The Mamur Zapt and the Night of the Dog

CHAPTER 8

"Dead! In his own church!” said the Moslems with satisfaction. There was general agreement-among the Moslems-that justice had been done. It was accepted without question, even by the Copts, that Zoser had been the Zikr’s killer and the Moslems were pleased that the matter had ended in such a satisfactory and clean-cut way. The British, it was agreed by all, on this occasion, were men of justice despite their many other faults, only they did have a habit of making tidy things untidy by over-insistence on bureaucratic process. Better that it should end like this, when justice was not only done but manifestly seen by all to be done.

Surprisingly, however, some Moslems, mostly at the upper end of the social scale, disagreed.

“It’s this tax business,” Paul explained, “this levy the Khedive is proposing. Word of it is beginning to get round and the Copts are already showing signs of growing restive. The Khedive is starting to realize that he might have trouble on his hands. So he doesn’t want incidents like this.”

“It’s a mess,” was the way Garvin put it later. “Administratively, I mean. It would have been better to have taken him prisoner. We could have delayed the trial until the tax business was settled. Then it wouldn’t have mattered.”

“Jane Postlethwaite wouldn’t have been here to give evidence.”

“You weren’t planning to use her, surely?” said Garvin, rubbing his chin.

That was one good thing to come out of the affair. Jane Postlethwaite wouldn’t have to give evidence. When the news was broken to her she suddenly went white. “Poor man,” she said. “Poor, poor man.” Zeinab took a more practical view. “It was a good job you didn’t have to climb up that ladder,” she said. “What ladder?” asked Owen. Zeinab was always imprecise about detail.

The reaction of the Copts was strangely muted. The Metropolitan, of course, complained-that was what Garvin was seeing Owen about. Various local delegations came to Owen to protest about the invasion of the church. Zoser was scarcely mentioned.

Andrus was a member of one of the delegations. On this occasion he said unusually little.

So far there was no word from the Patriarch, or from Abyssinia. Owen began to hope that they viewed the incident as too small to bother about. Perhaps it had not even been reported to them.

Mahmoud, busy as ever, had immediately switched to another case. It was clear that he regarded the matter as closed.

Owen was not so sure. Tit-for-tat- exchanges between the communities of Cairo did not necessarily end just because a man had been killed. He was waiting to see if there were any further attacks.

As the days went by, however, and no further incident was reported, he began to relax. His words to Osman appeared to have had some effect. On the Copt side, too, all was quiet. One morning he went so far as to say to Nikos that he thought the affair was now over.

“Yes,” said Nikos, “provided that it was the simple case.”

“What do you mean?”

“The simple case,” said Nikos, “is that the matter began and ended with the Zikr. He desecrated the tomb; he has paid for it.”

“Well?”

“The other case is when it doesn’t end there. Suppose Andrus were right? Suppose it were not the whole thing but part of a pattern? That gets more complex.”

“Polo,” said Paul.

“What?”

“Polo. It’s a game you play on horses. There’s a match tomorrow. Would you like to go and see it?”

“No!” said Owen.

“Pity. I’ve arranged for you to take Miss P.”

“I don’t want to watch polo. I’ve got better things to do.”

“Hasn’t everybody? However, that’s not the point. I need her out of the way tomorrow afternoon because things are reaching a juicy stage and I’ve got to work on her uncle.”

“Couldn’t you find somebody else?”

“I’ve picked you. Though not with the confidence I used to. However, with polo you ought to be all right. Just confine yourself to watching the game, that’s all. If a horse has to be shot, or, I suppose, a rider-perhaps they do that sort of thing in polo; I expect they do since the Army has a hand in it-you don’t have to go out of your way to ensure that she has a ringside seat. Nothing nasty this time, please.”

“It will be very boring,” Owen complained.

“I certainly hope so.”

“Mightn’t she find it boring too?”

“Oh, I don’t know. There are the horses. Don’t girls like horses?”

“I would have thought she’d have outgrown that.”

