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

“I’m looking for a man.”

“Here? You must be mad!”

“He came in.”

“Into the harem?”

“Into the house,” Owen admitted.

“He has not been in here,” she said. “Nobody has come in here. No man would come in here.”

“I am sorry, then,” said Owen, turning away.

“You don’t just go bursting into people’s houses like that!” she said. “Not even if the man we’re looking for may have had something to do with the attack on your father?” asked Owen.

Georgiades appeared from upstairs and shook his head. He glanced round the room and pointed to a small door which Owen had taken to be the door of a kazna, a large cupboard in which such things as bedclothes were kept.

“Does that go anywhere?”

“Why not go in and find out?” said Zeinab.

Georgiades’s hand was almost on the handle when the door opened of its own accord.

“What is the meaning of this?” said a harsh, unpleasant voice which struck Owen as oddly familiar.

Georgiades fell back.

A man came into the room, short, stocky, bare-chested, dressed only in red silk pantaloons.

It, was Guzman.

“You have offended the Sirdar,” said Garvin. “You have offended the Khedive. You have offended the Agent. And you’ve bloody offended me.”

He picked up a piece of paper from his desk.

“I’ve even had,” he said, “a letter of complaint from the Kadi about your desecrating religious property.”

He put the letter down.

“It takes some doing to offend all the powers of Egypt in the space of about two hours, but by God, Owen, you’ve done it. The Army, the Khedive, the Kadi- Not to mention me. And for what?” “We’ve got the grenades.”

“Not all of them. And you missed the man.”

“How was I to know it was Guzman’s house?” muttered Owen. “You could have asked,” said the pitiless Garvin. “The meanest beggar in the street outside would have told you. Instead, you went charging in. In fact, you spent the whole afternoon charging round, like a sort of lunatic McPhee. If I want a McPhee as Mamur Zapt,” said Garvin, “I’ll get a real one.”

This was proving even more uncomfortable than Owen had expected.

“But I don’t,” Garvin continued. “I really don’t. The Mamur Zapt isn’t supposed to work like that. He’s supposed to work behind the scenes, off-stage. Not front stage at the opera. The bloody comic opera!”

Owen felt this hit home. He sat there smarting but judged it best to keep quiet. Garvin obviously expected some reaction. When none came he was slightly off-put. His glare became half-hearted.

“It was a mistake, wasn’t it?” he said, still aggressively but with rather less vehemence. “Raiding that Syrian? I thought it would be. The trouble with a raid is that it either works or it doesn’t. If you don’t wrap everything up it kills off all the leads. I told you it would be better to put a man on the shop!”

If we’d done that, thought Owen, we would not have got the grenades.

Perhaps Garvin guessed what he was thinking, for the glare returned, defying Owen to make his objection.

Owen sat there impassively.

Satisfied, Garvin relaxed.

“It was my fault,” he said unexpectedly. “I shouldn’t have let you.” Now it was Owen who was off-put. He found himself wanting to demur.

Garvin was taking no notice, however. He was following his own train of thought.

“Maps!” he said suddenly. “Maps!”

“What?” said Owen, startled.

Garvin turned to him.

"Maps,” he said. “That’s what you need. You need to build up your own set of maps. The Mamur Zapt is different from the police,” he went on. “The police are interested in catching the criminal and punishing him. You’re not interested at all in seeing he gets punished, and not even interested, really, in him getting caught. What you’re interested in is seeing that certain things don’t happen. You may have to catch people, you may have to keep them in prison, but that’s all incidental. You may be able to do your job without it. In fact, it’s better if you do do your job without it. You’ve got to anticipate, to know in advance what’s going to happen and then to stop it. To do that you need information. Contacts. Maps.”

He looked at Owen.

“I shouldn’t have let you raid that Syrian, should I?” he said. “We should have used him to help you build up one of those maps. Syrian connections throughout the city. It would have been worth it.” “Even at the price of a box of grenades?”

“Even at the price of a box of grenades,” said Garvin seriously. He considered a moment. “At the price of something going wrong at the Carpet, though-” He broke off. “Well,” he said, “it’s never straightforward in this business.”

“Did I tell you,” he asked, “that the Old Man wants you to be in charge of security arrangements for the Carpet?”

“Still?”

Garvin smiled wintrily. “I would think so,” he said.

As Owen went out Garvin said: “The Carpet’s always a pig. There were riots all over Cairo when I was doing it.”

Owen knew the words were meant encouragingly.

Nikos came in, unusually agitated.

“There’s a woman to see you,” he said.

“What sort of woman?” asked Owen. “Do you want me to come out?”

It was rare for a woman to come alone to the Mamur Zapt’s offices, or, indeed, any other offices for that matter. Usually if a woman had business with an office she sent a man on her behalf or a male relative. In the few cases where she came herself she came accompanied. Occasionally, though, a countrywoman would come to see the Mamur Zapt with a petition. She would wait self-effacingly outside, not venturing to come in, hoping only to catch the Mamur Zapt as he went past. Owen had left strict instructions that if a woman was seen waiting like that then he was to be informed. He would go down to her as soon as he could.

“No,” said Nikos. He hesitated. Then he made up his mind. “I will bring her along to you.”

Owen sat back surprised. He had very few visits of that sort.

Nikos ushered in an elegant woman, dressed in Parisian black. She wore a short, European-style veil but had bound her hair in an expensive scarf so as to reduce the offence to Islamic susceptibilities.

Owen rose automatically from his desk. Nikos withdrew. The woman came further into the room and lifted her veil so that Owen could see her face. It was Nuri’s daughter, the one he had seen the day before, Zeinab.

“I wanted to see you,” she said. “I thought I could be of some use.”

Owen drew up a chair for her.

He felt unusually awkward.

For one thing, he had never before spoken to a young Egyptian woman alone. Arab Egyptian, that was. He had spoken to French Egyptians, Italian ones, Greek ones, but never previously to an Arab one. Even the Greek ones were pretty difficult to get to know. The Levantines were nearly as traditional as the Moslems where their women were concerned. Especially their daughters. Their wives were often restive and it was relatively easy to find a married woman with a taste for adventure. Their daughters, whether they had a taste or not, were seldom given the opportunity to indulge it. Young, single girls were kept as in purdah. And this was all the more true, of course, of

Arab ones. You simply never saw them. Very occasionally you might meet a very Europeanized one in the most advanced of circles, as, indeed, he had done, but even there they hardly ever detached themselves from the crowd. Your only chance was someone as Europeanized, independent, unconventional and strong-minded as Nuri’s daughter evidently was. If, of course, she was single.