The Camel of Destruction (10 page)

‘Exactly!’ cried Nuri, pounding his knee. ‘You’ve described my problem exactly!’

The suffragi, relieved that things were going better, poured them both cups of tea. Owen’s, however, tasted bitter.

‘My pay, you see, as a captain—’

‘Pitiful. I’ve said so to the Khedive himself. Government service is grossly underpaid, I said. It’s putting temptation in their way.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘It was when I had just become a Minister myself. You can’t expect me to become rich on this, I said! But, of course, I hadn’t understood. An old friend took me aside afterwards. My dear chap, he said, you’re thinking about it in quite the wrong way. You’re seeing it, forgive me, rather as a workman does: for so much work one gets so much pay. But that’s not the way to see it all.’

‘No?’

‘No. You should look upon it not as a job but as an investment. It’s not the pay you get—that, forgive me, is rather a low way of seeing it—it’s the use you can make of it. And the joy of a minister’s job is that there’s quite a lot of use you can make of it. If only,’ said Nuri gloomily, ‘I were a minister now!’

‘Yes, but—’

Nuri leaned forward and patted him on the knee.

‘It’s not the pay, dear boy. You’ll never become rich that way. It’s what you make of the job. Think of it as an opportunity. Now, surely, as Mamur Zapt you are extremely well placed—’

‘How did it go?’ asked Zeinab.

‘Not very well,’ Owen admitted. ‘He said he was short of cash himself.’

‘He probably is. It’s those dreadful people on his estate who have planted the wrong seed.’

‘Seed?’ said Owen, sitting up.

Zeinab pulled him down again.

‘For goodness’ sake!’ she said. ‘Now is not the time to take an interest in agriculture.’

Owen allowed himself to be pulled down.

‘I was just thinking,’ he said.

‘You always are. Now stop worrying. I’m sure it will be all right in the end. You must be patient. He really is short of cash.’

‘Yes, but when he’s short he means a million. When I’m short I mean a couple of hundred.’

‘You must try to bridge the gap, darling,’ Zeinab advised. ‘Spend more and then you will be short of a million, too.’

‘With you to help me,’ said Owen, ‘that should be no problem.’

Zeinab wriggled herself into a more comfortable position without opening her eyes.

‘You always seem to be thinking about money these days,’ she complained. ‘Can’t you think about anything else?’

‘As a matter of fact…’ said Owen, easing himself across her.

‘List of members?’ said the Chairman, taken by surprise. ‘Well, I don’t know about that. We’re rather an exclusive body, you know. There are members of the royal family. Prince Fuad, Prince Kamal—I’m sure they wouldn’t wish…’

‘In absolute confidence, of course.’

‘Well, if it’s in confidence, I suppose…’

The Chairman fetched the list. It ran to many pages. ‘For an exclusive body, you have a lot of members,’ Owen observed.

‘The cream,’ said the Chairman, ‘the cream!’

It was, indeed, the elite of Egypt. Royal Family, Ministers, Pashas, Members of the Assembly, senior members of the British Administration, eminent members of the business community—Singleby Stokes, for instance—bankers, diplomats, all were well represented.

Owen was amused to see that even Nuri’s name appeared, although the flowers that Zeinab’s father was interested in gathering were not normally of the horticultural variety. He was, however, assiduous at cultivating old relationships with those about the Khedive, never having quite abandoned hope that one day when the Khedive was constructing a Government he might still remember his old supporter.

There were various other Pashas in the list. Owen wrote down their names.

The Chairman looked worried. ‘I say, old chap—’

‘Just noting the names of fellow enthusiasts,’ said Owen soothingly.

Among them was that of Ali Reza Pasha.

‘Mr. Chairman, I protest!’ said Abdul Aziz Filmi.

‘What, again?’ murmured one of the representatives of the House Finance Committee. He caught his neighbour’s eye and grimaced. The Chairman of the Bank of Egypt grimaced back. Egyptians and British were alike on this.

Paul looked at his watch.

‘If you have to, Mr. Filmi,’ he said politely.

‘I do. I cannot let this discussion proceed further without calling the meeting’s attention to the impact such proposals would have on the fellahin.’

