The Fig Tree Murder

Chapter 9

Owen’s offering to pay for Ja’affar’s treatment had made him a friend if not of the whole village, then very definitely of the barber and, as he went past, the barber hailed him and invited him to take tea. The chair was empty for the moment, no chins requiring shaving, no injuries, treatment and no penises, circumcision, and the barber was free to bustle about preparing tea for his cronies.

Owen joined the ring squatting on the ground. One of the ring was Ja’affar.

‘How’s it going, Ja’affar?’

‘Terribly. I’ll soon have to go back to work.’

‘Old man Zaghlul was round after him this morning,’ volunteered one of the others.

‘The old bastard! He’s worse than the Belgians!’ said Ja’afFar indignandy.

‘He’ll be in the village every day now for a bit. He’ll be keeping his eye on you!’

Owen settled back and let the tide of conversation flow over him.

‘I saw Zaghlul just now,’ said someone.

‘Yes, he’s talking to Sheikh Isa.’

‘What’s he talking about?’

‘It’ll be to do with the pilgrims.’

‘Don’t tell me he’s trying to sell them ostriches!’

‘No, no. Camels. Some of them will need new camels for the journey. He can get them from his friends in the desert.’

‘Those thieving Bedouin! I bet he makes a piastre or two!’

‘You know what? I’ve heard they sell them to the pilgrims here and then steal them back later.’

‘And I wouldn’t be surprised if that old man Zaghlul had a hand in both, the murderous old skinflint!’

‘What happens?’ asked Owen. ‘Does Sheikh Isa go over to the Birket-el-Hadj and take orders?’

‘More or less. He’s over there most days at this time of year and no doubt he keeps his ears open. If he gets to hear of someone wanting camels he lets Zaghlul know about it.’

‘Old Zaghlul’s in the mosque most mornings now. It’s amazing how devout he gets when the pilgrims are around!’

‘Well, that was how he made his fortune wasn’t it? Supplying the pilgrims.’

‘That was in the old days. These days he’s into ostriches. Got out at the right time, too, I’d say. Once that new town gets built, the storekeepers there will have their eyes on the Birket-el-Hadj.’

‘They’ll have their eyes on richer people than pilgrims, if what I hear is true.’

‘What do you hear?’ asked Owen.

‘That Heliopolis is going to be for the rich.’

‘The poor will get shouldered out,’ said the barber. ‘That’s always the way of it.’

‘Old man Zaghlul will get shouldered out, from what I hear. Ostriches and horses don’t mix.’

‘He won’t like that,’ said Ja’affar.

‘It’ll be for the second time, too. He won’t take that lying down.’

‘He’s in the wrong place, that’s the trouble. The rich have got their eye on it and the rich always get what they want.’

‘We’re in the wrong place, too. And do you know why? Because they’re not building out on our side. If they were, we could be doing very well for ourselves. They’d be offering us money for our land like they’re doing in Tel-el-Hasan.’

‘Tel-el-Hasan? That’s where that Copt comes from. I’ll bet he’s doing all right!’

‘He’s doing all right anyway. What with that Tree!’

‘Ah, but he won’t have the Tree much longer. They’re going to take it away.’

‘Take it away? They must be crazy!’

‘Well, they are crazy. They’re foreigners. That’s right, isn’t it?’ he appealed to Owen.

‘Some foreigners do want to take it away. But it won’t happen.’

‘Take the Tree away! Whatever next!’

‘It won’t happen,’ said Owen, ‘at least, not for years.’

‘One day, though, it will,’ said the barber. ‘That’s it, you see. Everything’s changing. You think things are going to go on forever as they are and then one day they start building a town and the next thing you know there’s a massive town on your doorstep, and it spreads and spreads-one day, you mark my words, there’ll be houses from here to Cairo!’

‘Oh, come on!’

‘Ridiculous!’

‘You’re letting yourself be carried away, Suleiman!’

‘Houses all the way from here to Cairo,’ repeated the barber, highly satisfied at the effect of this conjuring up of the Apocalypse.

‘You don’t think so, do you?’ they appealed to Owen.

‘Houses all the way to Cairo? No!’

‘I don’t think so either,’ said one of the men. ‘And do you know why? Because before the houses get to Cairo, they’ll get to Birket-el-Hadj. And there they’ll stop.’

‘Why?’ asked the barber.

‘Don’t be daft, Suleiman. Because that’s where the pilgrims are. That’s where the caravan starts.’

‘So?’

‘They’re not going to change that, are they?’

‘Well-’ began the barber.

But his words were lost in the chorus of disbelief and disapproval.

