Michael Pearce - Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet

Mahmoud pointed to where a man was relieving himself in the road.

‘Fakhri’s arabeah was about there.’

‘He would have had a good view,’ said Owen.

‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud, ‘I think he did. Though between him and Nuri Pasha there were a lot of people.’

‘Did you find any of them?’

‘Yes. The first they knew of it was a loud bang. They looked round to see Nuri Pasha falling—’

‘Why was he falling?’ asked Owen. ‘He wasn’t hit.’

‘Don’t know,’ said Mahmoud. ‘I’ll have to ask him. Reflex, perhaps.’

He darted back and affected to stumble.

‘An old man,’ he said. ‘Dazed, winded and scared. Perhaps half-stunned. Anyway, he lay approximately here until about five hundred people took it upon themselves to carry him into the hotel.’

‘Who took the initiative?’

‘As I was saying,’ said Mahmoud, ‘about five hundred of them. Each one says.’

He looked up and down the road and then walked over to another mark.

‘Meanwhile, an ordinary fellah who had attempted to run away immediately after the shot was seized and brought to the ground, or tripped, or just fell over, about here. Definite, because he stayed there, unconscious, till the police came and one constable, brighter than most, marked the spot.’

‘That’s where he was taken,’ said Owen. ‘Where was he when he fired the shot?’

‘Or when the shot was fired. Don’t know. Fakhri Bey said he moved to the right, so if we move to the left—’ He counted out four paces. ‘He might have been standing here.’

‘About twelve feet from Nuri.’

‘In which case,’ said Mahmoud, ‘why didn’t he hit him?’

‘It’s more difficult than you might think,’ said Owen, ‘even at twelve feet. Especially if you’ve never fired a revolver before.’

‘Which might well have been the case,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Why is it so difficult?’

‘It kicks back in your hand when you fire,’ said Owen. ‘If you’re not holding it properly the barrel jerks upward.’

‘If the shot went upward,’ said Mahmoud, ‘how did it hit the lemonade-seller?’

‘Could have ricocheted.’

‘Off what?’

Mahmoud moved back to where Nuri Pasha had been standing. Owen took up the position they had guessed at for the assailant.

‘Off the statue,’ said Owen. ‘Maybe.’

They went over to the statue of Ibrahim Pasha and examined it.

Mahmoud put his finger on a mark.

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

They became aware that a small crowd was watching them with interest.

‘I think your half million is beginning to arrive,’ said Owen.

‘It’s unreal to reconstruct without a crowd,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It’s impossible with one.’

He walked across the Place to where Fakhri might have observed the scene from his arabeah. For a moment he stood there looking. Then he walked slowly back to Owen.

‘Just fixing it in my mind,’ he said, ‘before I talk to them.’

Two heavily-laden brick carts emerged at the same time from adjoining streets and then continued across the Place abreast of each other. A car coming out of the Sharia el Teatro was obliged to brake suddenly and skidded across in front of two arabeahs which had just pulled out of the pavement. All three drivers jumped down from their vehicles and began to abuse the drivers of the brick carts, who themselves felt obliged to descend to the ground, the better to put their own point of view. Other vehicles came to a halt and other drivers joined in. Some Passover sheep, painted in stripes and with silver necklaces around their necks, which had been trotting peacefully along beside the Ezbekiyeh Gardens, abandoned the small boy who was herding them and wandered out into the middle of the traffic. In a moment all was confusion and uproar. The Place, that is, had returned to normal.

‘That,’ said Mahmoud resignedly, ‘is that.’

The two had taken a liking to each other and Mahmoud, unusually for the Parquet, invited Owen to be present at his interrogation. It took place in the Police Headquarters at the Bab el Khalk. They were shown into a bare, green-painted room on the ground floor which looked out on to an enclosed square across which the prisoner was brought from his cell.

He looked dishevelled and his eyes were bloodshot but otherwise he seemed to have completely recovered from his heavy drugging. He looked at them aggressively as the police led him in. In Owen’s experience a fellah, or peasant, caught for the first time in the toils of the alien law tended to respond either with truculent aggression or with helpless bewilderment. This one was truculent.

After the preliminaries Mahmoud got down to business.

‘Your name?’

‘Mustafa,’ the man growled.

‘Where are you from?’

‘El Deyna is my village,’ he said reluctantly.

El Deyna was a small village on the outskirts of old Cairo just beyond the Citadel.

‘You have work in the fields,’ said Mahmoud. ‘What brought you to the city yesterday?’

‘I came to kill Nuri Pasha,’ said the other uncompromisingly.

‘And why did you want to kill Nuri Pasha?’

‘He dishonoured my wife’s sister.’

‘Your story will be checked,’ said Mahmoud.

He waited to see if this had any effect on the man but it did not.

‘How did he dishonour your wife’s sister?’

Mustafa did not reply. Mahmoud repeated the question. Again there was no response. The fellah just sat, brawny arms folded.

Mahmoud tried again.

‘Others will tell us if you do not,’ he said.

The man just sat stubbornly there.

‘Come, man,’ said Mahmoud, not unkindly. ‘We are only trying to get at the truth that lies behind this business.’

‘There is one truth for the rich,’ the villager said bitterly, ‘and another for the poor.’

‘The truth we seek,’ said Mahmoud, ‘is not necessarily that for the rich.’

‘The rich have all the weapons,’ the man said, ‘and you are one of the weapons.’

Unexpectedly, Mahmoud seemed to flinch.

‘I would not have it so,’ he said mildly.

The man had noticed Mahmoud’s reaction. It seemed to mollify him.

‘Nor I,’ he said, mildly too. ‘I would not have it so.’

He rubbed his unshaven chin.

‘Others will tell you,’ he said. ‘My wife’s family works in the fields for Nuri Pasha. One day Nuri went by. He saw my wife’s sister. He said: ‘Tell her to bring some melons to the house.’ She brought the melons and a man took her in. He took her to a dark room and Nuri came to her.’

‘That was wrong,’ said Mahmoud, ‘but it was wrong also to try to kill for that.’

‘What was I to do?’ the man said passionately. ‘I am a poor man and it is a big family. Now she is with child. Before, there was one mouth and she could work in the fields. A man wanted her and would have taken her at a low price. Now there are two mouths and she has been dishonoured. No one will take her now except at a large price. And how can I find a large price for her?’

Unconsciously he had laid his hand on the table palm uppermost as if he was pleading with Mahmoud.

‘How?’ he repeated vehemently. ‘How? I have children of my own.’

Mahmoud leaned across the table and touched him sympathetically on the arm.

‘There is worse, friend,’ he said. ‘How will they manage without you when you are gone?’

The passion went out of the man’s face.

‘There will be money,’ he said, and bowed his head, ‘without me.’

‘How can that be,’ asked Mahmoud softly, ‘when you have none?’

‘Others will provide.’

‘What others? Your family?’

‘Others.’

Both sides seemed to consent to a natural pause, which lasted for several minutes. Owen was impressed. He knew that if he had been conducting the interrogation, in the distant English way, he would never have reached the man as Mahmoud had done.