The Bride Box

THIRTEEN

Zeinab, who had never quite realized how much she cared for Leila, was distraught. Gradually, however, her distraction turned to anger. Mostly her anger was directed towards Owen. What was the point of having a Mamur Zapt for a partner if when it came to the crunch he was as powerless as you were? Zeinab had been close to power all her life, but now, when that power mattered most, it had all somehow dissipated.

She couldn’t understand Owen’s attitude. He seemed so calm. Garvin, McPhee, Nikos, even Georgiades, they all seemed so calm, whereas she was boiling, raging. It was, she decided, because they were cold. All Englishmen were cold. They had cold exteriors, unable or unwilling to display the slightest natural emotion, and they were cold inside. They didn’t feel as Egyptians did. Nor as Arabs did, nor as any decent human being would. Cold, that’s what they were: cold. She felt that Owen should be tearing around the place doing something; and yet all he did was sit silently in the house, before putting on his fez and going to his office, where, doubtless, he continued to sit silently, doing nothing!

She wanted to lash out, to hit someone. Why wasn’t he doing that? The old Mamur Zapts they used to have under the Khedive would certainly have done that. They would have flogged someone. ‘Why don’t you do that?’ she demanded.

‘Certainly!’ said Owen. ‘But who?’

That irritated Zeinab even more and she stamped out of the room. Then stamped back in.

‘Aren’t you at least going to do something?’

Musa was doing something. He had found his old service rifle, loaded it, and gone grimly out on the streets. When he returned, briefly, to grab some food — his wife, who, knowing her husband, had it waiting for him — he went off again after having swallowed barely a mouthful, urged on by Latifa, who afterwards went out and patrolled the streets herself. Of course it was useless, a complete waste of time. But at least they were doing something.

Zeinab wondered if she should go out, too, but had to admit, in her heart, that there was little point. McPhee had police out everywhere and if they couldn’t find anything then it was unlikely that she would. And then Garvin pulled the police off the streets! Deciding it was a waste of time, probably. Another cold Englishman!

When Owen came home at the end of the day, she wouldn’t speak to him.

Garvin had pulled the police off the streets at Owen’s request. Even the far too gentle McPhee was appalled. He did not normally question decisions from above, but on this occasion, shaking with anger, he did. He went to see Garvin and Owen and was satisfied by neither.

In fact, there was method in the madness. The truth was that Owen and Garvin had bigger fish to fry.

On what had become his usual patrol now, Georgiades had run into Abdul, the porter.

‘I’m hoping to have something for you soon!’ he said to Abdul cheerfully.

‘Not today,’ said Abdul. ‘I’ve got something else on.’

‘Not …?’

Abdul nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ve got to get my men to the warehouse when the muezzin calls this evening.’

‘Another night job?’

‘It could be.’

‘And you’ve no idea where? Keeping you in the dark as usual?’

‘As usual. Except that Nassir says I’ll know the place.’

‘Oh, I see. Been there before.’

‘And I’m not to say anything,’ said Abdul. ‘But nothing, says Nassir. And this time, he says, he means it. And Clarke Effendi will be standing over him and me and everyone else while we’re doing it.’

Georgiades padded along to the warehouse.

‘Can’t stop to talk,’ said Nassir.

‘Not even for a cup of coffee?’

Nassir shook his head regretfully. ‘The boss will be along at any moment,’ he said.

Georgiades reported all this to Nikos, who had been expecting it for the last couple of days. A man had come to the madrassa the previous morning, gone in, but not to the teacher, and spent some time there. Then he had come out, and had been followed home by one of Owen’s watchers. Home, it turned out, was the town house of the Pasha Ali Maher.

The police had been pulled off the streets so that their presence would not deter Ali Maher from any action that he was proposing to undertake. Guns, especially in that quantity, were important to the police. If they were linked to rioting, the situation would become very difficult to control.

They had to have priority. Both Owen and Garvin knew that. It wasn’t just whatever unrest Ali Maher and his associates had in mind — that could be taken care of — but it was the possibility that it might spread that worried them. Shooting would invite return shooting and who knows where it would end?

So Owen waited in his office. He had made his arrangements and, for the moment, there was nothing more he could do. Reports came in continually through Nikos.

Reports came in, too, about the search for Leila. They were all negative. It was only too easy for anyone, especially a child, to disappear into the warren of little back streets that made up Cairo. You needed a lead. Without a lead he knew he would never find her.

