The Point in the Market Page 17

  Yasmin looked up with alarm.

  ‘My brother will soon be here. I told him I would walk over to the shrine. He wanted to stay and watch the fire. He likes fires.’

  Owen wondered what it was that she had wanted to say to him. Nothing, perhaps. Perhaps she had just wanted to talk to him, intrigued, perhaps, by the fact that he was an Englishman.

  He got up and went to find his horse.

  Suddenly Yasmin came running after him.

  ‘I need to know about Sabri,’ she said urgently. ‘I need to.’

  Owen saw a figure coming quickly across the fields towards them. He climbed back up on to his horse.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ he said.

  ‘Why did Sabri have to die?’ she whispered. ‘Why?’

  As Owen was riding away, he caught sight of her brother’s angry face.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Owen felt uneasy about Yasmin and, a couple of days later, as he was crossing the Ataba el Khadra, he thought he would drop in at the fire station to have a word with Mohammed Sekhmet.

  A training drill was going on in the yard. One of the small two-horsed engines had been brought out and its crew were busily running out a hose. One took the nozzle and dashed over to a practice wall, another fastened the other end of the hose to a hydrant, and another pushed out the escape ladder. Another man was standing by with a watch.

  ‘One minute seven seconds,’ he said.

  The firemen were all in their thick blue uniforms and wearing glittering brass helmets pointed on top. In the heat it must have been sweltering but they all grinned cheerfully at Owen.

  The crew lowered the ladder and began to run the hose back to the cart. One of the men jumped up on to the cart to see to the coiling. The man with the watch stood by keeping a careful eye.

  ‘It’s important, Effendi,’ he explained to Owen. ‘If they’re not coiled right, they won’t run out right. And, besides, it’s bad for the hoses.’

  Along one side of the yard was a row of stables. Owen could see the noses of the horses pointing out above the half-doors. The fire engines themselves were drawn up in the middle of the yard, three two-horse ones and a larger four-horse one. The larger one was now being brought out in place of the two-horse one, which was being pulled aside.

  The crew of the larger engine stood looking expectantly at the man with the watch.

  ‘Now!’ he said, and immediately they set to work, running out the hose and a huge eighty foot ladder. One of the firemen mounted the ladder with a nozzle and a moment later was directing a fierce 1¼-inch jet against the target, with the aid of a steamer from the motor tower.

  ‘Two minutes nine seconds,’ said the man with the watch.

  ‘Pretty good,’ said Owen.

  ‘We need to be,’ said the man with the watch.

  The crew were in the middle of storing the hose away when a man dashed out into the yard and banged a gong.

  ‘Damn!’ said the man with the watch. He touched Owen on the arm. ‘However, Effendi,’ he said, ‘watch this!’

  Before the echoes of the gong had died away, a man ran round opening the half-doors of the stables. The horses came out of their own accord.

  ‘There!’ said the man with the watch proudly.

  By now firemen were leading the horses to two of the carts. A moment later they were racing out of the great gates of the fire station clanging their bells.

  ‘I am most impressed,’ Owen said to Mohammed Sekhmet a little later when he went into his office.

  ‘Thank you, Effendi,’ said Mohammed Sekhmet gravely.

  ‘It is good to see such zeal and such efficiency. They are things one does not always see in Egypt.’

  ‘And in England?’ asked Mohammed Sekhmet.

  ‘Not in England, either.’

  Mohammed Sekhmet seemed unusually subdued this morning. After greeting Owen he sat down again behind his desk as looked at his hands.

  ‘Well, Effendi,’ he said, ‘what can I do for you?’

  ‘I wanted to have a word with you about Yasmin.’

  ‘You have seen her, I gather,’ said Mohammed Sekhmet, not looking up from his hands.

  ‘Yes, I was out at the village a couple of days ago.’

  ‘To see Yasmin?’

  ‘No, no. On other business. It was just that she was at one of the houses I visited.’

  ‘But then you spoke with her again.’

  ‘By accident, yes.’

  ‘Alone.’

  ‘I met her on the road as I was riding back to Cairo.’

  ‘Yes. Osman has told me. And my son.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Effendi, I think you should not speak to Yasmin again. I believe you mean well, but it unsettles her and disturbs my family.’

  ‘Certainly, if that is what you wish.’

  ‘It is what I wish.’ He looked up from his hands. ‘What was it you wanted to say to me, Effendi?’

  What Owen had wanted to say was that he did not think the village, or Osman’s household, the right place for Yasmin. It was too crippling for a girl of her intelligence and Osman’s regime too harsh and lacking in understanding.

  But now he felt he could not say that. What business was it of his? It was evidently a family matter and however much you might feel that the family was wrong, you could not interfere. And this was especially so with women in an Egyptian family.

  Yet he felt he had to say something.

  ‘You should not think,’ he said quietly, ‘that because your original intentions for Yasmin have not turned out the way you expected, they were necessarily wrong.’

  ‘They were wrong,’ said Mohammed Sekhmet flintily, ‘and God has rebuked me.’ He stood up to show Owen out. ‘Yasmin will marry a man from the village, a man who will keep her within her proper horizons. It is not as I would have wished, I had hoped for better things for her. But what is more important than worldly achievement is that she should do right in the eye of God. She must learn to find her fulfillment in the performance of her wifely duties.’

