Hashish: A Smuggler's Tale (26 page)

It was agreed that we should go to Cairo together next day, so that I could make the acquaintance of this king of smugglers. We took the train
at seven o’clock next morning, Stavro travelling in a different compartment, for it was not prudent for us to be seen together. He only rejoined me outside the station at Cairo; we took a carriage, and the coachman set off immediately without asking for an address.

We soon turned into a street which seemed one long row of funeral undertakers’ shops. These strange shops are only to be seen in those Egyptian towns where there are many Greeks. The carriage stopped before one of them, a vast room which stretched back into the shadow. Behind big plate-glass windows was an imposing array of coffins of all sorts. Some were daintily padded, and open like jewellers’ boxes, showing an attractive lining of pastel-coloured silk. Two or three of the finest were laid on trestles, to show off to full advantage their gilded carvings, wrought-metal handles and ornamental nails.

In the midst of this macabre scene some people were sitting round a little table, drinking coffee and chatting gaily. Right at the back was an immense desk at which sat a man of about forty, who had a decided and soldierly air. He was talking to two ladies in deep mourning. This was the owner of the shop, busy with customers. Stavro shook hands with the coffee-drinkers as we went in. They were compatriots, tradesmen from round about who had popped in for a minute’s chat. Some of them spoke French, and Stavro introduced me as a tourist come to see the Pyramids.

At length the owner passed on the ladies to a salesman, who would help them to choose a coffin for the dear departed, and came towards us with outstretched hand, smiling, affable and familiar. He said to me at once, as if I were an old acquaintance:

‘Let’s go to the house. My wife will be delighted to see you and to speak French, for she was brought up in France.’

In front of the door stood an imposing hearse to which were harnessed two magnificent horses of the most impeccable black. I was prepared for anything, and I almost expected my new friend to invite me to get into this gala vehicle. I had used up my faculty of astonishment since I had entered this strange shop. But no, the hearse was not for us; it had only come to fetch its trappings. A landau, probably a mourning one but comfortable for all that, carried the three of us off towards the new quarters of the town, and stopped before a huge house with pink marble balconies.

The staircase was also of marble, adorned with bronze statues holding electric torches. A porter saluted us respectfully at the door. We reached the second floor, and entered a room positively bewildering from its profusion of mirrors. Everywhere were bear-skins, Persian carpets, palm-trees in tubs and such-like. Then I was ushered into a drawing-room decorated in the most atrocious taste by a very expensive upholsterer, with a profusion of bronze and terra-cotta statues, the latter painted like anatomical mouldings. My host invited me to sit down in a gilded armchair upholstered in yellow silk, opposite an immense cabinet full of silver dishes, gold cups and so on, which looked like a goldsmith’s showcase.

Gorgis, the master of the house, was very proud of all this luxury, and greatly enjoyed the admiration in which he believed I was plunged. He was very parvenu, poor man, but in spite of his immense wealth he had remained a man of action. He rather resembled Petros Caramanos. He was so proud to show me all his riches, his vanity was so harmlessly obvious, his way of seeming to say, ‘Just fancy, I’m the man who made the money to buy all this’ was rather childlike, and provoked my sincere liking rather than otherwise. We spoke of my visit to Steno, of Papamanoli, of Madame Smirneo; indeed, I gave him all the family news, for Petros was his second cousin.

Stavro was ill at ease in the midst of all this luxury. He kept rolling the immense brim of his black felt hat between his great fingers, and very soon, muttering something about important business, he left me alone with Gorgis.

He introduced his family, three blooming children. The youngest was still in the arms of his English nurse, while the eldest, though he was only eight, greeted me like a little old man of the world. His wife was a pretty woman, a little plump, in accordance with Oriental tastes, and most elegantly dressed. She spoke French perfectly, without the slightest accent, and we discussed music and literature. Gorgis did not take much interest in this sort of thing, so he disappeared.

At last it was dinner-time. Dinner was served in a vast dining-room, with crystal-shelved cabinets containing complicated silver-ware all round the walls. The table was oppressively well supplied with silver and innumerable glasses of every size, and the meal gave me the feeling that it came from a good caterer for banquets. There was the inevitable
lobster, and elaborate ices. I was horrified at the way the children pecked at the sweets, then threw them to the dogs.

