Michael Pearce - The Mamur Zapt and the return of the Carpet

Two contrite young men looked at him pleadingly. Owen could not resist and went back with them to the table where a space was quickly made for him.

The rest of the cafe looked on with approval, having enjoyed, in typical Arab fashion, both the abuse and the courtesy.

The men apologized. They were, they explained, filling in time before going to a party. They had been talking politics and one of their number had been carried away. It was not said, but Owen guessed, that the topics had included the British in Egypt. The conversation turned tactfully in another direction.

They inquired how Owen came by his Arabic and when he mentioned his teacher it turned out that two of them knew him. This reassured Owen, for the Aalim was not one to waste his time with fools.

Indeed, they were far from fools. They were all journalists, it appeared, working for the most part on arts pages. One of them was introduced as a playwright.

Owen said he had been to the Arab theatre but found the plays excessively melodramatic.

“That’s us,” said one of the men. “All Arabs are melodramatic.”

“No, it’s not,” said the playwright. “We’re dramatic. It’s the plays that are melodramatic. They’re just bad.”

“Perhaps you will improve the standard,” said Owen.

“Gamal’s latest play is good,” one of the men said.

“Is it on somewhere? Can I see it?”

They all roared with laughter.

“Alas, no!” said Gamal. “But when it is put on I shall send you a special invitation.”

Owen said he had just been to the opera. They asked him how it compared with opera in Europe. He was obliged to admit that the only opera he had seen had been in Egypt. Two of the journalists had seen opera in Paris. They thought Cairo opera provincial.

The conversation ran on merrily. Some time later Owen glanced at his watch. It was well past two. Opera finished late in Cairo; parties started even later, evidently.

The thought occurred to one or two of the others and they rose to go. Owen got up, too, and began to say his farewells. His acquaintances were aghast that he should be leaving them so early. They insisted that he came to the party with them.

Owen was taking this to be mere Arab politeness when the playwright linked his arm in Owen’s and began to urge him determinedly along the street.

“A little while,” he coaxed, “just a little, little while.”

“We want you to meet our friends,” they said.

The house was a traditional Mameluke house. It went up in tiers. The first tier was just a high blank wall with a decorated archway entrance. Above this a row of corbels allowed the first floor to project a couple of feet over the street, in the manner of sixteenth-century houses in England. And above this again a triple row of oriels carried out into the street a further two feet. There was no glass, of course, but all the windows were heavily screened with fine traditional woodwork.

Through the archway was a courtyard with a fountain and some people sitting round it. They belonged to the party, but most of the guests were inside, in a mandar’ah, or reception room, opening off the courtyard.

The mandar’ah had a sunken marble floor paved with black and white marble and little pieces of fine red tile. In the centre of the floor was a fountain playing into a small shallow pool lined with coloured marbles like the floor.

A number of people stood about the room in groups, talking. Other groups reclined on large, fat, multi-coloured, leather cushions. Some had Western-style drinks in their hand. Quite a few were drinking coffee. All were talking.

At the far end of the room was a dais with large cushions. This was where the host normally sat, along with his most honoured guests. There was a group on it now, sprawled about on the cushions, all talking animatedly.

Two of Owen’s acquaintances went off to find their host. They returned leading him triumphantly.

He was Fakhri.

He recovered at once, grasped Owen’s hand in both his own and embraced him.

“It would take too long to explain,” said Owen.

However, his friends were determined to explain, and Fakhri got the general picture.

“But we have met already!”

“You have?”

Fakhri bore Owen away.

“Whisky?” he said. “Or coffee?”

“I would say coffee but I have had so much already-”

“Whisky, then. For me also. After such surprises-”

“Sorry,” said Owen.

“Such nice surprises. I take it you are not on duty?”

“Far from it,” said Owen, with conviction.

“Then enjoy your evening. Come! I will introduce you-”

But another group of guests arrived, who solicited Fakhri’s attention. Owen went off to find his acquaintances. The playwright was in a little group about the fountain. Owen started across to join him.

The party was Western-style. That is, women were present. There were Syrians, Jews, Armenians, Greeks, Tripolitans and Levantines generally; there were scarcely any Egyptians. None were unattached. That would have been flouting convention too far.

One of them Owen recognized. It was the girl he had noticed at Nuri’s. She looked up and caught his eye.

“Why,” she said, smiling, “le Mamur Zapt. ”

Fakhri appeared, hot and bothered from greeting three lots of guests simultaneously.

“You know each other?” he said. “Captain Carwall-” he mumbled the word “-Owen.”

“What?” said the girl.

“Owen.”

“I know,” said the girl. “Le Mamur Zapt. ”

Fakhri looked at Owen a little anxiously.

“Pas ce soir, ” said Owen.

“Ah!” said the girl. “You are Mamur Zapt only sometimes. That is imaginative.” She turned to Fakhri. “Don’t you think,” she asked, “that it is one of the weaknesses of the British that they can usually be only themselves?”

“It is one of their strengths,” said Fakhri. “They never doubt that they are right.”

“While we doubt all the time. Perhaps. But it is a weakness, too. The world is not so simple.”

“Cairo is not so simple, either,” said Fakhri, with a sidelong glance at Owen.

He slipped off to greet some new arrivals.

“I saw you the other day at Nuri’s,” said Owen.

“My father,” said the girl.

“Nuri is your father?”

“Oui. ’’

He considered her. Something in the face, perhaps? A strong face, not a pretty one. But the figure was willowy, unlike Nuri’s barrel-like one.

“You must take after your mother.”

“In more ways than one.”

“How is she?” asked Owen. “The attack on your father must have been a great shock.”

“She is dead.”

“I am sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

The girl looked out into the courtyard where the fountain caught the moonlight.

“I think they loved each other,” she said suddenly. “They never married, of course. She wouldn’t go in his harem.”

Seeing that Owen was trying to work it out, she said: “My mother was Firdus.”

She saw he was still puzzled.

“The courtesan. You wouldn’t know, but she was famous.”

“And obviously beautiful.”

The girl regarded him sceptically.

“She was, as a matter of fact. But that is not one of the things I have inherited from her.”

“I don’t know,” said Owen. “Is Ahmed your brother?” he asked. “Half-brother. His mother was a woman in the harem.”

“We met him at your father’s that day.”

“C’est un vrai imbecile, celui-la, ” said the girl dismissively.

“He doesn’t like the British.”

“You can’t expect originality from him.”

Owen laughed.

“He doesn’t seem to care greatly for your father, either,” he said. “Naturally,” said the girl. “None of us do. We are angry for our mothers.”