The Bride Box

ELEVEN

‘Well,’ said the genial Greek, as he stuck his head in at the warehouse the next morning. ‘So it’s all safely stowed, is it?’

‘It is,’ said Nassir, ‘and I can breathe again!’

‘And have a cup of coffee?’

‘I don’t know that I should,’ wavered Nassir. ‘He might come in early to have a look around.’

‘He was in last night, wasn’t he?’

‘He was. I don’t mind that. He wanted to make sure everything was all right. Well, that’s his way. But he should have gone away afterwards. Some of us have lives to live, you know.’

‘Is that what you told him?’ said the Greek admiringly.

‘Well …’ said the clerk, tempted. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Not exactly.’

‘More than your job’s worth?’

‘Exactly!’

‘But once it was all settled, you’d have thought …’

‘You would. You would have thought he’d have gone home, instead of fussing around. But he didn’t. He had to go over it all again, making sure everything was as it should be. Not just the lot that had just come in, but everything else! Fussing around. And what made it worse was that he had sent me off.’

‘Sent you off?’

‘Yes. Before we’d even got back to the warehouse. Just like that: on a whim. He’d seen some kid or other out with her mother and wanted me to follow her and find out where she lived! Now, if it had been the mother, I’d have understood. She was a real looker. But a kid! I mean …!’

‘He’s not …’ said the Greek, hesitating. ‘One of those?’

‘Not as far as I know. As I say, I’d have thought the mother was more in his line. But you can never tell with him. He’s full of quirks. Whims. I don’t know what it was all about but he had me follow them. And then when I got back, he wanted to know all about it. Where they had gone, that sort of thing. Well, they’d gone to have an ice cream, like any sensible mother would when she’d got her kid hanging about her on a hot afternoon.’

‘Did you tell him that?’

‘Well …’

‘You should have. Probably not got any kids himself so wouldn’t know.’

‘That could well be true.’

‘Not got any family of his own?’

‘I wouldn’t think so. Going off on those long journeys of his all the time. What woman would stand it?’

‘Maybe that’s why he wanted to know? To find out what ordinary life was like?’

‘Seems a funny thing to do to me. But that’s what he did. Sent me off after them. And, you know, he’d made such a fuss earlier about the consignment and the way it was handled. Me at the front, him at the back. And then he sends me away after some kid!’

‘A nutter!’ judged the Greek. ‘They’re all like that, these bosses.’

‘Well, this one is a prize specimen.’

‘Look, how about that coffee? I can see this must all have been a strain for you.’

‘So now you’ve got it all in,’ said the Greek over coffee, ‘is that it for a while?’

‘No. It’s got to go out again. In a few days’ time.’

‘Have I got it wrong, or did you say it had to go to a madrassa?’

‘You’ve not got it wrong. The one round the corner.’

‘Round the corner? Why didn’t they take it there in the first place, then?’

‘Safer in the warehouse, I suppose. You don’t want it hanging around in the madrassa. They’ve only got the one room in the mosque.’

‘And the kids, I suppose. They’d have it to bits in a moment.’

‘Don’t say things like that! My hair’s grey enough as it is.’

‘Well, once it gets there, it’s out of your hands, anyway.’

‘That’s right. And not a moment too soon.’

The clerk couldn’t stay long. There was always the chance that Clarke Effendi would come round.

‘Keeps you up to the mark, I can see.’

‘It’s only for a short time. Then he goes away again.’

‘He doesn’t fuss around at the madrassa?’

‘Once it gets there, it’s not his concern.’

‘Moves on, I suppose. Quite quickly. You say they’ve not got much room there.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Why bring it here, then? I take it that it’s for other places as well as the madrassa. Other madrassas, I suppose. Tables and chairs, that sort of thing.’

‘They could certainly do with some. Although I’m not sure it’s that. Clarke Effendi doesn’t always tell me.’

‘I’ll tell you what I think it is,’ said the Greek. ‘It’ll be part of all the money the government is spending on schools. Too much, in my view.’