After dinner Stavro came to fetch us, and we went to a sort of music-hall, where Gorgis had booked a box next that of the Khedive. Gorgis laughed heartily at everything, and enjoyed himself like a child; I couldn’t help remembering that he had been an ordinary sailor. Stavro, in spite of his gigantic frame, seemed much more refined in type, probably because after all he was a man of education. The secret jealousy which he felt for the lavish wealth of Gorgis could be read in his mildly ironical smile at the noisy mirth of the ex-sailor at the vulgar farces played by the clowns. He threw me a meaning glance from time to time, as if to indicate how much above such childish nonsense he himself was.

When we started to speak of business Gorgis was anything but a child. Assuming a lordly and generous air, to make Stavro’s canniness seem more petty, he accepted the price I suggested straight away, and agreed to pay half the money in advance. When Stavro wanted to bargain and scrimp over details, he told him to be quiet, and there, in the box at the music-hall, he drew an enormous wad of bills from his pocket with a careless air, and handed me five hundred Egyptian pounds. I had some trouble in finding a place for all this paper in my pockets. Next day we were to arrange for the delivery of the goods.

A room had been booked for me in rather an ordinary-looking Greek hotel owned by a friend of Gorgis. Before we parted for the night Stavro, who occupied the next room, gave me a long harangue about his friend, and his absurd taste for unsuitable and excessive luxury. They had been sailors together, and little by little Gorgis had organized their business, and in ten years he had amassed a fortune.

‘I only got the bones to pick,’ said Stavro a little bitterly. ‘He’s a marvel in business, there’s no denying that, but selfish – he thinks only of himself. Do you think everybody is happy in his house? He keeps his poor wife short of everything, and treats her like a slave. Yet when it is to show off he doesn’t care how much he spends; he just flings his money away. You must have noticed that today. One thing I must say: he is honest as the day. He keeps the accounts and nobody has ever been a penny the poorer for that. In so far as that is concerned you have nothing to fear, especially as he feels you are a man of a certain social rank, and he is flattered to do business with you.’

It was true that all the time I had been with the two partners, I had noticed that it was always Gorgis who decided, always Gorgis who paid. He had that assurance which comes from the possession of much money and which gives a certain prestige which takes the place of distinction. He was known and bowed down to wherever we went. The gigantic Stavro trailed after him like a little boy. I had the advantage of being a novelty, and especially of possessing four hundred
okes
of hashish which they hadn’t managed to steal from me. Alone in my room, I counted my banknotes over and over again. I could hardly believe they were real, so little real hope had I had of bringing my enterprise to a successful conclusion. The future seemed brighter now.

Early next morning I was awakened by a knock at my door. It was Gorgis. A car was waiting, and whisked us off out of the city, south towards the outskirts of Cairo, covered with kitchen-gardens and fields of clover. Here and there were hamlets with clay houses surrounded by manure-heaps. We reached a station on the line to Helwan. There we took a local train. I wondered why we did not go on in the car – perhaps so as not to attract attention.

Three-quarters of an hour later we got out at a little station right out in the country. On the deserted platform were heaps of vegetables and wooden cages containing hens and rabbits. We set off on foot across gardens and green fields, following winding paths. At last we crossed a wooden foot-bridge over the canal which watered all the country-side. On the other side, without any transition, was the desert. We walked up a dried river-bed towards a chain of neighbouring hills. I wondered where we were going. Stavro had removed his coat, and mopped his forehead, puffing and blowing. I was suffering martyrdom from my shoes, as happens each time a return to civilization compels me to wear the cursed things. Gorgis, who seemed quite at ease,
walked ahead, swinging a cane and poking fun incessantly at the weighty Stavro.

What very odd tourists we must have looked in this stony desert under the burning sun. But there was nobody to see us. What reason could any human being have for coming into these solitudes? And yet the rich valley of the Nile was close at hand, stretching green and smiling at our feet, with here and there a rich red patch, where the plough had turned over the alluvial earth brought down from the plateaux of Abyssinia by the river. The irrigating canal we had crossed a little before drew a mathematically straight line between life and death, as if some invisible barrier existed between the teeming life of the plains and the barren stretches of the desert towards which we were making our way. We advanced in silence, all our attention taken up by selecting flat spots on which to put our feet. I could hear Stavro behind me grumbling and swearing at the rolling rocks on which he twisted his feet.

