Donkey-Vous (12 page)

Izkat Bey was the man who had been in the arabeah when it had picked up Madame Chévènement and Berthelot from Shepheard’s.

“Accident. He came out into the street looking for an arabeah and to his misfortune he found this one.”

Ali’s uncle, who did not usually attract such splendid custom, had been only too ready to reveal the identity of so distinguished a person to Georgiades.

“Why didn’t he use his own arabeah?” asked Owen.

“Didn’t want to be recognized, I suppose.”

Izkat Bey was one of the Khedive’s senior Court Officials. His function at Court was obscure but of his power there was no doubt. He was close to the Khedive and, like most of those close to the Khedive, a Turk. He shared the ruling circle’s arrogance toward the Egyptians and antipathy to the British and seemed particularly to relish those commissions of the Khedive which gave him opportunities to display both those qualities. His name was one of those that appeared on Zeinab’s list.

When Owen had asked Abdul for a list of Samira’s guests she had at first refused. “I do not spy on my friends,” she said haughtily. Then, characteristically changing her mind, she had furnished him with a list. “It is not complete, however,” she had warned him. “I have left off all my friends.” The inference was that Izkat Bey was not one of Zeinab’s friends. This was quite likely as the Bey had a traditional view of the role of women. He came to Samira’s because she was royal and because he was bidden; and Owen guessed that he saw the occasion as one for the transaction of business rather than for the pleasures of social intercourse.

The arabeah threaded its way along beside the river bank until it had left most of the built-up area behind it. They came to an area of market gardens, cultivated fields and fields of maize. They came suddenly upon a great pile of pumpkins which marked the spot where a small secondary track, barely a yard wide, ran off to the left down to the river. All around were patches of peas, beans, tomatoes, onions, cauliflowers, mangoes, guavas, figs and watermelons. There was no one in sight except for over to the left where a small boy on a buffalo was working a sakiya, one of the traditional, heavy wooden water-wheels.

It was here that Ali’s uncle stopped.

This is where you brought them?” asked Owen.

“Yes, effendi,” said Ali’s uncle humbly.

“If you are playing tricks with me—”

“I am not, effendi. I swear it!” Ali’s uncle protested vigorously.

“You brought them here? To this very spot?”

“Yes, effendi.”

Owen climbed out of the arabeah and looked around him. In the distance he could hear the regular, rhythmic creaking of the water-wheel and then, far away across the cauliflower and maize, the faint singing of peasants at work in the fields. “Did they come here to meet someone?”

“I do not think so, effendi,” said Abdul’s uncle diffidently.

“You saw no one?”

“No, effendi.”

“They just came here and looked around?”

“They talked, effendi.”

“What did they talk about?”

“I do not know, effendi. I did not hear.”

“They just sat and talked?”

“They stood and talked. They descended from the arabeah.”

“And then they went home again?”

“Yes, effendi.”

Owen looked around, completely baffled. There seemed nothing here but garden crops and in the distance fields of berseem, the green fodder which the camels brought in every day across the bridge for the use of the donkey-boys and the arabeah-drivers.

Owen’s heart began to sink.

“Have they tricked us again?” he said to Georgiades, who had come across and was standing beside him.

“They can’t have! They couldn’t have known.”

“They might have done it as a precaution.”

“Just on the off-chance that someone would be trying to check on the journeys they had made?”

“It sounds ridiculous.”

“It is ridiculous. No,” said Georgiades, shaking his head. “It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?”

Georgiades walked over to inspect the cauliflowers. They were planted in rows and there were little channels running between them. The channels were hard-caked and smooth. As he watched, a little trickle of water began to run along them.

“The dam,” said Georgiades. “Is it something to do with the dam?”

“Not up here,” Owen objected. “It can’t be, surely.”

The water was coming from the sakiya. It was just reaching the field of cauliflowers. More and more trickles appeared in the channels and in some of them it was now flowing freely.

“Did they walk anywhere?” Georgiades asked Ali’s uncle.

“No, effendi.”

Ali’s uncle seemed daunted by it all. Perhaps it was leaving the city for the great open spaces. But then, Ali’s uncle was easily dauntable.

“I heard them talk of the river,” he volunteered, though, hopefully.

“What did they say?”

“One could travel by river.”

“Who could?”

“I do not know, effendi. I did not hear.”

He had caught the mention of travel by river, though from where and where to and for what reason had passed him by, as did most things in life, Owen uncharitably felt.

He and Georgiades walked down to the water-wheel. A raised, banked-up main channel ran back alongside the path in the general direction of the river. At intervals subsidiary channels took the water off and distributed it through the fields. They could see the water running down the furrows between the plants and suddenly turning the parched soil into soft, fertile mud.