For Owen, squatting on the sand, drinking the bitter, black, but oddly refreshing tea of the fellahin, listening to the creak of the sagiya from the well and the gurgles of the doves in the palms, the sounds and tastes and sensations of Egypt immemorial, it seemed inconceivable too.

Yet the railway was stretching over the desert and the houses were being built. The world was changing, as he had so glibly said to Sheikh Isa. For perhaps the first time he realized fully how it must appear to the villagers, how it must appear to Isa, and felt a twinge of sympathy.

‘Sheikh Isa does not like it,’ he said.

‘He does not.’

‘He hasn’t liked it from the first,’ said someone, ‘not from the day Ibrahim said he was going to work for them. He had us all in and said it was the devil’s work we’d be doing. But Ibrahim said it was just like any other work and that he needed the money. Several others thought that, too. Sheikh Isa was very angry and said that it would be on our own heads.’

‘So you didn’t go, Mohammed?’

‘They wouldn’t have me. I’m glad now. He was right, wasn’t he? Look what happened to Ibrahim.’

‘That’s nothing to do with it!’ said the barber. ‘What happened to Ibrahim happened because he was fooling around with other women and got across those mad brothers of his wife. I always said he shouldn’t have married out of the village!’

‘Not to someone from Tel-el-Hasan, anyway,’ said Ja’affar. ‘There’s always trouble when you mix with that lot.’

‘Yes, but it wouldn’t have happened if God hadn’t willed it,’ said Mohammed, unwilling to relinquish his position.

The free-thinking barber, however, would have none of it.

‘God’s got better things to do than breaking Ibrahim’s neck,’ he said firmly.

Owen, listening soporifically in the sun, and slipping ever deeper into the villagers’ world, was becoming more and more convinced that the answer to the riddle of Ibrahim’s death lay here in the village and not in the city. Mahmoud could look there if he wished.

A violent tooting disturbed the slumbers of the houses.

‘What’s that?’ said Owen, startled.

‘It’ll be the Pasha’s son,’ said someone.

‘Come to see Jalila,’ said the barber.

A motor car — the motor car-nosed its way into the street with a horde of urchins running alongside. It came to a stop beside the barber’s.

‘Hello, Owen!’ called Malik.

Owen got to his feet.

‘Thirsty? I wouldn’t drink that stuff. It’s the water, you know. Best avoided. I’ve got something better here. Fancy a drop?’

‘No, thanks. Not while I’m working.’

‘Working? Here? What on?’

‘It’s the case of that chap who was found on the line.’

‘The villager? But my dear fellow, you don’t bother about villagers! They’re always killing each other. Leave them to it, is my motto.’

‘Ah, yes, but, you see, it was interfering with work on the line.’

‘Oh, that fellow! Damned nuisance. Why they didn’t just push him off and get on with it I can’t understand. But, my dear chap, you shouldn’t be concerning yourself with this sort of thing! Leave that to the Parquet. What you ought to be doing is seeing that the Nationalists don’t exploit it.’

‘Well, thanks.’

‘They’re only too ready, you know.’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘Stick to essentials, that’s my advice.’

‘Thank you. And you: sticking to essentials, too?’

Malik laughed.

‘I’m over here to see a woman, if that’s what you mean. But I wouldn’t call her essential. Not in particular, that is. Just women in general.’

‘And none nearer at hand? But, Malik, how sad!’

‘There are plenty nearer at hand,’ said Malik, offended. ‘I just happened to be passing, that’s all.’

‘All the same, I’m surprised you think her worth your attention.’

‘A mere village woman, you mean? Well, you know, she has her points.’

‘I must confess, though, Malik, I am a little surprised. Someone like you! Sharing her with the villagers!’

Malik looked at him.

‘You know about that?’ he said, slightly disconcerted. ‘Well’- recovering-‘one mustn’t be narrow-minded about these things. She’s still a village woman, after all.’

Owen didn’t quite follow.

‘Well,’ said Malik seriously. ‘They all belong to me, you know. In principle. The whole village belongs to me.’

‘I don’t belong to you, you bastard,’ muttered the barber, sotto voce.

‘You mean, the women-?’

‘Of course, I don’t choose to exercise my rights. Not these days. But the right is still there. It’s a matter of tradition. Tradition is very important to these people, you know, Owen. You wouldn’t understand that, as an Englishman coming in from outside. But I know how important it is to them. They really want me to sleep with their wives. They expect it of me. And I, well, I really hate turning them down. It goes against the grain, Owen. But then I am also a man of the modern world. The fact is, I am torn. Torn, like all Egyptians, between the Old and the New.’

‘Gosh, how difficult for you! And so you have to compromise? Instead of sleeping with all the women, you just sleep with the one who doesn’t have a husband?’

