The Mark of the Pasha Read online

  He came now weaving through the tables, a smile on his face. They embraced affectionately in the Arab way. Then Mahmoud sat down and looked around for the waiter, which was not the Arab way. The last thing an Arab would do in a café was order coffee. He would wait for it to come, like manna from heaven, and meanwhile he would read the papers, play dominoes, or chat. The only thing he would do for the good of the house was, occasionally, to hire a pipe, since his own pipe, with its water jar and length of hose, was too large to carry around. Mahmoud, however, was a strict Muslim and did not smoke; he was at the same time a compulsive Westerner, in that he believed in getting on with things. The waiters here knew him and they knew Owen and pretty soon came over with small cups and a brass pot with a long spout and poured them both coffee.

  They talked a little, in guarded terms, about the political situation, and then Owen got to the point. He told Mahmoud about the Royal Procession and the bomb, and then about Mr. Narwat.

  ‘It is only right,’ said Mahmoud mildly, ‘that a defendant should be legally represented. Even a water-cart driver.’

  ‘I have no objection to that. But would a water-cart driver normally be able to hire someone like Mr. Narwat?’

  ‘Of course not. I know Yasin Narwat and he is very expensive. He may, mind you, be doing it for nothing. Lawyers sometimes do that in political cases. However—’ he shook his head, ‘—I don’t think Yasin Narwat is like that.’

  ‘Someone else is paying. And I was wondering if word had got round who.’

  Mahmoud shook his head again.

  ‘I don’t think so. Not yet, at any rate. I will keep my ears open.’

  He sat for a moment, thinking.

  ‘It is, however, a little surprising. That Narwat should let himself get involved in a thing like this. Even if he was very well paid. It’s not the sort of thing that he usually touches. And that’s nothing to do with politics, it’s a social matter. He likes to stick with the well-to-do.’

  ‘Well, he could still be doing that.’

  Mahmoud looked at him quickly.

  ‘He could?’

  ‘This could—just could—be going right back to the Palace.’

  ‘Well, that is interesting.’ He took it in. ‘So this could be big, then?’

  ‘It could.’ Owen waited and then said: ‘You wouldn’t like to come in on it, would you? I could ask for you to be assigned.’

  Mahmoud shook his head regretfully.

  ‘They wouldn’t do it,’ he said. ‘They’re keeping me tied up at a desk. In any case—’

  He stopped.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head again. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. Then he looked at Owen. ‘The fact is, things could be about to change. If the Government falls and Zaghlul gets in. I’ve been told—just a hint, you understand? nothing firm—that if a new Administration is formed, I might be included.’

  ‘Gosh!’

  Owen rested back. This was something new. He hadn’t realised that Mahmoud had reached these heights.

  ‘Congratulations!’ he said. ‘If it comes.’

  ‘It probably won’t. It almost certainly won’t. There are plenty of people who don’t want it to happen. That may be,’ he said ruefully, ‘why I’m being blocked.’

  ‘Look, I realise I shouldn’t have spoken. Not in the circumstances. Sorry.’

  ‘No, no. You weren’t to know. And please keep it quiet. Don’t even drop a hint.’

  ‘No, no, of course not.’

  ‘It may never happen.’

  ‘They couldn’t do better.’

  ‘That’s probably why it will never happen,’ said Mahmoud, laughing.

  ***

  When Owen got home, Zeinab was full of something that had happened to her that morning. She had been sitting in her office at the hospital when a woman had come in: young, well dressed, in European style, although with a veil over her face which she had removed as soon as she had got in.

  ‘I want a job,’ she had said.

  ‘Job?’

  Zeinab was taken aback. Women didn’t do this sort of thing in Egypt.

  ‘Yes. In the hospital.’

  ‘Are you a doctor?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A nurse, perhaps?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well…’

  And in any case, the nursing was done by men. It was true there had been women nurses during the War but they had been British. The ladies of the expatriate community had volunteered their services, eager to do their bit and Cairns-Grant, a little reluctantly but hard-pressed, had accepted them. But when the War ended they had quietly drifted away and been replaced by men.

  ‘I want to work in an office. Like you, Zeinab.’

  ‘Yes, well, it’s taken a bit of time—’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t expect to start high up. Just an ordinary clerical job. At the bottom. You do have clerks, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  But they were all men. Didn’t she know that?

  ‘I’d do anything,’ the woman said passionately. ‘I just want a chance. And then I’d work my way up. I want to be like you, Zeinab.’

  ‘Look,’ said Zeinab, ‘how old are you?’

  The woman flushed.

  ‘Twenty-four,’ she muttered. Then, misunderstanding the point, and thinking it was that she was too old, she raised her head defiantly and said:

  ‘I never married. I didn’t want to get married. Not to the kind of men they suggested. And now I’m too old.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Zeinab, only just married, at thirty.

  ‘It’s true,’ the woman insisted. ‘And, besides, I—I put men off. I frighten them. I think differently from them. I’m bolder, I think. But they don’t want a bold woman. They think a bold woman is just brazen. But I’m not brazen, I just wanted to be different. I wanted to do something. Like you, Zeinab. Not just be stuck in a house, cooking my man’s meals.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ said Zeinab.

