The Women of the Souk Page 5

  ‘It’s just a stone,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Minya, ‘it’s a special stone.’

  ‘How’s that then?’ said Selim, taking the stone and slipping it into a fold of his galabiya.

  ‘They were throwing it the other day in the souk. All the girls were talking about it. Our Head teacher kept us in until they had stopped.’

  ‘That was very sensible of her,’ said Selim.

  ‘You ought not to throw stones at people,’ said Minya. ‘Someone might have got hurt.’

  ‘They might. Don’t you go round throwing stones, little pigeon.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ promised Minya. ‘Marie’s friend was one of the boys throwing stones and she was cross with him.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said Selim vaguely. He was aware of the throwing stones episode, everyone in the souk was, but, like him, vaguely.

  Minya looked up sharply.

  ‘You know about Marie. She’s the one who used to walk me to school before you did and now Layla, and one day she was kidnapped, and it was all my fault!’

  ‘What?’ said Selim, waking up suddenly.

  ‘Some bad men. They kidnapped her, and it was all my fault!’

  She began to cry.

  ‘Now, now!’ said Selim, not used to children’s tears, and much agitated. ‘What’s all this?’

  ‘They took her away and might have killed her, and Layla says it was all my fault!’

  ‘No, no, they won’t. You’ve got it wrong, little pigeon, it’s not your fault. But what does this have to do with the stone?’

  ‘Marie. She walked me to—’

  ‘The Kewfik girl is this?’

  Despite the efforts to keep quiet about the kidnapping word had not only got out but was all round the souk.

  Minya burst into more tears.

  Selim paused, still holding Minya. Lacking children of his own, he didn’t quite know what to do with her.

  He decided to take her back to the Bab-el-Khalk. The boss would know.

  Owen was not in fact in his room, but Georgiades, alerted by the sound unusual in the Bab-el-Khalk of a child crying, and having children of his own, came out of a door further along the corridor. Selim seemed incapable of explaining how he came to be in the police headquarters with a distressed child in his arms.

  Minya fumbled in the pockets of his galabiya and produced the stone.

  Georgiades examined it gravely.

  ‘It looks a good stone,’ he said. ‘How does it come to be there?’

  Selim’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly.

  ‘I picked it up in the playground,’ said Minya, ‘and my cousin said it looked like one of the stones the boys had been throwing, and that I ought to throw it away, or else the police would be on to me.’

  ‘No, we wouldn’t,’ said Georgiades, ‘not unless there was some reason to think you had been throwing it.’

  ‘Marie was cross with her boy friend because he had been throwing it.’

  ‘This one?’

  ‘Or one like it. He had been throwing them in the souk. That day when everyone was doing it.’

  Feeling important, Minya sat on the end of the desk in the fat man’s room. He sat on a chair opposite her and seemed harmless. He spoke to her in the same way as the Mamur Zapt had done, as equal to equal. Layla had said that was what she liked about him. Men, she said, usually give themselves airs. If they could be bothered to notice the presence of a girl – or young woman rather. Minya knew that she shouldn’t say girl, she was a young woman and should not forget it, said Layla. Although on the whole Minya felt more like a little girl than she did a grown up.

  The Mamur Zapt, however, was approved of by Layla and the other big girls and Minya knew better than to buck the trend. Besides, she quite liked the Mamur Zapt, although he was rather tall and she did not really understand all this about a Zeinab or where she fit in. Who was she? Perhaps she was the Mamur Zapt’s mother. But if so, why did he not just call her mother? Most children Minya knew were not on first name terms with their parents. But Minya was finding that there were a lot of things she did not know and that this was probably another.

  The fat man was quite nice and not at all intimidating (this was a word she had recently learned and was rather proud of).

  The fat man put his hand in his pocket and took out an object, then placed two things on the desk, both of which Minya recognised. The first was the stone and the second was a sweet. She had seen that before too, in the Scentmakers’ Bazaar.

  ‘So here is my question,’ said the fat man: ‘do they both come from the same place?’

  Minya thought they did. Perhaps they were not exactly the same, but they were very like the stones that had been thrown in the Bazaar and the sweets that had been in the jar – on the scentmaker’s counter.

  ‘Your friend Marie would probably recognise them too,’ said the fat man.

  Minya nodded.

  ‘Did the man in the shop give her sweets?’ asked Georgiades.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘But I’ll bet she didn’t throw stones!’ said the fat man.

  Minya was quite sure of this.

  ‘In fact, she told off her friend when he threw them?’

  Minya nodded again.

  ‘Who was this friend?’

  ‘Marie’s friend. I don’t know his name,’ said Minya firmly.

  ‘Did she meet him often?’

  Minya considered.

  ‘Quite often,’ she said.

  ‘When she was taking you to school? Or when you were coming home?’

  ‘Both. But not always in the afternoon because he had lectures.’

  Minya thought she needed to explain.

  ‘Lectures are like lessons,’ she said.

  ‘And then one day they started throwing stones? Like this one?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Minya. ‘And one of them nearly hit me, and I didn’t like it and Marie became very angry and said, “What the hell did they think they were doing?”’ She remembered the word exactly because it was one that children were told not to use, and she had been quite shocked when she heard Marie using it. Although a little thrilled.