“I would have thought so too, but last night I spent a whole dinner sitting between two girls who talked about nothing but horses. That’s what gave me the idea.”

“I think she may be different.”

“So she may, and tomorrow’s the chance for her to find that out. I’ve arranged for you to pick her up from her hotel at four o’clock.”

The polo took place at the Khedivial Sports Club, or Gezira, as it was familiarly known, and the following afternoon found Owen walking dutifully about its spacious grounds with Jane Postlethwaite’s hand resting lightly on his arm. He had been somewhat apprehensive about the encounter in view of the way their last meeting had ended, but fortunately she seemed to have put her irritation behind her. They stood beneath the trees for a while watching the game.

“Do you play polo yourself, Captain Owen?” she asked politely.

“A lot of people did in India,” he said. Honesty compelled him to add: “I didn’t. I couldn’t afford the ponies.”

Jane Postlethwaite turned her candid gaze upon him.

“They are very expensive, I presume?”

“Not in themselves. It’s the things that go with them. Stabling, a syce-that’s a sort of groom-that kind of thing. You couldn’t really manage it on a subaltern’s pay. Of course, most of the officers had private incomes.”

The play moved over to the other side of the field and they stopped their conversation for a moment to follow it. Then a long hit sent ponies and riders thundering away.

“It seems wrong,” said Jane Postlethwaite.

“What does?”

“To spend your money on this sort of thing.”

“There are worse things to spend your money on.”

“And better.” She turned away. “Shall we walk through the grounds?”

The grounds were beautiful and well kept. There were marvellous flowerbeds, rose-gardens and herbaceous borders, well-established trees and shrubberies in full bloom. Yet the pride of the Gezira was its turf. Lush, green fields stretched in all directions. They were heavily watered each day in both the morning and the evening and kept their greenness in spite of the wear and the sun. All the pitches were lined with trees under which spectators could sit and which made splendid spots for picnics when no game was going on. There were several families under the trees now, with little children running around and babies crawling about in the grass. Jane Postlethwaite watched them with pleasure.

“I can see now,” she said. “I can see how it might be possible to bring up a family here. I wondered how an English family could manage it. It’s so hot. It would drain the energy out of you.”

“You get used to it.”

“Especially with children.”

“Lots of men send their families home to England in the summer.”

“I wouldn’t like that,” said Jane Postlethwaite with a decided shake of her head. “I wouldn’t like that at all.”

They made a wide circle through the grounds. By the time they came back to the club house the sun was already setting. Through the trees they could see the spectators returning from the polo. Because of the heat games never started before four and they had to finish soon after six because of the early Egyptian twilight. There was time for one innings only if you were playing cricket. All matches had to be two-day ones.

They approached the club house through a fine avenue of tall mimosas. Jane Postlethwaite dawdled.

“It’s lovely,” she said enthusiastically. “It’s just like one of those avenues you sometimes see in Italy. Different trees, of course. But against the sky, especially when it’s beginning to get dark… Have you ever visited Italy, Captain Owen?”

Owen hadn’t. To him Italy was as alien and remote as- well, as England was. It was ten years since he had been in Europe. He had left England when he was nineteen. The landscape he knew was that of the East.

Jane Postlethwaite went happily up the steps of the club house and off to the ladies’ room. Owen waited outside. At this time of day it was cooler outside than in the airless rooms of the club. He took a turn along a path between the great bougainvillaea bushes. A man came along the path towards him, obviously taking the air, as he was. He looked at Owen, stopped and stretched out his hand. t

“Hello,” he said. “Enjoying the polo?”

“The grounds more,” said Owen.

It was Ramses, the civil servant from the Ministry of Finance whom he had talked to at the Consul-General’s reception.

“Me too,” said Ramses. “I bring my family out here for a picnic. The boys like watching but I can’t say I greatly enjoy it myself.”

They fell into step beside each other. Owen asked how John Postlethwaite was getting on in the ministry.

“All right. He’s very thorough. He knows his stuff.”

“I wish I did. Accounting has always been a closed book to me.”