  The woman glowed.

  ‘Of course you can, Zeinab! And you’ve found a way out. You’ve done it, Zeinab! And I will do it, too. If you will help me.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m in much of a position to help. I may not be here much longer. They’ll probably want to throw me out.’

  ‘Oh, no, they’d never do that!’

  ‘They’re talking of it.’

  ‘The English?’

  ‘No. The Egyptians. And they’ll probably want to throw Cairns-Grant out as well.’

  ‘But he’s a great man!’

  ‘Nevertheless.’ And then, feeling the need to explain: ‘Things are changing. Egyptians are taking over. Or maybe they’re going to take over. Don’t you want that?’

  ‘Oh, yes! Of course, I do, Zeinab. Only—you don’t mean that, do you, Zeinab? About them throwing you out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you are an Egyptian! Is it—is it because you’re a woman, Zeinab?’

  ‘A lot of men can’t get jobs. So they don’t like it when they see a woman doing one. They think it’s their job that she’s doing.’

  ‘That’s it! That’s it! And that’s what has got to change. And you’ll change it, Zeinab! You’ve changed it already. And you’ve got to go on. You mustn’t let them throw you out.’

  ‘Well, it’s not as easy as that. In the end I don’t have much say in the matter.’

  ‘If I was beside you, Zeinab, I’d support you. I’d fight for the things you fight for!’

  Zeinab was not much older than she was but felt about a hundred years older.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’m very sorry, but I don’t think I’ll be able to help you.’

  ‘I’d wash the floors.’

  ‘We’ve got men washing the floors.
And, anyway, that’s not the level we want women to be working at.’

  ‘Oh, Zeinab, you’re so right!’

  Zeinab could have bitten her tongue off.

  She got up to show her out.

  ‘I can type,’ the girl said diffidently. ‘I taught myself.’

  Zeinab stopped.

  ‘Can you now?’

  Perhaps she could do other office things, too. The bane of Zeinab’s life were the forms she had to fill in. They were the bane of Cairns-Grant’s life, too, and he had delegated them all to Zeinab. She had processed them honourably and diligently, but that was really not her sort of thing. She was miles too impatient.

  ‘Can you now?’ she said thoughtfully.

  ***

  ‘No,’ said Cairns-Grant. ‘It would make things even more difficult and they’re difficult enough as it is. They’re even objecting to you, Zeinab.’

  ‘Would one more make that much difference?’

  ‘Zeinab, sometimes these days I get really worried. People are so—so crazy! I sometimes think they might aim at the hospital, send us a bomb or something. Just because we employ a woman. Or, of course, an Englishman. I sometimes think I should step down and let an Egyptian have a go. The trouble is there aren’t any Egyptian specialists ready in my area. There’s Fahmi, of course, and he’ll be very good. But not just yet. And there’s Rahel. He’s training abroad and when he’s finished he might well be able to. But not just at the moment. All our training programmes were disrupted by the War.

  ‘But, of course, in your case there’s no specialisation involved. In principle a man could do your job. I don’t, actually, think he could do it half so well. But that’s what they’ll say. Are saying. And, anyway, a hospital manager’s job is specialised. Those bloody forms—’

  ‘Well, actually, it’s just there that she might be able to help—’

  It was a powerful argument and Cairns-Grant agreed to think about it.

  ***

  Meanwhile, though, it might be best to look around. Perhaps there was another area where a lively woman might be employed.

  ‘No,’ said Owen flatly. ‘They’d go mad. A woman in the Mamur Zapt’s office. You know what they’d say?’

  ‘What would they say?’

  ‘That my motives were not strictly honourable. The Mamur Zapt’s harem! I can hear it already.’

  ‘You could tough it out. You’re always saying that’s often the best thing to do.’

  ‘Look, there are a lot of changes—’

  ‘Yes, that’s why I thought you might be able to get away with it.’

  ‘These days they’re cutting budgets. They’re even asking me to reduce staff. And I’ve only got three! What do you want me to do? Sack Nikos? Or Georgiades?’

  ***

  In the end Cairns-Grant came up with a solution.

  ‘A temporary post,’ he said. ‘To help with an anticipated increase of clerical work. Arising out of the winding down of the military patient programme. Don’t want to employ a man since the job would be only temporary. It wouldn’t be fair to him. Whereas a woman…’

  So it was agreed Miriam should start as a clerk in Zeinab’s office.

  ***

  And meanwhile the unrest on the streets went on. The students were still marching and still breaking windows. They broke the windows of the big Western shops, their stones rattled against the shutters of the Government offices. The High Commissioner’s became a favourite target. The great European hotels, the Savoy, Shepheard’s, the Continentale, Mena Palace, and the Semiramis, had all taken to posting armed guards. Europeans began to keep off the streets. Soldiers off duty were confined to barracks, which didn’t please them. Some of them slipped out and went to their usual haunts. On their way back to the barracks, totally incapable, several of them were beaten up. Whereupon some of their mates slipped out the next night and responded in kind, unfortunately rather indiscriminately, which raised the temperature yet more.

