Michael Pearce - The Mingrelian Conspiracy

Selim came out of the kitchen looking daggers. He put the coffee before Owen, however, with a flourish.

‘Brilliant!’ whispered Owen. ‘You’re doing brilliantly.’

‘The next time they beat him up,’ Selim whispered back. ‘I’ll join in and help them!’

‘Meanwhile, just put up with him. You’re doing very well, and this is important.’

‘He just sits there all day giving orders,’ said Selim. ‘He’s worse than a sergeant.’

‘Yes, well, don’t mind him. It won’t be for long. It’s just a question of waiting.’

‘I don’t mind waiting,’ said Selim. ‘Not if I’ve got my feet up and a pot of coffee in front of me. But this is not like that. The moment I sit down he’s on to me.’

‘There are worse things. Just keep it up, that’s all. Now listen: there’s something you can be doing. Try and find out the name of the gang. Talk to the woman.’

Selim gave a broad smile.

‘I’ll talk to the woman, all right,’ he said.

Owen and Zeinab had been to the opera; in fact, were still at the opera, only, as this was the interval, and intervals were somewhat protracted in Egypt, they were going for a walk round the nearby Ezbekiyeh Gardens. ‘Gardens’ was perhaps a misnomer. In a country where, given water, anything will grow, and gardens were usually a riot of lush tropical vegetation, the Ezbekiyeh remained barren. There were various explanations for this. The most popular was that it was a British plot; or, conversely, testimony to Egyptian incapacity. Whatever the reason, the fact was that it consisted of only a few scrubby trees and some equally scrubby grass, tempting only for fornicating in, which was the reason, no doubt, why the gardens were fenced off with high iron railings and closed after dark.

What made the gardens fun to walk round was not their inside but their outside. As in the English tabloid newspapers, all human life was there: from the chestnut sellers roasting their chestnuts on the gratings which covered the roots of the young trees which surrounded the gardens-and perhaps that’s why the trees were scrubby-to the fortunetellers, usually Nubian women, telling fortunes by reading sand spread on a cloth. There were pavement stalls (rags and sweets in promiscuous proximity), pavement restaurants (consisting of large trays with stew in the middle and hunks of bread stuck on nails around the edge), barber shops (the barbers sat on the railings while their customers stood patiently in front of them), hat stands (on the railings), whip stands (ditto), oleographs of Levantine saints (ditto), indecent postcards (ditto and adjacent) and many other treasures. At intervals along the railings were Cleopatra’s Needle-like columns, only they consisted either of tarbooshes piled one on top of the other to an implausible height, or of congealed candy densely spotted with flies.

At night, however, such detail was lost. Lamps on the railings threw a mysterious, hazy glow and the flames of the chestnut-sellers’ fires created little pockets of moving light and shadow. Owen, impressionable at the best of times and made more so by the music he had just been listening to, loved it.

They came round on to the Sharia el Genaina, where there was music of a different kind: honky-tonk from the questionable cafes which looked across the street to the houses opposite, where the ladies of the night paraded their charms. In one of the cafes some men were singing mournfully.

‘Oh, my God!’ said Owen.

‘What language is it?’ asked Zeinab, puzzled.

‘Welsh!’

They could see the singers more clearly now. It was, as Owen had already suspected, his friends, the Welsh Fusiliers.

‘Why don’t they keep those stupid bastards back in barracks?’

‘But why?’ demanded Zeinab. ‘They sing so beautifully!’

‘Because they’re drunk. And they’ll soon be causing trouble.’

‘They are singing because they’re unhappy,’ said Zeinab indignantly. ‘Listen to the music. You can hear!’

‘Welshmen always go on like that abroad.’

‘They are thinking of their homes. It is in the music,’ said Zeinab, who was also impressionable and had also just been to the opera. ‘They are far from their country and they are very sad. If I was taken away from my country,’ declared Zeinab tragically, turning her great eyes on Owen, ‘I would sing like that!’

They had with them one of Zeinab’s artistic friends, a musician called Rashid.

‘What is interesting,’ he said, ‘is that they are singing in parts. You don’t usually get drunken soldiers doing that!’

‘There’s a bit of a tradition of choral singing in Wales.’

‘Is that so? But this is not what I would normally think of as choral singing. It is not church music, surely?’

‘Some of it. But also folk song.’

‘It is the spirit of the people,’ said Zeinab firmly, ‘speaking in music.’

‘Well-’

‘Speaking in music,’ said Zeinab, sensing opposition, ‘because that is all they have left. The English have taken everything else from them.’

‘What’s all this?’ said the musician.

‘In their music their spirit rises up and defies the hated English.’

‘Look, I know that song,’ said Owen. ‘It’s about sheep-’

‘They were humble shepherds,’ Zeinab told the musician, ‘and the British Army came in, just as it came into Egypt, and seized their country and took everything away from them. Except their songs and their spirit.’

‘And only in their music can they be free? But that is sad!’ said the musician, concerned. ‘Sad, but-wonderful! And why is it so sad?’ he cried, becoming excited. ‘That is how music is! That is how it has always been! The expression of a free people! That is how it was in Italy with the opera. Did you know that, Zeinab? The rise of opera is inextricably linked with the rise of Nationalism. It was so in Italy. It will be so in Egypt. Yes!’

‘Yes!’ cried Zeinab.

‘But where is it now? Where is the Egyptian opera? The true Egyptian opera? It has yet to be written.’ Rashid stopped dead. ‘I know!’ he shouted. ‘ I will write it for you, Zeinab! It will have you in it. The spirit of suffering Egyptian woman-’

‘Yes!’ cried Zeinab enthusiastically.

‘And you, my friend!’ He turned excitedly to Owen. ‘The spirit of nations everywhere, long suppressed and denied! Poor, suffering Wales! I will use some of those soldiers’ rhythms. There will be choral singing. Sheep, too. I could put in a pastoral scene-’

Owen gently shepherded them back to the Opera House. Paul was standing on the steps.

‘Hello!’ he said. ‘What’s going on? Zeinab looks a bit excited.’

‘She’s just joined the Welsh Nationalists.’

‘Oh.’

He turned to go in with them but then stopped.

‘The Welsh Nationalists? They’re not another bunch with a thing about Russia, are they?’

'Effendi,’ declared Selim, ‘this is the good life! Little did I think when I entered upon your service what riches it would lead me to! To sit in a cafe all day drinking coffee while those other poor bastards are out there walking round in the heat- this is bliss indeed!’

‘The man is not always upbraiding you?’

‘The man is always upbraiding me,’ conceded Selim, ‘but there are compensations.’

Owen did not like the sound of this.

‘Keep your hands off the woman!’ he said.

‘You told me to talk to her!’ protested Selim.

‘Talk, not touch.’

‘Well, Effendi,’ said Selim with a grin, ‘one thing leads to another.’

‘Let it not lead too far! Remember you are here for a purpose!’

‘Would I forget, Effendi?’ said Selim in wounded tones. ‘They have but to stick their heads in here and I will stamp on them!’