The Fig Tree Murder

Chapter 4

A few people stood around but, compared with what it would have been in the city, it was nothing. In the city, the crowd would have filled the street. Here, an old man looked up while watering his goats, some women with jugs on their heads paused on their way to the well, men stooping in the fields looked as they straightened their backs for a moment. One or two villagers had come out to see what was going on; and beside the Tree, Daniel, the Copt, stood vigilant, hoping somehow to turn this into a bargain.

The space in front of the Tree was roped off and some men in police tunics and military-style tarbooshes were crouched down examining the ground. Despite the sun, which made the sand so hot that it almost burned the hand, they had bare feet; and although they looked not very different from ordinary city policemen, they were in fact men of the desert. They were the police force’s professional trackers.

Some of their achievements were legendary. On one occasion some goods had been thrown out of a train in the middle of the desert. Accomplices waiting on camels had taken them to Port Said, over a hundred miles away; where the trackers had found them in the market, identifying them by camel track alone.

‘I had thought it might be too late,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and, of course, the ground at the railhead was very disturbed. There had been so many people milling about that first day. But out beyond the disturbed ground they were able to pick up the trail. It was partly the different kinds of sand they found on the body, but then they also found tracks.’

‘And it led back to here?’ said Owen.

‘Yes. This is where he was killed.’

One of the trackers looked up and pointed to a patch of ground.

‘He fell here?’

Owen bent down and looked closely. He didn’t really expect to see anything and he wasn’t disappointed. However, he knew the trackers well enough to believe them. On second thoughts, that might be a slight declivity.

The tracker pointed to one side of it and made smoothing movements with his hand. Yes, you could argue that something had been dragged. He stood up and, beckoning to Owen to follow him, set off across the desert, pointing to the ground.

To him it was as plain as a pikestaff. To Owen it was the next best thing to invisible; only, from time to time, the tracker bent down and showed him marks which he certainly could see. The difficult thing was pulling the marks together to establish the trail as a whole. This was where, presumably, the different types of sand came in. Here again, to Owen the differences were practically indistinguishable. To the trackers they leaped out a mile.

The tracker led him across the desert to the railway, where some of the men he and Mahmoud had talked to the previous day were laying the track. New lengths had been added. The tracker disregarded these and took Owen straight to the place where he had first seen the body.

Owen walked back with him to the Tree.

‘It’s a long way to drag someone.’

The tracker shrugged.

‘Perhaps he didn’t have a donkey,’ he said.

It was a long way. You wouldn’t have done it lightly. It must have been done deliberately, to make, as Mahmoud had suggested, a point.

But then, it was a long way and if it had been done deliberately, premeditated, why had not the attacker thought of the carrying? Here, in the heat, almost every little thing was carried on the back of a donkey. True, the attack had been at night, when it had been cool. All the same, it was a long way.

He said this to Mahmoud.

‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud, ‘I’ve been thinking that too.’

‘Why not a donkey?’

‘Because there are other donkeys about. It might have called out.’

‘We’re some way from the village,’ Owen objected.

‘Yes, but there are donkeys about. There’s one over there, for instance, among those trees by the well.’

Owen nodded, accepting.

‘It had to be a long way,’ said Mahmoud. ‘The railway track was where he wanted the body to be in the end. But Ibrahim wasn’t going to walk there himself. If he was going to be trapped by a meeting, the meeting would have to be close to the village. Close, but not too close. Here, by the Tree,’ said Mahmoud, looking around him, ‘would be just about right.’

The Copt had been watching the goings-on with interest. Owen walked over to him.

‘Are you here all the time, Daniel?’

‘Certainly,’ said the Copt. ‘It’s my property, isn’t it?’

‘Nights, too?’

‘Well, no. I have a wife to keep warm.’

‘And where do you keep her warm, Daniel?’

‘At Tel-el-Hasan.’

‘Ah, Heliopolis? Where they are building?’

‘Where they are building, unfortunately. I offered them my land but the Khedive got there first.’

‘It’s his land, is it?’

‘Most of it is just desert. But he claimed that it belongs to him.’

‘And you go back there every night?’

‘I do.’

‘Do you walk?’

‘Walk?’ said Daniel, astonished. ‘Walking is for fellahin. I have a donkey.’

‘And at what time is it that you set out from here?’

‘When the sun is two fists above the horizon. Leave it any later and it would be dark when I got home. I wouldn’t want that. There are bad men about,’ he said, looking at the spot where the trackers were crouching. ‘Muslims,’ he added.

‘And when do you return?’

