Michael Pearce - The Donkey-Vous

“Because coming in the opposite direction is a donkey with a load.”

Georgiades leaned out to inspect.

“The donkey is still far away. Even your horses could pass. Where is your spirit, man? Are you not an arabeah-driver?” Thus goaded, Ali’s uncle attempted to overtake, but so half-heartedly that in the end he was obliged to cut in on the cart, which earned him a torrent of abuse from the carter. Instead of instantly responding in kind, as most arabeah-drivers would have done, delighted at the chance to display their own rhetorical skills, he cracked his whip over his horses and scuttled away fearfully. He seemed as low-spirited as his nephew.

“How did Izkat Bey come to choose him?” asked Owen, astonished.

Izkat Bey was the man who had been in the arabeah when it had picked up Madame Chevenement and Berthelot from Shepheard’s.

“Accident. He came out into the street looking for an arabeah and to his misfortune he found this one.”

Ali’s uncle, who did not usually attract such splendid custom, had been only too ready to reveal the identity of so distinguished a person to Georgiades.

“Why didn’t he use his own arabeah?” asked Owen.

“Didn’t want to be recognized, I suppose.”

Izkat Bey was one of the Khedive’s senior Court Officials. His function at Court was obscure but of his power there was no doubt. He was close to the Khedive and, like most of those close to the Khedive, a Turk. He shared the ruling circle’s arrogance toward the Egyptians and antipathy to the British and seemed particularly to relish those commissions of the Khedive which gave him opportunities to display both those qualities. His name was one of those that appeared on Zeinab’s list.

When Owen had asked Abdul for a list of Samira’s guests she had at first refused. “I do not spy on my friends,” she said haughtily. Then, characteristically changing her mind, she had furnished him with a list. “It is not complete, however,” she had warned him. “I have left off all my friends.” The inference was that Izkat Bey was not one of Zeinab’s friends. This was quite likely as the Bey had a traditional view of the role of women. He came to Samira’s because she was royal and because he was bidden; and Owen guessed that he saw the occasion as one for the transaction of business rather than for the pleasures of social intercourse.

The arabeah threaded its way along beside the river bank until it had left most of the built-up area behind it. They came to an area of market gardens, cultivated fields and fields of maize. They came suddenly upon a great pile of pumpkins which marked the spot where a small secondary track, barely a yard wide, ran off to the left down to the river. All around were patches of peas, beans, tomatoes, onions, cauliflowers, mangoes, guavas, figs and watermelons. There was no one in sight except for over to the left where a small boy on a buffalo was working a sakiya, one of the traditional, heavy wooden water-wheels.

It was here that Ali’s uncle stopped.

"This is where you brought them?” asked Owen.

“Yes, effendi,” said Ali’s uncle humbly.

“If you are playing tricks with me-”

“I am not, effendi. I swear it!” Ali’s uncle protested vigorously.

“You brought them here? To this very spot?”

“Yes, effendi.”

Owen climbed out of the arabeah and looked around him. In the distance he could hear the regular, rhythmic creaking of the water-wheel and then, far away across the cauliflower and maize, the faint singing of peasants at work in the fields. “Did they come here to meet someone?”

“I do not think so, effendi,” said Abdul’s uncle diffidently.

“You saw no one?”

“No, effendi.”

“They just came here and looked around?”

“They talked, effendi.”

“What did they talk about?”

“I do not know, effendi. I did not hear.”

“They just sat and talked?”

“They stood and talked. They descended from the arabeah.”

“And then they went home again?”

“Yes, effendi.”

Owen looked around, completely baffled. There seemed nothing here but garden crops and in the distance fields of berseem, the green fodder which the camels brought in every day across the bridge for the use of the donkey-boys and the arabeah-drivers.

Owen’s heart began to sink.

“Have they tricked us again?” he said to Georgiades, who had come across and was standing beside him.

“They can’t have! They couldn’t have known.”

“They might have done it as a precaution.”

“Just on the off-chance that someone would be trying to check on the journeys they had made?”

“It sounds ridiculous.”

“It is ridiculous. No,” said Georgiades, shaking his head. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

Georgiades walked over to inspect the cauliflowers. They were planted in rows and there were little channels running between them. The channels were hard-caked and smooth. As he watched, a little trickle of water began to run along them.

“The dam,” said Georgiades. “Is it something to do with the dam?”

“Not up here,” Owen objected. “It can’t be, surely.”

The water was coming from the sakiya. It was just reaching the field of cauliflowers. More and more trickles appeared in the channels and in some of them it was now flowing freely.

“Did they walk anywhere?” Georgiades asked Ali’s uncle.

“No, effendi.”

Ali’s uncle seemed daunted by it all. Perhaps it was leaving the city for the great open spaces. But then, Ali’s uncle was easily dauntable.

“I heard them talk of the river,” he volunteered, though, hopefully.

“What did they say?”

“One could travel by river.”

“Who could?”

“I do not know, effendi. I did not hear.”

He had caught the mention of travel by river, though from where and where to and for what reason had passed him by, as did most things in life, Owen uncharitably felt.

He and Georgiades walked down to the water-wheel. A raised, banked-up main channel ran back alongside the path in the general direction of the river. At intervals subsidiary channels took the water off and distributed it through the fields. They could see the water running down the furrows between the plants and suddenly turning the parched soil into soft, fertile mud.

As they neared the river they saw that the water came from the water-wheel. It was a traditional native wooden one, consisting of a heavy horizontal wheel, turned by a buffalo working round it, and connected through cogs to a large vertical wheel at the river’s edge. There were buckets set all ’round the vertical wheel which scooped up the river water as the wheel turned and emptied it into a steep gutter from which it flowed into the distributing channels.

On the top of the buffalo was a small boy.

“That is a big buffalo,” said Georgiades, “for a small boy.”

“It is my father’s buffalo,” the boy said proudly.

“Oh? Then you are not a boy hired for the day but work on the buffalo as your father’s son?”

“That is true,” the boy agreed.

“That is a heavy responsibility for one so young.”

“I am nine,” the boy said.

“Are you?” said Georgiades, affecting surprise. “I would have said thirteen.”

“I am big for my age.”

“That is fine, but it means you get taken for a man when there is work about.”

“I could do a man’s job,” said the boy, “but my father won’t let me. He keeps me on the buffalo.”

“Well, that is important. And hard! I expect you work all day?”

“All day and every day. ”

“And all alone, too. You don’t see many people here.”