The Girl in the Nile (5 page)

“Pink shintiyan? That the one?”

“That’s the one.”

“Not come through yet. When did it happen?”

“The night before last. About three miles upstream.”

“She’ll have sunk, then. Otherwise she’d have come through by now.”

Owen looked out along the works. There seemed a lot of water passing through the gaps.

“Could she have gone through and missed you?”

“She could. But most of them finish up against the scaffolding. In the old days before we started building the bridge they used to fetch up on a bend about two miles down. That was better for us because it’s in the next district and meant they had to do the work and not us.”

“Ah, but that meant they missed all the glory, too!”

“I think the average Chief would prefer to do without the glory!”

Owen laughed. “We’ve known a few like that!”

“Yes. We sometimes get the feeling that not all the bodies that come down to us need have done.”

“You think so?”

“Sure of it.”

“It’s important to pick up this one,” said Mahmoud.

“Yes, I’m checking them myself. We’ve had two women through this week. One of them’s old and one of them’s young, but I don’t think the young one could be the one you’re looking for, not unless she changed her trousers on the way down.”

“The trousers is about all we’ve got at the moment. I hope to add some details later. Keep the young one just in case.”

“It’ll be some time before she’s traced and identified anyway. They don’t always come from the city. Sometimes it’s a village upstream.”

“Well, keep her. Just on the off chance.”

“If she’s sunk, what then?” asked Owen.

“Oh, she’ll come up. Gases. In the body. It’ll take a day or two. Then the body comes up and floats on down to us. We get them all in the end.”

“I hope you get this one.”

They pushed off. Their boat was now downwind and they had to tack. The boatman tucked up the skirts of his galabeah, hooked his knees over the gunwale and leaned far back over the side. Owen, more confident of his transport now, trailed a hand over the side and turned his face to catch the breeze. Beside him, Mahmoud, hands clasped behind head, was thinking.

In the bows the boatman’s wife sat muffled from head to foot, invisible behind her veil, anonymous.

Does this girl have a name?” demanded Zeinab.

They were lying on cushions in her
appartement
. Very few single women in Cairo had an
appartement
of their own, but Zeinab was rich enough and imperious enough and independent enough to insist on one.

The richness and imperiousness came from her father, Nuri Pasha, not quite one of the Khedive’s family but certainly one of his confidants, not exactly trusted—the Khedive, wisely, trusted nobody—but regularly called upon when the Khedive was reshuffling the greasy pack of his Ministers. Nuri was one of Egypt’s great landowners and the Khedive considered there was sufficient identity of interest between them for him to be able to use Nuri’s services without fear.

Zeinab was Nuri’s daughter: illegitimate, but that, as he explained, was not his fault. Her mother had been a famous courtesan, doted on by all Cairo but in particular by Nuri, who, though a mature man, had taken the reckless step of proposing that she become his wife and a member of his harem.

Unaccountably, the lady had refused. She was more than willing—since Nuri was handsome as well as rich—to extend him her embraces; but enter his harem? She was a fiercely proud, independent woman and these qualities had passed in more than abundant measure to her daughter.

Nuri had gained his way on one thing. Their child had been acknowledged as his daughter and raised in his house, which gave her all the privileges and benefits of belonging to one of Egypt’s leading families. While, admittedly, these were not normally conspicuous in the case of women, for Zeinab they were substantial.

Like most of the Egyptian upper classes, Nuri was a Francophile. He spoke French by preference, read French books and newspapers and followed French intellectual and cultural fashions rather than Egyptian ones. The culture of educated Egyptians was, anyway, in many respects as much French as it was Egyptian. Mahmoud, for instance, had been educated as a lawyer in the French tradition. The Parquet was French through and through.

Zeinab had been brought up in this culture. Her father, finding in her many of the qualities he had admired in her mother, had given her far greater freedom from the harem than was normal and from childhood she had sat in on the political and intellectual discussions her father had with his cronies. She came to share many of his interests and tastes and as she grew up she became something of a companion to him.

All this made Zeinab an interesting woman but a rather unusual one. Men found her formidable and she advanced into her twenties, long past the usual marrying age, without Nuri having received a suitable offer. He began to think of this as a problem.

It was a problem, however, which Zeinab herself solved. She moved out and set up her own establishment. Nuri, though advanced in his thinking, was rather shocked by this. Shocked but intrigued: was Zeinab taking after her mother?

Zeinab, however, was merely following up some of the ideas she had met in her father’s own circle. Among his friends were some writers and artists who formed a somewhat Bohemian set. Zeinab, who had strong musical interests, found their company congenial and enjoyed their artistic debates. This talk, too, was very much influenced by French fashions and preoccupations; and from it Zeinab acquired the notion that it was possible for a single woman to set up house on her own.