‘At sunrise. Leave it any later and who knows how many may have been carving at the Tree.’

‘And on the night the man was killed you saw nothing untoward as you left?’

‘No.’

‘Nor as you came the next morning?’

‘What might I have seen?’

‘I was just wondering.’

‘The other men have already asked me this,’ said Daniel. ‘Both that one’-pointing at Mahmoud-‘and the other one before.’

Owen, following the point, saw again the donkey among the trees.

‘That donkey over there: is it yours?’

‘It is; and the trees should be mine by rights also. For when the Virgin rested beneath the Tree, she went down to the well for water with which to wash the Child’s garments. And when she threw away the water afterwards, trees of holy balsam sprang up. Those trees. Worth a lot of money. And by rights,’ said Daniel bitterly, ‘they should be mine. For they would not have been there had not the Virgin rested under my Tree.’

‘ Who do they belong to?’

‘There are those in the village who say they are wild trees, that they belong to everyone. But the well isn’t wild, is it? Someone put it there. The same with the trees. Someone planted them. And that someone was the Virgin after she had rested under my Tree. They don’t belong to everyone; they belong to me. And that old bastard over there is letting his goats devour my substance!’

The goats were rising on to their hind legs and tearing at the branches. From where they tore, a strong, sweet, herby smell drifted across to Owen.

‘Fine beasts!’ he said to the old man.

‘Two are milking,’ said the old man.

‘This is a handy place for you,’ said Owen. ‘Both water and food.’

‘They don’t like the leaves all that much,’ said the old man. ‘We might move on soon.’

‘You’ve been here a day or two?’

The old man nodded.

‘What do you do at night? Leave them?’

‘I stay with them,’ said the old man. ‘They’re used to me.’

‘So you were here the other night, the night the man was found?’

He nodded again.

‘And did you hear anything that night?’

‘I heard the doves in the trees.’

‘And then, when it grew dark and the doves settled down, did you hear anything then?’

‘The goats were restless.’

‘They were disturbed, perhaps?’

‘Perhaps,’ agreed the old man.

‘What by?’

The old man considered.

‘People,’ he said at last.

‘Up here? By the Tree?’

‘That’s where they were.’

‘There were more than one of them, then?’

‘That is so.’

‘And what did you hear?’

‘Talking.’

‘Loud talking?’

‘Not very loud.’

‘Were they fierce with one another?’

‘No,’ said the old man, surprised. He considered for a moment. ‘One of them was a woman,’ he volunteered hesitantly.

‘Ah? You heard her talking? And the other was a man? Or perhaps there was more than one man?’

‘Just the one.’

Owen tried, unsuccessfully, to get more out of him, then went and told Mahmoud.

‘She was wrong, then,’ said Owen.

‘She?’

‘Jalila. The woman he had been seeing.’

He told Mahmoud what she had said to Asif.

‘She reckoned it would be no good him seeing another woman after what he had been doing with her! Evidently she was wrong.’

‘Or lying.’

‘I don’t think she was lying,’ said Owen.

‘Probably not. Let us accept, then, that she was wrong. He was going out to see another woman.’

‘We can’t be absolutely sure. But it seems very likely.’

‘It would have to have been,’ said Mahmoud, thinking, ‘a woman in the village. In that case someone else in the village will almost certainly know her.’

‘Women in this village are a loose lot!’ said Sheikh Isa fiercely. They had run into him on their way back to Matariya. ‘Well, that’s the way of it!’ said Owen, shaking his head sadly.

‘Is it that they do not listen to their husbands’ words?’ asked Mahmoud sympathetically. ‘Or is it that the husbands do not hear your words?’

‘Women are immoral; men are weak,’ said Sheikh Isa.

‘Temptresses, all of them!’ said Owen.

‘That slut Jalila! She should be stoned, for a start!’

‘One bad date infects the others,’ said Mahmoud.

‘They ought to make an example of her! I’ve been saying that for a long time. But will they listen to me?’

‘I expect that’s because too many have been seeing her themselves,’ said Owen naughtily.

Sheikh Isa glared at him.

‘If they have,’ he said fiercely, ‘then they should mend their ways!’

‘Perhaps the fate of Ibrahim will be a lesson to them.’

Sheikh Isa gave him a quick look. He was, for all his vehemence, Owen realized, no fool.

‘Was that it?’ he said.

‘We do not know,’ said Mahmoud, ‘but we wonder. And we wonder especially who was the other woman that he was seeing.’

‘Another?’ Sheikh Isa smote his brow. ‘Another woman, you say? Besides Jalila?’ Mahmoud nodded.

