Michael Pearce - The Mamur Zapt and the Girl in Nile

Zeinab, however, was merely following up some of the ideas she had met in her father’s own circle. Among his friends were some writers and artists who formed a somewhat Bohemian set. Zeinab, who had strong musical interests, found their company congenial and enjoyed their artistic debates. This talk, too, was very much influenced by French fashions and preoccupations; and from it Zeinab acquired the notion that it was possible for a single woman to set up house on her own.

She did this and enjoyed it and gradually her father and his friends came to accept it; indeed, not even, any longer, to notice it. And she was living like this when she met Owen.

The intensity of their relationship surprised them both. Zeinab, alarmed at herself, backed off a little and insisted on maintaining an independent life while she was working out how to handle all this. Owen, equally alarmed, was content to let it rest like that while he tried to see a way through the likely complications. Neither of them was getting very far.

Meanwhile they carried on as they were and that went very well. They met every day, usually in Zeinab’s appartement and Zeinab kept a proprietorial eye on what Owen was doing when he was away from her.

‘Of course she has a name,’ he said. ‘It’s just that we haven’t found it yet.’

‘It was the way you were talking,’ said Zeinab.

‘Well, it all sounds pretty anonymous, I know—’

‘Yes.’

‘Until we find out more about her, it’s bound to be.’

‘I just ask myself,’ said Zeinab, ‘what kind of woman is likely to be found on Narouz’s dahabeeyah.’

‘And what answer do you get?’

‘Someone like me.’

‘What nonsense! What absolute nonsense!’

It disturbed him.

‘Nonsense!’ he repeated vehemently.

‘It’s got to be someone like me, hasn’t it? It can’t be an ordinary girl from an ordinary family because in Egypt ordinary girls are never allowed to be seen. Not even by their husbands, until after they are married.’

‘An “ordinary” girl, as you put it, wouldn’t get anywhere near a son of the Khedive.’

‘No, it would have to be someone from a family of rank, wouldn’t it? Like mine.’

‘The same thing applies to them. They’re kept out of sight, too. More, even, since they know what the Khedive’s sons are like. I’ve been in Egypt four years and I’ve never seen a Pasha’s wife or daughter.’

‘Except me.’

‘You’re different. You’re not at all ordinary. In fact,’ said Owen, his mind beginning to stray on to a quite different tack, ‘you’re altogether extraordinary—’

But Zeinab refused to be diverted.

‘It would be someone like me,’ she said. ‘Someone whose family is rich enough for her to meet the Khedive. Someone whose father is, well, modern enough not to care. Someone who’s struck out on her own. Someone who’s vulnerable.’

Unexpectedly she began to cry.

Owen was taken aback. Zeinab cried frequently at the opera, never, up till now, anywhere else. He took her in his arms.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ he said. ‘You don’t even know the girl!’

‘I can feel!’ sobbed Zeinab. ‘I can feel!’

‘You can get misled by feeling.’

Zeinab pulled herself away. ‘You don’t have any feeling,’ she said, looking at him stormily. This was, however, more like the Zeinab he knew and he felt reassured.

‘Aren’t you missing out the most likely possibility?’ he said. ‘That she’s foreign?’

‘I thought you said—?’

‘It’s what the steersman said. He thought she was different from the other two and they were certainly foreign. Well, she might have been different but still foreign. And isn’t that the most likely thing? You don’t get the Egyptian women on their own either on the Prince’s boat or off it. He’s used to mixing with foreign women. Someone he’s met at Cannes? I’d have thought it was pretty likely. After all, the Khedive himself—’

‘Well, of course,’ said Zeinab, sniffing, ‘that’s true.’

‘It was the clothes, you see, that made him think she was Egyptian. The shintiyan.’

‘ Would a Frenchwoman wear shintiyan?’ asked Zeinab, who herself dressed à la Parisienne. ‘I certainly wouldn’t.’

‘Maybe to please the Prince. Or as a joke or something.’

Zeinab thought it over.

‘The other two were foreign, weren’t they?’

‘Yes. And that’s another thing. My guess is that they were from some cabaret or other. That’s where he might have come across them. You see, you said the girl would have to come from a family of rank. Well, I don’t think girls who let themselves get picked up en masse off the bank to spend a week with a bloke on a dahabeeyah are likely to be that high class. Foreign, not too classy, three at a time—that sounds like cabaret to me.’

‘No decent Egyptian woman would let herself be subjected to such a thing,’ said Zeinab, removing Owen’s hand.

‘So,’ said Owen, putting it back, ‘they must either be foreign or—’

‘Or what?’ asked Zeinab.

‘Indecent Egyptian women,’ said Owen, putting his other arm round her.

In front of him was a beautiful old building, very like a small mosque with its domes, its façade of red and white stones intermixed, its ornate panelling and intricate arabesques. It was not, however, a mosque but a hammam, a public bath-house.

The entrance was narrow and below street level. A towel hung over the door.

Owen’s men looked at him inquiringly.

The towel meant that the baths were temporarily occupied by women.

‘Leave it,’ said Owen resignedly. The men moved on. Owen made a note to return to the hammam later when the towel had been taken down.

It was not, however, a good start.

He was conducting yet another search of the quarter. His informant swore blind that the arms were still there. He had even been able to specify a little more precisely the area where he thought they were concealed. They were, he said, somewhere near the souk.

The souk was not located, as markets usually were, in a square of its own but occupied the space created by a crossroads. Its stalls spread over the whole area successfully restricting passage in any direction. Fortunately, this far out of town, there were very few vehicles to pass. The occasional horse-cart laden with stones, the occasional hand-cart carrying ice, were the closest approximation. The Souk Al-Gadira existed only for its immediate neighbourhood.

The stalls were erected and dismantled every day so there was little likelihood of the arms being hidden beneath them. They were far more likely to be concealed in one of the buildings round about and it was here that Owen was concentrating the search.

They had gone through the buildings when they had searched the area previously but on that occasion, as Owen reminded himself crossly, he had been summoned away in the middle by that foolish District Chief and sent on that wild goose chase down to the river.

There would be no repetition of that today, he told himself grimly. He would make damned sure they stuck with it and did the job properly.

Only it was not quite so straightforward. First, there had been the hammam. And now, at the end of the street, just ahead of him, was a mosque.

Again the men looked at him inquiringly. And again he hesitated.

Even the Mamur Zapt entered mosques on police business with caution. It was so easy for minister and congregation to get excited. The smallest thing would set them going. The sight of a Western face was enough.

Well, he could do something about that. He needn’t go in himself, just send the men in.

Just send the men in? The police were only slightly more grata than himself. They were seen as the agents of either an alien, infidel force (the British) or a dissolute secular power (the Khedive). In either case they were unwelcome. It needed only one irascible minister to take umbrage at some fancied slight or misdemeanour for there to be trouble.