As they neared the river they saw that the water came from the water-wheel. It was a traditional native wooden one, consisting of a heavy horizontal wheel, turned by a buffalo working round it, and connected through cogs to a large vertical wheel at the river’s edge. There were buckets set all ’round the vertical wheel which scooped up the river water as the wheel turned and emptied it into a steep gutter from which it flowed into the distributing channels.

On the top of the buffalo was a small boy.

“That is a big buffalo,” said Georgiades, “for a small boy.”

“It is my father’s buffalo,” the boy said proudly.

“Oh? Then you are not a boy hired for the day but work on the buffalo as your father’s son?”

“That is true,” the boy agreed.

“That is a heavy responsibility for one so young.”

“I am nine,” the boy said.

“Are you?” said Georgiades, affecting surprise. “I would have said thirteen.”

“I am big for my age.”

“That is fine, but it means you get taken for a man when there is work about.”

“I could do a man’s job,” said the boy, “but my father won’t let me. He keeps me on the buffalo.”

“Well, that is important. And hard! I expect you work all day?”

“All day and every day. ”

“And all alone, too. You don’t see many people here.”

“Only the people in the fields.”

“And the occasional stranger.”

“Not many of them.”

“Are there any?”

“There were some the other day. They came like you in an arabeah.”

“And did they come down and talk to you?”

“No. They stayed with the arabeah.”

“It was too hot for them, I expect.”

“It was the afternoon. Still, there was a Sitt with them.”

“A lady? Then she would not want to walk far. I expect she just wanted to see the fields.”

“They are good fields,” said the boy with an air of experience.

“Indeed they are. Lucky the man who owns them. Not your father?”

“No. They belong to Sidky.”

“Does he live in the village?”

“No, no. He’s a rich man. He lives in the city.”

“And doesn’t come down here very often, I expect.”

“He was down here the other day. He came with another man and showed him the fields.”

“They are good fields.”

“Yes. I think the man liked them, because he came again.”

“By himself?”

“No, no. With the others.”

“Others?”

“The man I told you about. There was the Sitt and another man.”

They stood talking with the boy while the buffalo wound ’round and ’round and the sakiya squeaked and the water plopped out from the buckets into the gutter. As the sun began to set, the opal of the sky was reflected in the changing colors of the river, blue then green then yellow then red, and finally white. A man began to come across the fields toward them.

“That is my father,” said the boy.

The man came up, unhitched the buffalo and lifted the boy down. They stood exchanging greetings for a while and then man, boy and buffalo set off back across the fields while Owen and Georgiades went back to the arabeah.

“It is all very beautiful,” said Georgiades, “but I find it hard to believe that Madame Chévènement and Berthelot are interested in taking up market gardening.”

It was only half past three and the terrace was still deserted, but already the keenest vendors were creeping back to take up strategic positions in front of the railings. The choicest positions were those nearest the steps and the vendors here guarded their privileges jealously. Despite the heat, they had already reassumed their pitches but since there were as yet no customers above they had squatted down in the dust and were engaged in desultory conversation.

It was a good moment to catch them. Mahmoud had talked to them all separately, but for that it had been necessary to abstract them from their normal setting and converse in privacy. The artificiality had made them uneasy and he felt they might talk more freely in more natural surroundings. Besides, there were some advantages in them hearing what their neighbors said, as soon became apparent.

Mahmoud was still trying patiently to identify the dragoman who had been on the terrace and soon after he and Owen had joined the squatting circle he brought the topic up. Which of them had the dragoman actually spoken to?

“Farkas,” said the strawberry-seller definitely.

The filthy-postcard-seller at once denied it.

“It wasn’t me,” he said.

“Yes, it was,” the strawberry-seller insisted. “I was hoping his party wanted some strawberries and he was coming to me but he walked right past me.
Mush kider
—is that not so?” he appealed to the flower-seller beside him.

“No,” said the flower-seller. “He wasn’t coming to you, he was coming to me. I thought perhaps the Sitt wanted some flowers.”

“She wouldn’t have wanted flowers, not if they were going out. She would have had to carry them. On the way in, perhaps.”

“She certainly wouldn’t have wanted strawberries. It would have made her hands too messy and then she would have had to have gone back to her room to wash them.”

“She could have just popped them into her mouth,” said the strawberry-seller.