She did this and enjoyed it and gradually her father and his friends came to accept it; indeed, not even, any longer, to notice it. And she was living like this when she met Owen.

The intensity of their relationship surprised them both. Zeinab, alarmed at herself, backed off a little and insisted on maintaining an independent life while she was working out how to handle all this. Owen, equally alarmed, was content to let it rest like that while he tried to see a way through the likely complications. Neither of them was getting very far.

Meanwhile they carried on as they were and that went very well. They met every day, usually in Zeinab’s
appartement
and Zeinab kept a proprietorial eye on what Owen was doing when he was away from her.

“Of course she has a name,” he said. “It’s just that we haven’t found it yet.”

“It was the way you were talking,” said Zeinab.

“Well, it all sounds pretty anonymous, I know—”

“Yes.”

“Until we find out more about her, it’s bound to be.”

“I just ask myself,” said Zeinab, “what kind of woman is likely to be found on Narouz’s dahabeeyah.”

“And what answer do you get?”

“Someone like me.”

“What nonsense! What absolute nonsense!”

It disturbed him.

“Nonsense!” he repeated vehemently.

“It’s got to be someone like me, hasn’t it? It can’t be an ordinary girl from an ordinary family because in Egypt ordinary girls are never allowed to be seen. Not even by their husbands, until after they are married.”

“An ‘ordinary’ girl, as you put it, wouldn’t get anywhere near a son of the Khedive.”

“No, it would have to be someone from a family of rank, wouldn’t it? Like mine?”

“The same thing applies to them. They’re kept out of sight, too. More, even, since they know what the Khedive’s sons are like. I’ve been in Egypt four years and I’ve never seen a Pasha’s wife or daughter.”

“Except me.”

“You’re different. You’re not at all ordinary. In fact,” said Owen, his mind beginning to stray onto a quite different tack, “you’re altogether extraordinary—”

But Zeinab refused to be diverted.

“It would be someone like me,” she said. “Someone whose family is rich enough for her to meet the Khedive. Someone whose father is, well, modern enough not to care. Someone who’s struck out on her own. Someone who’s vulnerable.” Unexpectedly she began to cry.

Owen was taken aback. Zeinab cried frequently at the opera, never, up till now, anywhere else. He took her in his arms.

“For Christ’s sake!” he said. “You don’t even know the girl!”

“I can feel!” sobbed Zeinab. “I can feel!”

“You can get misled by feeling.”

Zeinab pulled herself away. “You don’t have any feeling,” she said, looking at him stormily. This was, however, more like the Zeinab he knew and he felt reassured.

“Aren’t you missing out the most likely possibility?” he said. “That she’s foreign?”

“I thought you said—?”

“It’s what the steersman said. He thought she was different from the other two and they were certainly foreign. Well, she might have been different but still foreign. And isn’t that the most likely thing? You don’t get the Egyptian women on their own either on the Prince’s boat or off it. He’s used to mixing with foreign women. Someone he’s met at Cannes? I’d have thought it was pretty likely. After all, the Khedive himself—”

“Well, of course,” said Zeinab, sniffing, “that’s true.”

“It was the clothes, you see, that made him think she was Egyptian. The shintiyan.”

“
Would
a Frenchwoman wear shintiyan?” asked Zeinab, who herself dressed à la Parisienne. “I certainly wouldn’t.”

“Maybe to please the Prince. Or as a joke or something.” Zeinab thought it over.

“The other two were foreign, weren’t they?”

“Yes. And that’s another thing. My guess is that they were from some cabaret or other. That’s where he might have come across them. You see, you said the girl would have to come from a family of rank. Well, I don’t think girls who let themselves get picked up en masse off the bank to spend a week with a bloke on a dahabeeyah
are
likely to be that high class. Foreign, not too classy, three at a time—that sounds like cabaret to me.”

“No decent Egyptian woman would let herself be subjected to such a thing,” said Zeinab, removing Owen’s hand.

“So,” said Owen, putting it back, “they must either be foreign or—”

“Or what?” asked Zeinab.

“Indecent Egyptian women,” said Owen, putting his other arm round her.

In front of him was a beautiful old building, very like a small mosque with its domes, its façade of red and white stones intermixed, its ornate paneling and intricate arabesques. It was not, however, a mosque but a hammam, a public bathhouse.

The entrance was narrow and below street level. A towel hung over the door.

Owen’s men looked at him inquiringly.

The towel meant that the baths were temporarily occupied by women.