  Marie had pulled her behind one of the wooden booths. But then the boys had started breaking up the booth. And Marie had come out and shouted at them, and they had run away. Then one of the boys had said to Marie’s friend: ‘Who the hell’s side do you think you’re on?’

  ‘Hell’ again. It had marked it firmly in Minya’s mind. The boy and Marie’s friend had started shouting at each other and Minya had been afraid they were actually going to hit each other, but the other boys pulled them apart and told them to get on with it. And they had all moved off to another part of the souk and Marie had been of half a mind to go with them, but then she remembered Minya and stopped.

  ‘You’re a little pain in the ass!’ she had said to Minya and Minya had started crying but Marie had grabbed her and hugged her and said it was all right, it wasn’t her fault. But Minya had known that she wanted to go after the boys and had felt guilty once again.

  ‘And what had happened then?’ asked the Greek. It had all quietened down, and then someone had come running along the line of wrecked shops shouting to everyone to get out because the Kauris were coming. And Marie had grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away, and they had run out of the souk and off home.

  ‘This was in the afternoon, was it?’ asked the fat man. ‘At the end of school, when you were on your way home?’

  Minya agreed that it was.

  ‘And all the shopkeepers were very cross,’ she said.

  Such incidents were not uncommon in Cairo. In fact, they happened all the time and the police were inclined to disregard them. It was irritating for the shopkeepers but, as McPhee said, it could have been much worse. Nationalism was stirring in Egypt and the student body was generally restive. It was part, thought Owen, of growing up in a society that was just becoming conscious of the possibilities that were opening up for it. Handle wi
th care, was Owen’s motto. Because if you didn’t handle it with care a situation would explode – and there was already the possibility of explosion. But so long as it remained only a possible explosion and did not become an actual explosion, you were all right. He judged that this incident was already settling back to the possible level and not worth worrying too much about.

  But there was one thing that stood out: the involvement of Marie Kewfik’s friend. How deep did that involvement go? And was there any connection between it and Marie Kewfik’s kidnapping?

  FOUR

  When Mahmoud had worked in the Geziret previously he had had occasion to visit several of the schools in the area. Among them was the school that Ali Shawquat had attended – it was in the same area dominated by the Kewfik stables and most of the bigger children who still went to school in that area went there. Mahmoud had liked the school and liked the Headmaster. He was a decent man, a little unimaginative, perhaps, but one who knew his children. Mahmoud decided to pay him a visit.

  Yes, the Headmaster remembered Ali Shawquat: a promising boy, of whom they had had great hopes. He had been a prefect and looked on as a possible future Head Boy. Egyptian schools were usually modelled on the English system and went in for such things as Head Boys. Mahmoud himself had been Head Boy. But this school was very different from the one he had attended. Mahmoud had gone to a school for the very brightest children. It was for the sons of the Cairo elite and was much like a good English grammar school. The school young Shawquat had attended had been more like a technical school, but a good one which tended to do well by its boys. Its aim was to open doors for humbler children of ability and, with its sympathetic and committed Headmaster, to give its pupils a good start in life; for the area, that was. He had gone on from the school to a senior technical college, where he had studied engineering. This was the best route for the bright boy from the Geziret. Brighter boys went to one of the religious foundations. The most famous of these was, of course, the El Azhar. However, his grades at school had not been good enough for him to go there, nor did his inclination.

  ‘His interests were elsewhere?’

  ‘I don’t think his interests were clearly defined when he was still with us, but they were certainly not in a religious direction.’ This in a way was significant. Egypt was a Muslim country and most bright students went into religious study. You had to make a conscious effort not to.

  ‘In his case what helped was parental influence,’ went on the Headmaster. ‘Usually it is the father but in Shawquat’s case it was the mother as well. He had an unusually strong-minded mother who wanted him to be equipped for life in the modern world. It was a good thing, I think. I do not say this because I am not a good Muslim. God forbid! But it doesn’t suit everyone and I don’t think it would have suited him. His was a peasant family and not at all inclined to religious speculation. But, unlike a lot of peasant families, they were ambitious for their son. The mother especially. “My boy is not going to work in the fields!” she told me more than once. “He is a clever boy and deserves better.”

  ‘And the father, too, was ambitious for his son. Back then, at least, he was a strong radical which meant that he was not content with his place and he thought that society was holding him back, keeping him down. So he was angry with society – bitter against it, bitter against the Pashas, bitter against the Khedive. Bitter against the Kewfiks, who are the big employers around here.’

  ‘Bitter against the Kewfiks?’

  ‘Yes. Why do you sound surprised? Everyone here is bitter against the Kewfiks. Especially those who work for them. As Ali Shawquat’s father did, in the stables. The Kewfiks own the land. Their overseer’s whip lands across the peasants’ backs. Perhaps I shouldn’t say that, but that is how it seems to the peasants. They know only what it meant for them.’

  ‘So young Ali grew up with a mother who wanted better things and a father who knew only that he was against the bosses, and both mother and father pinned their hopes on him,’ Mahmoud said, nodding his head.

