Death of an Effendi. Michael Pearce
was a different noise. From one of the tents further along the row he could hear a woman’s soft moans. Well, that was what she was there for, presumably.
The moans quickened, became urgent and then sighed away, and then for a while all was quiet. Owen wondered whether to go back to bed but knew that if he went back too soon he would stay awake. He thought about going down to the lake. But there was always Tvardovsky.
He heard someone moving among the tents and then, to his surprise, for he had assumed she was otherwise engaged, he saw the blonde woman. She was wearing a long black kimono. Her feet were bare. He stepped back from the doorway. There was a swish of silk as she went past. Outside Tvardovsky’s tent she hesitated and then went in.
There were no moans this time, just what appeared to be a short, intense argument in a language Owen did not understand. Then the woman came out again, so quickly that he had no time to step back. She saw him standing there and smiled.
The next morning, after breakfast, the waiters arranged some armchairs beneath the palms and the financiers continued their discussion. Owen stayed on the terrace at his breakfast table. After a while, one of the waiters, a young, pleasant-looking man, came up to him.
‘You no talking?’ he said in English.
‘No.’
‘Why no talking?’
‘They’re talking about money.’
The waiter smiled.
‘You not got?’
‘That’s right,’ said Owen. ‘Not got.’
The waiter squatted down on his haunches, ready to drift into conversation in the easy way of the Egyptians. The pressure was off the waiters now and he could afford to relax.
‘Me, too,’ he said. ‘Not got.’
‘Got wife yet?’
The waiter looked glum.
‘Money first,’ he said. ‘Then wife.’
‘Same here.’
That was not quite true. There were other reasons preventing, or perhaps delaying, his and Zeinab’s marriage: the attitude the British Administration would probably take to one of its servants marrying an Egyptian, for a start. But then, Zeinab herself was uncertain. Did she want to marry an Englishman?
‘Welshman,’ pleaded Owen.
As Zeinab was not quite sure about the difference between the two, that made her even more uncertain. She knew that Wales was, or had been, like Egypt, an independent country and that, like Egypt, it had been conquered by the English. But where did that leave Owen? Was he, like so many young Egyptians, a secret Nationalist? But if so, how did he come to be Mamur Zapt? And what would happen when they found out? If Zeinab was doubtful about marrying one of the conquering English, she – ever the realist – was even more doubtful about marrying one of the losing Welsh, particularly, if as seemed to be the case, there was more than an outside chance that the English might garotte him.
The real obstacle, however, Owen suspected, was that having invested so much willpower in creating a life for herself as an independent woman, which took some doing in Egypt, she hadn’t got quite enough left to take the last step, making an independent marriage.
But would her father, Nuri, in fact object? He and Owen had always got along well. But getting on well was one thing, marrying a daughter quite another. Pashas like Nuri tended to view marriage as a means of political and financial alliance. It might suit him for the moment to have his daughter close to the Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police but that advantage would be only as temporary as a civil servant’s career. As for financial advantage, Nuri knew only too exactly how little Owen earned. So, yes, it was true what he had said to the waiter: they were in the same boat.
The waiter jerked his thumb in the direction of the financiers.
‘They lot of money,’ he said. ‘Why they want more?’
‘That’s the way of rich men,’ said Owen.
‘True,’ acknowledged the waiter, still brooding, however. ‘But why they here?’
‘Egypt not got,’ said Owen.
That was even more true. In fact, it was so true that Egypt’s international creditors had felt obliged to set up a commission, the Caisse, to make sure that they were repaid. The British had been installed, or installed themselves, as managers on behalf of the commission, and now it was a good question who really ran the country; the Khedive, Egypt’s nominal ruler, the British Consul-General, whose hand was on all the strings, or the Caisse.
The waiter was silent.
‘Egypt rich country,’ he said after a while, the sweep of his hand taking in the fields with their cotton and sugar cane and fruit. ‘Why not got?’
‘Ah, well,’ said Owen. ‘You’ll have to ask the Khedive.’
The waiter went into the hotel and returned with a newspaper, which he gave to Owen. It was a copy of Al-Liwa, the leading Arabic Nationalist paper. Ordinarily, he would have read it the previous night – one of the Mamur Zapt’s duties was to read all the newspapers – before publication – but because he had been away he had not been able to.
He looked at the newspaper and felt vexed. They had slipped up in his absence. There on the front page was a reference to the financiers’ visit. What were they here for, demanded Al-Liwa? Was it to suck yet more blood out of Egypt’s already dried-up veins? Well, if blood was what they wanted, blood was what they would—
Owen gave the newspaper back to the waiter. He was used to the sanguinary rhetoric of the Nationalist newspapers and it did not bother him. However, they had been trying to keep the visit secret. The negotiations were important and neither the British Administration nor the Khedive wanted them disturbed by any unfortunate incident.
‘Not got,’ said the waiter, jerking his thumb again, ‘because all money go out of country to people like them!’
If even ordinary waiters were saying such things, thought Owen, was it any wonder that other people were?
Tvardovsky kept, or was kept, apart from the other Russians. At lunch he came and sat with Owen.
‘How’s it going?’
‘They have no vision,’ said Tvardovsky. ‘They see only roubles.’
‘What do you see?’
‘I see fields of grain,’ said Tvardovsky. ‘This was once Rome’s granary. It could be again.’
‘Depending on what?’
‘Water,’ said Tvardovsky, ‘and pumps.’
‘And money?’
‘Well, naturally.’
‘People, too,’ said Owen.
‘Yes,’ granted Tvardovsky, ‘people are important.’ He looked at Owen. ‘You know the country,’ he said. ‘How would the people feel?’
‘I think they would need to feel part of it,’ said Owen.
‘And at the moment they don’t,’ said Tvardovsky. ‘That is because they are serfs.’
‘Well, not really—’
‘The next best thing to. We were serfs, too, in Russia,’ said Tvardovsky. ‘I was one. Or, rather, the son of one. So I know.’
‘I don’t think it’s quite the same in Egypt.’
‘They need to feel part of it. Will the British make them feel part of it?’
‘We have done a bit,’ said Owen.
‘No,’ said Tvardovsky. ‘The answer is no. But Russians could.’
Owen looked at the financiers on the