Michael Pearce - The Bride Box

‘ What did he know?’

‘About the girl? All. Everything. He was with me when I came from the Sudan. He stayed with me when I moved out of my husband’s house. He was with me when Soraya came. From the start he had said: “That girl is no good. She will do harm here before she is done.” He is my eyes and ears. Know? Of course he knew! He had seen her from the start. “That girl has designs,” he said. “She is not content to be a lowly servant.” But I did not listen to him. I thought I knew best. Soraya spoke my tongue. I knew her mother. So I trusted her. I advanced her. And look how she repaid me!’

‘You say that Suleiman knew all this?’

‘From the start.’

‘He knew about Karim?’

‘Of course he knew about Karim! He had held him in his arms when he was small.’

‘And when he grew. So he knew about Ibrahim?’

The Pasha’s lady gave him a startled look. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he knew about Ibrahim. He was here when it happened. But why do you ask? What has Ibrahim to do with all this?’

‘I do not know,’ said Mahmoud. ‘That is why I am asking.’

‘Ibrahim had nothing to do with any of this.’

‘But Suleiman knew?’

‘Of course. Why do you ask these questions?’

‘Was Suleiman a kinsman of Ibrahim?’

‘We are all kinspeople here.’

‘In this house?’

‘Yes.’

‘But not your husband’s house?’

‘Both houses are my husband’s.’

‘But do both houses contain equally your kinspeople?’

‘They do not. My kinspeople came with me to this house when my husband said I should go.’

‘That Karim should go?’

‘That Karim should go. Which is the same thing. I am his mother.’

‘Let us go back,’ said Mahmoud, ‘to Soraya. And her bride box. When she left the second time, taking her bride box with her, who carried it for her?’

‘Who carried it? I do not remember.’

‘Men from your household?’

‘I do not recall. No, I think not. They all wished to have done with Soraya.’

‘So who were they?’

‘I do not recall. These things are small.’

‘When she came the second time, bringing her bride box, who brought it?’

‘I do not recall.’

‘I don’t think it was people from your household.’

‘No. It wasn’t.’

‘So who was it?’

‘I do not recall.’

‘It was the slaver’s men.’

‘Was it?’

‘You had spoken with the slaver before. He had acted for you with Soraya’s father. How was that?’

‘I do not recall.’

‘Not all people have dealings with slavers. How comes it that you did?’

‘I knew Abdulla of old,’ said the lady, sulkily. ‘And I knew that he was passing so I asked him to act for me.’

‘How did you know that he was passing?’

‘Some of his people knew some of my people.’

‘Because they come from the Sudan?’

‘Yes. Because they come from the Sudan. From that part of the Sudan where my family lives.’

‘What were the names of the men the slaver sent to collect the box?’

‘I don’t know. These are small things.’

‘Someone must have instructed them. Was it Suleiman?’

‘I don’t recall.’

‘It would have been, wouldn’t it? Suleiman was your right-hand man. He acted for you in most things.’

‘All this is too far distant-’

Mahmoud cut her short. ‘What I want to know,’ he said, ‘is what instructions he gave to the slaver’s men?’

‘How do I know?’

‘Suleiman would not have given instructions if he had not received instructions.’

He waited.

The lady said nothing.

‘So what were they?’

The lady merely shrugged.

‘I would have asked Suleiman,’ said Mahmoud, ‘but you had sent him away. So that I could not.’

After he had spoken to Karim, Owen went straight up to the temple.

The afternoon heat still hung over it. There was not a person about. Everyone had retreated indoors. Everything was silent. Only, high up on the pylon in front of the massive portico, he heard a slight buzzing and remembered the bees. He looked up, and in the different light he saw that they were not bees but wasps. He saw now that there were dozens of tiny wasps’ nests, hanging from the stone like mud bubbles.

He stood there for a moment looking up at them. Then he heard the cry of a hawk, and stepped inside.

Selim emerged from behind a pillar.

‘The guns have come,’ said Owen. ‘They will soon be here.’

‘They are here already,’ said Selim.

He took Owen inside and led him to the chamber he had shown him before. In the darkness it seemed to have changed its shape. Then Owen saw that the change was due to boxes that had been stacked there. He gently prised up a slat on one of the boxes and looked inside and saw the guns: new ones, like Karim’s.

He hammered the slat back into place. It left behind it a slight smell of metal and grease.

‘The men will be back,’ Owen said. ‘Probably soon.’

Selim nodded.

‘I will be here,’ he said.

Owen went round to the station office, where he found the clerk’s brother, Babikr, standing in again. His brother, he said, was still sleeping it off after his exertion on the previous day.

‘The boxes I spoke of-’

‘Have arrived,’ said Babikr. ‘A man was sent to tell me. They are kept I know not where, but tomorrow they will be brought to the station just before the train arrives. There is a goods train, Effendi, early in the afternoon, and the boxes are to be put on it.’

‘Suleiman had been sent away on a family matter,’ said the Pasha’s lady. ‘Nothing to do with this or you.’

‘We shall see what he says.’

‘He is far away,’ said the lady, ‘and will not be coming back.’

‘The Khedive’s reach is long,’ said Mahmoud.

‘But does not extend to the Sudan,’ said the lady.

‘But the British are there as here,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and they will send him back for me to talk to him.’

The lady did not reply. In fact, she continued to sit there in silence, thinking. ‘And all this,’ she said after a while, ‘for a silly girl!’

‘For a girl, yes,’ said Mahmoud, thinking that the lady was merely reflecting the general designation of women in the eyes of Arab society.

‘And no one thinks of Karim,’ said the lady.

‘His mother thinks of him,’ said Mahmoud. ‘And that is right. But the girl had a mother, too, who, if she had been alive, would have been thinking of her.’

The Pasha’s lady sat silent again for, it seemed, a long time. Mahmoud, however, was prepared to wait. ‘Her mother is dead,’ said the lady suddenly, ‘so I had to do the thinking for her.’

‘For the mother?’

‘For her, yes. Since she is not alive and I am the senior kinswoman.’

‘Was that why you took Soraya into your service?’

‘Yes. Especially since I knew her mother, and her father is a sot. It is as if she were parentless. I had responsibilities.’

‘So you took her in?’

‘Yes, but it did not work out. She was stubborn, obstinate. She would not listen to me. It would have been better if she had.’

‘You cannot control a person’s feelings.’

‘No, but you can guide them. And that is what a parent should do. And I would have done — I did do — since I was in place of her mother. But she would not listen to me.’

‘Her eyes were looking in a direction where you felt they should not.’

‘ Could not! I had to think of my family. Or, at least, my husband’s family. As well as hers. Even then I might have managed it if she had not been so obstinate. So proud! I had found her another man. That was right, that was what I should do! But she would not have it.’