Michael Pearce - The Last Cut

‘No, no, not that.’

‘How, then?’

The ghaffir laid his finger along his nose.

‘Fair is fair, and if you take mine, I take yours. That’s fair all round, isn’t it?’

‘Depends what it is,’ said Georgiades.

But the ghaffir seemed to think he’d said enough. He picked up his gun and prepared to move away.

‘All the same, though,’ he said, with a slightly worried expression on his face, ‘it’s best not to meddle with the Lizard Man.’

Mahmoud seemed oddly uneasy Normally, although he was on the best of terms with Owen personally, he liked to keep his distance from him over legal matters. Constitutionally there was no place for the Mamur Zapt in the legal scheme of things, and Mahmoud was a stickler for constitutionality. Over this business of the Maiden, however, he seemed anxious to consult him at every turn. Owen knew that it was not because he had any doubts over the right course to pursue in terms of law. It must be something else; and Owen thought he knew what that was.

Mahmoud was not at home with this kind of case. It touched on things he knew very little about: women, for example. By this time most Egyptian men of his age would have married. Mahmoud’s father, himself a busy lawyer, had died young, however, and before he had had time to arrange that. Mahmoud had had to set about supporting his family and had immersed himself first in his studies and then in his career to the exclusion of all else. His mother broached the issue from time to time, indeed, was doing so with increasing frequency, but Mahmoud, determinedly modern, made it clear that he himself would see to the matter when the time came.

The time, however, had not so far come; and, since he had no sisters, and was, like many educated young Egyptians, distinctly prudish on sexual matters, the consequence was that he had had very little to do with women and knew very little about them. Given the way in which women were kept from any contact with men outside their own family, Owen doubted whether Mahmoud had ever spoken to a young woman of his own social standing.

The result was, thought Owen, that Mahmoud probably knew as much about female circumcision as he, Owen, did about water engineering.

And it was from this weak basis that Mahmoud was being called on to make a major, probably public, stand. Had the law been clear, Mahmoud would not have hesitated a moment. But the law, wisely, in Owen’s view, had left the matter vague. This was, as things stood, as much an issue of morality and social policy as it was of law.

Again, had things been clear, Mahmoud might well not have hesitated. He was, as Labiba Latifa had found out, a man of strong moral principle and firm social convictions. But he did like things to be clear, he needed them to be clear. And were they clear here? Mahmoud simply did not know enough about the subject to know whether they were or not.

And so he was unusually hesitant, unusually uncertain.

‘I was wondering,’ he said diffidently, ‘if you would like to come?’

‘By all means.’

They set out down the Mouski, on foot, because at this time of the evening the street was so full of people that even if you took an arabeah from one of the hotels, whose drivers were the most aggressive in Cairo, it wouldn’t have been able to force its way along at more than walking pace. Up near the Ataba the shops were quite good but the nearer one got to the bazaars, the cheaper and shoddier they became and the street was virtually taken over by stalls.

They forced their way through the crowds around the nougat sellers and Arab sugar sellers and-Owen could never quite understand this-spectacles sellers and made their way into the Khan-el-Khalil, the Turkish Bazaar. It was the bazaar most popular with tourists, who were there in throngs, studying the saucers of glittering gems, the lumps of turquoise, the flashing and densely-chased silver- and brass-ware and the gaudy keepsakes of Crusaders and Pharaohs. The shopkeepers were all in black frock-coats and tarbooshes. It was Oriental, all right. But not Egyptian.

Behind the bazaar was the real Egyptian: small, poor houses with the doors open and people sitting in them, catching the air; small, poor, dimly-lit shops with black-clad women fingering the last remaining-and reduced-tomatoes; stalls again, this time with sticks of sugar cane, small cucumbers and pickles.

It was here that Um Fattouha, Mother Fattouha, lived. She was one of the midwives in Labiba Latifa’s circle of contacts and the one, Labiba thought, most likely to be of use to Mahmoud.

Mahmoud stopped at the open door and called softly in. A large, fat lady, heavily veiled and dressed in black, came to the door. She led them into an inner room. It was very dark, lit by a single spluttering oil lamp, and furnished only with a single worn divan and a floor cushion on which a young man in the dark suit of an office worker was sitting, nervously playing with his tarboosh.

He sprang up when they entered.

‘Suleiman Hannam,’ he introduced himself. ‘Labiba Latifa told me to come. I–I knew Leila.’

The woman indicated that they should sit on the divan and then disappeared. The young man returned to the cushion at their feet.

‘How did you know Leila?’ asked Mahmoud.

The young man swallowed.

‘I–I had known her before,’ he said, ‘when we were children. Back at our village. Then her family moved away. I had forgotten about them but then one day I saw her father, in the street. I was wondering whether to go up and speak to him when I saw her. She was bringing him his lunch. I guessed at once that it was her. But she was so different! So-so-’

‘So?’

‘Womanly. I just stood there. All I wanted to do was look at her. She went away, but I guessed that she did it every day, so the next day I found out where he would be and I-well, I went there, and waited for her. And then I followed her home.’

‘Did you speak to her?’

‘No. Not at first. I just wanted to see and I followed her every day. And then one day she-she realized. At first it frightened her and just made her hurry all the more. But then-then she saw how it was. And then one day-one day she smiled at me-’ Owen sighed inwardly.

Mahmoud, however, frowned. This was loose behaviour. ‘Smiled?’ he said. ‘Was she not in her veil?’

‘Oh yes. But I–I knew somehow.’

Mahmoud looked stern.

‘And then?’

‘Well, I-one day I approached her. Not that day. Much later. I–I went up to her. And spoke.’

‘You spoke to her without asking her father’s permission?’

‘He wouldn’t have given it me. Our families-our families had quarrelled. Years before. In the village.’

‘You shouldn’t have spoken to her.’

‘I meant no harm! I–I spoke to her honourably.’

‘How could you speak to her honourably? Without her father knowing, and your father knowing?’

‘I was going to. I wanted to. Only-only Leila said I should wait. And I thought, perhaps that was a good idea, perhaps I would be able to talk my father round-’

‘Wouldn’t that have been better?’

‘It would have been difficult. The daughter of a water-carrier! He would have been very angry.’

All the same-’

‘I would have tried. We agreed that was best. Only-’

‘Only what?’

‘One day she told me her father was going to marry her to Omar Fayoum.’

‘Well-’

‘But he’s old! And foul! And not really very rich. All he does is run a water-cart. Well, that may look good to a water-carrier but it’s nothing really. I thought I would go to him and say, look, you can do better than that. I have a job at the Water Board, and if you will only wait-But Leila said no, the fates were against us, and I said, let us defy fate-’