‘Whores!’ shouted Sheikh Isa. ‘All of them! Whores!’

Passers-by in the street looked up with interest.

‘Well, possibly not all of them,’ said Owen. ‘Perhaps, in fact, just one. Apart from Jalila, of course.’

‘A woman was speaking with Ibrahim on the night he was killed,’ said Mahmoud. ‘After he had been to Jalila’s. We would like to know who she was.’

‘It may be, indeed, it is quite likely, that he had seen her before,’ said Owen.

‘In which case,’ said Mahmoud, ‘someone in the village may know her.’ Sheikh Isa looked at him thoughtfully.

‘They may indeed,’ he said. ‘There are people in the village who make it their business to know everyone else’s business. And tell it!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Gossips, slanderers, spies! Women!’

‘Well-’

‘Come with me!’ shouted Sheikh Isa. ‘I know who will know!’

An old woman came to the door.

‘Tell us!’ shouted Sheikh Isa. ‘Tell us!’

‘Tell you what?’

‘Who he was with. Come on! Out with it! Let’s have the name of the whore!’

‘Which whore?’ asked the old woman. ‘There are plenty of them.’

‘The one who was with Ibrahim that night!’

‘You know who was with him that night.’

‘Not Jalila, you fool. The other one!’

The woman regarded him unabashed.

‘Oh ho!’ she said. ‘You’re waking up, are you?’

‘My eyes have been opened!’

‘Well, about time, too. But I can’t help you.’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Not for certain. But I could have a pretty good guess.’

‘Well then?’

‘Oh, no. I couldn’t tell you.’

‘Why not?’ thundered the sheikh.

‘You told me not to gossip.’

‘This isn’t gossip!’

‘What is it, then?’

‘Why, it’s-it’s simply giving information. That’s all.’

‘But that’s what I was doing last week when you told me not to!’

‘Don’t trifle with me, bitch!’

‘Oh, no, I couldn’t tell you, I’m afraid,’ said the old woman, greatly enjoying herself. ‘I do know, as a matter of fact, or, at least, I could make a pretty good guess. But I couldn’t tell you. It wouldn’t be right.’

‘Just tell me, you old bitch!’

‘My sheikh told me not to!’

Sheikh Isa raised his stick and the old woman darted back behind the door.

‘Shame on you!’ she said. ‘First you tempt me into vice; then you beat me! I shall go to your prayer meeting tomorrow and I shall call out to all the people: “Sheikh Isa tempted me to vice and then when I wouldn’t succumb, he threatened to beat me!” ’ The stick smashed against the door. Evidently Sheikh Isa was not feared as greatly in the village as Owen had supposed. Mahmoud decided to intervene.

‘You joke, Mother,’ he said sternly, ‘but this is no laughing matter. A man has died.’ The woman opened the door and looked at him.

‘Are you the kadi?’ she asked.

‘I am as the kadi.’

‘You’ve been a long time coming. Justice doesn’t get to this place often.’

‘It has come now. And it seeks your help. When Ibrahim went out that night, after he had left Jalila, he went out to meet another woman. Do you know who she might have been?’

The old woman looked at him for a moment or two without replying. Then she sighed and said:

‘Ibrahim was a fool. He never could leave the women alone. But it’s not right that he should die because of that. That’s not justice, is it? So I will tell you. I don’t know who he went out to see that night. But I know who he had an eye for: Khadija.’

‘Khadija?’ shouted the sheikh. ‘Khadija?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You old bitch! You’re just mischief-making!’

‘Who is Khadija?’ asked Mahmoud.

The woman turned to him.

‘Leila’s sister.’

‘The murdered man’s wife,’ said Owen.

‘You lie, woman!’ shouted the sheikh.

‘I don’t lie!’ said the woman defiantly. ‘It’s true! He’s always had an eye for her. Some say he wanted to marry her and not the other one. I don’t know about that but I do know he’s always had an eye for her, even after he got married.’

‘Did you talk to the wife’s family?’ Owen asked Mahmoud quietly.

‘I did. But I didn’t talk to her.’

‘It is possible,’ Sheikh Isa grudgingly acknowledged. ‘Though unseemly!’ He glared at the old woman.

‘Of course, she doesn’t come from our village,’ said the old woman cunningly.

‘That’s true!’ said Sheikh Isa, struck.

‘Where does she come from?’ asked Owen.

‘Tel-el-Hasan.’

‘I must go there,’ said Sheikh Isa, ‘and tell Sheikh Riyad. Together we will denounce her!’

‘Hold back a little,’ said Mahmoud. ‘We do not know yet that she was the one.’

