The Men Behind (6 page)

“I am looking for Ali,” he said.

The group exchanged glances and then one of them got up, touched Owen on the arm, and led him off to one side of the square.

Ali was sitting in the dust with his back against a wall, his eyes staring unseeingly before him. By his knee there was a bowl of food, untouched.

“He is not well,” said the man who had brought Owen over. “He may not hear you.”

Owen dropped into a squat.

“Ali,” he said softly. “Ali, do you remember me?”

Ali gave no sign of having heard.

“I was with Deesa, if you remember. That day.”

Ali stirred. “I remember,” he said.

“You helped me that day,” Owen said. “You told me there were two inside.”

“Yes,” said Ali. “There were two.”

“Can you help me some more? Just before it happened, did anyone throw anything?”

“I cannot remember.”

“Into the café? And run away, perhaps?”

Ali frowned. “I cannot remember,” he said. “There was a mighty wind. It threw me to the ground. My head aches.”

“Just before the mighty wind. Did anyone throw anything?”

Ali looked puzzled. “I do not understand,” he said. “Why should anyone throw anything?” He put his head in his hands and rocked to and fro. “I do not understand,” he said. “I do not understand anything.”

“He is sick,” whispered the man who had brought Owen.

“It is the shock,” said Owen. “Get him to the English hakim at the hospital. Tell him the Mamur Zapt sends him.”

“I will take him,” said the man.

Ali had stopped rocking.

“Ali,” said Owen. “I shall ask you only one more thing. Then you are to go to the English hakim and he will make you better. That morning, when it happened, there were two inside. But had there been others? Had others come and gone that morning?”

“My head aches.”

“Try,” said Owen. “Try to remember, Ali.”

Ali put his head on his hands again and frowned with concentration. Some inner pain made him wince and close his eyes.

“I am trying,” he said. “I am trying to remember.”

“Good. That morning. Before. Were there others?”

Ali bowed his head in concentration.

“Yes,” he said suddenly. “There were others.”

“Many? Do you remember them?”

“Not many.”

Ali’s head came up. “I do not remember them,” he whispered. “I was working.”

“But you saw them?”

“I cannot remember.”

“Can you remember one of them? One I could ask about the others?”

Ali frowned with concentration. Suddenly he burst into tears.

Owen managed to find a small boy who knew the way. The boy took him down a dark alleyway which opened out into a small courtyard completely enclosed by crumbling blocks of flats. There was a pump in the middle of the courtyard round which small children were playing. A strong smell of fried onions came from one of the houses.

A man in a galabeah and skullcap came out of the house. It was the sharp-faced workman who had organized things at the scene of the bombing. He greeted Owen politely and led him inside. In an inner room a woman was busy cooking.

There were no chairs but the man produced a worn leather cushion for Owen to sit on. He himself sat on the bare floor.

The floor was clean, which was not always the case in the houses of the poor. But then, as poor went, perhaps this man was not so very poor. The flat seemed to have at least two rooms and the furnishings, though sparse, were of good quality and well looked after.

A woman came in from the other room and placed little dishes of olives beside them. She wore her veil over her face but only over half her face. Intelligent, interested eyes regarded Owen curiously. She observed the proper forms but there was an independence about her which went with that of her husband.

The husband’s name was Ibrahim and he was a mechanic; one of a new breed of workman which was growing up in the city. He worked at the transport depot repairing trams. It was a skilled job and he received good wages.

“I know you, of course,” he said to Owen. “I saw you the other day. You are the Mamur Zapt.”

Owen bowed his head in acknowledgment.

“And I know you,” he said. “It was easy to find your house. Everyone knows Ibrahim and speaks well of him.”

Deliberately he spoke loudly enough for the wife to hear in the other room.

Ibrahim now inclined his head.

“We have been here a long time,” he said.

“I would like to ask you some questions. But first I wish to thank you for all you did that day.”

“It was nothing. Who would not have wished to help? I was there first, that was all.”

“Not all. Not all, by any means. But tell me, how was it you came to be there first?”

“I was passing when it happened. I had just come into the square when I was struck by a puff of wind. It was like a blow in the face. I stopped in surprise and then there was a great roar and the house began to crumble. Ali was standing in the doorway and he was thrown forward. He was on hands and knees in the street and great stones were bounding all over the square. I saw a man struck, a water-carrier, I think, but then there was dust everywhere, it was like a haboob, and I couldn’t see anything. When the dust cleared there was just the great pile of rubble where the café had been and I ran forward in case people lay buried.”

“That was brave of you and quick. For the rubble would have been unstable and when such things happen one is stunned for a time.”

“Well,” said Ibrahim modestly. “I don’t know about quick. But the rubble was certainly unstable. As I reached it, it was still moving. Then it seemed to collapse and steady.”

