Michael Pearce - The Snake Catcher’s Daughter

“No one, effendi,” said Selim, with a broad flash of white teeth.

This was, as McPhee pointed out, the correct ritual answer. In theory, namings were modest domestic occasions, kept deliberately low-key in order to avert the wrath of malign spirits which might envy the good fortune of the family if too ostentatious a display was made. In practice, of course, no one could resist the chance of a binge and Selim had invited the whole street.

Plus a few more. Owen recognized many faces from the Bab-el-Khalk, together with those of constables and orderlies from many of the city’s substations. He had also noticed Sayeed Abdullah, who greeted Owen with his usual deferential bob of the head.

“Well, I couldn’t leave the poor old chap at home by himself, could I?” Selim excused himself.

“What about the family?” said Owen, a trifle anxiously.

“Oh, they’re here too,” Selim assured him. “Inside.”

Which was where, for the moment, all the women were. If there were as many of them as there were of men in the yard there were more than a hundred in the tiny, two-room house. Owen could not believe that to be possible. Mother and baby, of course, were inside, too.

“How’s the baby?” he asked, again with some anxiety.

“Baby?” said Selim, a little vaguely. “Oh, yes, baby. Oh, very well, very well.”

He showed Owen and McPhee up to the place of honour on the roof. Two rickety cane chairs had been placed on the very edge, where there was a good view down into the yard.

Selim clapped his hands.

“Beans for the Effendis! And lemonade. Good lemonade,” he whispered to Owen with a nudge.

“Not for the Bimbashi,” Owen whispered back.

“Not this time, no,” said Selim, with a great laugh.

The lemonade, in Owen’s case, turned out to be marissa beer. He sipped it contentedly and looked down on the spectacle below.

“Where’s that bitch of an Aalima?” said Selim crossly.

Down in the street there was a thunderous knocking. A little later the Aalima appeared. She went round the yard sprinkling something on the ground.

“Fennel and maize,” said McPhee, “the fruits of the earth. Fertility symbols, obviously. And salt.”

“Salt?”

“To avert the evil eye. That’s what she’s singing. ‘Salt in the eye of the evil beholder.’ ”

“Is she doing that right?” asked Selim anxiously.

“Oh, I think so.”

“If she’s not,” said Selim, still only half-convinced, “I’ll put some salt on her tail all right.”

“No, no,” said McPhee, “she knows her stuff.”

“It’s just that after what Sayeed said-”

“What was that?” said Owen. “What did Sayeed say?”

“About the evil eye,” said Selim. “We don’t want any of that here.”

“Ssh-!” whispered McPhee. “This is the important bit.”

The baby was brought out into the yard. First it was paraded round the yard to general appreciation. Then it was given to its mother, who had now appeared in the yard and was seated on a special chair festooned with flowers and coloured handkerchiefs. An older woman brought out a brass mortar which she put right next to the baby’s head and then struck repeatedly with a pestle.

“That’s so that it doesn’t grow up to be frightened of mirth and music,” said McPhee.

Finally, the child was placed in what looked to Owen very like an ordinary sieve and shaken.

“What’s that? A sieve?”

“It’s to prevent tummy upsets,” said McPhee.

The baby survived these and other ordeals and then was brought up to the roof for presentation to Owen and McPhee.

Owen knew, at least, about this bit and produced some coins, which the baby’s mother tied into its hair.

Everyone waited expectantly.

“What is its name going to be?” whispered McPhee.

“Name?”

“Mahbuba,” whispered Selim.

“Fatima,” whispered his wife.

Selim glared at her.

“Khadija,” said Owen, “Khadija Mahbuba Fatima,” and hoped that everyone was satisfied.

“Well, that’s that,” said Selim. “Now, perhaps, we can get on with things.”

Owen asked if the baby and mother would like to stay on the roof in the cool air.

“Stay on the roof?” said Selim, astonished. “The place for them is indoors. I’m on the roof.”

Baby and mother disappeared below.

“Lemonade?” said Selim happily. “There’s plenty. Don’t hold back!”

For some time a set of bagpipes had been trying without success to push its way into the densely-packed yard. At last someone saw it.

“The musicians! God be praised! The musicians have arrived.” A way was not exactly cleared but found: bagpipes and man were hoisted into the air and passed over the heads of the crowd until they reached the opposite wall, where the bagpipes player established a perch for himself. He was shortly joined by two drummers and a cymbals player, transported likewise. With a roll on the drums the music began.

Down in the yard, men began to writhe. That was about all there was room for. It soon became evident, however, that some men could writhe better than others and it was not long before they attracted a certain space and following. Women now began to appear in the doorways and at the edge of the yard, watching admiringly. Whatever might be the case in the houses of the rich, where troupes of female gipsy Ghawazi dancers might be hired for the occasion, in more lowly houses it was the men who danced.

Selim, monarch for the moment of all he surveyed, was content for a while to sit on the roof imbibing prodigious quantities of lemonade. Then his limbs began to twitch and his haunches to wriggle; and shortly afterwards he leaped to his feet and rushed to join the pullulating throng below.

“Greek, would you say?” said McPhee thoughtfully. “Demeter? Persephone?”

“The Aalima? Oh, yes, definitely.”

McPhee looked pleased.

“Glad you think so, too. Cultic, I’m pretty sure.”

Owen would have liked to have gone down into the yard, not so much to dance-he regarded that as impossible-as to talk to some of the people there. At one point he did, indeed, descend the steps but the bottom of them was as far as he got. He stood there for a little while exchanging remarks with people he recognized.

Among those he recognized was Sayeed Abdullah, not dancing himself because of the decorum of age and his injured leg. He sidled round to Owen and greeted him shyly.

“Nice to see you here, Sayeed Abdullah.”

“Selim invited me. I said: You will have enough without me. But he said: No, no, the more the merrier. He is, indeed,” said Sayeed Abdullah gratefully, “a most munificent person.”

“He is indeed.”

And as a result, thought Owen, would almost certainly be broke the following morning. The seniors in the Police Force, on Garvin’s instructions, had tried to dissuade the constables and orderlies from too lavish expenditure on celebratory occasions. Births, naming days, circumcision feasts, weddings and funerals came round all the time and their cost was an important reason why the ordinary Egyptian was usually heavily in debt. The connection between the night before and the morning after was not very persuasive the night before, and the morning after, wise words were too late.

“Your wife is here, too, I gather.”

“Oh, yes, effendi, she is inside.”

Sayeed Abdullah drew near to Owen, looked over his shoulder and muttered: “I’ve told her to stay near the baby and keep off the evil eye. It’s the least we could do.”

“Oh, yes, very good idea. It’s important to take care over such things.”

“Well, yes, effendi, especially as I’ve seen her do it before.”

Owen turned to him.