“Leave it,” said Owen resignedly. The men moved on. Owen made a note to return to the hammam later when the towel had been taken down.

It was not, however, a good start.

He was conducting yet another search of the quarter. His informant swore blind that the arms were still there. He had even been able to specify a little more precisely the area where he thought they were concealed. They were, he said, somewhere near the souk.

The souk was not located, as markets usually were, in a square of its own but occupied the space created by a crossroads. Its stalls spread over the whole area; successfully restricting passage in any direction. Fortunately, this far out of town, there were very few vehicles to pass. The occasional horse cart laden with stones, the occasional handcart carrying ice, were the closest approximation. The Souk Al-Gadira existed only for its immediate neighborhood.

The stalls were erected and dismantled every day so there was little likelihood of the arms being hidden beneath them. They were far more likely to be concealed in one of the buildings round about and it was here that Owen was concentrating the search.

They had gone through the buildings when they had searched the area previously but on that occasion, as Owen reminded himself crossly, he had been summoned away in the middle by that foolish District Chief and sent on that wild goose chase down to the river.

There would be no repetition of that today, he told himself grimly. He would make damned sure they stuck with it and did the job properly.

Only it was not quite so straightforward. First, there had been the hammam. And now, at the end of the street, just ahead of him, was a mosque.

Again the men looked at him inquiringly. And again he hesitated.

Even the Mamur Zapt entered mosques on police business with caution. It was so easy for minister and congregation to get excited. The smallest thing would set them going. The sight of a Western face was enough.

Well, he could do something about that. He needn’t go in himself, just send the men in.

Just
send the men in? The police were only slightly more
grata
than himself. They were seen as the agents of either an alien, infidel force (the British) or a dissolute secular power (the Khedive). In either case they were unwelcome. It needed only one irascible minister to take umbrage at some fancied slight or misdemeanor for there to be trouble.

“Leave it,” he said again. If there was trouble he’d have to spend the rest of the day putting it down and wouldn’t be able to get on with the arms search at all.

But this was ridiculous! First, the hammam and now this! This wasn’t a search at all. Suppose the arms were hidden inside? And there would be no coming back to the mosque!

He called the men back.

“You two,” he said, picking on men he had brought with him from headquarters and therefore more experienced, “you go in and walk through, keeping your eyes open. Don’t cause any trouble and don’t insist if they look like objecting. Just see what you can see and come back and tell me.”

The men nodded and went off. After a while they returned. One of them spread his hands, palms upward, and shrugged.

“OK,” said Owen. “Worth a try. Get after the others.”

At least it hadn’t created uproar.

He moved on up the street, or would have moved on if he had been able to. The street was one of those which led into the souk and its lower end was completely blocked by stalls. Regardless of the general press of humanity, a funeral procession was attempting to pass down it from the other end. Processions, like deaths, were extremely common in Cairo and everyone stopped to look, including Owen, who was a little surprised to see a funeral so early in the day. Usually they took place in the evening when it was cooler.

As funerals went, this was a very medium affair. First came the Yemeneeyeh, six poor men, mostly blind, proceeding two and two, and chanting mournfully, “There is no God but God.” Then there were male relations of the deceased, few in this case. Next came four schoolboys, one of them carrying an open copy of the Koran placed upon a kind of platform of palm sticks and covered with an embroidered kerchief. As they walked, they sang: in rather more sprightly tones than the Yemeneeyeh. And then came the bier, its front draped with a shawl to indicate that it carried a woman, which perhaps accounted for the general meagerness of the proceedings.

All the Cairo world loved a good funeral and the bystanders stopped what they were doing, not so much to let the procession pass but to join in the fun. But where were the dervishes, the munshids, with their singing and dancing and flag-waving? There was admittedly a fiki but he was very restrained and seemed anxious to keep himself invisible at the back. This was a poor affair indeed. Even the female mourners, who followed the bier, were few in number and boringly subdued.

Disappointed, the crowd resumed its business. Which, of course, brought the procession to a halt. Owen cursed and tried to wriggle his way round, failed and had to cut across in front of the donkeys laden with bread and water to give to the poor at the tomb. The poor, judging from the size of the loads, would benefit handsomely.

Once past, Owen hurried to catch up with his men. He fell in alongside two of them at the end of the street. They were the two he had talked to on the previous search, the ones who had been taking such pains with the dovecot.

“Found that body yet?” one of them asked.

“No.”

“You won’t, either.”

Owen stepped aside to let a water carrier pass with his heavy bags.

“Why not?” he asked.

“It’s the river. Full of tricks.”

“It’ll come up sometime.”

“Ah yes. But where?”

“Most of them finish up against the bridge these days, apparently.”