This kind of batty, circumlocutory conversation ensued whenever you questioned Arab witnesses. When Owen had first come to Egypt it had regularly driven him to fury. It was Garvin, curiously, who had once taken the trouble to explain to him that that was how an Arab conversation worked. On arriving in Egypt and before taking up his duties as Mamur Zapt, Owen had been posted to Alexandria for a spell under Garvin to learn his trade. His duties had involved going round with Garvin to some of the little rural villages along the coast and hearing lawsuits brought by the villagers. Proceedings were always protracted and on one occasion Owen had boiled over.

Afterward Garvin had taken him aside.

“Look,” Garvin had said, “for Arabs, truth is not something you know privately and then describe. It is something you work out together.”

“But, Christ!” said Owen. “If they’re a witness—”

“It’s the same thing. What you saw is ingredients for a picture and it’s not until the ingredients have been put together, and that has to be done socially, that you know what the picture is.”

The apparently circumlocutory nature of the discussion was necessary because it was a way of making sure you had all the pieces of the picture that you wanted to fit together. It also allowed each piece to be weighed and tested against a variety of perspectives so that in the end you got something which everyone could agree was a more or less faithful representation of the facts.

“But it could take hours!”

“Well, yes,” Garvin had admitted. “It does.”

In the villages that was OK. In the cities it sometimes caused problems. Owen had learned the mode and developed patience: but sometimes that patience was put under strain. As now.

He looked at Mahmoud. Mahmoud so far had not turned a hair.

“Great, then,” he said calmly, “was the misfortune for both of you when you found that he went not to you but to Farkas.”

“That was another day,” said the filthy-postcard-seller. “He did not come to me that day.”

“It was that day,” insisted the strawberry-seller. “Don’t you remember? You were showing someone your cards when you dropped them.”

“I didn’t drop them. Somebody jogged my elbow.”

“They fell in the dust and the turkey ate them.”

“It did not eat them. It slightly chewed one of them.”

“It was a bit more than a slight chew, though, wasn’t it?” said the flower-seller. “Don’t you remember? It was that card where she—”

“And this was when the dragoman came over to see you, was it?” Mahmoud intervened.

“No, before then,” said the flower-seller.

“He had just picked them up,” said the strawberry-seller. “That was another day,” insisted the filthy-postcard-seller. “No, it wasn’t!” said the strawberry-seller and the flower-seller firmly, both turning on him.

Farkas was slightly taken aback.

“I didn’t mean that wasn’t the day when the cards fell in the dust,” he protested. “I meant that the day the cards fell in the dust wasn’t the day the dragoman came over and spoke to me.”

“What?” said the strawberry-seller, bewildered.

The flower-seller seemed bemused.

“What day did he come and speak to you?” asked Mahmoud.

“I forget now.”

“And what did he want to speak to you about?”

“I forget.”

The strawberry-seller and the flower-seller both laughed. “He doesn’t want to say.”

“It’s a business secret.”

“Oh?” said Mahmoud.

The flower-seller took it on himself to explain. “Sometimes,” he said, “the customers don’t like to speak to him directly.”

“So they send a dragoman.”

“That’s right. Or the dragoman suggests it. They get a cut, you know.”

“Is that what happened this day?”

“I expect so.

Even Mahmoud could not forbear a sigh.

“Did you actually
hear
him?” he asked, with only the faintest hint of exasperation in his voice.

“They couldn’t have,” said the filthy-postcard-seller, “because it was another day.”

“Whichever day it was,” said Mahmoud patiently, “did you hear him?”

The strawberry-seller took one of his strawberries, put it in his mouth and then restored it to the pile glistening with moisture. It looked fresher and more tempting that way.

“I can’t remember,” he said. He turned to the flower-seller. “Can you remember?”

“Yes,” said the flower-seller unexpectedly. “But he didn’t really say anything. He just made a sign.”

“What sign was this?”

“It was to ward off the evil eye, I expect,” said the strawberry-seller.

“It wasn’t that sort of sign.”

“Abdul Hafiz always makes the sign of the evil eye when he sees Farkas.”

“So does Osman. You wouldn’t think that, would you?”

“Which of them was it?”

“Abdul?” said the flower-seller.

“Osman?” said the strawberry-seller.

“It was another day,” said the filthy-postcard-seller.

“I remember now,” said the strawberry-seller, popping another strawberry into his mouth for a few seconds.

“Yes?”

“It wasn’t the sign of the evil eye. It was another sort of sign.”

“What sort of sign was it?” asked Mahmoud wearily. “Show me!”

The flower-seller made an unlikely motion with his hand. “And then Farkas went away,” he said.

“Went away?”

“It was another day,” said Farkas faintly, as if he had given up hope of convincing anyone. “My supplier had come. He was just pointing him out.”

“There was no message from the old man on the terrace?”

“What old man?” asked the strawberry-seller and the flower-seller, turning to Mahmoud with surprise.