Michael Pearce - The Mamur Zapt and the Men Behind

‘Get an arabeah,’ he said to the waiter.

He held Roper there until the arabeah came. Then he stooped down, hauled Roper upright and pushed him towards the door.

A waiter plucked at his arm.

‘The drinks, effendi.’

Owen put his hand in his pocket, thought better and put it in Roper’s pocket.

Roper suddenly tore himself away. He caught hold of a table and hurled it across the room, then swung out at an Egyptian who had been sitting at it. As the man fell, the waiters closed in.

The knot of struggling men edged towards the door. Just as they got there Roper went limp. He stood motionless for a moment, then bent forward and was violently sick.

The waiters sprang back, cursing.

Roper slowly collapsed until he was kneeling on the ground in the doorway both hands pressed to his middle.

‘Christ, I feel awful!’ he said.

The second girl, the Durham one, came forward and put a hand under his elbow.

‘Come on, love,’ she said.

Roper got to his feet and looked around dazedly.

‘Christ, I feel awful,’ he said again.

With the plump girl helping on the other side, the Durham girl manœuvred him out of the door. An arabeah was drawn up, waiting. As they tried to get him inside he collapsed again and fell under the wheels, groaning.

Owen bent down, caught him by the collar and tried to lift him up. The girls, used to such scenes, pulled Roper’s arms over their shoulders and took his weight. At the last moment, however, he lurched and they all fell into a heap. Owen was pulled down too and found his nose pressed deep into the plump girl’s warm, soft flesh.

‘Owen!’ It was McPhee’s surprised voice. ‘Owen! What on earth—’

‘Give us a hand, for Christ’s sake!’

They eventually succeeded in bundling Roper into the arabeah. Owen took the money out of Roper’s pocket, paid the waiters and gave some to the girls. They would probably have picked Roper’s pockets anyway.

He was about to get into the arabeah himself when he suddenly had a strong sense that somebody was behind him. He looked up quickly. There was no one there. For a moment, though, he had the impression that somebody was standing in the shadow. But then in Cairo there was always somebody standing in the shadow, waiting.

Owen was sitting at his desk in the Bab el Khalk when he heard a cru-ump. He knew at once what it was.

He stayed sitting. Within minutes bare feet came scurrying along the corridor. A man burst into the room.

‘Effendi! Oh, effendi!’ he gasped. ‘Come quick! It is terrible.’

‘Take me,’ said Owen.

They hurried along the Sharia Mohammed Ali and then branched off left into a maze of small streets, heading in the direction of the Ecole Khediviale de Droit, the Law School. There was confused shouting and a whistle blowing perpetually. There was a great cloud of dust which made Owen gasp and choke, and men running about in the cloud.

The explosion had demolished the entire corner of a building. A wall swayed drunkenly. Even as Owen watched, it crumbled down to join the pile of rubble which lay in a slanting heap against what was left of the building.

A fresh cloud of dust rose up. When it cleared, Owen saw that men were already picking at the rubble. A sharp-eyed, intelligent workman was directing operations, getting the men to pile the rubble to one side.

‘Is anyone under there?’ asked Owen.

‘God knows,’ said the man. ‘But it was a café.’

A woman started ululating. Through the ululation and the shouting and the screaming the whistle was still blowing. Owen looked up. A police constable was standing in a corner of the square, his eyes bulging with shock. He had a whistle in his mouth which he kept blowing and blowing.

‘Enough of that!’ said Owen. ‘Go to the Bab el Khalk and see the Bimbashi and tell him to bring some men.’

The constable stayed where he was. Owen gave him a push. The man collected himself and ran off.

There were more galabeahed figures pulling at the rubble now. The subsidiary pile of debris was growing. A few broken parts of furniture had joined the stones.

Owen suddenly became aware that there were other people in the square besides the workers. A peanut-seller lay on his back in the dust with a little crowd around him. He was moaning slightly.

Not far from him an injured water-carrier had been dragged into the shade. His bags of water had left watery trails behind them as they had been dragged with him. Presumably the sellers had been passing when the explosion had occurred.

There were youngsters in European-style clothes, students from the Law School probably. Some were supporting fellow students, others pulling at the rubble.

A large man in a blue galabeah, his face white with dust, went past holding his head in his hands. Two men went up to him but he shook them off and continued wandering round the square in a daze.

A young man in a suit knelt beside a man bleeding from the leg. He was tearing strips from the man’s undershirt and binding them round the wound: fairly expertly.

‘Are you a doctor?’ Owen asked.

‘Student,’ the man said briefly over his shoulder.

‘What happened?’

‘An explosion. There, in the café.’

‘Did you see it?’

‘Heard it. We were on our way there.’

‘It’s a student café, is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Christ!’ Owen had a sudden vision of a crowded café and bodies buried under the rubble.

‘It shouldn’t have been too bad. The café’s empty at this time of day. A lecture was just finishing.’

‘What’s your name?’ asked Owen.

‘Deesa.’

Owen took note of the name and then went over to help the rubble-workers. They were pulling at a huge beam. He got men to hold the beam while he organized others to pull away the stones which were trapping it. It came clear and they lifted it away.

A large fair-haired man came into the square with a small troop of constables.

‘Good heavens!’ the man said.

‘Hello,’ said Owen. ‘It was a café with students. There may be some under here.’

‘Right,’ said the man, and began organizing his constables. They formed a chain and began passing debris along it. The constables were simple peasants from the villages and used to this sort of work. One of them, incongruously, began to sing.

After a while Owen left the rubble work. McPhee, a Boy-Scoutish sort of man, was better at this kind of thing than he was. The work of clearing the debris was now proceeding systematically. The sharp-faced, intelligent workman who had got started in the first place was now burrowing deep into the rubble.

The square was filling up with people, eager to help but getting in the way. Owen pulled a constable out and sent him for more help. He tried to get the crowd to keep back. Then, seeing that was useless, he borrowed McPhee’s idea and formed them into chains, getting them to clear away the subsidiary pile, which was threatening to topple back on to the rubble.

So far he had seen very few injured people.

The student he had been talking to had finished his bandaging and came over to stand beside Owen.

‘Are you sure it was empty?’ Owen asked.

‘Not empty,’ said the student. ‘Emptyish.’

He interrupted the large man with the white, dusty face as he went past for the umpteenth time.

‘Ali,’ he said. ‘Come here.’

Ali stopped obediently. The student took hold of his head and stared into his eyes. Then he released him.

‘Concussed,’ he said.

‘You’re not a law student,’ said Owen.

‘No, medical. I was visiting friends.’

‘Why,’ said Ali, in a tone of surprise, ‘it’s Deesa.’