‘And in mine …’

Georgiades, sweating in the heat, padded patiently round the corner to the madrassa the clerk had mentioned. It was in a mosque, as Nassir had said. Not strictly in it, but on the steps in front of it, where other people, too, besides the teacher and his pupils, had gathered beneath the pillars in the shade. The pupils at the moment were young children, gripping their slates tightly. From time to time the teacher would pause in his recitation and get them to write a text, usually a verse from the Koran. They would hold up their slates to show him and he would check to see that they had got it right. For it wasn’t simply a matter of getting the letters and spelling correct, it was also doing justice to the Holy Word.

Behind them, on the outskirts of the group, were older boys not involved for the moment but waiting more or less patiently for their turn. And behind them, also sitting on the steps, were a lot of casual onlookers, talking quietly among themselves but benefiting, too, from hearing the Holy Words.

‘Good words!’ said the Greek, sitting down with his back to a pillar and mopping his face.

One or two of the people around him nodded. He tried to draw them into conversation but found their talk hard to follow. They weren’t very forthcoming, either, so after a while he abandoned the attempt. Sitting there with his back to the pillar in the heat, among the gentle hum of the teacher’s words, and the conversation around about him, he dozed off.

When he awoke he heard people talking. They were different people from the ones he had been sitting by before; they were more talkative. They were talking about beds, a congenial topic for Georgiades just at the moment.

They came from outside Cairo. You could hear it in their voices. But he wasn’t at once able to place them. Then he caught the work ‘angareeb’. An angareeb was a sort of rope bed, more common in the south of Egypt than in the city, but not unusual among the less well-to-do. There were no springs, no bottom layer, just rope, interwoven to form a comfortable, slatted surface, without even the give of a hammock.

Now they were talking about andats. He knew vaguely what they were, although again the word was unfamiliar. A foreign term for a foreign thing. You didn’t find them in Egypt. Thank goodness, for they appeared to be a species of stink bug: a sort of winged louse, from what he could make out. If you trod on one it gave off a most abominable smell. Sometimes they fell into the soup.

Soup? Had he misheard? No, they were talking about a child who had swallowed one by mistake. They had to call a hakim, a doctor.

Georgiades didn’t like the sound of this and was glad when they turned to another topic. It was, however, another medical matter. One of the speakers apparently had marital difficulties. He blamed his wife. She blamed him. Whoever was to blame, the problem appeared to be that appetite was inadequate.

‘Why don’t you try trocchee shells?’ someone suggested.

Trocchee shells? Georgiades came suddenly awake.

‘What do you do?’ said the afflicted man doubtfully. ‘Swallow them?’

‘No, no, not just like that. First you grind them into powder. The Saudis are always doing it.’

‘Trocchee shells? I don’t think that sounds very nice. Not to eat, I mean. Hey, wait a minute! That’s another thing with a nasty smell, isn’t it? Are you having me on?’

‘No! No, apparently it works a treat. In Saudi they’re all trying it.’

‘Dirty bastards!’

‘I know someone … five times a night!’

‘How do you get hold of it?’

‘There’s a chap round the corner … His boss is big in it … Trocchee shells, I mean. That’s what he trades in. You make them into buttons.’

‘Trocchee shells?’

‘That’s right.’

‘But how do you …?

‘No, no, normally they just get made into buttons. But in Saudi Arabia, apparently, they grind them into powder, and then away you go!’

And now Georgiades got it. Angareeb, andat, trocchee shells, the way they spoke … The people here were all Sudanese.

Mahmoud was to be put on to another case. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Mercy,’ said his boss. ‘Why should you fry in the sticks when there’s work to be done here?’

‘I don’t like to leave it unfinished …’

‘You’re not. According to what you say in your report, you’ve about finished it already. It’s just waiting for us to pick up this bloke Suleiman, and our friends in the Sudan will do that for us. They’ll send him here and he’ll sing sweetly and after that it’s only a matter of picking up some hooligans in … what was the name of the place, if it has a name? Denderah. And any fool can do it. We’ll send someone down. We might even get the police to do it. They cock up most things but they ought to be able to manage a simple arrest. It’s just manhandling. You’ve done all the brain work.’

‘Yes, but …’ said Mahmoud weakly. ‘It’s not quite wrapped up yet …’

‘It will be,’ said his boss confidently. ‘When you get this bloke Suleiman here.’