‘That’s it! Exactly! Of course, I know that many will be disappointed, but-’

‘I understand. But, my dear Malik, let me not add to the numbers of the disappointed by detaining you when you have pressing duties elsewhere-’

The car disappeared round the corner. The men circled round the chair watched it go.

‘He thinks he owns us,’ said someone bitterly.

‘There’ll come a time when all those Pashas are swept away,’ said the barber.

‘Not them! They’ll hang on somehow or other. First, they’ll sell themselves to the foreigners. Then they’ll sell us.’

Owen, however, was wondering about his tidy separation of the village from the city.

As he was walking back to the station, Owen saw a woman working in the fields. She straightened up as he went past.

‘It’s no good, Effendi,’ she said. ‘Whatever you do, it is not going to bring him back.’

He stopped, surprised at being spoken to, although he knew that the women in the villages were much freer than those in the town. He guessed at once, though, who she was.

‘You must be Leila,’ he said. ‘Ibrahim’s wife.’

She nodded.

‘I saw you,’ she said, ‘when you were talking to my father-in-law. And then you came again. You keep coming, don’t you?’

‘I keep coming,’ Owen said. ‘But really it is my colleague’s concern, not mine.’

‘Still you come, though. Well, I will tell my children and they will not forget. They are only daughters but they will tell their sons.’

‘Thank you.’ Owen looked around. ‘They are not with you?’

‘They are too small. Later-soon-they will come. When the man dies, the women have to work.’

‘It is hard when the man goes.’

‘And when he leaves no sons. We had hoped for sons but after Mariam’s birth-well, I had a hard time that time and afterwards things were never quite the same. I was not right inside. Ibrahim paid for me to go to the hakim but he could do nothing. That is why,’ she said, looking him in the face, ‘he went to Jalila.’

Owen muttered something.

‘It does not matter. Except that it angered my brothers. You have put my brothers in the caracol,’ she said, not in accusation but as a matter of fact.

‘Yes. Lest Ibrahim’s family kill them in anger.’

‘I do not think they would kill them. My brothers are strong men, stronger than they.’

‘It is not that. It is that one has to stop the killing. One killing leads to another. One has to break the chain.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said.

‘It is the first step that is wrong.’

‘Yes, but what is the first step? The killing or what led to it?’

‘Both are wrong. But when wrong is done, there are better remedies than killing.’

‘Well, maybe.’

‘ Did your brothers look for revenge?’

‘They looked.’

‘But did they take it?’

She gave no sign of having heard. Instead, she said, almost wistfully:

‘He was not a bad man. Foolish, yes, but not bad. His head was too hot and his tongue was too quick.’

‘Was it too quick for your brothers?’

‘For them?’ She seemed startled. ‘No. I do not think so. Ibrahim and Ali were friends,’ she added, after a moment.

‘Friends?’ said Owen, surprised.

‘Yes. That was how I came to wed. They met at the ostrich farm.’

‘When Ibrahim was working there?’

‘Ali worked there too. But only for a short time. He had worked for Zaghlul before, when Zaghlul was supplying the pilgrims. He used to manage the mules. But then when Zaghlul stopped, there was no work for him. Zaghlul offered him a job at the ostrich farm but Ali did not like it. He said, “This is no work for a man like me.” “Very well, then,” said Zaghlul, “you find your own work.” Then Ali worked in the fields, but he did not like that either. He was always going off to the city. We would have spoken to him about it but he usually brought back money. Good money,’ she said, considering.

‘So he no longer works in the fields?’

‘Oh, he does sometimes. At harvest time, of course. But also other times. And he still brings back money.’

‘It was before he went to the city, then, that he was friends with Ibrahim?’

‘No, they stayed friends after he’d left the ostrich farm. Ibrahim sometimes used to go with him into the city.’

‘To the races?’

She looked at him in surprise.

‘That is where Ali goes, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but that is not where they went. They used to go to meetings.’

‘Meetings?’

‘Yes, big ones. Once,’ she said with pride, ‘they went to hear Mustapha Kamil.’

In a way it was no surprise. Thousands had gone to hear Mustapha Kamil, the charismatic young leader of the Nationalist Party, before he had died suddenly at a tragically early age. All the same, Owen hadn’t expected it. Ali, the tough nut, the one who, if Mahmoud was right, consorted with racetrack gangs, and Ibrahim, the humble villager, going to political meetings?

And Nationalist ones? Well, they wouldn’t have gone to any other, that was for sure. Politics was not for the likes of Ibrahim and Ali. Even the Nationalists drew their strength from office workers and the professional classes. They recognized that themselves. That, in a way, had been the point of the meeting that Owen had attended down by the Pont de Limoun. They had been trying to draw up support from the railway workers, without a lot of success.