  At the Sporting Club people began to mutter. What was the High Commissioner doing? The Police? The Mamur Zapt? What were these guys paid for? Send in the Army! They would know what to do.

  ‘That would only make it worse,’ said Owen, at a small meeting he attended at the High Commissioner’s.

  Garvin, the tough nut who was Head of the Cairo Police, nodded in agreement.

  ‘We stand ready,’ said the Commander in Chief of the Army.

  ‘Well, just stand a bit longer,’ said Willoughby.

  Nevertheless, he had to do something. What he did was to arrest Zaghlul, who had made the mistake of leading one of the processions in person, and deport him to Malta.

  ‘That will show them!’ said the Sporting Club members, pleased.

  It did; and the protests in the streets intensified.

  ***

  Owen consulted with Paul about getting Mahmoud assigned to the case.

  ‘Not a chance!’ said Paul. ‘He’s known as a Zaghlul man. Rushdi Pasha wouldn’t have it, the Khedive wouldn’t have it—’

  He stopped.

  ‘Wait a minute. That could actually help. It would show that everyone, Wafd as well as the Government, were united in the desire to track down the perpetrators of this ghastly outrage. Leave it to me.’

  ***

  The Khedive turned the request down flat.

  ‘I would as soon harbour a viper within my bosom—’

  ‘I know exactly how you feel, Your Highness,’ said Paul, ‘and I’m with you all the way. I think you’re very brave.’

  ‘Brave?’ said His Highness.

  ‘Yes, to set your face so resolutely against something which could make all the difference to your safety.’

  ‘Just a minute—’ said the Khedive.

  ‘Mr. el Zaki is one of the Parquet’s ablest men. Not to use him, in the present circumstances, seems, well, a bold decision.’

  ‘Not so fast!’ said the Khedive. ‘Perhaps, after all…’

  Chapter Four

  Owen went out to Helwan to see the races. He had not done that before and after an hour or two he decided that he was unlikely to do it again. He was sitting in some raised seats and every so often a few cars whizzed past with a roar of engine and in a cloud of dust and disappeared into the distance. It took just a couple of seconds and that was it; until after a while they stopped going round and one of them was pronounced the winner.

  For most of the time, of course, no cars were going past and in the intervals he attempted conversation with his neighbours. This was not easy. For the most part they were the scions of rich families, or else the hangers-on of the scions of rich families, with whom he had little in common. And then the only thing they could talk about was cars, about which Owen knew slightly less than nothing.

  ‘Who do you favour?’ one of them asked him.

  Owen cast around.

  Then, luckily, remembering Zeid’s reporting of the boy’s comments, he said:

  ‘The De Dion, I think. Or, perhaps, the Brazier.’

  This seemed to satisfy the man.

  ‘The Brazier, I think,’ he said, and then embarked on a long, incomprehensible disquisition on the merits of the rival engines.

  The boy was actually there today. They had seen him as they had driven in. How he had got there Owen couldn’t imagine but he went, he said, to most of the races. His name was Salah and he aspired to be a mechanic. He took them over to the start where various cars were lined up, bonnets open, being prepared for their races. Over everything hung the heavy smell of petrol fumes and Owen, not used to them, found his head swimming. He left Zeid with Salah and walked back to the start.

  A circuit had been laid out on the desert. The sand was thin and hard and although the track was bumpy at various points, it was relatively flat. Further out into the desert the ground became stonier, so the t
rack was fashioned in the form of an oval. The cars roared off, disappeared, and then roared back again, briefly.

  At the furthest point of the circuit the track shimmered. It may have been the petrol fumes or perhaps it was, as it usually was in Egypt, the effects of a mirage. Spirals of heat rose from the ground and shook themselves momentarily into a composed surface, and in that surface there would sometimes appear reflections, as in a mirror: The desert itself, and once some palm trees, and then, astonishingly and very clearly, a vision of cars drawn up, every detail about them as sharp as if they had been standing in front of him.

  The heat out there in the desert was quite unbearable; and yet the event had attracted a crowd of onlookers. They crouched in the sand beside the seats and when the cars went past they jumped to their feet and cheered excitedly. Each time the cars circled they drew nearer and nearer to the track until they were almost standing on the track itself. He saw McPhee there, trying to make them get back.

  What McPhee was doing there, either, he did not know. A police presence in case of accidents? Crowd control—with a crowd as small as this?

  How had he got here, anyway? Not on the donkey he usually rode about Cairo, that was clear. Perhaps Garvin, the police Commandant, whom he had seen somewhere in the crowd, had given him a lift. In his car. Owen felt a little stab of envy. Garvin’s car was permanent, Owen’s temporary, loaned to him for a few weeks.

  The cars were coming round again. There was an awkward bend, sharper than you thought, as the circuit straightened out to go in front of the stands and you could hear the cars before you saw them.

  Suddenly there were shouts. Someone had run out on to the track and was standing there waving and gesticulating.

  The driver of the first car, some way in front of the others, tried to avoid him and lost control. The car veered off the track into the spectators, spun out again, and lay broad-side across the track, where it stopped. Spectators ran over to it.