‘He had an eye for her; we know that, don’t we?’

‘Yes, but we don’t know that she had an eye for him.’

‘He wouldn’t have looked in her direction if she hadn’t lured him, would he? Whores! Whores! They’re all whores!’ shouted Sheikh Isa, as he hurried away.

Tel-el-Hasan, where the wife’s family came from, was a village less than two miles away. Like Matariya, it was a cluster of trees. Although the villages were some four or five miles away from the Nile, they were connected to it by irrigation channels. Their chief course of water, however, was the main Khalig Canal, which became the Ismailiya Canal just beyond Matariya. Again, they were not directly on the canal but connected to it through the irrigation system, a mass of small channels, ditches and furrows which ran water across the fields. There was, though, probably at both Matariya and Tel-el-Hasan, an underground supply of water which the wells were tapping and which accounted for the dense foliage of the trees.

In one of the gadwals, or ditches, two small boys were fighting. Mahmoud, for justice even among small boys, stepped down into the ditch and pulled them apart.

‘He’s smaller than you,’ he remonstrated.

‘It’s a blood feud,’ said the bigger boy.

‘Shame on you! In the same village?’

‘He’s not really of this village,’ said the bigger boy.

‘Yes, I am,’ said the smaller boy tearfully.

‘No, you’re not. That’s his house over there!’

He pointed to a small house on the outskirts or, if you were pedantic, just beyond the outskirts of the village.

‘That counts as village,’ said Mahmoud firmly, and let the boys scamper off.

‘Even that little distance!’ He shook his head sadly. ‘It makes two miles away seem like a foreign country.’

‘They marry between villages, though,’ said Owen.

‘They have to. The trouble is, it doesn’t diminish the distance.’

‘Was the family bent on feud?’

‘They wouldn’t say. They wouldn’t say anything.’

‘You know, this could be solved. It doesn’t have to turn into a blood feud. From the point of view of the woman’s family, no blood has been shed.’

‘From the point of view of the man’s family it has, though. If they think it was one of the wife’s family, they’ll want revenge.’

‘Why should it be one of the wife’s family?’

‘Honour.’

‘Do they care about the woman that much?’

‘No. But they do care about the family and they say the family’s been slighted.’

‘Ibrahim’s family could pay recompense.’

‘Recompense is the last thing it’s thinking of at the moment. One of its men has been killed and it wants revenge.’

‘It could pay a little and send the wife back.’

‘That would make it worse. The wife’s family would say it showed a lack of respect. Funnily enough, I think Ibrahim’s family would take that view too. They’ve got no thought of sending her back. They don’t like her particularly, all she’s had are two daughters, it’s just an extra burden on them-and yet it hasn’t entered their heads to send her back. She became part of the family by marriage and now it’s their job to look after her. No, what they’re really interested in is the man. A man’s been killed, their man, and that must be paid for.’

Owen nodded. When he had first come to Egypt he had spent a few months patrolling the desert and knew about feuds and the tribal code of honour.

‘The danger is,’ he said, ‘that they’ll kill someone in the wife’s family, and then there’ll be another death to be paid for, and so it’ll go on.’

‘These villagers!’ said Mahmoud.

‘Let’s hope it’s not someone in the wife’s family.’

‘Let’s hope we find out who it is,’ said Mahmoud, ‘before they do.’

The roof of the house was piled high with brushwood, vegetables and buffalo dung, all in close proximity to each other. From the corners of the roof, strings of onions dangled down, each onion as vast as a melon. Poor the people might be, hungry they were not. Where there was such food there must be men to earn it or grow it, and, sure enough, inside the house there were three of them.

‘You again?’ said the older brother unwelcomingly to Mahmoud.

‘It is justice for your sister that I seek,’ said Mahmoud softly.

‘We will look after that.’

‘No,’ said Mahmoud, shaking his head. ‘You will not.’

The brother stared at him for a moment and then looked at Owen.

‘Who is he?’

‘The Mamur Zapt.’

The man flinched slightly. Old memories, the old legend, died hard.

‘What is it you want?’

‘To talk to Khadija.’

‘Khadija! There is no point. Talk to us.’

‘I talked to you the other day,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Now I would talk with Khadija.’

The men looked at each other.

‘She is not here,’ said one of the other brothers defiantly.

‘Then I will wait until she returns,’ said Mahmoud, settling himself comfortably.

‘You cannot speak with her!’

‘Why is it important that I do not speak with her?’

‘It is not important; she is a woman, that is all.’

‘Would you like my friend to go into the women’s quarters and fetch her out? He has the right.’