But now here were two ordinary fellahs from the sticks turning up to listen to Mustapha Kamil! Unlikely ones, too, not exactly the sort you would see as avid readers of the Nationalist press, not the sort, actually, who could probably read at all. What was going on?

‘Mustapha Kamil!’ he said. ‘There was a man!’

‘There was a man indeed!’ agreed Leila proudly.

‘And Ali talked to you all about such things?’

‘Oh, yes.’

He had underestimated Ali, only too evidently. He had seen only the rough, hard villager. What was it that she had said? Head too hot and tongue too quick?

But she had said that about Ibrahim, not about Ali.

‘And Ibrahim, too, did he used to talk to you about such things?’

‘At first, yes, but then his father would not let him. He said such talk was bad, that the Pasha would hear of it and be down on us. I think Fazal would have talked.’

‘Fazal?’

‘Ibrahim’s brother.’

The difficult one. The one that Owen had thought might have looked for revenge for his brother’s killing.

He still didn’t think he was wrong. Only he had seen it all too simply. He had seen just the enmity, just the possible revenge relationship. He had not seen the relationships between the families. But relationships there were, of which the marriage between Leila and Ibrahim had been just one.

‘And were they all still going to such meetings, Ali and Ibrahim?’

She was silent. Then she said:

‘Mustapha Kamil is dead.’

‘But there are others. Others now speak in his place.’

‘There has been no time for meetings,’ she said, ‘not since Ibrahim began working for the Belgians.’

‘They did not meet?’

‘Only occasionally. Sometimes they would walk back to the village together.’

Suddenly she seemed to be far away. Perhaps she was remembering the past. Perhaps it was the first time since Ibrahim’s death that she had allowed herself to.

‘He was a good man,’ Owen prompted gently.

‘Yes.’

‘But a hot-headed one, you said?’

‘Yes.’

She laughed, remembering.

‘And too quick of tongue. How was he too quick of tongue?’

‘That time when he spoke up for the railwaymen. They were angry but no one would speak. Ibrahim was angry, too, but he said he would speak. His father wanted to beat him when he heard. Ali, too,’ she said, surprisingly.

‘Ali wanted to beat him?’

‘Not beat him. But he said it was foolish to step forward. “Let others do that,” he said.’

‘Why did he say that?’

‘He said it would do Ibrahim no good if he were to let himself be singled out. The job was not forever. Put up with it, he said, take the money, and then speak if you must.’

Owen was again surprised. Ali, the moderate? The man who had run for his gun that day?

‘But Ibrahim did not take his advice,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Was Ali angry?’

‘No. He said it was on his own head. But afterwards he came to him again and said: “There are men better at this than you.” “Let them come forward, then,” said Ibrahim. Well, Ali knew a man who wanted to work on the railway line and who was good at speaking and they let him come forward instead.’

‘Was his name Wahid?’ asked Owen.

As Owen approached the station he saw that a train was in. It was coming from Cairo, however, and no use to him. He was surprised, though, to see Mahmoud getting off.

Mahmoud, too, was disconcerted. He hesitated, gave Owen a slight bow with his head, and hurried past.

Owen was annoyed. Surely they had been friends for too long to mess about like this? On an impulse he turned and hurried after Mahmoud. Mahmoud heard the footsteps and looked round guardedly.

‘Are you going to the village? I have just come from there. I picked up one or two things-perhaps I could discuss them with you?’

Mahmoud instantly warmed. Quick to perceive a slight, especially when it came from the British, he was also quick to respond to a sympathetic initiative. In fact, he tended to overrespond, especially when it came from Owen.

‘I will stop. Where I was going does not matter. No, it does not matter at all. You are going back to Cairo? I will come with you!’

‘No, no!’ protested Owen. ‘I will walk a little of the way with you. You were going to the village?’

‘To the Tree. But I cannot allow you-’

After some while it was agreed that it was easier for Owen to accompany Mahmoud rather than vice versa and they set out across the fields. Owen looked to see if Leila was still there but she was not.

He was relieved to find that Mahmoud was still taking an interest in the village end of things. It had seemed that his attention was entirely on the railway and Owen felt that was unlikely to be productive.

He told Mahmoud what he had learned from his conversation with Leila. He hesitated for a moment over whether to tell him about the Nationalist meetings, but then decided that he would.

‘So you see,’ he said, ‘there is this connection between Ibrahim and Ali.’