  ***

  When Owen came out into the sunlight of the yard, the heat hit him like a fist. He stopped for a moment, quite dazed. Over on the other side of the courtyard some firemen were gathered round a bucket which seemed to have some sort of hand-pump in it. Nearby was a small heap of rubbish, wooden boxes, packaging. The man with the watch was there again.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s start. Who’s going to light it?’

  There was a sudden chorus.

  ‘Fahmy, Fahmy! Fahmy’s the one.’

  A man came forward sheepishly.

  ‘Right, then, Fahmy. Get on with it!’

  A man stooped and put a match to the pile of rubbish.

  ‘One!’ said the watch keeper.

  Someone seized the pump and began to work it. Another took its small hose and directed a jet on to the rubbish.

  ‘Two, three,’ counted the watch keeper.

  Another bucket was brought and the man making the pump transferred it dexterously.

  ‘Eight, nine. Stop! Well, that wasn’t bad,’ said the man with the watch. He turned and saw Owen. ‘Just a little one this time, Effendi,’ he said with a grin. ‘We use this sometimes when we can’t get the hose there.’

  The men around the pump looked up. One of them, the man who had lit the fire, was Yasmin’s brother. And again the angry look came over his face when he saw Owen.

  ***

  Nikos had asked for a meeting of himself, Georgiades, Owen, and the financial expert from Customs. He said that in the course of the financial negotiation over the cotton something had come up on which they needed Owen’s guidance.

  They gathered in Owen’s office. Georgiades was looking even greyer in the face. When Owen asked him how his wife’s deal was progr
essing, he just shook his head despairingly.

  Nikos said that Iskander, the middle man who was acting for the Pasha Ismail, had just introduced a new demand. The Pasha wanted payment not in money but in rifles, which were to go to an agent of his in Tripoli. Iskander said that was no problem, that he could arrange for the purchase and dispatch of the arms. It just meant that when Georgiades received the money from the European buyer, he would allow Iskander to draw on it for the necessary purchasing. Georgiades would, of course, retain a balance until the deal was concluded.

  ‘This kind of three-way transaction is quite normal,’ said the financial expert from Customs, ‘and it doesn’t affect the legal issue, which is the illicit export of cotton. But we thought that, given the nature of the consignment, and where the arms are going, we ought to check it with you.’

  ‘Rifles?’ said Owen. ‘Tripoli?’

  ‘The war is over now,’ the Customs official pointed out.

  The war with Italy had ended not long before.

  ‘So why do they want the arms?’

  ‘I imagine the ultimate buyer will be the Senussi,’ said the Customs man. ‘They probably need to replenish their stocks.’

  ‘As a general principle, we are reluctant to see the tribes of the interior more heavily armed,’ said Owen.

  ‘That’s what we thought. I think what it comes down to is at what point do we wish to intervene, bring the whole thing to a halt.’

  ‘When we’ve got enough to nail Ismail. Have we got to that point, do you think?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘I was really hoping to see the cotton physically moving. That way there’s less scope for argument.’

  ‘Well, we’ve probably got to that state now,’ said Nikos. ‘Georgiades could ask for it.’

  ‘We’ve got people down in Ossawa watching the crop,’ said the Customs official.

  ‘Ossawa?’

  ‘The Pasha’s estate. Ismail has got estates all over the place, but that’s the one the sample came from. According to old Zaghlul.’

  Ossawa. He had come across the name recently. Ah, yes: that was where the donkey-barber had brought the message for Osman Huq from. From one of the Pasha Ismail’s estates to another, probably.

  Something was niggling at the back of his mind.

  ‘I thought old Zaghlul said the estate was on the river?’

  ‘It is on the river. Most Pashas’ estates are. That’s where the fertile land is.’

  ‘But—’

  The donkey-barber had given the impression that he had been working the Canal road. But that road lay across the desert. He had made a detour, obviously. No reason why he shouldn’t. But—

  And now another thought began to niggle: something else that the man from Customs had said.

  ***

  ‘I’ve been to the hospital,’ said Zeinab.

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Labiba took me. It was terrible there. There are so many wounded coming in from Gallipoli that it’s frightfully overcrowded. The staff are completely swamped.’

  ‘It was pretty full when I was there.’

  ‘It’s worse now. There are people lying on the floor between the beds and on mattresses down the middle. They’re going to have to open an annexe. That’s why Labiba was there.’

  ‘She’s going to do it?’

  Zeinab nodded.

  ‘That’s what Cairns-Grant wants. In fact, he’s insisting on it. I’ve never seen him so angry. Of course, he’s very tired. He looks exhausted. But he was furious. Paul had been there all day trying to calm him down.’

  ‘Well, he’s being left to carry the whole damned thing. And with the numbers—’

  ‘It’s not that. Or not just that. There are some Egyptians there. They want to move them out.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Mrs Cunningham says that her teams could manage extra wards. But the Egyptians don’t like being nursed by women. They think it’s improper for women to do that sort of thing. If they can be moved out, Australians could be put in that ward, or those wards, there are three of them now, apparently, and Mrs Cunningham’s teams could manage the lot, without any extra staffing.’

