The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt. Michael Pearce
An ordinary Egyptian woman.’
‘Well, Zeinab’s not exactly ordinary—’
‘She’s the nearest I can get. You won’t believe how difficult it is in Egypt to meet an ordinary woman.’
‘I’ll see if she’s free,’ promised Owen.
‘I’m trying to get Miss Skinner’s mind off antiquities. The Woman Question is my big hope.’
‘Just a minute: antiquities. One of Miss Skinner’s hobbyhorses doesn’t happen to be the export of Egypt’s treasures, does it?’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Paul, ‘I believe it does.’
Monsieur Peripoulin bestowed a fatherly pat as he went past.
‘A useful meeting!’ he said. ‘At last things are beginning to move.’
‘That meeting,’ said Owen, ‘it wouldn’t have anything to do with Miss Skinner’s being here, would it? The fact that you called it, I mean?’
‘It’s been in our minds a long time,’ said Paul.
Some time later in the evening Owen came upon Miss Skinner and Abu Bakir having an earnest chat in one of the alcoves.
‘I was just explaining to Mr Bakir,’ said Miss Skinner, her face slightly flushed, ‘that my friends and I are very concerned about the fact that so many of Egypt’s remarkable treasures are departing her shores.’
‘And I was explaining to Miss Skinner,’ said Abu Bakir, smiling, ‘that many of us in Egypt are concerned about that also.’
‘True,’ said Owen, ‘very true.’
‘Mr Bakir was explaining to me the Nationalist position.’
‘Not just the Nationalist position,’ said Abu Bakir quickly, his smile disappearing. ‘It is one, I believe, that the Nationalists share with the Government.’
‘Although, as you were saying, the vested interests of the big landlords make it very difficult to get anything through the Assembly.’
‘I was giving Miss Skinner some of the political background,’ Abu Bakir explained.
I’ll bet you were, thought Owen.
‘There are political difficulties, it is true,’ he said out loud, ‘but I think we’re beginning to face them.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Skinner, ‘Monsieur Peripoulin was telling me about some meeting you had had recently.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Owen, ‘a very important meeting.’
‘Meetings are all very well,’ said Miss Skinner, frowning, ‘but it’s the action that results from them that is important. I understand, for instance, that there is a widespread evasion of the controls on the export of antiquities. What is being done about that?’
‘Ah,’ said Abu Bakir, ‘but that is just where we are taking action. The Mamur Zapt—Captain Owen here—is about to take steps to stamp that out.’
‘Are you?’ said Miss Skinner, beaming. ‘Oh, I’m so glad. I shall follow what you do with great interest.’
Owen was sitting in a café in the Ataba-el-Khadra watching the world go by. The Ataba was a good place for that because it was at the end of the main street, the Muski, which connected the old native city with the new European quarters. The square was, moreover, the main terminus for nearly all of Cairo’s trams.
At any hour of the day and deep into the night the Ataba was a tangle of trams, arabeahs—the characteristic horse-drawn cab of Cairo—great lumbering carts carrying stone, great lumbering camels carrying forage for the city’s donkeys and horses, native buses, of the open-sided ass-drawn variety, motor-cars (a few; tending towards the stationary) and sheep.
Quite why there should be so many sheep in the Ataba was a mystery. Certainly the Arabs were very fond of their fat-tailed Passover sheep and shopkeepers liked to keep one tethered outside their premises, to eat up the garbage, it was claimed; but why so many should be wandering loose in this most hazardous of places was hard to comprehend.
You would feel something nudging your knee and look down and there would be a sheep painted in blue stripes and often with a child’s shoe hanging round its neck on a cheap silver necklace.
The answer lay, perhaps, in the fact that despite the trams and despite its proximity to the new European quarters the Ataba remained obstinately part of the native city. The people you saw were the ordinary people of Cairo: blue-gowned labourers, veiled women in black, office workers in suits and tarbooshes, the red, pot-like hat of the educated Egyptian, shopkeepers in striped gowns and tarbooshes but with a turban bound round the tarboosh.
The hawkers, too, of whom there were very many, were ones who served the ordinary Egyptian rather than the tourist. Instead of the souvenir-seller and dirty-postcard-seller of the great hotels you saw the brush, comb and buttonhook-seller, the pastry-seller, the lemonade-seller and the water-carrier.
It was two different worlds and despite the incessant clanging of the trams and the shouts of the street vendors Owen on the whole preferred this one to the hotel one.
He had been visiting the fire station on the Ataba and afterwards had adjourned with the chief, as was proper after transacting business, to the coffee house. They sat there now benignly watching the mêlée in the square.
‘So what would you do,’ asked Owen, ‘if you wanted to get out and your way was blocked?’
‘I would ring my bell and shout.’
‘But nearly everyone else in the square is ringing a bell and shouting,’ Owen pointed out.
‘I would exhort them,’ said the Fire Chief.
And by the time you got anywhere, thought Owen, half the city would have burned to the ground.
‘Is there no other exit?’
The Fire Chief pushed back his tarboosh and scratched his head.
‘Well—’ he was just beginning, when on the other side of the square there was a fierce squeal of brakes and a tram-bell started jangling furiously. An arabeah veered suddenly and there were agitated shouts.
A crowd seemed to be gathering in front of one of the trams. It looked as if there had been an accident.
A policeman somewhere was blowing his whistle. Owen could see him now pushing his way through the crowd. The crowd, unusually, parted and Owen caught a glimpse of a still form lying beside the tram.
It seemed to be a woman, a European.
He got to his feet. The Fire Chief, used to dealing with accidents, fell in beside him. Together they began to force a way through the crowd.
Even in that short time it had grown enormously. It was now well over a hundred deep. Traffic everywhere had come to a stop.
Some of the other trams had started ringing their bells. People were shouting, sheep bleating. As ass began to bray. It was bedlam.
The whole square now was an impenetrable mass of people. Owen looked at the Fire Chief and shrugged.
Over to one side was a native bus, totally becalmed. The driver had given up, laid his whip across the backs of his asses and was waiting resignedly. His passengers, content to watch the spectacle—all Cairo loved a good accident—chattered with excitement.
The Chief laid his hand on Owen’s arm and nodded in the direction of the bus. They made their way towards it.
The bus was one of the traditional sort and was basically a platform on wheels. From the corners of the platform tall posts rose to support a roof. The sides were open and the wooden benches faced towards the rear.
The Chief put his foot on the running-board and jumped up. The next moment he was shinning nimbly up one of the posts