It was true. The Mamur Zapt had right of entry into all houses in Cairo, including harems. Whether that right extended as far out as Tel-el-Hasan, however, was questionable.

It was also questionable how far the right could be made to stick. Only two years before, not far from here, a policeman had been shot while conducting his investigations.

Owen stirred, as if ready to get to his feet. The men looked at each other.

A woman came through the door which led to the inner room.

‘Let them talk to me,’ she said.

‘Khadija?’

She nodded.

‘I will do the talking,’ said the eldest brother.

The woman stood with arms folded. She was not exactly veiled, but had pulled her headdress across her face so that they could not see it.

‘Did you know Ibrahim?’ asked Mahmoud, putting his question, however, not to her but to her brother, as was the convention.

‘How could she?’ said the brother.

‘I am asking her.’

‘I knew my sister’s husband,’ she said quietly.

‘She knew him as a sister-in-law should.’

‘I have no doubt about that. But was it the same with him? Would he have known her, that is, would he have liked to have known her, in a different way?’

‘You’ll have to ask him,’ said one of the other brothers, and laughed.

‘That is a disrespectful question,’ said the oldest brother.

‘It has to be asked. For others are asking it too.’

‘They are?’

The oldest brother’s cheeks tautened.

‘That village makes a jest of us, brother,’ said one of the others angrily.

Mahmoud held up his hand.

‘Not a jest. And they show no disrespect. For all they say is that he behaved disrespectfully to you.’

‘In disrespecting us,’ said the woman angrily, ‘he disrespected my sister.’

‘It was, however, by eye alone?’

‘He would have liked it otherwise.’

‘But it was by eye alone?’

‘With me, it was. But not with my sister. With her it was by deed.’

‘He shamed her publicly,’ growled one of the brothers.

‘By going to Jalila?’

‘Every night. He made no secret of it. And nor did she. “I can give you sons,” she said, “even if your wife can’t.” ’

‘Who was she to talk?’ said the woman fiercely. ‘How many sons had she? At least Leila had had daughters. And sons would have come. They always do in our family. Look at them!’

She pointed to her brothers.

‘I am puzzled,’ said Owen. ‘First, he left your sister for Jalila. And then he would have left Jalila for you?’

‘If he had had the chance!’ said Khadija.

‘He wouldn’t have got the chance,’ said one of the brothers angrily. ‘What do you think we are: men who make their sisters into whores?’

‘Whores!’ shouted a familiar voice in the street.

Owen and Mahmoud looked at each other.

‘Oh God!’ said Owen. ‘It’s Sheikh Isa!’

Out in the street was Sheikh Isa, together with another religious sheikh, as old, venerable and, probably, as irascible as himself, supported by an interested crowd of onlookers.

‘This is untimely!’ said Owen.

‘God’s work does not wait on man’s convenience,’ said Sheikh Isa unyieldingly.

‘God’s work? You call it God’s work to come to a house and denounce a woman who may well be guiltless?’

‘Innocence is for God to judge, not man!’ bellowed the sheikh. ‘Man looks only at incidentals but God sees into the very heart!’

‘There’s nothing wrong with my heart!’ said Khadija stoutly.

‘There’ll be something wrong with yours in a minute!’ said one of the brothers, diving back into the house.

Mahmoud caught him as he re-emerged carrying a rifle.

‘Enough!’ shouted Owen.

He forced the gun out of the man’s hands and covered the other two.

‘Stay where you are!’

‘To the caracol with them!’ shouted Sheikh Isa, enraged.

Mahmoud looked at Owen.

‘That might not be such a bad idea.’

Owen nodded.

‘Fetch me rope!’ he commanded.

Some men ran into a nearby house and returned with a coil.

‘I’m arresting you,’ said Mahmoud to the brother he was holding. He tied the man’s hands.

‘And you! And you!’ he said to the other brothers.

‘We haven’t done anything!’ shouted the brothers.

‘Let’s keep it like that. Turn round!’

‘What about me?’ cried Khadija.

‘Whore!’ shouted Sheikh Isa. ‘You’re the one who started it all!’

One of the brothers made a grab for the gun. Owen brought it down on his arm. Mahmoud caught him from behind and tied his hands deftly.

‘You stay out of this!’ Owen said to Sheikh Isa. ‘You stay here!’ he said to Khadija.

‘And you,’ he said to the other sheikh, ‘see that she comes to no harm!’

Mahmoud finished tying the brothers and stepped back.

‘Why are you doing this to them?’ demanded Khadija.

‘To save them from being shot,’ said Owen in an aside.