“I don’t suppose it figures large in an officer’s training.”

“No. But when you move into administration you find you need it.”

“All administration is ultimately money,” said Ramses, who had a professional bias in the matter.

“Money. And people.”

“The two go together.”

“Especially in Cairo.”

They both laughed.

“I’m having problems,” said Owen.

“A soldier’s pay doesn’t go far,” said Ramses neutrally.

“No, no. It’s not that. I’m having problems with my viring.”

“You don’t have powers of virement, surely?”

“I’ve sort of had in the past.”

Ramses grinned.

“But they’ve found out?”

“Yes, but I need to vire, if that’s what you call it. I get my money through all sorts of old accounts. It might have been all right in the past but it doesn’t work now.”

“That’s the problem with Egypt’s finances as a whole,” said Ramses. “And that, actually, is why Lord Cromer suspended all delegated powers of virement. Everyone was switching money from one account to another and usually into their own account as well.”

“I’m not doing that. I’m just trying to make things work.”

“You won’t get them to agree to virement. What you’ll have to do is to ask for your allocation to be increased.”

“Garvin said I wouldn’t get anywhere doing that. It’s mixed up with the levy on Copts, apparently.”

“The proposed levy. It’s not been agreed yet. Yes, that’s quite true. There’s an across-the-board freeze on any increases in allocation until the levy business is settled. But there usually is at this time of year anyway. It’s getting near the end of the financial year. You won’t get any increase this year, but if you put in a good bid now you might get your allocation upped for next year.”

“Well, thanks,” said Owen. “It’s now that I need it.”

“That’s what they all say. Including the Khedive.”

They headed back towards the club house.

“It’s not just the levy,” said Ramses. “It’s the general political situation. The levy’s only a pretext.”

“I thought the Copts didn’t like it?”

“They don’t. But that’s not the only reason for introducing it.”

“The Khedive needs money.”

“He always does. No, it’s not that either, though that also is true. No, the real point is to make it impossible for Patros Bey.”

“Make what impossible?”

Ramses looked sideways at him.

“You haven’t heard?” He hesitated. “I thought you would have. Otherwise I wouldn’t have spoken. Oh well, you’ll soon know, or else you’ll find out: the Consul-General is trying to get the Khedive to make Patros Prime Minister.”

“A Copt?”

“It’s all these people wanting increases in their allocations,” said Ramses. “You need someone who is both competent at finance and honest. In Egypt the two don’t usually go together. Especially in politicians.”

“Just in Patros.”

“He’s come up through the ministry. The Consul-General knows he can trust him.”

“He’s one of the blokes that stops me viring?”

“That’s right. Only he left the ministry some time ago to go into politics.”

“Is he in favour of the levy or against it?”

“A good question, the answer to which the Coptic community would dearly like to know. The point is, however, that whether he’s actually in favour of the levy or not, he can’t accept the Prime Ministership while the issue is still on the agenda. He would lose all credibility with the Coptic community. So, if you don’t want him to become Prime Minister you keep the issue on the agenda.”

“Which the Khedive is doing.”

“Which the Khedive is doing for different reasons. He just wants money to go to France. The politicians around him are encouraging him in his insistence on the levy because they want to stop Patros.”

“And when is all this likely to be resolved?”

“It’s coming up to the boil, I would say,” said Ramses, “coming up to the boil.”

“I went to a funeral yesterday,” said Georgiades.

“I’m sorry. It-” Owen began.

Georgiades cut him off.

“On business.”

“What business?”

“Zoser’s. At least, it was his funeral. It was in the Mar Girgis. I thought I’d go and see who attended.”

“And who did attend?”

“Pretty well the whole congregation. Top to bottom.”

“Ramses?”

“And Sesostris.”

“Andrus?”

“Certainly. And did a lot of talking afterwards.”

“What did he say?”

“Couldn’t get close enough. I didn’t want to make myself too obvious. In view of my last visit.”

“A lot of people there?”

“Yes.”

“That worries me,” said Owen, “a bit.”