‘It will be me that gets to question him, will it?’ asked Mahmoud.

‘I expect so,’ said his boss vaguely. ‘Anyway, it will be brought to court, so you’d better start pulling things together. Wasn’t there a bride box in it somewhere?’

The bride box had all this time been resting quietly in the yard at the Bab-el-Khalk, the police headquarters where Owen had his office. It had been left sufficiently far away from the main building for the smell to be manageable and it had become less unpleasant with the passage of time. At first, people had wondered what it was doing there but as the days passed they ceased to wonder and took it so much for granted that they hardly saw it. If anyone raised a question they were given the answer: ‘The Mamur Zapt has decreed it,’ which stopped argument.

One day Zeinab had to go in to the Bab-el-Khalk on an errand for her father. It was a trivial errand, a misplaced form or something, to do with her father’s taxes. Nuri Pasha tried to avoid having anything directly to do with the tax authorities, and usually sent any tax return via Owen in the hope — misguided, of course, as most of Nuri’s financial dealings were — that it would impress or even cow the Egyptian Finance Ministry. Owen always sent it on immediately without comment. Nothing good ever resulted from Nuri’s tactics but he clung to them in hope. What, after all, was an eminent son-in-law (or might-be son-in-law) for? Believing that Owen was still away in the south, he decided on this occasion to make use of his daughter’s service instead.

Zeinab, who, although cavalier with finances, especially her own, knew something about the way the system worked under the British, warned him that nothing would come of it and that he would do far better to get a good accountant. But Nuri shrank from accountants, particularly ones who knew what they were doing and who might discover what he had been doing, and persuaded her to keep to the usual time-honoured ways of Egypt. He even put a wad of notes in her hand, which she gratefully accepted but knew better than to use for the purpose he intended. Nuri Pasha was also a great believer in the personal touch, especially when it was delivered by a pretty girl. And what were daughters for, etc …?

Zeinab had nothing better to do that afternoon so agreed to go to the Bab-el-Khalk, stipulating, however, that all she would do would be to deliver the letter. ‘Drop it on a desk.’ Nuri Pasha had sufficient confidence in his daughter to believe that even dropping a letter on a desk would have an impact if it was done by her.

She took Leila with her. She had got into the way of taking her on brief expeditions and quite liked the experience of walking along hand-in-hand with the little girl.

When they entered the yard at the Bab-el-Khalk Leila saw the bride box and at once burst into tears. She broke away from Zeinab and rushed over to it.

‘It’s Soraya’s box!’ she cried. ‘And it’s all dusty. They haven’t been looking after it properly!’

One or two orderlies standing nearby moved hastily away at this point. Nikos looked out of a window and then quietly closed the shutters.

McPhee, the eccentric but tender-hearted Deputy Commissioner, came out of his office and gave her a square of Turkish delight. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right!’ he said, distressed. ‘It will clean up!’

‘But it ought never to have been allowed to get like this!’ cried Leila.

‘It’s evidence, you see, and evidence shouldn’t be tampered with,’ said McPhee.

‘It’s not evidence. It’s Soraya’s box!’

‘I suppose it would do no harm if it was dusted …’ said McPhee weakly. He looked around. ‘Ya Hussein!’ he called to an orderly sitting in the shade.

‘Effendi,’ said Hussein, springing up smartly.

‘Dust the box!’

‘Dust the …? began Hussein incredulously.

‘It’s dirty.’

‘Well …’

Hussein pulled himself together. ‘Ya Ali!’ he called.

‘Ya Hussein?’

Ali was, of course, the other half of the Hussein/Ali act. He came running — well, walking — round the corner.

‘Dust the box!’ said Hussein.

‘Dust the …?’

‘I will do it!’ said Leila.

‘Now, wait a minute, this is man’s work. You can’t just take a man’s work away. Not like that. What am I going to live on? What about my family. My wife? My children?’

‘Just bloody do it!’ said McPhee.

‘I will do it!’ said Leila. ‘Can I have a duster?’

‘Ali …’

‘Oh, all right,’ said Ali, going back into the building. He emerged with a soft chamois leather, bright yellow duster.