He racked his brains all afternoon. Why had Leila been taken? Was it some crazy man who had taken a fancy to her? These things happened. They were not infrequent in Cairo. There was no wider rationality to them. They just happened, on a man’s wild fancy. And so it was very hard to find a thread in them to follow.

Or was it something else? His mind went back to what Miss Skiff had said at the very beginning about the risk of Leila being snatched back by the slavers. Could that be what had happened? And yet it was a long way to come from Upper Egypt to do that. Was a single child worth it? Wouldn’t a slaver have merely gone on to some other child, if numbers were that important? He would go to the length of coming up to Cairo only if there was something special about the child. What was so special about Leila?

And then, as he sat there, he realized what it was. His mind went back to Selim’s reports on the conversation he had overheard in the temple at Denderah, the fears that Clarke had expressed about ‘that child’ hearing something. And seeing something, too. Him, and being able to recognize him.

Finally, he remembered what Georgiades had heard Clarke say at the Pont Limoun in Cairo. Again the fears of being recognized, of being implicated in the arms dealing. The fears must have run deep for he had recognized Leila at once, had known that she was the same child.

And the fears would have been reinforced, Owen now realized, by his own presence there at the caravan’s encampment. For Owen now knew that the man who had stared at him so persistently that day had been Clarke. He had not known that at the time but Clarke had known him. The Mamur Zapt was not an unknown figure in Cairo. Far from it. Clarke had recognized him and must have wondered what he was doing in Denderah. And feared that it might be something to with him. In his mind it would all have been coming together.

And it was Owen himself who brought it together. The sight of him at Denderah would for Clarke have been a warning. And then that day at the Gare Pont Limoun the warning would have come home with force. It would have reinforced his anxieties about what Leila could reveal. And tipped Clarke into taking action.

It was Owen himself who had triggered the kidnap.

But at least he now knew that he had his lead. The lead that he had been looking so hard for.

Abdul and his porters came to the warehouse just as it was growing dark. Nassir was waiting for them and showed them in. A few moments later the tall, thin figure of Clarke slipped in after them. There was a brief delay and then the porters began to come out, two by two, each pair carrying a box between them. Last of all came Nassir and Clarke, watching over them as they made their way to the madrassa.

Georgiades was watching, too, and he saw, a little later, the porters come out of the madrassa and go across the street with Nassir to be paid. Georgiades didn’t need to go with them. He knew about this bit. Instead he waited beneath the columns of the madrassa and when Clarke came out, put his arms in a lock around his neck and waited for Owen’s men to come up and take him away.

In his room at the Bab-el-Khalk Owen sat behind his desk. Opposite him, with his men standing over him, sat Clarke.

‘There is one thing you can do,’ said Owen, ‘to make things easier for yourself. Tell me where the child is.’

Clarke started to deny all knowledge — but then looked at Owen’s face and shrugged.

‘For arms,’ said Owen, ‘you will receive a prison sentence. For the murder of a child, it will be worse.’

‘Not murder,’ said Clarke, shaking his head. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’

‘No?’

‘No. I haven’t laid a finger on her.’

‘I need to see her,’ said Owen.

Clarke shrugged again. ‘I have sent her away,’ he said.

‘To?’

‘Denderah. The slaver’s men will pick her up there.’

‘And?’

‘Take her to join the others.’

‘If she comes to harm,’ said Owen, ‘it will be on your head, not just theirs. With the consequences I spoke of.’

Clarke hesitated, then looked at his watch. ‘If you hurry,’ he said, ‘you can get there in time. The Pont Limoun. The train to Luxor leaves in forty minutes.’

Ali and Hussein were moving the bride box yet again. This time it was to go to the court house where the trial was to be held. The order had come late, after the normal working day had ended, and Ali and Hussein had questioned it. That had taken a satisfactory amount of time but had not resulted, as they had hoped, in the job being postponed until the next day. Indeed, they were doing it in the soft warmth of a Cairo evening.

They were just taking a shortcut through the precincts of the Pont Limoun when a girl’s voice said: ‘That’s Soraya’s box! What are you doing with it?’

‘Why,’ said Ali and Hussein, putting the bride box down, ‘it’s that little girl again!’

‘Help! Help!’ Leila cried.

‘Shut up!’ said the man holding her roughly by the arm. He tried to hustle her away.