“It surprised me,” said Georgiades. “I’d thought he was a loner.”

“It looks as though, on this occasion at least, a lot of Copts identify with him.”

“It might be just that he’s one of their flock.”

“Wife there?”

“A woman smelling of perfumes.”

“Anyone talk to her?”

“I couldn’t see what went on behind the screen. But she didn’t come with anyone. And afterwards she left on her own.”

“You don’t know where she went?”

“As it happens,” said Georgiades, “I do.”

“You followed her?”

“No,” said Georgiades. “I wanted to hear what the others were saying. I got someone else to follow her. A small boy. For a large reward.”

“Not Ali? That boy in the cemetery.”

“That little bugger,” said Georgiades, “may be most places in Casiro but he’s not everywhere. No, another urchin. Equally unscrupulous.”

“Anyway, he followed her home?”

“That’s right. She’s moved, but not far. Still within a stone’s throw of the Scentmakers’ Bazaar.”

“She could still be important.”

“Yes. So I’ve set this boy up with a regular income. He’s keeping an eye on her. Debit the Curbash Compensation Fund with a few more milliemes.”

The Mamur Zapt winced.

Eventually Owen had to summon Yussuf.

“Yussuf,” he said, “things can’t go on like this. You’ll have to sort things out between you and your wife.”

“I have no wife,” said Yussuf obstinately.

“Yes, I know all about that,” said Owen, “but it won’t do. We haven’t had any decent coffee for days. Besides, it’s depressing everybody.”

That was true. Yussuf’s unhappiness had spread a cloud over the whole orderly room. Normally it buzzed with cheerful conversation. The orderlies didn’t do a lot of work but they did do a lot of talking, and their general cheerfulness had a lifting effect on the corridor as a whole. Owen would hear them as he sat at his desk; and if by some incredible chance all the bearers at once were sent out with messages and the orderly room fell empty he was at once conscious of a gap. Since Yussuf had fallen out with his wife, however, the sounds from the other end of the corridor had become more subdued. At first the other orderlies had merely seized upon it as an excuse for extra banter. Gradually, however, they had all been infected by Yussuf’s low spirits and now the orderly room was an oasis of gloom.

Even McPhee, the Assistant Commandant, had noticed it and that morning he had come along to see Owen.

“We can’t have this,” he said. “It’s depressing everybody. You’d better have a word with him. I’d do it myself but he’s your bearer.”

Although, strictly speaking, the bearers were not assigned to individuals and worked as a pool, carrying messages for anybody in the building, in practice they identified themselves with particular people. When Owen had first arrived in the building Yussuf had decided, unilaterally, to be his bearer and now it was a source of great pride to him that he was the one who carried the Mamur Zapt’s messages. Owen did not in fact have many messages-he preferred to use the telephone-and Yussuf had time on his hands. It had seemed to him a natural extension of his duties, and somehow consistent with Islamic notions of hospitality, to assume responsibility for seeing that Owen was properly supplied with coffee. The same generous spirit had seen him extend his service to the rest of the corridor, and now the whole floor depended on it. When the service faltered, therefore, everyone along the corridor was afflicted; and Owen, as the person responsible in custom for Yussuf, was seen as the man to put it right.

What precisely he could do about it was not immediately clear since even the Mamur Zapt’s writ did not normally extend to the domestic relationship between man and wife. The consensus along the corridor was that Yussuf’s wife was all right really apart from her inability to produce any children and that this was the root of the trouble. The other bearers took the traditional view that the right thing to do was for Yussuf to get rid of her and find another one; but for reasons known only to himself Yussuf was reluctant to do this. A refinement was therefore suggested, namely that he should keep his first wife and merely add a second. Here too, though, there were difficulties. Yussuf couldn’t afford it and his first wife wouldn’t allow it. She had marched indignantly out when the proposal had been put to her and the matter had remained unresolved ever since.

“I have no wife,” Yussuf repeated obstinately.

“Then it’s time you did,” said Owen. “Either take Fatima back or find yourself another woman.”

