Michael Pearce - The Bride Box

‘And you’re not saying!’ said the Greek, chuckling.

‘Too true, I’m not!’

‘Well I think he’s a lucky man to have you to call on.’

‘Well, I think he is, too. It’s not easy to get things done the way he likes them done. There’s more to it than he thinks. Just getting the stuff here is not that straightforward. It comes in by train, you see, and has to be fetched from the station. Nothing to it, you might think. Just a matter of porters. But porters have to be found, and porters have to be stood over, like I said, or else they’ll get it wrong. And then he’d go mad!’

‘Do you use the same porters every time?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘I should think you would. If he’s like you say, you’d want to be sure of your porters. And if you’ve found some you know to be reliable, I think you’d stick with them.’

‘Well, I do, as a matter of fact.’

‘Go to the same ones every time?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I reckon you’ve done well if you’ve found some reliable ones.’

‘It’s not easy. In a place like Cairo. Where porters are always drifting away. Offer them some money and they’re off!’

‘Does he pay well?’

‘No.’

Georgiades pursed his lips. ‘That makes it tricky,’ he said.

‘It does. That’s what I always tell him. “You don’t know the half of it,” I say.’

‘He’s a lucky man to have you to rely on.’

Further along the street was a barber’s shop. Well, not quite a shop — this was a poor area — but certainly a barber. He worked from the pavement, where he had put a chair, an old cane chair, on which he sat his clients. His equipment was on the ground beside him: two pairs of scissors, one for hard work, the other for fine: a razor, of the cut-throat variety, a shaving brush, a tin bowl and a large pewter jug containing the hot water he had to fetch from the cafe up the road where Georgiades and the warehouse clerk went for their coffee. And there was a length of cloth, not overly clean, which he tied round the neck of his client. From time to time he shook it into the gutter.

There was always a circle of onlookers gathered round the chair, sitting on the pavement, offering advice or critical judgement or just generally chatting. The barber was good at chatting and the people who came to join him were regulars. Some passed the day there.

The Greek ambled along the street, paused when he saw the barber and hovered uncertainly. The chair was empty at the moment and the barber spread his apron cloth invitingly. Georgiades sat down. ‘Short back and sides,’ he said.

‘It’s pretty short already,’ said the barber doubtfully. ‘Are you sure you want a haircut?’

‘My wife says I need one.’

‘Perhaps she was thinking of your beard?’

‘I haven’t got one!’ protested Georgiades.

‘Maybe that’s the problem. You’ve got a lot of stubble there.’

‘My hair grows quickly!’

‘It does on some people.’

‘I shave every morning, you know, and by ten o’clock it looks as if I haven’t touched it.’

‘It’s the jowls — they hide the hair, and you can’t cut closely, and then as the day wears on, the hairs come back from behind the flesh.’

‘This is getting personal!’ said Georgiades.

‘No, no, it’s just a technical observation. I’m right, aren’t I?’ he appealed to the onlookers.

‘It’s true he’s a bit fleshy,’ one observer piped up.

‘I can’t help that!’

‘No, he can’t. And stop going on at him. Some people carry a lot of weight. It’s the way they are.’

‘It’s certainly the way I am,’ said Georgiades.

‘All he needs is a shave!’ someone else shouted.

‘You could be right,’ said the barber.

‘All right, a shave, then.’

‘Go on,’ the crowd advised. ‘Make it nice for his wife. She doesn’t want to be scraping herself against his bristles all the time. That’s the problem. It’s not his hair.’

‘A shave, then,’ said the barber. ‘As smooth as a baby’s bottom.’

After this promising beginning, the conversation flowed, and soon the Greek was in a position to ask about the porters.

‘Reliable ones,’ he stipulated.

‘You’ll be lucky!’

‘I know, but a chap who works in one of the warehouses here was telling me that he reckoned he’d found some.’

‘All the warehouses use porters!’

‘Yes, but some are better than others. This bloke I was talking to seemed to need especially good ones. He worked for a foreign Effendi, you see, who was always on to him.’

‘Would that be Nassir?’

‘It might be. I didn’t quite catch his name. But he said he worked for a foreign Effendi who was often away — a trader. Gum arabic, I think. And trocchee shells.’

‘That definitely was Nassir.’

‘Why do his porters have to be so special?’ asked someone. ‘That’s just ordinary work.’

‘Sometimes they have to move stuff at night,’ said Georgiades. ‘And then, I suppose they’re working without supervision.’

‘Why do they have to move the stuff at night?’

‘God knows! But apparently they do. Anyway it sounded as if he’d got some good porters, and I just wondered if anyone knew who they were? Because I could certainly use them.’

‘They come from outside, I think.’

He meant outside the quarter. Cairo was a very localized place as far as ordinary people were concerned.

‘They do mostly,’ said someone. ‘But I think he makes use of Abdul.’

‘Well, Abdul is very good. If you want someone who’s reliable, he’s your man.’

‘How could I get hold of him?’

‘You’ll find him just along the road. At the trough there. When he’s not working, that is, which is most of the time.’

Yet further along the road was another business conducted entirely on the pavement. It consisted of a large flat tray resting on a layer of cinders and filled with cooking oil, usually olive or sunflower. Beside the tray was a cloth on which were lying various pieces of meat and sundry vegetables. From time to time its attendant would drop a piece of meat or a few vegetables into the cooking fat. They would sizzle and turn brown. When they were done he would fish them out and hand them, usually on a piece of paper, to whoever had requested them. Then they would sit on the pavement and eat them.

For this was a restaurant. It did not cater for the exalted (it was not even like the place Georgiades and the warehouse clerk attended just along the road) but for porters, donkey-boys, warehouse workers and the humbler men who did menial jobs round about. And, like the barber’s shop, it was a humming social centre.

Georgiades stood over the tray, obviously tempted. The smell of frying onions rose enticingly into the air.

‘Try some!’ invited the cook.

Georgiades sat down. The cook ladled some onion slices on to a square of paper and put it in front of Georgiades.

‘Yes?’ said the cook anxiously.

‘Yes,’ said Georgiades, and handed the square back for more.

‘And something else?’

‘Aubergines?’ said Georgiades hopefully.

The cook pointed. ‘In the pot,’ he said.

Georgiades held out the square.

‘And …?’ said the cook.

‘Beans.’

‘Beans, yes. And …?’

Georgiades held up his hand. ‘No more,’ he said. ‘My wife says I eat too much anyway.’

‘How could she say that?’ said the cook, affecting amazement. ‘A slim fellow like you!’

‘That’s what I say. But somehow she’s not convinced.’

There were several other men squatting around the tray. They pointed out, in the friendly, intimate Egyptian way, the best aubergines and helped him to extract them from the pot.