Michael Pearce - The Face in the Cemetery

‘They’ll be all right when the Australians come,’ said Paul.

‘They’re definitely coming, are they?’

‘Oh, yes. And soon. The Sirdar won’t release his regiments until he’s sure of replacements. Not with the Turks on the Canal.’

The other side of the Suez Canal was Ottoman ground and for some time there had been rumours of an increasing concentration of troops on that side. Turkey had not yet come into the war and whose side it would come in on was still in doubt. Not that of the British, most people suspected.

Owen told Paul that he had been thinking about his own position.

‘They need experienced officers,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the experience. It seems wrong not to use it.’

‘I’ve been wondering the same thing,’ said Paul. ‘Not that I’ve had your training or experience, of course. Still, I’ve been wondering whether I ought to volunteer. I’ve got so far as to think I’ll have a word with Kitchener when he gets back.’

‘You might have a word with him about me, too.’

‘I will. But do you know what I think he’s going to say to me? “You’re more use here,” that’s what he’ll say.’

He looked at Owen.

‘And I think he might say the same of you.’

‘I think he might not,’ said Owen. ‘He doesn’t like me.’

‘It’s not just up to him.’

‘Perhaps you could float the idea generally,’ said Owen. ‘You know, sound people out.’

Paul nodded.

They got up from the table. As they left the verandah, he said:

‘Have you talked to Zeinab about it yet?’

That was something he’d been deferring; but, as he climbed the stairs to their apartment, he told himself it was something he could not go on putting off. That evening, as they sat over their drinks on the balcony, he broached it.

Zeinab seemed to freeze.

‘You can’t do that!’ she said.

‘Well, I know, but –’

‘What’s the war got to do with you? It’s over there. You’re here.’

‘Well …’

‘You belong to Egypt now,’ she said fiercely. ‘You belong to me!’

‘Yes, I know, but –’

‘What the hell’s it got to do with you?’ she said again, her eyes filling. ‘You’ve made your life here. With me. Don’t I count for anything?’

He tried to put his arm round her, but she shook it off.

‘You say one thing and then you do another! You say you love me and then you do – this!’

‘Look, I’ve not done anything yet. And maybe I won’t do anything. All I’m doing is thinking about it.’

‘Even to think about it,’ said Zeinab, ‘is wrong. It hurts me. Even for you to think about it!’

She jumped to her feet and ran inside. He heard the door of the bedroom slam.

The telephone was already ringing in the outer office as he went through. Nikos picked it up, listened and then put his hand over the mouthpiece.

‘It’s another one,’ he said.

Owen went on into his office. He heard Nikos say:

‘I’ll put you through, Effendi.’

He picked up the phone on his desk.

‘Yes?’

‘Owen, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Your men have arrested one of our nurses!’

‘Is she German?’

‘Her mother’s German.’

‘Well, then –’

‘But her father’s English.’

‘That ought to be all right, then.’

‘But it’s not all right! Your men have arrested her.’

‘Which Consulate is she registered with?’

Foreign nationals were supposed to register with their Consulate.

‘Both.’

‘She can’t be registered with both. It’s got to be one or the other.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, Christ, you can’t be both English and German.’

‘What about dual nationality?’

Owen swore quietly to himself.

‘Is she registered for dual nationality?’ he asked.

‘Well, she’s registered with both Consulates.’

‘But that’s not the same thing.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No. Look, we’re working from a list supplied to the Ministry by the German Consulate and it doesn’t say anything about her having dual nationality. What it says is that she’s German.’

‘Well, she isn’t that, is she? Not if she’s half English.’

‘She ought to have said she was half English. Then this wouldn’t have happened.’

‘I think she just thought … All right, all right. The thing is, she can’t quite make up her mind which she wants to be. She’d quite like to be both. She says you never know which nationality is going to come in handy.’

‘At the moment, it’s definitely the British. Look, no matter how she’s registered, this is clearly a case of dual nationality –’

‘At least.’

‘At least?’

‘She was born in Egypt. Doesn’t that make her Egyptian as well?’

‘No. Not unless she wants it.’

‘Well, she does want it. Quite. The point is that that’s what she is, really. She was born here and has spent all her life here –’

‘Look, if she wants to be an Egyptian, she’s got to get herself registered as an Egyptian.’

‘Yes, but she doesn’t want to be just that, she wants to be the others as well. Could she apply for triple nationality, do you think?’

‘She’s not, by any chance, getting married to a Panamanian?’

Afterwards, though, he fell to wondering about the girl and her situation. It was not uncommon in Egypt. With so many nationalities, it was not surprising if, despite the tensions and barriers between them, sometimes people got married across the lines of division. As, perhaps, he and Zeinab would.

As the girl’s parents had. He wondered if they were still alive and, if they were, whether they were living in Egypt. They might well be. In that case the wife might be on one of the lists. Was she being taken away like all the other Germans? The picture came into his mind of the woman on the landing stage at Minya holding out her hands to him. Would it be like that?

It was easy to take people if you thought of them just as names on lists. But Owen had always found it difficult to do that. His mental maps were bristly with the individual reality of people. This was sometimes an advantage to him in his work as Mamur Zapt, sometimes a disadvantage. In the case of taking people into internment it was definitely a disadvantage. Every so often he would become aware of the lives behind the lists and then it was as if a piece of grit had got into the process, like a grain of sand beneath his eyelid, and then he would worry at it and worry at it and be unable to leave it alone.

The woman in the cat cemetery was a bit like that. He had no real sense of her as an individual, yet she refused to go away. Partly it was that the Parquet, with their incompetence, kept bringing her back before him. Partly, though, it was a certain curiosity about the life that lay behind the body; the life of a European married to an Egyptian. How had it gone? he wondered.

Yet another communication from the Parquet! Goodness, had they no other work to do? What depth of idiocy would they sink to now? He took the slip of paper out of the envelope and looked at it.

Then he sat up.

The handwriting was different from that of the communications he had recently been receiving. It was small, neat, precise, purposeful.

The message merely said:

I have taken over this case.

Mahmoud

Mahmoud el Zaki was one of the Parquet’s rising stars and Owen had known him almost ever since he had been in Egypt. He was a young, ambitious lawyer whose ambition, however, took the form less of personal advancement than of advancement for his country. Like the Khedive – a comparison he would have hotly rejected – he wished to free Egypt from the ramshackle practices of the past and see it take a place among the developed nations. Unlike the Khedive, he saw no need for foreign help in achieving this. Egyptians could and should do it on their own. Owen knew exactly where he would stand on the issue of the Germans in the Ministry of the Interior: they shouldn’t be there anyway. Egyptians should be doing the work.