‘Help!’ cried Leila again. ‘He’s a bad man, and he’s stolen me! And I want to go back home. I want to go back to Zeinab!’

‘Shut up!’ said the man.

‘Oh!’ said Leila. ‘He’s hurting me!’

‘Hey!’ said Ali and Hussein. ‘You can’t do that!’

‘Keep out of it!’ said the man, showing them a knife.

‘Help! Help!’ shrieked Leila.

Others beside the two porters began to take notice.

‘You let her go!’ said Ali.

‘She’s a friend of ours!’ said Hussein.

Leila tried to tear herself away from the man holding her. He cuffed her head and twisted her arm. Leila lowered her face and bit him.

The man swore and let go. Leila threw herself into the arms of Ali and Hussein.

The man was advancing on them with his knife when suddenly there was a sharp crack. The man fell forward over the bride box.

‘Musa! Musa!’ cried Leila.

Throughout the day people came and went at the madrassa, as they usually did. Some of them, as they left, were carrying packages, often rolls which might have been a prayer mat. These people were followed home by Owen’s men. By the end of the day all the guns were gone. But Owen knew who had taken them and where they had gone to. So it was easy that night to pick up both the people and the guns and take them to the Bab-el-Khalk.

Last of all came the Pasha Ali Maher.

‘Tell me,’ said Owen, ‘what the guns were for?’

‘I don’t know anything about any guns-’ began the Pasha, but Owen cut in.

‘I know who they were for, of course, because they came to the madrassa and collected them. Both guns and people are now in my hands. But what were you going to do with them? Start an uprising? Surely not. Even in the Sudan it wouldn’t get anywhere. It would be too small. And the British army would be too big. And in Egypt you would get nowhere.’

‘That is a matter of opinion-’

‘Yes, I know. But it is not just my opinion. I have talked to a number of leading politicians, and do you know what their response was? They just laughed.’

‘They would,’ said Ali Maher bitterly.

‘I know about your hopes to unite the Sudan and Egypt politically. That is a perfectly sensible aim. Unlikely to succeed, but not completely foolish. There are others who think like you, both in the Sudan and in Egypt. But an armed uprising?’

Owen gently shook his head.

‘That … that was not my intention,’ said Ali Maher.

‘No?’

‘No. I knew there was no hope of getting anywhere with that. My supporters are, as you say, not numerous, although they are more numerous than you think. Of course I knew that an armed insurrection was not likely to succeed. But that was not my intention.’

He went on: ‘I intended to organize demonstrations. A lot of them. In the Sudan as well as in Egypt. Public demonstrations which would show the extent of the support there was for the movement.’

‘The movement?’

‘In support of the great cause of uniting the Nile Valley politically, so that it could speak with one voice.’

‘Yours, of course.’

‘I hoped that my voice would be heard, naturally. My voice among others. I hoped that once I had demonstrated the extent of my support the Khedive would feel compelled to take account of it and would call me into the Cabinet. With others, of course. It was not a case of supplanting the government but of augmenting it. I wanted to be taken seriously. To be able to shape the government’s position. Change it.’

‘In favour of unification?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why the arms? Cannot the arguments for your cause be put peacefully? In the normal political way?’

‘They would not be listened to.’

‘Oh, come! There are other politicians making the same points. You are not alone.’

‘But we are not listened to as we would be if the arguments were backed up with guns.’

‘Too small,’ said Owen. ‘Too few guns.’

‘I know. But if there were a number of incidents, all over the place, in the Sudan as well as in Egypt …’

‘You think it would create the illusion of numbers?’

‘Not just the illusion. The reality. People would see and would come to hear more. And so the numbers would grow. They would become real. But without guns …’ He made a gesture of dismissal. ‘And demonstrations all over the place, Captain Owen? Would not you pay attention to that? Would not the Khedive?’

‘Your defence is that you never meant to use the guns?’

Ali Maher looked down at his feet. ‘We might well have used them. But sparingly.’

Owen laughed. ‘In my experience,’ he said, ‘which is extensive, once these things start, they grow. You shoot at us, sparingly. We shoot back at you, sparingly. But it’s not seen or felt as sparingly. And so the incident grows, and in the end no one is firing sparingly! Believe me, Pasha, when soldiers shoot, they do not shoot sparingly. The police might do so, perhaps, with someone standing over them. But soldiers! Believe me, Pasha. I was a soldier once. I know!’

To Ali Maher’s surprise, coffee was brought in.

