The Mamur Zapt and the Girl in Nile. Michael Pearce
Zeinab thought it over.
‘The other two were foreign, weren’t they?’
‘Yes. And that’s another thing. My guess is that they were from some cabaret or other. That’s where he might have come across them. You see, you said the girl would have to come from a family of rank. Well, I don’t think girls who let themselves get picked up en masse off the bank to spend a week with a bloke on a dahabeeyah are likely to be that high class. Foreign, not too classy, three at a time—that sounds like cabaret to me.’
‘No decent Egyptian woman would let herself be subjected to such a thing,’ said Zeinab, removing Owen’s hand.
‘So,’ said Owen, putting it back, ‘they must either be foreign or—’
‘Or what?’ asked Zeinab.
‘Indecent Egyptian women,’ said Owen, putting his other arm round her.
In front of him was a beautiful old building, very like a small mosque with its domes, its façade of red and white stones intermixed, its ornate panelling and intricate arabesques. It was not, however, a mosque but a hammam, a public bath-house.
The entrance was narrow and below street level. A towel hung over the door.
Owen’s men looked at him inquiringly.
The towel meant that the baths were temporarily occupied by women.
‘Leave it,’ said Owen resignedly. The men moved on. Owen made a note to return to the hammam later when the towel had been taken down.
It was not, however, a good start.
He was conducting yet another search of the quarter. His informant swore blind that the arms were still there. He had even been able to specify a little more precisely the area where he thought they were concealed. They were, he said, somewhere near the souk.
The souk was not located, as markets usually were, in a square of its own but occupied the space created by a crossroads. Its stalls spread over the whole area successfully restricting passage in any direction. Fortunately, this far out of town, there were very few vehicles to pass. The occasional horse-cart laden with stones, the occasional hand-cart carrying ice, were the closest approximation. The Souk Al-Gadira existed only for its immediate neighbourhood.
The stalls were erected and dismantled every day so there was little likelihood of the arms being hidden beneath them. They were far more likely to be concealed in one of the buildings round about and it was here that Owen was concentrating the search.
They had gone through the buildings when they had searched the area previously but on that occasion, as Owen reminded himself crossly, he had been summoned away in the middle by that foolish District Chief and sent on that wild goose chase down to the river.
There would be no repetition of that today, he told himself grimly. He would make damned sure they stuck with it and did the job properly.
Only it was not quite so straightforward. First, there had been the hammam. And now, at the end of the street, just ahead of him, was a mosque.
Again the men looked at him inquiringly. And again he hesitated.
Even the Mamur Zapt entered mosques on police business with caution. It was so easy for minister and congregation to get excited. The smallest thing would set them going. The sight of a Western face was enough.
Well, he could do something about that. He needn’t go in himself, just send the men in.
Just send the men in? The police were only slightly more grata than himself. They were seen as the agents of either an alien, infidel force (the British) or a dissolute secular power (the Khedive). In either case they were unwelcome. It needed only one irascible minister to take umbrage at some fancied slight or misdemeanour for there to be trouble.
‘Leave it,’ he said again. If there was trouble he’d have to spend the rest of the day putting it down and wouldn’t be able to get on with the arms search at all.
But this was ridiculous! First, the hammam and now this! This wasn’t a search at all. Suppose the arms were hidden inside? And there would be no coming back to the mosque!
He called the men back.
‘You two,’ he said, picking on men he had brought with him from headquarters and therefore more experienced, ‘you go in and walk through, keeping your eyes open. Don’t cause any trouble and don’t insist if they look like objecting. Just see what you can see and come back and tell me.’
The men nodded and went off. After a while they returned. One of them spread his hands, palms upward, and shrugged.
‘OK,’ said Owen. ‘Worth a try. Get after the others.’
At least it hadn’t created uproar.
He moved on up the street, or would have moved on if he had been able to. The street was one of those which led into the souk and its lower end was completely blocked by stalls. Regardless of the general press of humanity, a funeral procession was attempting to pass down it from the other end. Processions, like deaths, were extremely common in Cairo and everyone stopped to look, including Owen, who was a little surprised to see a funeral so early in the day. Usually they took place in the evening when it was cooler.
As funerals went, this was a very medium affair. First came the Yemeneeyeh, six poor men, mostly blind, proceeding two and two, and chanting mournfully, ‘There is no God but God.’ Then there were male relations of the deceased, few in this case. Next came four schoolboys, one of them carrying an open copy of the Koran placed upon a kind of platform of palm-sticks and covered with an embroidered kerchief. As they walked, they sang: in rather more sprightly tones than the Yemeneeyeh. And then came the bier, its front draped with a shawl to indicate that it carried a woman, which perhaps accounted for the general meagreness of the proceedings.
All the Cairo world loved a good funeral and the bystanders stopped what they were doing, not so much to let the procession pass but to join in the fun. But where were the dervishes, the munshids, with their singing and dancing and flag-waving? There was admittedly a fiki but he was very restrained and seemed anxious to keep himself invisible at the back. This was a poor affair indeed. Even the female mourners, who followed the bier, were few in number and boringly subdued.
Disappointed, the crowd resumed its business. Which, of course, brought the procession to a halt. Owen cursed and tried to wriggle his way round, failed and had to cut across in front of the donkeys laden with bread and water to give to the poor at the tomb. The poor, judging from the size of the loads, would benefit handsomely.
Once past, Owen hurried to catch up with his men. He fell in alongside two of them at the end of the street. They were the two he had talked to on the previous search, the ones who had been taking such pains with the dovecot.
‘Found that body yet?’ one of them asked.
‘No.’
‘You won’t, either.’
Owen stepped aside to let a water-carrier pass with his heavy bags.
‘Why not?’ he asked.
‘It’s the river. Full of tricks.’
‘It’ll come up some time.’
‘Ah yes. But where?’
‘Most of them finish up against the bridge these days, apparently.’
‘Perhaps this one will too. When it gets there.’
Owen didn’t quite understand this and would have asked more but the two men ducked into the next house. He continued slowly along the street, noting how long it took them. Everything was going to be under control this time.
There was nothing wrong with the efforts of his men at the moment. They were working through the buildings quickly and, as far as he could tell, efficiently.
They turned up the next street. It contained