Michael Pearce - The Snake Catcher’s Daughter

“I don’t think we need go into this,” said Selim uneasily.

His wife, however, enjoying the opportunity, thought otherwise; and did with relish.

“And then I said I thought he was an ox,” she said happily. “Not from the point of view of getting on with his work uncomplainingly but because of his stupidity-”

“Look, Aisha,” Selim began.

“I complained how often my husband beat me. Because of the times when I was possessed, that is. And then I asked her if she knew of an Aalima who could cast out the spirit from me. ‘It sounds as if your husband is the one who needs to see her,’ she said. ‘No, no,’ I said, ‘my husband is kind and patient and thoughtful and generous, hard-working and considerate-”’

“Aisha, if you don’t-!”

Over the heavy veil the big eyes looked at Owen demurely.

“ ‘I am the one possessed’, I said. ‘That I could ever think of him otherwise!’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ve got a cousin in the Gamaliya and she knows an Aalima’, so we went to the cousin and she said she would speak to the Aalima. And the Aalima agreed to see me. ‘What is your trouble?’ she asked. And I said, ‘Every full moon I think my husband is a pig.’ ‘A pig?’ she said. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘a pig.’ ”

“Aisha-”

“ ‘Why is that?’ she asked. ‘Because he wishes to engage in unnatural practices with me. Or, at least, that’s what I imagine. When I’m possessed.’ ”

“Aisha-”

“ ‘What sort of unnatural practices-?’ ”

“All right, all right,” Owen broke in. “We’ve got that bit.”

“You wait till you get home!” said Selim.

“None of that!” said Owen. “Or you don’t get paid.”

“Yes, but, effendi-”

“Did the Aalima agree?”

“Well, she said she’d just held a Zzarr and ordinarily she wouldn’t have another one for several months. However, it had raised a lot of interest in the neighbourhood and since it had been held, quite a few women had come forward, so that she thought that perhaps she’d better hold another one as otherwise it wouldn’t be fair-”

“Did she give you a date?”

“Next week sometime. She’ll let me know. I’ll need time to prepare, you see.”

“Prepare?”

“I have to purify myself. No sex beforehand and none for a month afterwards-”

“A month!” said Selim, aghast.

“At least. You’ll just have to ask Leila.”

“It’s the wrong time of the month for her.”

“Oh dear,” said Aisha.

The city drooped in the heat. From about mid-morning the streets were deserted. Even the Ataba-el-Khadra, the square where most of Cairo’s tram routes terminated, and which was normally bustling with people, seemed empty. The drivers of the trams clanged their bells half-heartedly, and departed half empty. No one wished to travel if they could avoid it.

The tourist season was at an end now and outside the big hotels the ranks were full of arabeahs. Their drivers dozed in the shade beneath their vehicles and did not even bother to look for custom. The donkey boys below the hotel terraces played endless games with sticks and white stones. Their donkeys slept on their feet. Even in sleep their tails twitched continuously against the flies.

During the season, the street in front of the main European hotels was crowded with hawkers selling everything from souvenirs of the tombs to dirty postcards. Now all the hawkers had gone, as had the tumblers, and acrobats, the musicians and the people with performing monkeys. Only a solitary, blind snake charmer remained. Hearing Owen approach, he began to play on his flute. The snake rose slowly from its basket.

Did snakes have ears? Owen wondered. He couldn’t remember ever having noticed any. He couldn’t see any on this one, either. Perhaps they were sunk in or something? He would have liked to have looked more closely, but then again, he wasn’t sure he wanted to look too closely. His friend the snake catcher had said they always removed the poison fangs before selling them on but Owen didn’t want to be the first to find an exception.

“Have they got ears?” he asked the snake charmer.

The charmer stopped in mid-trill.

“Ears?” he said incredulously. “Of course not!”

“Well, then, how do they hear the music?”

“Look, are you trying to catch me out?” said the snake charmer angrily, blaring a short blast on his flute.

The snake’s head stopped its rhythmic swinging and hung in the air. It certainly seemed to be responding to the music; but perhaps there was some other cue it was responding to? The old man’s swaying, for instance? Or perhaps vibration was picked up in a different way.

The charmer stopped playing and the snake returned to its basket. The old man replaced the lid crossly and stumped away. Owen would have liked to have asked him more questions but this was clearly not the occasion. He would have to ask someone else. His own snake catcher, for instance. Or perhaps that girl.

He had been thinking about the snakes as he had been walking along. Because that was the bit that needed explanation. He could understand what had happened at the Zzarr. They hadn’t wanted McPhee to see the ceremony so they had drugged him. But why put him in the cistern with the snakes? Were snakes something to do with the Zzarr? Had some religious significance, perhaps?

There was only one way to find out. He wasn’t a McPhee, interested in ceremony for its own sake, nor did he wish to do a McPhee, poke his nose in where he wasn’t wanted. But he was beginning to feel that a lot of the questions he was asking could only be answered by knowing more about what went on at a Zzarr and the best way of finding out was to go to one.

He could treat it as a reconstruction of the crime, perhaps. Mahmoud, with his background in French law, would like that. The Parquet, steeped in the French judicial system and trained to apply French criminal procedures, were keen on reconstructions. He was not sure, though, that simply going to a Zzarr would come into that category.

And ought he to be wasting his time on that sort of thing, anyway? Oughtn’t he to be concentrating on the Mahmoud investigation? But the pace in that was set by Mahmoud and he was having to juggle the time he spent on that against the demands of the other things on his plate. Owen reminded himself that he was just an observer; if that.

No, he had to leave the initiative to Mahmoud. The McPhee business on the other hand was clearly his responsibility and he ought to get on with it. Not because of McPhee himself-they might all be having a peaceful time if it had not been for that blockhead-but because of the danger of it spilling over into communal violence. And was there someone behind it all? It did look a bit like it.

He decided to go and see the witch.

She was not exactly pleased to see him.

He had left it, deliberately, as late as he could so that she would not have time to cancel the Zzarr or rearrange it in another place. The outer courtyard was already full of people and there were lamps inside the house. Musicians were tuning up.

The house was not the one she had used before but very like it. There was both an outer courtyard and an inner one. The men were congregated in the outer courtyard and stopped him when he tried to pass through to the inner one. “Can’t do that,” they said. “Women only.”

“I wish to speak to the Aalima.”

“She won’t see you.”

“I think she will. Tell her it’s the Mamur Zapt.”

There was a sudden hush.

“All right,” said someone at last, “but she won’t like it. There could be trouble.”

“There’ll be trouble all right,” said Selim, big and bulky behind Owen, “if you don’t do what the Mamur Zapt says.”