Michael Pearce - Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet

‘Would you like me to have a go?’

‘It might be best,’ said Mahmoud.

Owen lunched at the Gezira and then, unusually, went back to his office. Late in the afternoon, when the sun’s fierce heat had softened, he went again into the Place Bab el Khalk.

He was in a light linen suit and wore a tarboosh, the pot-like hat of the Egyptian, on his head. With his dark Celtic colouring and the years of sunburn he looked a Levantine of some sort. He carried an Arabic newspaper.

He chose a tea-stall on the eastern side of the Place and perched himself on a stool. The tea-seller brought him a glass of Russian tea.

From where he sat he could see along the Sharia Taht er Rebaa to where the massive battlemented walls of the Mosque el Mouayad rose on the left. One or two little bunches of black-gowned figures were already beginning to spill out on to the Sharia. From somewhere behind the Mosque came a confined noise which, as he listened, began to settle down into a rhythmic chanting.

‘Wa-ta-ni. Wa-ta-ni. Wa-ta-ni.’

The tea-seller came out from the other side of the counter and looked uneasily down the street.

‘There will be trouble,’ he said.

On the pavement behind him a barber was shaving a plump, sleepy-looking Greek. The barber put his razor in the bowl beside the chair and came out on to the street also.

‘Yes,’ he said, peering towards the Mosque, ‘there will be trouble.’

The Greek opened one eye. ‘What trouble?’

‘Students,’ said the barber, wiping the soapsuds off his hands on to his gown.

‘Again?’ said the Greek. ‘What is it this time?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the barber. ‘What is it this time?’ he called to a bean-seller at an adjoining stall.

The bean-seller was serving some hungry-looking students with bowls of ful madammas, red fava beans cooked in oil and garlic.

‘What is it this time?’ he asked them.

‘We don’t know,’ said the students. ‘It is the students of el Azhar, not us.’

‘They are going to Abdin Square,’ volunteered one of the students, ‘to demonstrate against the Khedive.’

‘Much good that will do,’ said the bean-seller. ‘They will just get their heads busted.’

‘Someone has to,’ said the student.

‘But not you,’ said the bean-seller firmly.

‘You sound like my father,’ said the student.

‘Your father and I,’ said the bean-seller, ‘are men of experience. Learn from us.’

‘Anyway, I cannot go with them today,’ said the student. ‘I have my exams tomorrow.’

‘Have not the el Azhar students exams also?’ called the Greek.

The students shook their heads.

‘They’re not like us,’ they said.

Owen guessed them to be engineering students. Engineering, like other modern subjects, was studied at the Governmental Higher Schools. At el Azhar, the great Islamic university of Cairo, the students studied only the Koran.

The students finished their bowls and left. The bean-seller began clearing away his stall. At the far end of the Taht er Rebaa a crowd was coming into view.

‘You carry on shaving,’ the Greek ordered. ‘I don’t want you running away before you’ve finished.’

‘Who is running away?’ said the barber. ‘There is still plenty of time.’

‘I am running away,’ said the bean-seller. ‘Definitely.’

At this time in the afternoon the Place Bab el Khalk was fairly empty. A few women, dressed in black and heavily-veiled in this part of the city, were slip-slopping across the square, water-jars on heads, to fetch water for the evening meal. Men sat in the open air cafés or at the street-stalls drinking tea. Children played on the balconies, in the doorways, in the gutter.

The bean-seller apart, no one appeared to be paying much attention to the approaching demonstrators, though Owen knew they were well aware of them. When the time came, they would slip back off the streets—not too far, they wouldn’t want to miss anything—and take refuge in the open-fronted shops or in the houses. Every balcony would be crowded.

He could pick out the head of the column distinctly now. They were marching in disciplined, purposeful fashion behind three large green banners and were setting a brisk pace. Behind them the Sharia was packed with black-gowned figures.

Some of the more nervous café-owners were beginning to fold up chairs and tables and move them indoors. Obliging customers picked up their own chairs and took them into the shops and doorways, where they sat down again and continued their absorbing conversations. There were no women on the street now, and children were being called inside.

The barber wiped the last suds from the Greek’s face with a brave flourish.

The Greek felt his chin.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘What about here?’

‘Perfect,’ said the barber.

‘Show me!’ commanded the Greek.

The barber reluctantly produced a tin mirror and held it before him.

‘It’s lop-sided,’ complained the Greek. ‘You’ve done one side and not the other!’

‘Both sides I have done,’ said the barber, casting an uneasy glance down the street. ‘It is just that one side of your face is longer than the other.’

The Greek insisted, and the barber began to snip and scrape at the offending part.

The tea-seller lifted his huge brass urn off the counter and took it up an alleyway. Owen felt in his pocket for the necessary milliemes.

The procession was about a hundred yards away now. At this stage it was still fairly orderly. The students had formed up into ranks about twenty abreast and were marching in a disciplined column, though with the usual untidy fringe around the flanks, which would melt away at the first sign of trouble.

The barber dropped his scissors into a metal bowl with a clang and hurriedly pulled the protective cloth from off the Greek. The Greek stood up and began to wipe his face. The barber threw his things together and made off down a sidestreet. As he went, the Greek dropped some milliemes in the bowl.

Owen folded his newspaper and stepped back into the protective cover of a carpet shop. The shop was, like all the shops, without a front, but the carpets might prove a useful shield if things got really nasty.

The Greek came over and stood beside him.

‘Not long now,’ he said.

The head of the procession entered the Place. Owen’s professional eye picked out among the black gowns several figures in European clothes. These were almost certainly not students but full-time retainers of the various political parties, maintained by them to marshal their own meetings and break up those of their rivals.

As the column marched past, the students seemed to become progressively younger. El Azhar took students as young as thirteen, and some of the students at the back of the column could have been no more than fourteen or fifteen.

The procession was now strung out across the Place, the bulk of it in the open space in the middle and the head approaching the street which led up to Abdin Square.

An open car suddenly shot out of a street at right angles to the procession, cut across in front of it, and stopped. In it was McPhee.

He stood up and waited for the marchers to halt. The four armed policemen in the car with him leaned over the side of the car and trained their rifles on the front row of the demonstrators.

The procession hesitated, wavered, and then came to a stop. Those behind bumped into those in front, spread round the sides and formed a semi-circle around the car.

McPhee began to speak.

The crowd listened in silence for a brief moment and then started muttering. One or two shouts were heard, and then more, and the chanting started up again. The crowd began to press forward at the edges.