‘We’ve been through all this, Mr. Filmi,’ said the Minister of Finance wearily.

‘But you still haven’t addressed the problem!’ cried Mr. Filmi, pounding his fist upon the table.

The Minister looked at him with distaste.

‘We are not in the Chamber now, Mr. Filmi,’ he said coldly. ‘Can we not dispense with the histrionics?’

‘How else can I break through this wall of indifference? How else can I get you to pay attention to the needs of the people you are supposed to serve?’

‘Offensive!’ said someone on the other side of the room.

‘It will hurt the fellahin a lot more if banks start going under,’ observed one of the foreign bankers.

Mr. Filmi turned on him.

‘I agree. That is why I support the principle of an injection of funds into the banking system. What I am objecting to is the suggestion that existing loans be called in.’

‘But, Mr. Filmi,’ said the banker, ‘the banks are over-lent. If they don’t do something about that it will be no good us injecting more money. It will be pouring good money after bad.’

‘Tighten credit if you must!’ declared Mr. Filmi. ‘But do not do so at the expense of the poorest!’

‘We all have to share in the misery, Mr. Filmi,’ said the Minister, ‘fellahin as well as Pasha.’

‘The burden on the Pasha,’ said Mr. Filmi drily, ‘is rather less.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said the Minister, himself a Pasha.

Owen wondered if he was a member of the Khedivial Agricultural Society. He took the list out of his pocket and studied it surreptitiously. He was.

Mr. Filmi was now putting forward an argument that loans to fellahin should be considered differently.

‘I thought Mr. Filmi was opposed to special treatment for the Agricultural Bank,’ said the Minister of Finance slyly.

‘So I am!’ said Mr. Filmi, stung. ‘That would, indeed, be a case of pouring good money after bad!’

‘The Agricultural Bank? What’s that?’ asked one of the bankers.

‘It’s not a bank in your sense of the word,’ said Paul. ‘It’s a Government Agency.’

The bankers looked doubtful.

‘And under investigation by the Mamur Zapt,’ put in Mr. Filmi.

‘Really?’

The bankers looked even more doubtful.

‘A particular employee,’ said the Minister. ‘Not the bank in general.’

‘How are you getting on?’ asked Mr. Filmi.

‘I’m making progress,’ said Owen.

‘I think we should return to the general issue,’ said Paul, ‘which is the conditions on which our friends overseas would be prepared to make a substantial loan to the Egyptian Government.’

Unfortunately, friends overseas had already, on many occasions, made substantial loans to the Egyptian Government.

The financial history of Egypt for the past thirty years consisted of substantial loans.

Somewhat to Owen’s surprise, the friends seemed prepared to come up with money once again. He was less surprised when the rate of interest was mentioned.

The discussion became technical and his attention wandered. It came back again when he heard roads being mentioned.

‘That would be a good example,’ said the banker. ‘We would always be willing to invest in specific projects. Providing they looked like being profitable, of course.’

‘I don’t see how blasting a road through the middle of Cairo would be profitable,’ objected Paul. ‘Rather the reverse!’

‘There is tremendous potential for development in Cairo,’ said the Minister eagerly, ‘and of course, a prerequisite is the right infrastructure.’

‘Of course!’

The bankers looked impressed.

‘It would cost an arm and a leg,’ said Paul.

‘But think of the jobs it would create!’ said the Minister.

‘Millions!’ said Paul. ‘It would cost millions!’

‘The price of modernization!’ said the Minister.

The bankers looked even more impressed. Even Mr. Filmi seemed sympathetic.

‘The city would explode,’ said Owen harshly.

‘Civil unrest!’ said Paul.

‘Oh, I think that could be contained,’ said the Minister.

The meeting closed soon afterwards. Owen had hoped to have a word with Paul. Instead, he was captured by Mr. Filmi.

‘You must stop it!’ he said.

‘I’ll certainly do my best, but without stiffer planning machinery—’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Mr. Filmi, bewildered.

‘This road. Both roads. The effect on the city—’

Mr. Filmi brushed it aside.

‘I’m all in favour of development,’ he said. ‘Investment. Modernization. That’s what this country needs.’

‘But at the price of—?’

But Mr. Filmi did not want to talk about that.