‘This is unexpected, Mamur Zapt!’

‘Now that there is to be no shooting, we can allow some niceties. It does not, of course, affect the outcome. You will be sent for trial and you will be found guilty.’

‘But punished accordingly?’

‘It will be the Khedive who is punishing you, not the British.’

Ali Maher laughed. ‘Preserving, as you say, the niceties. And, as you say, the outcome will be the same.’

‘Yes. Actually, I wished to speak to you about something else.’

‘Oh?’

‘Karim.’

Ali Maher’s face fell. ‘Do not speak to me of Karim. Please!’

‘I have to. We have to.’

‘My family will take care of him.’

‘Will they?’

‘I shall tell them to. I have enough authority left to command in this.’

‘And your wife — will she do as you tell her, with respect to Karim?’

Ali Maher frowned. ‘She will have to.’

Owen shook his head. ‘I don’t see it,’ he said.

‘She will have to do as my family ordains.’

‘But will she?’

Ali Maher did not reply for a moment. ‘She is difficult, I know. Headstrong.’

‘What if she doesn’t do as they decree?’

Ali Maher made a little gesture of hopelessness. He was silent again for a moment, then declared: ‘It is her fault. All her fault. If she had not given birth to a monster-’

‘I don’t think she has,’ said Owen. ‘Although to you it seems so.’

‘The boy has his qualities,’ Ali Maher conceded. ‘But …’

‘Would it not be best to leave him with her?’

‘No!’ said Ali Maher vehemently. ‘She is not to be relied on. She is herself not right in the head. Look how she sent that girl to me!’

‘Girl?’

‘The one in the bride box.’

‘Why did she do that?’

‘To be revenged on me! For the failure of her own marriage. Oh, I know her tricks! At heart she is still savage. This is one of her Sudani pranks. The bride box, don’t you see? Bride box. And the dead girl inside. It was a sign. Oh, I know her signs. It was to tell me that all I did ended in death.’

‘She sent the box to you? With Soraya inside?’

‘Of course!’

‘Not Suleiman?’

‘Suleiman only did her bidding.’

‘He was that faithful a servant to her?’

‘He is from her tribe. From her family. So he would do as she required. Now do you see why I cannot leave Karim with her? If I am in prison, what might she do to the boy? She loves him, yes, but it is a mad love. It is sometimes like that with these woman who bear monsters. Their love is all the fiercer because they have brought forth a monster. How can I hand him over to her?’

‘But you did hand him over to her!’

‘I was a fool. I thought that while I was there in the background I could watch over him from afar. I couldn’t bring myself to be closer. I had wanted a boy so much. And then to find … this! So I had to put him away. And she seemed to love him — she did love him! So I thought it best … But now to have this … this crazed prank! Her mind has gone, it must have! How can I hand the boy over to someone like her?’

‘You are a faithful servant of the lady,’ said Owen.

‘I hope so,’ said Suleiman.

‘Even though she sometimes asks hard things of you?’

Suleiman looked startled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That is so.’

‘Take the boy, for instance. Karim. She expected your help with him.’

‘And rightly so. Was he not my mistress’s son?’

‘Nevertheless, afflicted as he was, it cannot always have been easy.’

Suleiman shrugged. ‘In my country,’ he said, ‘it is the custom to treat the afflicted as one of the family.’

‘The family, then, was yours, as well as hers. And his?’

‘That is so, yes. That is how we see it.’

‘When he was a child it was easy. Easy still, although growing more difficult, when he was a youth. But when he grew to manhood, and began to feel manly needs, then it became very difficult.’

‘That is so, yes.’

‘For her — and perhaps for you?’

Suleiman did not reply.

‘Especially when Soraya came into the household.’

‘That girl was a trouble maker!’

‘She answered to Karim’s needs, though. And all might have been well, had she been content.’

‘She was treated well. Too well, in my opinion. It made her forget who she was.’

‘And she raised her eyes too far.’

‘Too far, yes,’ agreed Suleiman.

‘So what was to be done?’

‘The lady sent her away — rightly so.’

‘But it did not work out.’

‘It should have worked out,’ said Suleiman. ‘It was the right thing to do.’

‘And the wrong thing to bring her back?’

‘The wrong thing, yes. The boy pined, and the mother’s heart was torn.’

‘And Soraya had brought her bride box.’

‘She should have been sent away immediately!’

‘But she was not. Until it became too late.’