Yussuf was silent.

“Fatima has faults,” Owen pursued. “No woman is without faults. Nor no man either. You yourself, Yussuf, are not without blame. Fatima has been a good wife to you. For the sake of that, take her back.”

Yussuf stared straight in front of him. He gave no sign of having heard.

“You have shown her you are a strong man, one who must be obeyed. If she didn’t know that before, she will know it now. She has learned her lesson. Be just as well as strong, O Yussuf.”

Owen had fallen into the familiar rhetorical style of the Arab. It was partly the language itself that suggested it. When he had first come to Egypt Garvin had insisted that he stay with an Arab family perfecting his Arabic. Owen had a facility for languages and had learned his lessons well. He spoke Arabic now without strain and from the inside, not needing to translate, thinking in the Arabic mode.

Yussuf stirred, responding, possibly, to the familiar patterns.

“She has done wrong,” he said.

“Indeed she has,” Owen agreed hastily. “But now she knows better.”

“She should acknowledge her fault.”

“And probably wishes to,” said Owen, hoping that Yussuf’s wife was not as formidable as his sister.

“She has not said so.”

“Well,” said Owen, “you can hardly expect her to.”

“She will have to say so before I take her back.”

“Do not be too hard,” Owen counselled. “The wise man is merciful as well as just.”

“If she acknowledges her fault,” said Yussuf, with the air of one making a great concession, “then I will take her back.”

Owen praised Yussuf’s justness and mercifulness, wondering, however, whether such an acknowledgement could be secured.

“There will have to be someone to go between you,” he said.

Yussuf was prepared to accept that.

“Though not Soraya,” he added darkly.

“Who is Soraya?”

“My sister.”

Owen thought that rather a pity as she had seemed very competent, quite capable of sorting out both Yussuf and his wife. However, this was a point Yussuf stuck on, so in the end it was agreed that they would ask Leila, the wife of the senior bearer. Privately Owen intended to make sure that she was given a very strong briefing beforehand. For the moment, however, it looked as if the matter was on its way to being resolved.

“Fatima will know,” he said to Yussuf, “that she has a husband who is just as well as strong, merciful as well as just.”

“She is a fortunate woman,” Yussuf agreed.

“And you will take her back.”

Yussuf hesitated.

“It-it may not be so simple, effendi.”

“Why not?”

“Effendi-”

“Yes?”

“I have already pronounced the divorce,” said Yussuf with a rush.

Under Islamic law it was possible to divorce by simple declaration. The husband merely had to say, in the presence of witnesses, “I divorce thee.”

“Did anyone hear you?”

Yussuf hung his head.

“Yes, effendi.”

It transpired that the whole street had been summoned to hear the declaration.

“That is a pity. However, you can revoke your word and take her back.”

It was allowable under the law for a husband who changed his mind to receive his wife back without ceremony. Twice.

Yussuf’s head dropped even lower.

“Effendi-”

“Yes?”

“It was the triple vow.”

If the words were spoken once, or even twice, the woman could be taken back. When the words were spoken for the third time, however, the divorce was irrevocable. And that applied whether the words were spoken on separate occasions or all together. Thus if a particularly irate husband pronounced the words three times in the heat of the moment the divorce was permanent and could not be reversed.

“You said it three times?”

“Yes, effendi,” said Yussuf unhappily.

“That’s all right,” said Zeinab, “it happens all the time.”

“They say it three times?”

“Yes. And afterwards they’re sorry. It’s too late then, of course.”

“He’ll have to marry someone else.”

Zeinab curled her legs up under her on the divan. “Why?”

“Because we can’t go on like this. It’s affecting everybody.”

“I didn’t mean that. I mean, why does he have to marry someone else? I would have thought it mightn’t be too easy. You say he’s got a bit of a reputation as a skinflint.”

“I didn’t say that. His sister did.”