‘No, no, my dear fellow,’ he said, taking Owen by the arm. ‘It’s this deal with the Agricultural Bank. I understand that it’s going ahead. You must stop it, my dear fellow, you must stop it!’

Owen, however, was less interested in stopping the deal than he was in stopping the road; not so much for æsthetic reasons, persuasive though he had found the arguments of Barclay and Selim, nor out of loyalty to the Widow Shawquat, although he still meant to do what he could for her, but for reasons of state.

He saw the projected road as a major threat to order. The one through the Derb Aiah was bad enough but the one through the Old City was political dynamite. It would make some of the most conservative parts of the population explode in fury.

Any road built between the Bab-el-Futuh, and the Bab-el-Azab would inevitably mean the despoliation of a number of religious sites, including, almost certainly, the demolition of mosques. Some of these were among the most hallowed in the city and he could see no way in which an attempt to demolish them would not be resisted with blood.

Set against the command of religious loyalties, any loyalty the Khedive could call on was infinitesimal. He was seen as a foreigner anyway and, although Turkey was part of Islam, as part of a remote and secular power structure imposed from outside, a view reinforced by the fact that at the time of the nationalist Arabi uprising twenty years before the Khedive had had to call on British bayonets to maintain him in power.

And that was not all of it. Cairo was a city of many different nationalities and diverse religions. The road would also require the destruction of religious buildings other than Moslem ones. Copts, Greeks, Armenians, Montenegrins, Lebanese of all sects would be up in arms, not to mention the Protestants and Catholics.

It wasn’t just one religious war that would be declared on the Khedive, it was dozens. And who would be called on to protect him? The British. The Minister had said unrest would be contained. Owen knew exactly who would be doing the containing.

Paul was working feverishly on the Consul-General and normally could be counted on to persuade him. It might be different this time, though, because of the financial crisis. If the banks were to lend money, they would be more likely to do so if they thought they would make a killing; and a major project of this sort offered opportunity for such a kill.

But while ‘killing’ was for them a metaphor, a businessman’s way of talking, as Zokosis might have said, for Owen it was no metaphor. Killing was real; and therefore something to be avoided if you possibly could.

If anything was to be killed, it was the road; and the time to do that was before it even got started.

When Owen received the message from the Widow Shawquat—it came via the barber, a water-carrier who patrolled the city, his cousin who was an orderly at the Bab-el-Khalk, and a friend who made the tea in Owen’s office, and was delivered orally—that she wished him to meet her sheikh, Owen was at first alarmed and then pleased.

He was at first alarmed because the sheikh would be a religious sheikh and he could see trouble ahead if the road got mixed up with religion. But then, on reflection, he was pleased. Here could be a person who might quite properly lodge an appeal against the
waqf
on the Widow’s behalf.

When he met the sheikh, however, in the dark, airless room the Widow used for reception, he realized that this was out of the question. Anyone more likely to get himself tied up in the coils of Egyptian bureaucracy it was hard to imagine.

He was old and frail and half blind and his mental life was spent in a world different from his. His periods of lucidity enabled him to recognize his flock and give them spiritual counsel: but guidance on more worldly matters was not to be expected.

The Widow fussed over him and bossed him about, as she did all men. Owen could quite see how the sheikh had come to be enlisted on her side, although whether he understood what he was letting himself in for was another matter.

‘The Mamur Zapt, eh? So you’ve got the ear of the Sultan. Well, just watch out!’ he admonished the Widow. ‘That way sin lies.’

The Widow was taken aback.

‘Ask him for favours and he’ll ask you for favours!’

The Widow giggled.

‘Not much hope of that,’ she said.

The sheikh continued to talk of the Sultan. Owen realized after a while that he was harking back to a period even before the Khedives.

He responded gently and sipped his coffee and ate his sweet, sticky cake and wondered how soon he could decently leave.

The sheikh wiped his fingers on his galabeah and brushed the crumbs from his mouth and then said, with a sudden change of tone:

‘Well, what about this
waqf
, then?’

Owen sat up with a jerk.

