Michael Pearce - The Bride Box

‘And you cannot tell me the name of the man, nor the place of his home? Good offer, indeed! Would her mother have thought so? Her true mother?’

‘When you have five children, you cannot do as well for them as you would like. She knew she would have to marry. In our village all the children know that. She had known that for a long time.’

‘Long enough to make ready a bride box?’

‘The offer came sooner than I had expected.’

‘So she didn’t have a bride box? Unlike her sister?’

‘Her sister had a bride box, certainly. She had more time to prepare one.’

‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud. ‘I have seen it.’

There was a stir of amazement in the crowd.

A woman pushed through the people. She was poorly dressed and didn’t wear a veil. Her cheeks were cut with tribal marks and her hands were dyed with henna. She was shouting angrily, ‘What is this? What is this? What are you doing with my man?’

‘Asking questions,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Which have to be answered.’

‘What questions?’

‘About your daughters. Your new daughters. The ones who were in your husband’s house when you came but are not there now.’

‘Well, what of it?’ the woman said, more warily. ‘They have gone away, that is all. Who asks these questions?’

‘The police,’ said someone in the crowd.

‘The police? Hah!’ the woman scoffed. ‘What do I care about the police?’

‘The police from Cairo.’

The woman put her hand over her mouth and stood for a moment looking uncertainly around her. Then she sat down on the ground beside her husband.

‘Is there an omda?’ asked Mahmoud, referring to a village headman.

‘Yes, Effendi.’

‘Fetch him.’

It took a little time. Meanwhile, Owen and Mahmoud sat patiently there on the ground, the crowd growing all the time. The people sat there quietly, but Owen knew they were taking everything in. That could be helpful later, if only as a check on what the basket maker had said. In a village like this everyone knew everything. What was perhaps more to the point, they know what was not being said.

At last a man came pushing through the crowd. He looked worried. ‘Effendis?’

‘Salaam Aleikhum,’ said Owen and Mahmoud together, politely.

‘And to you, Salaam!’ returned the omda.

‘I am from the Parquet,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and this is the Mamur Zapt.’

There was no doubt about the Mamur Zapt being known to the omda. He became tense. ‘You come from Cairo?’ he said. ‘It is a long way.’

‘Even there we hear of things. We hear, for example, that children have gone missing from your village.’

The omda went still. ‘One of them went to get married,’ he said, after a moment.

‘So it is said. And the other?’

‘I do not know.’

‘The one who went to get married: do you know the name of the man to whom she was to be married or the place of her new home? No? Is that the way things are done in Denderah?’

The omda was silent for a moment. ‘It is the way they were done on this occasion,’ he said quietly. ‘But not the way they should have been done. I knew nothing about it until after she was gone.’

‘Did you not make enquiries?’

‘We wondered, and asked. But her father said that he had received a good offer and that the matter had to be closed quickly.’

‘Without any celebration?’

‘There would be celebrations, her father told us. But they could be elsewhere.’

‘How could you be sure she was to be wed?’

‘She took her bride box, Effendi.’

‘And so you thought that …?’

‘What else could it mean?’

‘I have seen the bride box,’ said Mahmoud. ‘But not the things that she put in it. Have you seen them?’

‘No, Effendi!’ said the omda, shocked. ‘How could we?’

‘I think they may have been tipped out and left. In which case they must be lying around somewhere. Perhaps not far from the village. And if they were left like that, some of them may have been found and brought back here. Have they been?’

The omda, still shocked, turned to the villagers. ‘Have they?’ he asked.

There was a mutter of denial.

‘Look for them,’ said Mahmoud. ‘And if you find them, bring them to me. No one will be punished just for having these things, but I need to know about them.’

‘They were Soraya’s things!’ a woman said indignantly. ‘She was making ready for her wedding. They should not have been treated like that!’

‘Where is Soraya?’ someone asked.

Owen and Mahmoud exchanged glances. Owen nodded.

‘She is dead,’ said Mahmoud.

Mustapha’s new wife collapsed, weeping. Mustapha bowed his head to the ground and seemed to be trying to push his face into the sand. Some women at the back of the crowd began to wail.

There was no lock-up in the village. There was no constable, either. Mahmoud told Mustapha and his wife to stay in their house and made the omda responsible for seeing to it. Then he and Owen walked over to the village well and sat down on the little mud-brick wall that was built around it. People would come to them, they knew; but it would take time.

First, the omda himself came. ‘Would Your Excellencies like tea?’ he said anxiously. ‘Or perhaps beer?’

‘No beer, thank you,’ said Mahmoud.

Owen shook his head. ‘Tea would be welcome,’ he said.

Shortly afterwards a woman brought them tea, the bitter, black tea of the fellahin, on a wicker work tray. Afterwards she continued to stand there.

‘Yes?’

‘The body needs seeing to, Effendi,’ she said.

It was a rule that the body should be buried the day the person died.

‘That cannot be in this case,’ said Mahmoud. ‘The body is in Cairo. It is being seen to.’

‘It should be seen to by those that knew her,’ said the woman.

‘That cannot be.’

The woman stood for a while, then accepted it. ‘And what of Leila?’ she asked.

‘Leila is in Cairo, too,’ said Owen. ‘She is well and in safe hands.’

‘God be praised!’

‘Perform such rites as you can,’ said Mahmoud.

The woman nodded and went away and shortly afterwards the wailing rose in volume. It sounded as if all the women of the village were taking part — and perhaps they were.

The wailing continued all night and was still going on when they woke up the next morning. They had been taken to a house to spend the night and given food. In the morning when they went out the women were already busy drawing up water from the well.

Owen and Mahmoud went and stood by them.

‘Is it true, Effendi, what you said about Leila?’ one of them asked quietly.

‘It is true, yes.’

‘ Inshallah! God be praised!’

‘How did it come about that she was allowed to go? What sort of village is this?’

‘No one knew, Effendi. It was all done by the father and he told no one else. We had heard that slavers were in the district but no one had seen them. Mustapha must have sought them out.’

‘And Soraya? The same?’

‘Perhaps, Effendi. I do not know. She had disappeared some days before. Again in the night, and silently. Again it was her father’s doing. But, Effendi …’

‘Yes?’

‘The cases are not the same. Soraya must have thought she was going to be wed, for she took her bride box with her. Perhaps her father had told her some story.’

‘And then sold her to the slavers?’

‘Perhaps. But …’

‘Yes?’

‘Would the slavers have killed a pretty girl? Surely not! They would have kept her alive and sold her. She would have fetched a good price.’

‘I thought the slavers had gone from Egypt,’ Mahmoud said. ‘How comes it that they are here?’