“Well, she should know. If it’s true, he might find it difficult to get anyone to agree. Mothers are not going to let their daughters go to someone who’s mean with money. A bit of beating is all right, you can put up with that, but if a man is tight with his money there’s always trouble in the house. Besides, there’s nothing in it for the family.”

“I would have thought a family would have been only too glad to get an unmarried daughter off its hands.”

“Not if they’re going to come back again immediately because their husband is forever divorcing them.”

“Yussuf’s not like that.”

“It’s the money, you see,” explained Zeinab, who tended to take a very practical view of these things. “A lot of families will say that as soon as he’s got the dowry you’ll get the girl back. And then you’ll be worse off than when you started. You’ve still got the girl but you haven’t got the money.”

“Perhaps he’d be willing to take someone without a dowry. In the circumstances, I mean.”

“Him? Yussuf? Not if what his sister says is true.”

“If I leaned on him.”

“That might help,” Zeinab conceded.

“I could even pay the dowry.”

“I’d watch that if I were you. Otherwise they’ll all be doing it.”

“There are lots of poor families.”

“If you were prepared to pay the dowry-”

“It might be worth it.”

“What I can’t see, though,” said Zeinab, “is why bother with all this? Wouldn’t it be simpler just for him to marry Fatima again?”

“He can’t. That’s the whole point. He’s used the triple vow.”

“But that’s no problem. I’ve told you. People are always doing it.”

“But-”

“There’s a way round.”

“There is?”

“Yes. It’s simple. What you’ve got to do is to get her to marry again. You go to a friend, or if you haven’t got one there are people who specialize in it, and then you get them to marry her on condition that they divorce her immediately afterwards. Once that has happened you’re free to marry her again.”

“The triple vow doesn’t apply?”

“Not anymore.”

Seeing that Owen was having difficulties in getting used to the idea, she took him by the hand and pulled him down beside her on the divan.

“It’s all right,” she said. “In fact, it’s quite common. Men are always divorcing their wives and feeling sorry afterwards. So there’s got to be some way round it.”

“It happens all the time?”

“Sure,” said Zeinab, snuggling down. “All the time.”

And then the trouble started.

The first sign was slogans daubed on the wall of a kuttub, a religious school where small children went for their first instruction in the Koran. The slogans were in ill-formed, illiterate script and Owen at first put it down as the work of children; not the children who went to the kuttub, who were infants, but older youths.

“It’s the youths,” he said to the Moslems who complained. “I don’t know what things are coming to. Children have no respect for their elders nowadays.”

That at least they could agree with and went away shaking their heads, believing it to be merely another instance of the general moral decline which was overtaking the world. But when the slogans appeared on the wall of two mosques and camel dung was dropped on the entrance of one of them they were very angry and came back to Owen and said that these were godless young and should be put down. The connection with sectarianism was made gradually and only came after a succession of similar events. Women going to the mosque had their veils snatched off; a Moslem water-seller was set upon and beaten; Moslem stalls in the market were upset; and during the evening call to prayer a bell had been rung loudly.

Owen found it hard to take such incidents seriously.

“These things happen all the time,” he said sceptically when Nikos came in to report them.

“And people don’t notice them. But now they are. That’s the difference.”

Nikos also brought in some leaflets which his agents had confiscated.

“This is a difference too,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve had ones like this for quite a while.”

The leaflet accused the Moslems of kidnapping children and using them for ritual purposes. Afterwards, it was alleged, the victims were placed in the children’s brothels in which Cairo abounded. There was, of course, no point in trying to check the veracity of the allegations. The matter was mystic as much as factual, drawn from deep-lying sub-strata of racial prejudice and religious fear. Similar accusations were made at different times against all the churches. They surfaced at intervals, burned hot for a time and then slipped back underground, to be stored again in layers of social and religious memory.

If there were leaflets there was organization. And if there was organization there was money. And if there was organization and money, then there was design and planning. The incidents were not spontaneous. They were part of a pattern. He had hoped that the affair of the dog and the death of the Zikr were isolated instances, that with the death of those responsible the matter could end there.

It looked as if it was only beginning.