At last by this gentle slope we arrived at the foot of the cliff which crowned the vast plateaux of the hinterland. I turned round to admire the vast Nile valley, which stretched to the horizon which was blurred by that tenuous mist which rises from all the lands watered by its muddy stream. There it lay, majestic and all-powerful, spreading over the plain in a long curve, as wide as an estuary. Hundreds of white sails, those great triangular sails of the flat boats of the Delta, taut on their lateen yards, were coming up the peaceful course of its yellow waters. Other sails flitted across the fields along the innumerable and invisible canals, looking like butterflies in clover fields. The chalky cliff behind me was all hollowed out by the galleries of disused quarries. The blocks of stones for building the Pyramids were hewn out of this living rock. The same scenery had spread before the eyes of Pharaoh’s slaves as they glided the great cubes of stone down this slope to the brink of the river where they were awaited by great, flat-bottomed boats exactly like those of today. The same north wind had brought them there, and the same tranquil current would take them back as far as Giza.

Suddenly we came on a sort of crevice in the cliff, into which was inserted a narrow ravine. It was so burning hot here that I thought of an oven door, but hardly had we passed the entrance when we came out on a vast sandy circus, covered with harsh, dry grass. A herd of camels was peacefully grazing; we were surprised to see them, yet the camel is such
an extraordinary-looking animal that its presence rather contributed than otherwise to the desolate appearance of this waterless desert. A clump of thorn bushes and of greyish shrubs showed that the scanty rains must linger in the hollow of this basin. Towards this oasis, if I might call it an oasis, Gorgis now walked.

A Bedouin, dressed like those of Upper Egypt, came out of the bushes and strolled tranquilly towards us. He was carrying carelessly on his shoulder a Remington rifle, with the barrel pointing to the ground. He seemed to know my two companions very well, and greeted them with great deference. Then he turned and walked away, motioning to us to follow him. We were approaching a camp. I could see plump, bronze children running about naked, hiding behind the rocks to watch us pass from a safe distance. At last we saw a house, or rather a hut made of planks covered with corrugated iron. All round were the nomads’ dwellings, light, dome-shaped tents made of mats thrown over curved branches. As we came near men came out of these tents with the dazed air of those just awakened from sleep. Probably these Bedouins lived by night and slept all day.

The wooden hut was forty feet long by eighteen wide, and was partitioned off into two rooms, with a small window at each end. There was no furniture, and the floor was of beaten clay. In a corner were a few blackened stones and open tins, which were probably used as pots and pans. A Bedouin brought an old chair and two empty wooden cases, and invited us to sit down. Gorgis manifested considerable impatience, tapped angrily on the ground with his foot and asked in furious tones:

‘Why is Omar not here? He knew very well we were coming this morning.’

‘Be calm, my master, he is coming,’ replied the Bedouin tranquilly, continuing to sweep up the rubbish which littered the ground, with a palm-leaf broom. I noticed how different was the Arabic spoken by these natives from that spoken in Cairo. This was the dialect of Upper Egypt, and I had some trouble in understanding it.

At last Omar appeared, surrounded by a troop of Bedouins. I wondered how so many people could suddenly have sprung up in this seemingly deserted place. He was very tall, like many Egyptians, with very broad, square shoulders. In spite of his slimness he gave an impression of force
and endurance, for he had powerful bones, rather like those of camels. He wore a rich mantle of fine, dark cloth, with very wide sleeves, over a
guellabia
of black-striped yellow silk. He was not more than forty, and had calm, noble and rather haughty features, and very soft brown eyes lengthened by kohl. They were like the eyes of these desert creatures which always seem to keep the melancholy of wide spaces and limitless horizons. His hands were white and delicately shaped, though not small, and they were covered with curious tattooings. His nails and palms were reddened with henna, and on his little finger he wore a silver ring in which was set a stone bigger than a hazel-nut. The blue tattoo marks on his cheeks indicated to which tribe he belonged. He was obviously a chief, whose riches consisted in innumerable flocks and herds on the mountains and plains. Gorgis adopted quite a different attitude to him, and his impatience changed into amiable smiles and words. I was introduced and obliged as a sign of honour to take the only chair.