  ‘What about the ordinary nursing staff?’

  ‘They’re run off their feet as it is.’

  ‘Can’t they get in some more?’

  ‘That’s just what they’re doing. Only they have to train them first.’

  ‘What about the German nuns?’

  ‘They’re assisting the specialist nurses with the emergency cases. Cairns-Grant says that’s too important to leave to a lot of well-meaning…biddies, I think he said, I didn’t quite catch the word!’

  Owen disappeared into the kitchen to fetch Zeinab a cold drink. When he came back, he said:

  ‘So they’re going to do it? Move the Egyptians out, I mean?’

  ‘It appears so. Paul insists it’s not out. It’s merely to another part of the hospital. That’s what the annexe would be, he says. Just another part of the hospital.’

  ‘But for Egyptians only?’

  ‘Because of the nursing problem. Only because of that. They say.’

  ‘It’s foolish as well as nasty. How do they think Egyptian politicians are going to react?’

  ‘Paul swears that the facilities will be at least as good. If they’re not, he says he will offer himself up to Labiba for vivisection.’

  ‘How does Labiba come into it?’

  ‘Cairns-Grant says that if the annexe is genuinely going to be part of the hospital, then that means he has the say over who runs it. And he says Labiba.’

  ‘What about the other doctors?’

  ‘He says they will support him to a man. And they are, of course, all men.’

  ‘I know, but…. Professional solidarity and all that.’

  ‘I talked to one of them. He said he’d trained in the medical faculty when Labiba’s husband was Dean and that he’d known her for years. He had great respect for her, they all had. And then he said: “Look, Zeinab, at the moment I’m working eighteen hours a day, and that’s the way it should be. But I want to spend it using my medical expertise. I don’t want to be running round chasing people and bits of paper. I know Labiba is a terrific administrator and, as far as I’m concerned, the sooner she gets started, the better.”’

  ‘The nurses will all be men. Even the new ones. Might not that cause difficulty?’

  ‘I said that to Mahfouz. He said that people tended to do what Labiba told them.’

  Owen sipped his drink. Then a thought occurred to him.

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  ‘I told you. Labiba took me.’

  ‘Why did Labiba take you?’

  ‘She wanted me to see for myself. She said that when people saw for themselves, it was very hard for them not to do something.’

  ‘To do something? Exactly what—?’

  ‘This annexe will be up and running within a month. Labiba says that when it is, she will need help.’

  ‘And you—?’

  ‘Yes.’ Zeinab drained her glass. ‘And meanwhile,’ she said firmly, ‘I am going to work in the general wards to learn what it’s all about.’

  ***

  One of the orderlies came to him from the orderly office at the front of the building.

  ‘Effendi, there’s a man been hanging around.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  There were always people hanging around in Egypt; especially around the Bab-el-Khalk.

  ‘We didn’t like the look of him so we sent Selim to talk to him.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Effendi, I think you ought to talk to Selim.’

  Owen went downstairs and out through the main door. Selim was standing at the bottom of the steps.

  ‘Hello, Selim. What’s
the problem?’

  ‘There’s no problem, Effendi—Now. I sent the daft bastard away.’

  ‘Was he being a nuisance?’

  ‘Not really, Effendi. He was just hanging around. But he was magnoum, crazy—and they didn’t like the look of him.’

  ‘He went off without making any trouble?’

  ‘He was a bit truculent. He asked what the hell I was doing, ordering him around. I said I was a policeman and that’s what policemen did. He said I was in the pay of the British. And I said it was true that they paid me and I wouldn’t work for them unless they did.’

  ‘What did he say to that?’

  ‘He said that the British were infidels and that the new lot who had come—I think he meant the Australians, Effendi—were even worse. They didn’t follow God’s holy commandments. I said, well, of course, they wouldn’t, coming from far away and not knowing them. He said they drank and they swore and they went with women. I said that amazed me.

  ‘That was when he become truculent, Effendi. He said I was a flouter and a scoffer and a mocker of the Holy Word and that God’s wrath would be visited on me as surely as it would on the infidels. So I told him to piss off.’

  ‘Well, you seem to have dealt with that very effectively, Selim. If he causes any more trouble, perhaps you’d let me know?’

  Selim walked back with him up the steps.

  ‘I think it’s the heat, Effendi. It sort of brings them out. Crazy people like this, I mean.’

  They stopped at the top of the steps.

  ‘The fact is, Effendi, I think I know this person. He works at the fire station.’

  ‘At the fire station?’

  ‘Yes. He’s one of the firemen. I thought I’d go round there, Effendi, when I come off duty, and have a word with Hamid. He’s a friend of mine. I thought I’d tell him to keep an eye on this bloke, and maybe turn the hose on him from time to time to cool him down.’

  ***

  ‘I’ve received another invitation,’ said Zeinab.

  ‘Samira again?’

  ‘Not this time. It’s from Delila. But it will be the same people, and with the same aim.’

  ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘I won’t.’ Zeinab put the letter away.