Michael Pearce - Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet

Mahmoud leaned forward now and touched Mustafa on the sleeve.

‘Tell me, brother,’ he said, ‘about your visit to the city yesterday.’

‘I went to the city,’ said the man, almost as if he was reciting, ‘and there were many people. I was one of a crowd. And I saw that bad one and I fired my gun at him. And he fell over, and I gave thanks to Allah.’

‘How did you know where to find the bad one?’ asked Mahmoud.

The man frowned.

‘I do not know,’ he admitted. ‘He was suddenly there before me.’

‘Someone told you, I expect,’ said Mahmoud.

The man did not pick this up.

‘Have you been to the Place before?’

Mustafa shook his head.

‘Never.’

‘And yet you knew where to find him,’ Mahmoud observed.

He waited, but again the man did not pick it up.

Mahmoud switched.

‘Where did you get the gun?’

The man did not reply.

‘Did the one who told you where to find the bad one also give you the revolver?’

Again there was no reply.

‘If the rich have their weapons,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and I am one of them, you, too, are a weapon. Who is wielding you?’

‘Not the rich!’

‘When the tool is broken it is thrown away.’

‘I am not broken,’ said the man defiantly.

‘As a tool you are broken. As a weapon.’

‘My task is done,’ said the man. ‘I am satisfied.’

‘Nuri is still alive.’

The man looked at him, startled.

‘Didn’t you know? The shot missed.’

‘Is that the truth?’

‘On the Book.’

The man buried his face in his hands.

‘I am a poor weapon.’

‘You have fed too much on the drug,’ said Mahmoud.

‘It gave me the power,’ said the man from behind his hands.

‘It took away your power.’

The man shook his head.

‘Who gave it to you?’

‘A man.’

‘The same who gave you the gun?’

Again the shake of the head.

‘The one who showed you where to find Nuri Pasha?’

The shaking had become continuous. Owen doubted now if it meant negation.

‘The one who will provide for your family when you are gone?’ Mahmoud went on inexorably.

The shaking stopped and the man raised his head.

‘Inshallah,’ he said. ‘If God wills.’

He would say no more and after several further attempts to resume the conversation Mahmoud ordered him to be returned to the cells.

That afternoon they went to el Deyna. Mahmoud decided, on the spur of the moment, that he would like to talk to Mustafa’s family. Then, equally on the spur of the moment, he decided he would ask Owen to go with him.

Owen accepted at once. He liked Mahmoud and, besides, he had grown sensitive enough to Arab style by now to know that if he did not respond with equal warmth it would immediately chill the relationship that was developing between them.

He was, however, a little surprised. Relations between the ministries were not normally as close as this. He wondered whether the invitation was solely the product of an impulse of friendliness. Mahmoud was no fool. Perhaps, operating alone in what might turn out to be politically sensitive areas, he felt the need to guard his back. If so, Owen could certainly sympathize with him.

They met after lunch at the Ataba el Khadra, the terminus for most of the Cairo tramways, and took a tram to the Citadel.

Although it was still relatively early in the afternoon, and extremely hot, the Ataba was, as always, full of people. The ordinary population of Cairo was still impressed by trams and treated them very seriously. To board a tram at the terminus meant forcing one’s way through a mass of street-sellers, all concerned that the passengers might perish en route for lack of sustenance. Water-sellers, peanut-sellers, lemonade-sellers, Turkish-delight-sellers, sellers of tartlets, sweets and sherbet competed for custom.

The tram itself was, of course, crowded. Passengers hung over the driver in his cab and shared his agitation at the continual excesses of arabeah drivers. They bulged out of the tram itself and clung on to the steps. One or two hardy spirits climbed up on to the roof, from which they were dislodged with difficulty by a determined constable, only to be replaced by equally tenacious clamberers at the next stop.

Owen enjoyed all this, but even he had had enough, in the heat, by the time they got to the Citadel. They changed with relief into the small bus which would take them out into the country.

Here, too, there was difficulty in finding a seat. A large fellahin woman with a load of water-melons occupied the whole rear of the bus.

‘Come, mother,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Move your fruit. They take up more space than people.’

The woman started to move the melons and then looked up at Mahmoud.

‘Why is the Englishman here?’ she asked in Arabic, not thinking that Owen understood.

‘He is with me,’ said Mahmoud.

‘He should be in a motor-car,’ said the woman, ‘or in an arabeah.’

The bus had fallen quiet.

Conscious that she held the stage, the woman reached over and picked up two large melons.

She showed them to the passengers.

‘Two fine ones,’ she said.

She cast a sidelong glance at Owen.

‘As big as your balls, Englishman,’ she added, giving the other passengers a wink.

‘As big as they would need to be, woman,’ said Owen, ‘were I your husband.’

The bus exploded with delighted laughter.

The woman moved her melons, with good grace now, having enjoyed the exchange as much as anyone else, and Owen and Mahmoud sat down.

In a way, it was nothing, but Owen had sensed a current of feeling in the bus that had surprised him. Most Englishmen in Egypt would have said that the country-dwelling fellahin were all right, that it was only in the city that there was trouble. He had defused the current so far as he was concerned and the atmosphere was now quite relaxed. But that it should exist at all was significant.

Mahmoud must have sensed the current, too, for throughout the rest of the journey he kept the conversation at the level of general chit-chat; in Arabic.

The village omda, or headman, showed them to Mustafa’s house.

It was a mud brick house with three rooms and a ladder going up to the roof. The floor was beaten earth. In the first room, at night, a donkey and a water-buffalo lay down together. In the inner rooms the family lived, ate and slept. On the roof were the household stores and the rabbits.

There seemed to be at least eight or nine people in the inner rooms, two old people and six or seven children. When the omda explained the purpose of the visit, they all retreated into the furthest room, leaving Mustafa’s wife alone with Mahmoud, Owen and the omda. She held her veil up in front of her face the whole time they were there.

They sat down cross-legged on the floor. After a moment Mahmoud began.

‘Tell me about your husband,’ he said. ‘Is he a good man?’

There seemed to be a shy nod of assent.

‘Does he beat you?’

Owen could not detect any response, but the omda said: ‘He is a good man. He beats her only when she deserves it.’

‘Your children: does he beat them?’

This time there was no mistaking the denial.

‘Those old ones: are they your family or his?’

‘One is hers. One is his,’ said the omda.

‘Tell me about your sister,’ said Mahmoud.

The woman put the veil completely over her face and bowed her head down almost to her knees.

Mahmoud waited, but she said nothing.

‘I am not here to judge,’ he said, ‘merely to know.’

The woman bent her body to the left and right in agitation but could not bring herself to reply in speech.

‘She is ashamed,’ said the omda. ‘Her family is dishonoured.’