Then he saw the box. ‘It’s that bride box again!’ he said, taken aback.

‘Soraya’s,’ said Leila.

‘Yes, well …’

‘It’s all dirty.’

‘Yes, well …’

‘Give it to me and I’ll do it!’ said Leila, taking the duster.

‘Now, now, wait a minute!’

‘This is man’s work!’

‘Do it then!’ snapped Zeinab.

‘Dusting a bride box? Look, lady …’

‘It’s not any old bride box; it’s Soraya’s bride box!’ said Leila.

‘Why, it’s that little girl again!’ said Ali.

‘I remember you!’ said Leila. ‘You were the nice man who …’

‘I suppose we could help a bit,’ said Hussein soft-heartedly.

‘Dusting a bride box, though! I never thought it would come to this. I mean …’

‘I wouldn’t mind, but everybody’s watching …’

Heads were popping out of every window. Including Nikos’s.

‘Everyone get back to work!’ shouted McPhee.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ shouted a new voice. It was Garvin, the Commandant of Police.

‘Nothing, sir. Everything in control!’ said McPhee swiftly.

Hussein seized back the duster and he and Ali began dusting furiously.

‘Haven’t you men got anything better to do?’ demanded Garvin, coming out into the yard.

‘I’m afraid, Commandant, it’s my fault,’ said Zeinab, stepping forward.

‘Why, Zeinab, how nice to see you! But what are you doing here? Come inside.’

‘Must be a Pasha’s daughter at least,’ muttered Hussein.

‘The one they were sending that dog to, I’ll bet!’

‘Dog!’ said Leila, beginning to cry again. ‘In my sister’s bride box!’

‘Never mind, my little one!’ said Hussein, who had daughters of his own and only occasionally felt like selling them into slavery. ‘It’s not there now, and we’ll polish the box up so that it will look like new!’

When Zeinab and Leila got back to the house, Owen had returned from Denderah. Leila was suddenly shy at this stranger, although she remembered him as the funny man who had pulled faces at her. She hid behind Musa’s wife in the kitchen and was only gradually coaxed out. Zeinab hadn’t realized that there had been a weight on her shoulders but was now conscious that it had gone. Owen was pleased to be back with Zeinab and in a comfortable house again. He had grown used to and liked Arab houses, but they had their disadvantages and he missed English armchairs. Besides, he had not really been in a proper house since he left Cairo. It was good to be back.

It felt less good the next morning when he got into his office and saw the mountains of paperwork awaiting him. Nikos, he was convinced, had been building them up deliberately.

He looked first at the Brotherhood but all was as it had been. When he realized the scale of the arms shipments he had wondered if they were something to do with it, but on reflection it did not seem so. This was a new lot, which in a way was more worrying.

Nikos brought him up to date and then he had Georgiades in to give a report. All seemed satisfactory there, although he knew that it was now top of his agenda. The slavery issue was still there but had slipped down the agenda. The bride box was even further down. But something to do with it was niggling at the back of his mind and sooner or later he would have to give it his attention.

Meanwhile, there was the paperwork. And what was this? A missive from Nuri Pasha? One of those. He sent it on automatically and without additional comment to the tax people.

Towards the end of the afternoon he pushed all the papers aside and sat there for some time thinking.

The next day was Friday, the Muslim sabbath, and all the government offices were closed. Many of the officials who worked in them were Copts, like Nikos, which meant that they were Christian. Nevertheless, they took the Muslim sabbath. And also the Christian Sunday, although there was argument about this. As it happened, Nikos didn’t usually bother about sabbaths, either Muslim or Christian, and he was in early the next morning when Owen arrived. Well, that was satisfying. It meant that Owen’s day was spoiled, which would teach him not to go gallivanting off from the office when there was work to do.

Through the window he could hear the muezzin giving the morning call from the minaret, summoning the faithful to prayers. To his surprise Owen got up and left, putting his flowerpot-like red fez on his head.

He took a train the short distance across the city, getting out not far from Nassir’s warehouse. Then he walked round the corner to the mosque Georgiades had told him about. Already the faithful were streaming in.