‘It’s a swindle,’ said the sheikh. ‘The Shawquats have held that benefit for as long as I can remember. And
that
goes back some time. I remember Ali Shawquat’s grandfather— no, it wasn’t his grandfather, it was his
great
—grandfather— no, it wasn’t—’

‘It’s always belonged to us,’ said the Widow hastily, ‘and now it’s been taken away.’

‘It’s got to be given back,’ said the sheikh. ‘It was given for a purpose, and the purpose remains bright even though those who now benefit be dulled.’

The Widow was not sure how to take this.

‘We live in two worlds,’ continued the sheikh. ‘One is the world of time, in which people come and go. The other is a world in which the moral action is eternal. It is not for us to attempt to put limits on it.’

‘Quite right!’ said the Widow. ‘I think.’

‘The recent decision must be reversed!’

‘Yes, but—’

The sheikh banged his stick on the ground.

‘I shall go to the Mufti,’ he announced.

‘God is great!’ cried the Widow, enthusiastic but slightly worried.

‘He is indeed,’ said Owen. ‘But—the Mufti has much to do. I wonder if it is as well to bother him with a thing like this? Directly, I mean?’

The sheikh looked puzzled.

‘What else does one do?’ he asked.

Owen realized that he was back again in that old world in which the only way the lowly could get through to the great was by personal supplication. The only way in which you could get things done—Egypt had had three thousand years of bureaucracy—was by speaking to the boss yourself.

Or through an intermediary. Owen realized that was what the sheikh saw himself as called on to be.

The Widow Shawquat, however, was not one for intermediaries.

‘But, Sheikh,’ she said, ‘you are frail. Can you manage on your own?’

‘It is but the body that is frail,’ said the sheikh, ‘not the spirit.’

‘It is, however, the body that I am worried about.’

The Widow looked at Owen anxiously. He could see what concerned her; not just the chance that the sheikh might collapse but also the not small probability that he might get it wrong.

But here she faced a dilemma. Custom, in a religious matter, precluded personal application by a woman; yet if she left it to someone else, she could not trust them to get it right.

It was probably this that had stopped her from letting the sheikh speak to the Mufti before. He had offered, Owen remembered, previously.

‘I was wondering,’ said the Widow, looking at him tentatively. Then—

‘No!’ he said, realizing what she was thinking.

‘What?’ asked the sheikh, bewildered.

The Widow took him by the arm.

‘How could I let you go on your own, O Sheikh? What would they say of me? “She knew he was weak and frail, feeble and sick—’”

‘I’m not sick!’ protested the sheikh.

“‘—and yet she let him go all that way on his own!”’

‘It’s only just down the road!’

“‘Heartless woman, cruel woman!” That’s what they would say. And they would be right. No,’ she said, shaking her head firmly, ‘I cannot let you do this for me.’

‘Then, then what—?’

‘Alone, that is,’ said the Widow with emphasis. ‘You must have one to support you.’

‘Oh, all right,’ said the sheikh testily, ‘but who?’

The Widow looked at Owen.

‘Would you mind?’ asked Barclay.

Owen would. He felt he had spent enough time on the road already and still to come was the ridiculous visit to the Grand Mufti. He wasn’t really getting anywhere with the Fingari business and ought to give it some attention. Then there was all the regular work which went through his office and which he had been neglecting. And to cap it all, Finance was querying one of his expenses claims.

So he did mind. But Barclay had been helpful to him and Selim seemed a reasonable chap and if they wanted to meet him about something, well, he could afford them a few minutes, he supposed.

They met at an open-air café.

An apéritif?’ suggested Barclay.

He and Owen each ordered a
pastis
. Selim had coffee. He seemed rather nervous today, fidgeting in his seat; although this might have been caused by the proximity of the shoeshine boys, who threatened to pounce at any moment.

Owen poured some water into his glass and watched the mixture cloud over.

‘Well?’ he said.

Barclay signalled to Selim to begin.

‘I’ve spoken to my friends,’ he said.

‘His political friends,’ Barclay put in.

‘Yes?’

‘They weren’t interested,’ said Selim gloomily. ‘They were for the road, if anything.’

‘Progress and development? Open the city up? Modernization?’

‘Yes,’ said Selim, surprised. ‘How did you know?’

‘I got the same story.’

