Michael Pearce - Death of an Effendi

Mahmoud laughed.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Owen, ‘then you must be the boy who was stealing grapes?’

‘It’s a lie!’ said the boy. ‘They fell off by themselves. I found them in the road.’

‘I thought you were put in the caracol?’

‘The Sheikh spoke for me.’

‘It is bad,’ remonstrated Mahmoud, ‘that a boy like you, who is evidently high in the Sheikh’s esteem, should be found doing a thing like that.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t have been found if the ghaffir had not crept up behind the wall. And he certainly wouldn’t have caught me had it not been for the fiki.’

‘Fiki?’

‘He came up the other way through the bushes and when I lingered to exchange words with the ghaffir—’

‘The ghaffir should have been treated with respect!’

‘He is old and fat.’

‘Even so. He was but doing his duty.’

‘He does his duty when it comes to boys and grapes. But grapes are a small thing. What when it comes to big things? Then he sits on his big fat behind and does nothing. He is not like the Sheikh, who speaks the same words to big as to small.’

‘You think well of the Sheikh, then?’

‘When the man comes from the Ministry, I will speak up for him.’

‘That, I am sure, he will be grateful for.’

The boy gave him a sideways look.

‘It is not a small thing. The Sheikh’s dues depend on the man from the Ministry. But when he questions the others, they will not speak up. But I will speak up. I will give the right answers and then the man from the Ministry will know that our Sheikh is a good Sheikh.’

‘That is highly laudable. Be sure, though, that they are the right answers.’

‘There will be no problem about that; for I am at the head of my class. The Sheikh says that great things lie ahead of me. If I do not steal grapes.’

They walked on a little way in silence. Then the boy said: ‘I am going to be a lawyer when I grow up.’

‘My friend is a lawyer,’ said Owen, indicating Mahmoud. ‘He is from the Parquet.’

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