The mosque was not one of Cairo’s larger ones. It consisted of porticoes surrounding a square court, in the centre of which was a tank from which worshippers could scoop up water for the necessary ablutions. Owen went across to it and washed his hands three times and then splashed water on his face and head, lifting up the fez to do so. Then he joined the rows of worshippers before the Mecca-facing wall, took off his shoes and placed them sole to sole on the matting before him at the point where his head would touch the ground, and sat back on his haunches.

In front of him, on the exterior facing wall, was the mihrab, the niche which marked the direction of Mecca. To the right of this was the mimbar, or pulpit, and just in front of it was the dikka, a small platform on columns and with a kind of parapet. Beneath and in front of this was the desk which held a copy of the Koran, from which extracts were read during the prayers. At one point a muballigh would chant the equivalent of a hymn. Owen always liked the one about the spider showing favour to the Imam of Mecca by weaving its web in his cave.

When the worshippers protected themselves, bowing their head to the ground, Owen bowed likewise. Between prostrations he studied the people in the mosque — unobtrusively, of course, since it was forbidden to let your attention wander.

They were the usual mixture of Cairo rich and poor. In prayer all men were equal. A rich man or a man of rank might, however, bring his prayer mat with him.

At the last moment before the prayers began a man came into the mosque with a servant carrying a particularly beautiful prayer mat, which he placed on the ground for his master. When the prayers were over, the servant rolled up the mat and carried it out again behind his master.

The master was obviously a man of importance for as he left various people greeted him deferentially. A little group gathered around him and paused for a moment in conversation.

‘It is good to see rich and poor pray together,’ Owen said to the man beside him.

‘It is,’ agreed the man.

‘Tell me,’ said Owen, ‘who is that worthy man?’

‘It is the Pasha Ali Maher.’

Owen mingled with the worshippers as they came out into the sunshine. An unusual number of them seemed to be Sudanese.

There was no reason why they should not be. Cairo was a city of many nationalities — Greeks, Italians, all the shades of the Levant, Ethiopians — and each nationality had its own church. This one appeared to be for the Sudanese. There were a lot of Sudanese in Egypt, usually acting as servants. Not always though: there were well-to-do Sudanese as well, usually merchants of some kind, sometimes professionals. So the fact that there was an unusual density of Sudanese here was not especially striking. What was striking was that the Pasha Ali Maher was prominent among them.

Zeinab’s father, Nuri Pasha, was not one of the most devout of Muslims. Even so, he had been to the mosque that morning. The mosque he had gone to was the El-Merdani, which, apart from being one of the most beautiful of Cairo mosques, and therefore pleasing to Nuri’s highly developed aesthetic sensibility, was one of the most fashionable.

It was the one attended by the Court Pashas and also, since Court and Government went together, the one frequented by leading politicians. It was a place where Nuri could meet old cronies and also hope to meet new ones. It was a way of keeping in the swim — au courant, as the Francophile Nuri liked to put it. His influence these days was not, alas, what it had been: Nuri had been a minister once but then on an issue of importance had made the mistake of taking the wrong side — on this occasion, surprisingly, the British — and had therefore been eternally damned in Nationalist eyes. However, Court politician to the last, he still had hopes. So he made a point of cultivating the rising suns, and went regularly to the El-Merdani Mosque.

Owen, who knew his ways, fell in with him just as he was leaving.

‘My dear boy!’ cried Nuri. ‘You’re back!’

‘Got in yesterday evening!’ said Owen.

‘Then you will certainly need a drink!’ said Nuri, taking him by the arm. ‘And I know just the one to give you! It is the Saint-Loup. Just in from Paris. It is a little strong for my taste — too much gin. Destroys the balance, I think. But, then, it comes from America!’

‘It’s new to me,’ said Owen.

‘But then you’ve been away,’ said Nuri.

‘Not that long!’ said Owen.

‘But in the south! A wasteland, dear boy. An absolute wasteland! Why do you let yourself be sent down there?’

‘Interest.’

‘Surely not! In the south?’

‘A girl in a bride box,’ said Owen. ‘Perhaps you’ve heard?’

‘I did hear something about it. It sounds intriguing. And sent to Ali Maher! Of all men!’

