Michael Pearce - Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet

There were four letters in this last category and Owen found no ‘Club’ names among them that he did not recognize. This should make it comparatively easy to check them out.

He passed the sheaf on to Mahmoud.

‘I’d like to keep them for a bit, if I may,’ he said.

‘Of course.’

‘Can I go?’ asked Ahmed.

Nuri looked at Owen.

‘Unless the Mamur Zapt wishes for something else?’ he said.

Owen shook his head. The young man turned away immediately.

Nuri sighed.

The interview came to an end soon after and a servant showed them out.

They went into the house through a large, cool room, all marble and tiles, in which several people were sitting with drinks in their hands.

Among them was Ahmed. As Owen and Mahmoud entered, he ostentatiously turned his back. The woman beside him looked up at Owen with amusement. Owen caught a glimpse of a strong, beaky face and dark hair.

The other guests treated them with polite indifference. They were for the most part elderly, wealthy, Europeanized. In the upper levels of Cairene society it was fairly usual for women to be present and for alcohol to be served; but, Owen reflected, had any of the fundamentalist groups which had written to Nuri been watching, it would have added fuel to their denunciations.

He and Mahmoud walked back to the main street to find an arabeah. By mutual consent they walked slowly. In this wealthy suburb of Cairo the bougainvillaea spilled over the walls and the pepper trees and eucalyptus hung out across the road making it cool and shady. From the green recesses of the trees came a continuous purring and gurgling of doves.

‘A clear-cut case,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Circumstantial evidence, motive, confession.’

‘Believe it?’

‘Not for one moment,’ said Mahmoud.

Owen could not give all his time to the Nuri Pasha affair. He had his ordinary work to do.

This morning it was the demonstration. One of his men had picked the rumour up in el Azhar, Cairo’s great Islamic university. It was supposed to be taking place that afternoon once the sun had moved off the streets. Intelligently, the man was staying in the university so that he could keep an eye on developments. His reports came every hour. It looked as if the thing was definitely on.

According to his most recent information, the demonstration would take place in Abdin Square, in front of the Khedive’s Palace. The students intended to march there in procession from the university. They would make their way in separate groups through the narrow mediaeval streets which surrounded el Azhar and assemble in the wider Bab Zouweleh, before the Mouayad Mosque. Then they would march along the Sharia Taht er Rebaa, cross the Place Bab el Khalk, and proceed past the Ecole Khediviale de Droit, at which point they would join the law students. From there it was a short step to Abdin Square.

‘Mounted?’ asked Nikos.

Nikos was the Mamur Zapt’s Official Secretary; a sharp young Copt.

Owen nodded.

‘With foot in reserve to mop up. I’ve already spoken to McPhee.’

‘I’ll check,’ said Nikos, rolling up the street plan.

‘And, just in case,’ said Owen, ‘I want both entrances to Abdin Square sealed off.’

‘Both?’

‘The two on the eastern side. The Gami’a Abdin as well as the Bab el Khalk.’

‘It shouldn’t be necessary,’ said Nikos.

‘I know. But I don’t want to risk any of them getting into Abdin Square.’

Nikos inclined his head to show that he had understood. He reached across the desk, took some papers from the out-tray and stuffed them under his arm along with the street map.

‘It means more men,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t a small mounted troop in the Square do instead?’

‘No. It would look bad.’

Nikos raised dark eyebrows. ‘That worries you?’

‘A bit,’ Owen conceded.

‘The Khedive is hardly going to complain.’

‘He might,’ said Owen. ‘Just to be difficult.’

Nikos made a dismissive gesture. He had a Cairene contempt for the powerless.

From along the corridor came the chink of cups and a strong aroma of coffee.

‘It’s not that, though,’ said Owen. ‘It’s the way it might come across in the papers. The international ones, I mean.’

Especially now, he thought, with the new Liberal Government in England feeling extremely sensitive about international opinion after the Denshawai business and trying to get out. He wondered how much Nikos knew. Enough, he suspected. Nikos wasn’t stupid.

Nor, in fact, was the Khedive. He was adept at finding pretexts to cause diplomatic trouble. There were plenty ready to help him. France for one, which had never forgiven the British for the way they had stayed on after crushing the Arabi rebellion. Turkey for another. After all, Egypt was still in theory a province of the Ottoman Empire, with a Head of State, the Khedive, who owed allegiance to the Sultan at Istanbul.

In theory. In practice, the British ran it, and Egypt’s real ruler, for over thirty years now, had been the British Agent; first Cromer and now Gorst. The Khedive appointed his Ministers and they were responsible to him through the Prime Minister and Cabinet for their management of the Departments of State. But at the top of each great Ministry Cromer had put one of his men. They did not direct, they advised; but they expected their advice to be taken, and if it was not, well, there was always the Army: the British Army, not the Egyptian.

And then, of course, there was the Mamur Zapt.

That was the reality. But it did not mean that appearances could be dispensed with. Egypt was still in principle a sovereign state, the Khedive still an independent sovereign. The British presence needed explaining.

The British story was that they were there by invitation and on a temporary basis. They would withdraw once Egypt’s finances were sorted out. Only they had been there for thirty years now.

His Majesty’s Government thought it best, in the circumstances, to emphasize that the British role in Egypt was purely an advisory one. The British Agent merely suggested, never instructed; the ‘advisers’ made ‘recommendations,’ not decisions; and the Army was kept off-stage. Appearances were important.

And so it would not do for the students to demonstrate outside the Palace. It would give all sorts of wrong impressions.

Nikos, of course, understood all this perfectly well. Indeed, like many sophisticated Cairenes, he rather enjoyed the ambiguities of the situation. Not all Egyptians, naturally, had such a developed taste for irony.

Curiously, the British themselves were not entirely at home with the position either. It was too complicated for the military and, even under Cromer’s strong hand, there was always tension between the civil administration, conscious of the diplomatic need to preserve appearances, and the army, impatient to cut through the web of subtleties, evasions and unstated limitations.

The Mamur Zapt inhabited the shadow between the two.

‘Keep McPhee informed,’ he told Nikos. ‘I’m going out later.’

He had an appointment with Mahmoud.

As Nikos left he nearly collided in the doorway with Yussuf, who spun the tray away just in time. Clicking his tongue at the departing Nikos, he slid the tray on to Owen’s desk.

‘The Bimbashi has a visitor,’ he announced. Yussuf was a great purveyor of news. ‘He told me to bring the cups.’

Like McPhee, Owen had his own service-issue mug, which Yussuf now half-filled with coffee. When they had visitors a proper set of cups was produced.

‘Oh,’ said Owen, and then, pretending interest so as not to hurt Yussuf’s feelings. ‘Who is he?’

‘From the Palace, I think,’ said Yussuf, gratified. ‘The Bimbashi looked unhappy.’