Michael Pearce - The Donkey-Vous

“Only the people in the fields.”

“And the occasional stranger.”

“Not many of them.”

“Are there any?”

“There were some the other day. They came like you in an arabeah.”

“And did they come down and talk to you?”

“No. They stayed with the arabeah.”

“It was too hot for them, I expect.”

“It was the afternoon. Still, there was a Sitt with them.”

“A lady? Then she would not want to walk far. I expect she just wanted to see the fields.”

“They are good fields,” said the boy with an air of experience.

“Indeed they are. Lucky the man who owns them. Not your father?”

“No. They belong to Sidky.”

“Does he live in the village?”

“No, no. He’s a rich man. He lives in the city.”

“And doesn’t come down here very often, I expect.”

“He was down here the other day. He came with another man and showed him the fields.”

“They are good fields.”

“Yes. I think the man liked them, because he came again.”

“By himself?”

“No, no. With the others.”

“Others?”

“The man I told you about. There was the Sitt and another man.”

They stood talking with the boy while the buffalo wound ’round and ’round and the sakiya squeaked and the water plopped out from the buckets into the gutter. As the sun began to set, the opal of the sky was reflected in the changing colors of the river, blue then green then yellow then red, and finally white. A man began to come across the fields toward them.

“That is my father,” said the boy.

The man came up, unhitched the buffalo and lifted the boy down. They stood exchanging greetings for a while and then man, boy and buffalo set off back across the fields while Owen and Georgiades went back to the arabeah.

“It is all very beautiful,” said Georgiades, “but I find it hard to believe that Madame Chevenement and Berthelot are interested in taking up market gardening.”

It was only half past three and the terrace was still deserted, but already the keenest vendors were creeping back to take up strategic positions in front of the railings. The choicest positions were those nearest the steps and the vendors here guarded their privileges jealously. Despite the heat, they had already reassumed their pitches but since there were as yet no customers above they had squatted down in the dust and were engaged in desultory conversation.

It was a good moment to catch them. Mahmoud had talked to them all separately, but for that it had been necessary to abstract them from their normal setting and converse in privacy. The artificiality had made them uneasy and he felt they might talk more freely in more natural surroundings. Besides, there were some advantages in them hearing what their neighbors said, as soon became apparent.

Mahmoud was still trying patiently to identify the dragoman who had been on the terrace and soon after he and Owen had joined the squatting circle he brought the topic up. Which of them had the dragoman actually spoken to?

“Farkas,” said the strawberry-seller definitely.

The filthy-postcard-seller at once denied it.

“It wasn’t me,” he said.

“Yes, it was,” the strawberry-seller insisted. “I was hoping his party wanted some strawberries and he was coming to me but he walked right past me. Mush kider — is that not so?” he appealed to the flower-seller beside him.

“No,” said the flower-seller. “He wasn’t coming to you, he was coming to me. I thought perhaps the Sitt wanted some flowers.”

“She wouldn’t have wanted flowers, not if they were going out. She would have had to carry them. On the way in, perhaps.”

“She certainly wouldn’t have wanted strawberries. It would have made her hands too messy and then she would have had to have gone back to her room to wash them.”

“She could have just popped them into her mouth,” said the strawberry-seller.

This kind of batty, circumlocutory conversation ensued whenever you questioned Arab witnesses. When Owen had first come to Egypt it had regularly driven him to fury. It was Garvin, curiously, who had once taken the trouble to explain to him that that was how an Arab conversation worked. On arriving in Egypt and before taking up his duties as Mamur Zapt, Owen had been posted to Alexandria for a spell under Garvin to learn his trade. His duties had involved going round with Garvin to some of the little rural villages along the coast and hearing lawsuits brought by the villagers. Proceedings were always protracted and on one occasion Owen had boiled over.

Afterward Garvin had taken him aside.

“Look,” Garvin had said, “for Arabs, truth is not something you know privately and then describe. It is something you work out together.”

“But, Christ!” said Owen. “If they’re a witness-”

“It’s the same thing. What you saw is ingredients for a picture and it’s not until the ingredients have been put together, and that has to be done socially, that you know what the picture is.”

The apparently circumlocutory nature of the discussion was necessary because it was a way of making sure you had all the pieces of the picture that you wanted to fit together. It also allowed each piece to be weighed and tested against a variety of perspectives so that in the end you got something which everyone could agree was a more or less faithful representation of the facts.

“But it could take hours!”

“Well, yes,” Garvin had admitted. “It does.”

In the villages that was OK. In the cities it sometimes caused problems. Owen had learned the mode and developed patience: but sometimes that patience was put under strain. As now.

He looked at Mahmoud. Mahmoud so far had not turned a hair.

“Great, then,” he said calmly, “was the misfortune for both of you when you found that he went not to you but to Farkas.”

“That was another day,” said the filthy-postcard-seller. “He did not come to me that day.”

“It was that day,” insisted the strawberry-seller. “Don’t you remember? You were showing someone your cards when you dropped them.”

“I didn’t drop them. Somebody jogged my elbow.”

“They fell in the dust and the turkey ate them.”

“It did not eat them. It slightly chewed one of them.”

“It was a bit more than a slight chew, though, wasn’t it?” said the flower-seller. “Don’t you remember? It was that card where she-”

“And this was when the dragoman came over to see you, was it?” Mahmoud intervened.

“No, before then,” said the flower-seller.

“He had just picked them up,” said the strawberry-seller. “That was another day,” insisted the filthy-postcard-seller. “No, it wasn’t!” said the strawberry-seller and the flower-seller firmly, both turning on him.

Farkas was slightly taken aback.

“I didn’t mean that wasn’t the day when the cards fell in the dust,” he protested. “I meant that the day the cards fell in the dust wasn’t the day the dragoman came over and spoke to me.”

“What?” said the strawberry-seller, bewildered.

The flower-seller seemed bemused.

“What day did he come and speak to you?” asked Mahmoud.

“I forget now.”

“And what did he want to speak to you about?”

“I forget.”

The strawberry-seller and the flower-seller both laughed. “He doesn’t want to say.”

“It’s a business secret.”

“Oh?” said Mahmoud.

The flower-seller took it on himself to explain. “Sometimes,” he said, “the customers don’t like to speak to him directly.”

“So they send a dragoman.”

“That’s right. Or the dragoman suggests it. They get a cut, you know.”

“Is that what happened this day?”