‘It’s ridiculous to equate this with modernization,’ said Barclay. ‘Modernization doesn’t have to mean—’

But Selim, who would normally have followed this hare with alacrity, just looked gloomily at Owen.

‘What do we do now?’ he said.

‘It’s not absolutely certain that it will be agreed. There are powerful voices against it.’

(Paul’s).

‘The trouble is,’ said Barclay, ‘that this time there are financial arguments
for
it.’

‘It must not be decided purely on financial grounds,’ Selim insisted. ‘There are other considerations as well. Æsthetic, human.’

‘They don’t get you far in a place like Cairo, old man,’ said Barclay unhappily.

‘Can’t we rouse public opinion somehow?’ said Selim, addressing himself to Owen.

‘It’ll rouse public opinion all right if the road goes bang through the middle of the Old City,’ said Owen sourly.

Selim gestured impatiently.

‘It will be too late by then. What I wanted to ask you,’ he said to Owen, ‘was how would you feel if I sounded out public opinion in the area? Got a few people together to protest. Peacefully, of course.’

Owen opened his mouth. He was about to say that in his experience public protests in Cairo never ended peacefully, however they might start. In a city with so many divisions smouldering under the surface, religious, ethnic, political, discord on one thing was apt to ignite explosion over other things.

But then he closed his mouth again. One of the things he was always saying to the Consul-General and those in power— the Commander-in-Chief of the Army especially—was that not all protest is disorder. Was not this a case in point?

‘You could always jump on it if things looked like getting out of hand,’ said Barclay, watching him closely.

But could he? Would he be able to limit it if things went wrong? Experience shouted no. Once these things started you could never isolate them. People ran in from all sides to leap on the bandwagon and tilt it their way.

‘If I could be sure other people wouldn’t use it,’ said Owen. ’

‘I will do my best to see they don’t,’ said Selim.

‘I know you will. But…’

The voice of experience was very loud in his ear.

‘You see,’ said Selim worriedly, ‘I feel that ordinary people should have a voice in these things.’

‘The people in the Derb Aiah,’ said Owen tartly, thinking of the barber and the Widow Shawquat, ‘have got plenty of voices.’ He stopped and looked at Selim.

‘I could put you in touch with a few,’ he said.

The good thing about a
pastis
is that it lasts a long time. Still more, two, or three, and they were still sitting there an hour later. By then their conversation had moved to other things.

‘The thing that puzzles me,’ said Owen, ‘is why a developer should start at the Derb Aiah. It isn’t even the road that’s going to be built first. You’d have thought he’d have started with that one.’

‘But he
has
,’ said Selim, sitting up. ‘You remember that Bab-el-Azab business?’ he said to Barclay. ‘Looking back, I can see now this would have been part of it.’

‘What business is this?’ asked Owen.

‘Oh, it was one of those commissions that always irritates you if you’re an architect. I was asked to do some drawings for a big project down by the Bab-el-Azab. I put a lot of work in. I was paid all right, but the drawings were never used. They were just there to accompany the planning application.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing happened. That’s just the point. It wasn’t meant to happen. The land is standing there idle. Waiting, I now see, for the road.’

He turned to Barclay.

‘That was how I first came across Fingari. He was handling the application for the Ministry. It was when he was still at Public Works. I wasn’t too pleased with him, actually.’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh, he just messed around, delayed things. He didn’t ask the right questions and then he approved the thing on the nod.’

‘That was poor,’ said Barclay. ‘I didn’t realize he was like that. Of course, I only knew him when he was on the finance side.’

‘This was before then. He moved to accounts after.’

‘Does the name Tufa mean anything to you?’ asked Owen.

They both shook their heads.

‘Or the name Jabir?’

‘Jabir?’ said Selim thoughtfully. ‘Wasn’t he something to do with a bank? I feel I may have come across him.’

‘At the time of the Bab-el-Azab?’

‘Perhaps. I don’t remember now. I went to see the Fingaris the other day,’ he said to Barclay, ‘after Captain Owen told me.’

‘Did you meet Aisha?’ asked Owen.

Selim blushed.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘as a matter of fact I did.’

Georgiades stopped in mock astonishment as he entered the office.