  ‘Yes, but he wasn’t really like what either of them wanted. He was a mild, brainy boy who loved music. He used to play the nay very well and we encouraged him. It seemed to lift him and, as time went by, it began to seem that he wasn’t suited to anything else. He was not really interested in his technical studies, in the technical school. He was always cutting away to play by himself. In fact, his mother paid for him to have music lessons, but this was not what his father wanted at all. His father saw him as a boss in some factory or other, making a lot of money. But Ali did not want to be a boss, he did not want to work in a factory. So there was trouble between them.

  ‘The parents came to me and said: “What shall we do? All he is interested in is the nay, but playing the nay will not bring us money to keep a family or build a house – or provide for us when we are old.”

  ‘I put this to him and he said that his life was the nay. He didn’t want to do anything else. His father struck him and bullied him and said that what he wanted to do was do nothing but how could a family afford that?’

  ‘That would have been difficult for the boy.’

  ‘And there was another consideration: both his mother and his father were ardent nationalists. His father was a member of the Nationalist Party. They were working, they said, for a better Egypt, an Egypt in which wrong was righted and life would be better for everyone. What was wrong with him, that he couldn’t do that?

  ‘The mother said: “Why did he think only of himself?” and his father said: “On my money! Let him provide for himself if all he wants to do is play the nay?”

  ‘They wanted me to appeal to him, and I did. I reasoned with him and said he had to think of his family, of others too. Of Egypt. Did he not want to help to build a better land? Like his father and mother?

  ‘He said he did but he wanted to play the nay too.

  ‘“Play the nay, by all means,” I said, “but do it as well as providing for yourself and your family!”

  ‘Well, I think he did heed what I said, and for a time there was an improvement in his work at the technical college. He was a clever boy and there could be no doubt about his ability to do well if he tried, but after a while he didn’t try as much. He began to drift back to his nay. What didn’t help was his fellow students. They kept saying, “Let us hear more of the nay! Factories go on forever but playing such as yours does not.”’

  ‘And his father did not like that?’

  ‘His father had always disliked his nay-playing but he was cunning. When Ali’s work began to fall off he did not blame the nay-playing, he blamed the work! It was not his fault, he said, the poor and lowly always have to struggle. It was society’s fault, not his.

  ‘“Look at the Kewfiks,” he said. “Do they have to struggle? Don’t you work as hard as they do? And yet they get further. Is that just?”

  ‘Well, after a while he began to believe his father and then he began to work even less hard, and his performance at school fell off even more. He felt that it wasn’t his fault and became bitter, and he added his father’s bitterness to his own.

  ‘He fell in with other discontented boys, unsuccessful students. They went round together and started to become a nuisance and we were sad, because we had seen it before. Bright children become less bright and in the end falling foul of the law. There were little bits of indiscipline, then larger. Stones were thrown. They made trouble in the souk. I have seen it before. One or two troublemakers join together and become so many troublemakers that the police take notice.

  ‘That’s how it was with the bunch that Ali had fallen in with. It soon became clear that the police would step in, and then what would happen to Ali? He would be punished, become known as a bad lot. It would be the end of all their bright hopes for their son.

  ‘And then, just at this time, there began this business with the girl.’

  ‘Marie Kewfik?’

  ‘Yes. No sooner than I saw them together my heart began to sink, for the Kewfiks are
a rich, powerful family and they would not like it. What seems like innocent play soon became less innocent. They grow up, and Ali began to grow up and she, too, I expect. At first it was just nay playing. When he played at the stables for the workmen, or after school in the playground for his fellow students, she would be there. There were others too, of course, lots; but she – she seemed riveted to him and the music. Soon she was always there, and it began to be noticed. The Kewfiks heard of it and someone must have spoken to Ali’s father, for he intervened.

  ‘“Rich are rich and poor are poor,” he said to Ali, ‘“and they do not mix. Keep away from the girl!”

  ‘Perhaps something similar was said on the Kewfiks’ side, because for a while we didn’t see the two together. But then she began to come again, not in the stables, they stopped that, but after school to where Ali played daily in the playground.

  ‘And all this time, his playing was getting better and better. The playground began to be full after school. Even the masters, even people nothing to do with the school, came to listen. And she was rapt.

  ‘When he had finished for the day and went home, they went off together. Not to his home, nor to hers, but somewhere together. Always together.’

  ‘Ali’s father became angry?’

  ‘Yes, very. “You will bring trouble upon us!” he said, and beat the boy. After a while Ali ran away. We don’t know what happened to him, but we knew that he was still playing, and we suspected that she still went to listen.

  ‘And then we heard one day that she too had gone. Kidnapped, some said. Run away like him, others said. But someone told us that she had been taken by someone else, bad men, who had seized her for money. Ali was walking around like a man who had lost his senses. And then, suddenly we no longer saw him about. And some said he had killed himself. Out of despair.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘We no longer hear his nay.’ The Head looked thoughtful. ‘There are police everywhere, but they are not looking for him. A poor man counts for nothing, but everyone looks for her.’

  ‘What,’ said Owen to Mahmoud, ‘is a nay?’