Michael Pearce - The Mamur Zapt and the Camel of Destruction

‘I’m like you: don’t know anything about it.’

‘He’s certainly been going out a lot lately,’ said the man thoughtfully. ‘But we thought – you know, lunch and all that sort of thing–’

‘You don’t know any of the people he used to meet?’

The man shook his head.

‘We didn’t really like to ask him. Thought they might be people he’d worked with when he was at Public Works.’

‘No names?’

‘They’d be in his desk diary. We’re supposed to record–’

‘It doesn’t seem to be here,’ said Owen, searching.

‘Isn’t it? It ought to be. Ya Abdul!’

Abdul Latif appeared in the doorway.

‘Fingari effendi’s Green Book: have you seen it?’

‘It should be on the desk,’ said Abdul Latif, coming into the room.

The Ministry of Agriculture was, as it happened, in the same building as the Ministry of Public Works, occupying part of a corridor on the top floor at the back, which indicated, in the subtle way of the Civil Service, its status as a parvenu .

The building was in the Ministerial Quarter, the Kasr-el-Dubara, which was itself in the same state of incompleteness as the rest of Cairo. Half of it consisted of grubbed up gardens and abandoned foundations, a memento of the recent land-boom, in which the part on the river bank was to have been developed as a fashionable residential area.

The other half of it had already been developed with imposing new Government buildings, set out in French-style ornamental parks with formal flowerbeds and cool promenades of trees.

Owen had intended taking to the promenades but as he came round the corner of the building he saw in front of him the handsome, if rather stolid, edifice of the Ministry of Religious Endowments. Since he was in the neighbourhood …

‘I would like to check the details of a waqf I am interested in,’ he told the clerk at the Reception desk inside. ‘It’s in the Derb Aiah area.’

The clerk, a Nikos in embryo, looked at Owen sniffily.

‘We do not classify them by areas,’ he said.

‘How do you classify them?’

‘By names.’

‘Shawquat.’

‘What sort of name is that?’

‘It’s the name of the beneficiary.’

‘Ah, we don’t classify by the names of beneficiaries. We classify by the name of the original endower.’

‘Mightn’t he be named Shawquat, too?’

‘He might; but then, again, he might not.’

‘Try under Shawquat,’ said Owen.

The clerk took his time.

‘There are several Shawquats.’

‘Fine. I’ll look at them all.’

‘The files would be too heavy to bring.’

‘I’ll look at them where they are.’

Reluctantly, the clerk took him into a back room, very large, occupying the whole of one floor of the vast building.

‘Thank you. How are they organized?’

‘In files.’

Owen considered whether to pick the clerk up, shake him and drop him. But this was not one of the Ministries with an English Adviser, it was a Ministry which, in view of the nature of its business, history mixed with religion, the English thought it politic to leave alone. So he didn’t.

‘Arranged alphabetically by the initial letter of the name?’

‘Of course.’

The clerk went off. As he disappeared behind the stacks Owen heard a voice say softly in Arabic:

‘Is that courteous?’

‘It is only a foreign effendi–’

‘Then that is worse. For in that case you are representing not just the Ministry but also our country: and what will the foreign effendi think of a country whose servants behave as you have just been doing?’

‘I said nothing–’

I heard what you said. And now I will tell you what you will do. You will go round and you will collect all the files that the effendi needs and you will take them to him.’

I–’ began the clerk, but then stopped abruptly.

He began to bring Owen files at speed.

Owen went round the stack to thank his benefactor. He found a young Egyptian, smartly dressed, not in the usual dark suit of the office effendi, but in a light, white, French-style cotton suit and a red tie exactly chosen to go with his red tarboosh.

He was sitting at a table reading one of the files but looked up politely as Owen approached. His eyes opened wide in surprise and he jumped up.

‘ Mon cher ami! ’

‘Mahmoud!’

‘I didn’t realize–’

They embraced warmly in the Arab fashion.

‘But why,’ demanded Mahmoud, disengaging himself, ‘did you put up with him?’

‘Well, I thought, this is a special Ministry–’

‘But why did you think that?’

‘The religious connection–’

‘But you mustn’t think that! It is just a Ministry like any other. You mustn’t expect less than you would from other Departments. That is to insult it.’

‘It’s not that, exactly–’

‘But this is important! If you do not apply the same standards, is it because you think this is only an Egyptian Department, it’s not a proper one?’

‘No, no. Certainly not! Look, it’s not worth bothering about.’

‘But it is, it is,’ cried Mahmoud excitedly. ‘You put up with it because you say, “They are only Egyptians, you can’t expect anything better;” and that is bad, that is to wrong us, to insult us–’

‘I don’t do anything of the sort–’

‘It is to apply a double standard, one for the English, another for the Egyptians!’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Tell me,’ said Mahmoud fiercely, ‘would you expect the same service if you were in England?’

It was a long time since Owen had been in England. He considered the matter honestly.

‘Yes,’ he said firmly.

‘Yes?’

Mahmoud stopped, astonished.

‘They’re the same the whole world over.’

‘They are?’

‘They are.’

‘Well …’ said Mahmoud, deflating. ‘Well … All the same,’ he shot out as the unfortunate clerk scurried past, ‘the service here needs improving!’

They were old friends and had, indeed, worked together on several important cases. Mahmoud was a lawyer, a rising star of the Parquet.

‘What are you doing here?’ asked Owen.

‘Working up a case,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It starts tomorrow.’

‘I didn’t know you were an expert on waqfs .’

‘I’m not. That’s why I’m going over it again before I get in court.’

‘Can I get some free legal advice? No, I’ll tell you what, I’ll pay for it. I’ll take you out to lunch.’

‘You don’t need to pay for it,’ said Mahmoud, ‘but lunch would be a pleasure.’

They agreed to meet at one and for the rest of the morning Owen worked on the files the clerk had brought him, after which he was little the wiser.

‘It is complicated,’ Mahmoud admitted over lunch, ‘but basically what you want to know is: can a waqf be set aside?’

‘That’s right.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘Well, you tell me. Public interest?’

Mahmoud shook his head.

‘Not a chance. There is an issue of public interest, since the endowment was established for the benefit of local children. But if the endowment has merely been transferred, the issue does not arise.’

‘If it’s a developer, he’s going to close down the school.’

‘You’d have to wait until it was clear that was what he was going to do.’

‘It would be too late, then. He’d have demolished the building.’

‘It wouldn’t matter anyway because he could always say he was going to open another school somewhere else in the neighbourhood.’

‘What about the argument that the relative didn’t know what he was doing when he sold the benefit? The Widow Shawquat said he was senile.’