Michael Pearce - The Snake Catcher’s Daughter

“Sorry,” said Owen. “I’m well supplied, thanks.”

“It’s not like that,” she said.

“What is it like?”

“Why don’t you come home with me and find out?”

“Sorry.” He shook his head. “Someone is expecting me.”

“Zeinab’s not the only girl in the world. And, anyway, she’s not expecting you. She’s at Samira’s.”

Owen stopped, astonished. How did a girl like this know about Samira, the Princess Samira? And how did she know about Zeinab, for that matter?

“You know Samira?”

“As well as I know you. Surprisingly well.”

Owen considered the matter. He was intrigued.

But then, he was intended to be intrigued.

“No, thank you,” he said, and walked on.

Later, he was sorry. Plums, after all, do not grow on every tree.

Owen went down to the Gamaliya next day to see that things were all right. He found the shop open and the Copt busy behind the counter. The shelves, though, were half empty.

“A lot missing?” asked Owen, indicating the shelves with his hand.

“No, no. I’ve just not put them up. I have to take them down at night, you see, now that the shutters have been broken. It’s not worth it. The women know what they want and can always ask for it. I keep the stuff inside now.”

An idea came to Owen.

“Do you talk to the women?”

“Of course.”

“And sometimes, perhaps, you overhear things?”

“Perhaps,” said the Copt, slightly bewildered.

“Did you know about the Zzarr?”

He caught the look before the Copt’s face became studiously blank.

“Zzarr? I don’t think so.”

Owen smiled.

“ I think so,” he said.

The Copt shook his head.

“The reason I am asking,” said Owen, “is that I think the Zzarr could have something to do with the attack on your shop.”

The shopkeeper looked surprised.

“How could it?”

“Just believe me, that I think it could. Now, what I’m trying to do is stop it happening again. So I need to know.”

“I know there was a Zzarr,” said the shopkeeper. “That’s about all I know. Honestly!”

“Where was it?”

“It was in the house over there.”

“Show me.”

The Copt called into the house and a woman appeared. She was dressed in black like the other women in the street and veiled like them. The Copt told her to look after things while he was gone. He said he wouldn’t be long.

“Normally she doesn’t mind,” he said to Owen. “It’s just that now-”

The house was only about a couple of hundred yards away. Owen knocked on the door. No one responded.

“I think it’s empty,” said the Copt.

“Who does it belong to?”

“A Mr Abbas, I think. He lives in the Gamaliya somewhere.”

There were still some policemen about. Owen set them to work finding out where Mr Abbas lived-it was simply a question of knocking on people’s doors and asking, someone was bound to know. He himself went to a cafe to wait. The Copt, he sent back to his shop.

Eventually, one of the constables returned. Or rather, two of them returned. One was the man who found out; the other was Selim, who had now, on the strength of past glory, appointed himself Acting Sergeant, still, unfortunately, unpaid.

Mr Abbas owned a large store off one of the suks. He came out to meet Owen and then invited him into his office to take tea. They sat on a low leather divan and the tea was served on an equally low table, about six inches high. Courtesy demanded that it was some time before they got down to business, but eventually they did.

“My house, indeed,” said Mr Abbas blandly, “and sometimes I let it. But a Zzarr! Oh dear, I had no idea.”

“They gave no indication of their purpose?”

“Well, of course, I don’t handle it myself-”

The person who did, an agent who managed several properties, lived on the other side of the Gamaliya. It was another hot day and by the time Owen had reached him, his clothes were wet with perspiration. He was received again with courtesy and tea; and again given the run around.

“Well, of course, I had no idea what they wanted it for. A celebration of some sort, I believe they said. Too large for their own house so they wanted to hire a bigger one.”

“Do you have their names?”

The agent spread his hands regretfully.

“I’m afraid not,” he said.

That was unlikely, Owen remarked.

“They pay the money first,” the man said, smiling. Owen got nowhere. He walked back to Bab-el-Khalk with Selim, dripping.

“The Gamaliya’s a no-good place, effendi,” said Selim, commiserating. “Now, over by the fish market, where I live-” Owen stopped in his tracks.

“Selim,” he said, “are you married?”

“Well, yes, effendi,” said Selim, taken aback. “There’s Leila, and there’s Aisha, and there’s-”

He began, however, to look troubled.

“Effendi,” he said hesitantly, “I don’t think they’d be good enough for you. Not yet. I mean, I’m trading up. In a bit, I’ll divorce Aisha, and then I’ll look out for someone a bit classier. In fact, I know a girl already who would do. She would just suit-

“No, no, no, no!” said Owen hastily. “Not that at all.”

He explained what he wanted.

Selim listened carefully.

“Well,” he said, “Aisha’s the one. She’s a bit of a bitch, that’s why I’m thinking of getting rid of her. Nag, nag, nag all the time, just come back late and you’re in trouble. But she’s got a good head on her. Mind you,” he looked worried, “it could give her ideas, she would start getting above herself-”

“There would be money in it,” said Owen. “For you.”

“Well, in that case-” said Selim, brightening. He thought it over. “Yes,” he said, “Aisha’s definitely the one. She could say she was possessed by an evil spirit, all right. In fact, it wouldn’t be too far from the truth…”

Garvin asked Owen if he would drop in on him before he went home. It was a request and courteous, so Owen knew that Garvin had found out that the Philipides business was about to be reopened.

He found him not sitting behind his desk, as was usually the case, but standing by the window, looking down through the shutters into the courtyard; as if he had just seen some donkeys there to which he took exception.

He was a big man, well over six feet in height and with huge broad shoulders. Despite twenty years of Egyptian sun, and Egyptian malaria, his face was fair and ruddy as if he had just arrived from English fields. The impression caught a truth about the man. Garvin came from one of the old English country families, no longer property owning but still country living. His father, a youngest son, had been a clergyman, but a clergyman of the ‘squarson’ sort, both squire and parson. Garvin had been brought up in the country and, though a university man (Cambridge), his pursuits were those of the country squire: riding, shooting and fishing. And, of course, hunting.

But there was another side to the man which the bluff exterior concealed. Garvin was no fool. He had spent two decades in the country and knew his job back to front. He knew it at all levels, too. He spoke Arabic like an Egyptian and was as familiar with the patois of the Alexandrian seafront underworld as he was with the slow rhythms of the fellahin in the fields around Cairo. Because of the time he had spent in the provinces before coming to the city, he was intimate with the background of family feuds and alliances which the fellahin carried with them when they migrated to the city. The Cairo poor were still villagers at heart; and Garvin knew them as he knew his own face in the mirror.

Yet he had been to Cambridge, too, and this gave him entry to an inner club from whose members the rulers of Egypt and India and, indeed, England were almost exclusively drawn. Mixing on equal terms with the British elite, inevitably he mixed, too, with the Egyptian elite. He knew the political preoccupations of both.