Suleiman said nothing.

‘Something had to be done,’ said Owen. ‘Did the idea come from her or from you?’

Suleiman just shook his head.

‘I don’t think it would have come from you,’ said Owen. ‘It was not your place. You merely did — faithfully — as you were told.’

There was a long pause, and then Suleiman said, ‘I do not know how it came about.’

‘Soraya was sent home again. Her bride box, too. You were charged with seeing to it.’

Suleiman did not speak but inclined his head.

‘But Soraya never got home.’

‘Men fell upon her.’

‘So you say. But no men have been found. The men who were carrying the bride box were sent away. Leaving you, Suleiman.’

Suleiman bowed his head again. ‘I must answer for it,’ he said.

‘You must certainly answer for what you did. But is it right that you alone should be blamed?’

Suleiman looked at him.

‘When you were merely being faithful.’

Suleiman was silent for a long time. Then he said: ‘It is my place to be faithful.’

‘And there was much to be faithful to. The family, for instance: what was best for the family? And you could not leave out the master’s family. Duties are owed there, too. And there, it seemed, the duty was clearer. The master’s family was a great one. There might be a place for Karim in it. But not for Karim and his son, if son there should be. Lest the son should be like him. Was that how it was reasoned?’

‘It may have been.’

‘Or perhaps it did not even need to be reasoned. It just had to be understood. And someone like you, Suleiman, who had been in the family for a long time, understood that very well.’

‘It may have been so.’

‘The lady did not need to spell it out. Perhaps she did not even need to speak. You knew what was expected of you, and, as a faithful servant, you carried it out.’

‘It may have been so.’

‘Did she speak of it?’

Again there was a long pause.

‘Perhaps,’ said Suleiman. ‘But I do not recall.’

Mahmoud received a letter from his friend Idris. It was postmarked Suakin, Sudan. The ‘Sudan’ was heavily underlined by Idris and there was a big examination mark beside it.

Dear Mahmoud,

As you will see from the postmark, I am in one of the outer rings of hell, recognizable by the heat. It is much, much hotter than even Upper Egypt. My brains are fried to a cinder. My sap is dried up. Beneath this huge open sky, with nothing between me and the sun, I shrivel.

The heat! The flies! The stink of trocchee shells on the beach when I go there in search of air! The lack of anyone to talk to.

And so I talk to you, or, at any rate, write to you. Do please write back to me, so that I will know that there is life beyond the grave! At the moment, as I dwindle, I fear that everything outside me dwindles. Hopes, ambitions, ideals are the first to shrink.

As you see from the postmark — and, yes, they do have a post office, where the pilgrims go to get their documents stamped and everyone else to pay their taxes — I am in Suakin, the City of the Dead, as they so rightly call it. Once it was a big, thriving city, the main port on the coast, through which all the pilgrims passed on their way to Mecca, but the ships got bigger and the water needed to be deeper, and so the whole city had to move further up the coast and became Port Sudan. The houses now are empty. Only the mosquitoes and the flies now wing their way through the deserted streets. Only the occasional stray dog searching for offal. And behind the dog, me.

Life has migrated, Mahmoud, and I alone am left to handle my master’s business. The taint of trocchee shells lies heavily upon me. The true smell of business!

This place is backward beyond belief. Only today I heard that a slaver was expected in the town. Yes, like that, a slaver! Expected! I thought that sort of thing had died out years ago. And now … expected! Part of the natural scheme of things. Taken for granted.

While you and I and fools like us work for the improvement of our country and believe that through our reforms we can make the world a better place! No, Mahmoud, it is not so. Here in the desert everything runs away into the sand. We achieve nothing. Evil goes on, as it has gone on for centuries. They tell me that many of the slaves are children, sold by their families, or kidnapped from their families. And much desired by the wealthy families of the Saudi peninsula. And perhaps they will be better off with them than where they are. Only it sticks in my gullet, Mahmoud. I don’t like it. This is not a world that I can believe in or accept.

I thought it belonged to the past but tomorrow the slaver will come in with his caravan, quite openly, and settle down in the market-place to await the ship. No wonder the place stinks!

I know that if I stay here I shall stink, too. And so, sooner or later, I shall come back to you, Mahmoud, all smelly but with a tiny part of my integrity intact.

Write to me, Mahmoud, before I slip away into the sand, too, and become just a mirage, floating in the air, quivering, just another bad smell in the stale air.