Michael Pearce - A Cold Touch of Ice

He stopped, embarrassed.

‘Soldiers?’

‘British soldiers.’

‘A hundred years ago,’ said Owen. ‘I’m not a soldier now.’

‘Once a soldier, always a soldier,’ said Ibrahim Buktari.

‘Where are you stationed?’ asked Owen.

‘At the Abdin Barracks, at the moment. I’ve just got back from the Sudan.’

‘Ah,’ said Owen. ‘Have I met your uncle? Wasn’t he one of Sidi Morelli’s domino-playing friends?’

‘That’s him up there,’ said Ibrahim Buktari.

‘Fahmy Salim?’

‘That’s right,’ said the young Egyptian.

‘He was worried about your being sent to the front.’

‘What front?’ said Kamal bitterly. ‘The British are keeping us away from any front.’

Ibrahim Buktari clicked his tongue reprovingly.

‘You’ll get your chance,’ he said.

‘But when? asked the young man. ‘And who against? It’s not the Sudanese that I want to be fighting.’

‘It doesn’t matter who it’s against,’ said Ibrahim Buktari. ‘The important thing, for a young soldier, is to be fighting.’

Kamal laughed and laid his hand on Ibrahim’s arm affectionately.

‘You’re a fine friend for my uncle to have!’ he said. ‘I’ll tell him what you said!’

‘Tell him! And then I’ll tell him that the one thing a young officer wants is war. That’s the way to quick promotion.’

‘Yes, I know. That’s what they all say. But that’s not the only thing, you know. You need to be fighting on the right side.’

‘Nonsense!’ cried Ibrahim Buktari, greatly enjoying himself. ‘There is no such thing as the right side. Not here in Egypt, there isn’t. Sides are all over the place, and the only thing that counts is to be on the winning side!’

‘Shocking!’ cried Kamal. ‘To have respectable elders leading young men astray! What is the country coming to!’

They embraced each other, laughing. This was obviously a continuing pretend argument between them.

Then they sobered up and the young Egyptian excused himself.

‘I must go and walk beside my uncle. It is a long way in the heat and he is much stricken by Sidi Morelli’s death. He may need help before the end. And perhaps,’ he said to Owen, ‘you can talk some sense into this old firebrand. The only people he listens to are the British!’

‘Outrageous!’ shouted Ibrahim Buktari. But the young Egyptian was gone.

‘He’s all right,’ Ibrahim Buktari said to Owen. ‘I’ve known him since he was a boy. Full of wrong ideas, of course. But then, the young always have been.’

That evening Owen went round to see Zeinab. She lived in the fashionable Ismailiya Quarter, and had an appartement of her own. This was unusual for a single Egyptian woman; but then Zeinab was unusual in many respects.

She was the daughter of a Pasha, which explained how she could afford to own an appartement but which did not account for the audacity of maintaining a separate establishment itself. Most Pasha’s daughters were as harem-bound as other Egyptian women and spent their lives at home with their families until they could be suitably married. The circumstances of Zeinab’s birth and upbringing were, however, mildly out of the ordinary, even by Egyptian standards.

Her mother had been one of Cairo’s most famous courtesans and the young Nuri Pasha had been desperately in love with her, to such an extent, indeed, that he had scandalized Cairo society by proposing marriage. To his surprise, and the even greater surprise of society, she had turned him down, preferring to keep her independence. This had endeared her to Nuri – who liked a bit of spirit in his women – even more, and the two had lived happily together until, tragically, Zeinab’s mother had died giving birth to Zeinab.

The shattered Nuri had clutched at the baby as representing all that was left of the great passion of his life, acknowledging Zeinab as his daughter and bringing her up as, in his view, a Pasha’s daughter should be brought up.

This was not quite, however, as other Pashas’ daughters were reared. Like most of the old Egyptian ruling class, Nuri looked to France for his culture, and had brought Zeinab up to share that culture. Being Nuri, however, he had rather overdone it, with the result that Zeinab was as much a Frenchwoman as she was an Egyptian. She spoke French more naturally than she spoke Arabic.

Consistent with this approach, the doting Nuri had throughout her childhood allowed her considerably more licence than her peers enjoyed, rejoicing, indeed, in every expression of independence as reflecting something of the spirit of her mother.

True, still, to his enthusiasm for things French, especially women, he had encouraged her, as she approached womanhood, to assume the ton of the young Parisienne. Basing himself, however, largely on the latest magazines that he had received from Paris, he had tended to confuse the current normal with less widely shared notions of the New Woman, which, admittedly, he interpreted as merely the adding of a piquant new flavour to the more traditional ones of sexual attraction. The upshot of all this was that by the time she was eighteen Zeinab had come to take for granted a degree of freedom unusual among Muslim women; and what Nuri was reluctant to grant, she took.

Zeinab, too, was enthusiastic about French culture, although her interests were more aesthetic. The Cairo art world, where she found most of her friends, was heavily French in tone, and had the additional advantage of taking a more relaxed view of women than the rest of Egyptian society. She was able, therefore, to pursue her interests in painting and music more or less in peace, and sometimes thought that one day she might establish a salon along the lines of that of the great Parisian ladies.

First, however, she would have to get married, and this presented a problem, since the only man she could contemplate was someone who shared her views on personal freedom, and there appeared to be no rich young Egyptian men in that category. That only left Owen; and he, alas, was English.

Meanwhile, she was just coining up to thirty.

‘Mahmoud? Married?’ she said now, raising herself upon her elbows. She seemed disconcerted. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was the marrying kind.’

‘I think it was a bit of a surprise to him, too.’

He told her about the evening.

‘School?’ said Zeinab. ‘She must be about fourteen.’

‘I think she’s left school now.’

‘Well, that, I suppose, is something.’

‘I met her father. He seems all right.’

‘The trouble is,’ said Zeinab, ‘that Mahmoud is not marrying the father.’

‘I know. It does seem strange. But there you are, Time passes.’

‘Yes,’ said Zeinab.

‘Owen, I’ve had a letter this morning –’

It was McPhee, the Deputy Commandant of the Cairo Police.

‘Everyone’s had them,’ said Owen.

‘Not just me, then.’

McPhee seemed pleased. He turned to go. Then he came back.

‘I’ve had them before,’ he said.

‘The same writing?’

‘It’s a letter-writer’s hand,’ said McPhee, who, despite his eccentricity, knew his Egypt.

‘Got one?’

McPhee laid it before him.

‘It’s the same as mine,’ said Owen. ‘And the same as everyone else’s. Whoever it is always used the same writer.’

‘We could look out for him, I suppose,’ said McPhee. ‘Though there are dozens of letter-writers in the city.’

‘The ones to you, and to the Mamur Zapt,’ said Nikos, the Secrets Clerk, ‘were both posted in the Box.’

Fastened to the wall outside the Governorate was an old wooden box in which from time immemorial it had been the habit of the citizens of Cairo to deposit petitions, complaints about the price of bread, denunciations of their neighbours and accusations against their neighbours’ wives, together with sundry informations which were thought might be of interest to the Mamur Zapt. And some of them were.