‘Why of all men, Nuri?’

‘He’s a bit of a stick, you know.’

‘I wanted to ask you about him.’

‘Then we shall certainly need a drink. How about the Savoy?’

Owen wondered who was paying.

Nuri waved a hand. An arabeah, one of the horse-drawn cabs of Cairo, drew in.

The Savoy was not one of Owen’s favourite hotels. It had a nice terrace, admittedly, although there was nothing that you could see from it except the traffic going across the Nile Bridge. The reception rooms, however, were cool and airy. As Nuri said, it was a pleasant place to hang around in — depending, of course, on who you wanted to hang around with. Nuri’s tastes in that matter were not quite the same as Owen’s.

They found a secluded alcove and prepared to sample the Saint-Loup.

‘By the way,’ said Nuri, ‘I sent you a note …’

‘And I sent it on,’ said Owen, ‘to someone who might be able to help.’

This was true, although less helpful than it seemed. Nuri Pasha seemed relieved, however.

‘My dear boy!’ he said, affectionately patting his hand, in the Arab way, on Owen’s arm. The waiter, in full Arab robes, because this went down well with the tourists, of whom the Savoy was full, brought the two Saint-Loups in long glasses packed with ice, because, again, this went down well with tourists.

Nuri took a long sip. ‘So, dear boy,’ he said, putting the glass down, ‘you wanted to know about Ali Maher?’

‘Please,’ said Owen.

Nuri took another sip and then looked at his glass doubtfully. ‘A strange fellow,’ he said. ‘His mother, they say, was a Sudani, although it is hard to be certain among all his father’s wives. For some strange reason, certainly, he has always taken an interest in the Sudan. A taste for the savage, perhaps? He even took a wife from there himself. Although it worked out rather as you might expect. They had a boy, I gather, who wasn’t quite right in the head.’

‘I have met the boy.’

‘That is more than most people have. His father keeps him out of sight. It might be awkward, you see, from the point of view of his political ambitions.’

‘He has political ambitions?’

‘Yes. He’s trying to establish himself as a Unionist. You know, one of those fanciful fellows who works for the unity of the Nile Valley.’

‘The union of the Sudan and Egypt?’

‘A crackpot idea if ever there was one. But then, he’s a bit of a crackpot himself. A century behind the times. The Sudan was part of Egypt seventy years ago. It was where we used to go to get our slaves,’ said Nuri, with a tinge of regret.

He was thinking, perhaps, of Zeinab’s mother, who had herself been a slave, although she had not come from the Sudan but from Middle Europe, another fruitful source of slaves to the Ottomans.

‘And you say that his Unionist interests extend to practical politics.’

‘He thinks they do. He thinks they could open a whole new area for Egyptian politics. “Dream on!” I told him. But the idea is not completely crazy. When I was young I occasionally thought along those lines myself. Occasionally. But then, of course, I grew up. I realized the British would never allow it.’

‘But still he dreams?’

‘An odd fellow, as I said. He lives in a sort of mental cocoon, cut off from the world around him, dreaming his dreams. He’s always been like that. He comes from a good family but in his youth he seemed to go wild. He took off for the Sudan. The ancestral pull of the wild. Or just the influence of his mother. Anyway, he stayed there for some time. Went native. And when he came out he was a changed man. Began talking politics. Had seen the light. Been given a vision. Thought he could lead his people out of the wilderness. “Ali,” I told him once, “you are not, believe me, another Mahdi!” He looked uncomfortable, and said: “Of course not!” But, you know, I rather fancy that he had that in his mind. Or some idea like that. Egypt and the Sudan joined together, perhaps, with him as its leader. Crackpot, as I say; but I think he takes the idea seriously.’

‘He sees himself as Khedive?’

‘I don’t think that. Not any longer. It’s more that he thinks if he makes enough noise, the Khedive will have to notice him and take him in.’

‘Into the government?’

‘I know! Crackpot! But not completely crackpot. His ideas start by being sane. But then, somehow or other, they go off the rails. Do you know what I think? I think it’s in the family. That boy of his. Well, I think it’s in him, too. In Ali Maher himself.’