‘The fact that they were friends,’ said Mahmoud, thinking, ‘wouldn’t stop the brothers from exacting revenge. Revenge overrides everything in the Arab code of honour.’

‘All the same-’

‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud, ‘I am glad you told me.’

‘And then there is the bit about the dispute, you know, the one on the railway that you are interested in, when Ibrahim acted as spokesman. I had been wondering why Ibrahim had acted as spokesman and not Wahid.’

‘I made too much of that,’ muttered Mahmoud.

‘Well, I’ve probably been making too much of Wahid.’

‘You were right, though. About the Nationalist connection.’

‘But how important is it? So Wahid is a Nationalist. So are half a million other Egyptians.’

The mutual concessions restored their old relationship and by the time they reached the village they were talking happily.

‘But you were going on to the Tree?’

‘Well, yes. I wanted to see the place without so many people there.’

‘I’m afraid-’ began Owen guiltily.

But then Mahmoud saw the Tree with its guarding legions.

‘What-?’

Owen explained.

‘And they are guarding the Tree against the French?’ said Mahmoud, amazed.

‘And each other, yes.’

The guarding cohorts seemed for the time being, however, to have struck up an amicable alliance. They had found a brazier from somewhere and fuelled it with dried dung from around the well. The bitter fumes drifted across towards them. Daniel, the Copt, emerged from the balsam trees leading a donkey.

‘Well, I’m off now,’ he said, perching himself on the back of his donkey. ‘Otherwise I won’t get home in the light. There may be bad men about. Keep your eyes open!’ he said to the Copts. ‘I’ll be back in the morning.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said the Copts. ‘It will still be here.’

They watched him go.

‘Mean bastard,’ they said. ‘You’d think he’d have found us a chicken or two!’

‘Isa’s a mean bastard, too,’ said one of the Sons of Islam. ‘I reckon he’s forgotten about us entirely.’

‘The government’s mean bastard, too,’ said the policeman, looking at Owen.

‘All right,’ said Owen, ‘I’ll get somebody from the village to bring you up something.’

The men settled down around the brazier.

Mahmoud shrugged, then turned and walked a little way away and began looking round him. Owen knew he was trying to visualize what had happened.

But it had happened at night, thought Owen. There had been nothing to see. There had only been sounds in the darkness.

Over in the balsam trees around the well there was a little scurry and two goats came bounding out. Owen went across and found the old goatherd lying under a tree.

‘Still here, then?’

‘We’ve been over to Tel-el-Hasan for a couple of days,’ said the old man. ‘We’d have stayed longer but somebody had been there before us.’

‘Eaten all the food, had they?’

‘They’ve taken the lowest shoots. We can do better here.’

Owen sat down beside him. The heat had gone out of the sun now and the shadows were creeping over the sand.

‘Tel-el-Hasan? Not many people go between there and here, do they?’

‘Only the Copt.’

‘You remember the night the man was found on the railway line?’

The old man nodded.

And you heard voices up here by the Tree?’

‘Yes.’

‘Earlier that night, perhaps just when it was getting dark, did you see anyone coming over here from Tel-el-Hasan?’

The old man shook his head.

‘A man, perhaps, or two men?’

‘I saw no one.’

‘Or even,’ Owen persisted, ‘a man and a woman? You said you had heard a man and a woman talking up by the Tree.’

‘I heard. I did not see.’

‘But earlier?’

The old man considered.

‘I remember seeing no one,’ he said finally.

Owen nodded. Mahmoud had probably already asked the questions.

‘The goats were restless,’ said the old man. ‘It was a bad night.’

Owen made sympathetic noises. Up by the Tree, Mahmoud had walked off at a tangent and now was looking back at the spot where, according to the tracker, the attack had taken place. Owen guessed he was trying to work out how the two, the man and the woman, had approached. They must have been waiting by the Tree. But why had Ibrahim gone there anyway?

‘It was a bad night,’ said the old man again. ‘The goats were restless. There was no quieting them down. First, the people. Then the bird.’

‘Bird?’ said Owen.

‘There was a bird about. An ostrich.’

‘You saw it?’

‘No. But the goats knew. That was why they were restless.’

‘When was this? About the time that you heard the people talking?’

‘No. After.’

Puzzled, Owen went to join Mahmoud.

It was getting dark now and if they did not leave soon they might find it difficult to trace their way back across the fields to the station.

As they left the village behind they saw a long line of people coming across the desert. They were leading donkeys and camels heaped high with packs and some of them were carrying banners.

Owen and Mahmoud stopped to watch them pass.

‘Have you thought,’ said Mahmoud, ‘that the concentration of pilgrims will be at its highest at just the moment that the new railway reaches Heliopolis?’