“Were there any cries?”

“From inside? No. I think it happened too suddenly. The boys were killed at once. But sometimes people are trapped in spaces where they can breathe and if you get to them quickly they can be pulled out alive. I have helped before when a house has fallen. It is not uncommon in Cairo—it is the way the houses are built. I sometimes fear about this one. That is why, when we have saved enough, we shall move to another. Also we shall want a bigger house for our children.”

Owen looked around.

“You have good children,” he said. “They are very quiet. Or are they playing outside by the pump?”

“If they are still playing,” said Ibrahim, “it is inside. For as yet they are still in my wife’s stomach.”

There was a stifled laugh from the other room.

“God grant you a fine boy.”

“A boy first. But then I would like a girl to help her mother.”

This too was unusual. In most families girls were unsought for, if accepted when they arrived.

“One first, then the other. Not both together,” said Owen. Again there was a laugh from the other room. Something Ibrahim had said came back to him.

“You said that Ali was standing in the doorway of the café when you came into the square?”

“That is so.”

“Are you sure?”

Ibrahim thought for a moment.

“Yes,” he said.

“And then, almost at the same moment, there was the explosion?”

“Yes.”

“Was there anyone else by the door?”

Again Ibrahim thought.

“No,” he said.

“Did you see anyone running away?”

“No.” Ibrahim looked at Owen. “I do not think anyone would have thrown anything,” he said, “if that’s what you’re asking. They would have had to have thrown it in through the doorway and I do not think Ali would have been standing there so calmly if they had.”

“In that case it must have been left there beforehand. I have spoken with Ali. He says that there had been people in the café earlier that morning.”

“There is always somebody in there.”

“The trouble is Ali can’t remember who it was.”

“The students will know.”

“It might not have been students.”

“It usually is. It’s mostly students who use that café.” There was a wail from outside in the courtyard. Ibrahim’s wife stuck her head into the room and said something to him. Ibrahim half started to get up, then stopped.

“It is the pump,” he said. “It has got stuck again. Someone must have jammed it.”

“Let me not hinder a man who is called on for help,” said Owen politely, and stood up.

“The fact is, they’re always calling on me,” said Ibrahim.

They went out into the courtyard. It took Ibrahim only a moment to strip the pump down.

“I tried to do that, Ibrahim,” said one of the boys tearfully, “but when I put it back together again it wouldn’t work.”

“That is because you put this bit back the wrong way round. Otherwise it would have.”

He showed the boy and they put it back together.

“You can be the first to try it,” said Ibrahim.

There was a gush of water from the spout and a cry of triumph went up from the assembled children. Within a moment they were all playing happily again.

“The young are God’s gift,” said Ibrahim, watching them.

“Who, then, would wish to harm them?” asked Owen.

“You are thinking of the students?”

“Yes.”

Ibrahim hesitated.

“I have asked myself that,” he said. “I said to myself: who could do such a terrible thing.”

“And did you find an answer?”

“Yes. Other students.”

“Other students?” said Owen, taken by surprise.

“Yes. For they were too young to have other enemies.”

Owen did not reply at once. He and Ibrahim began walking slowly across the courtyard towards the exit.

“If it was a quarrel,” said Owen, “then it was a terrible revenge.”

Ibrahim spread his hands. “The young are immoderate in their hates,” he said, “as in their loves.”

“I still find it hard to understand,” said Owen. “Revenge on an individual, yes. But this would have blown up everyone in the café!”

“I wondered,” said Ibrahim diffidently, “if it might be one Society lifting its hand against another.”

Owen stopped in his tracks.

“Was it a café used by Societies?”

Ibrahim shrugged.

“I do not know,” he said. “But where there are students, there are Societies. I don’t know what’s come over them these days.” He looked back at the pump and at the children playing. “We could do with more good workmen,” he said, “and fewer Societies.”

“I hardly knew them,” said Deesa. “Of course, I had seen them, often. They came most days and they always sat in the same place, in the back room. But they didn’t join in much. You know, if there was a general argument they didn’t say anything. They kept themselves to themselves. We thought they were rather dull. You know, typical engineering students.”

Owen picked up Deesa at the Medical School after morning lectures and they had gone on to a café. Deliberately Owen had chosen one some distance from the Schools so that there would be less likelihood of interruption; and it was not a student café.

He did not think Deesa would mind being seen talking to the Mamur Zapt, but in the tricky world of student politics, especially just at that time, such conversations were liable to be misinterpreted.

Deesa had impressed him at the scene of the bombing and he had made a mental note to talk to him again. When he had approached him, Deesa had agreed readily enough. “Though there won’t be much I’ll be able to tell you,” he had warned. “I wasn’t even in the café that morning. I was just passing.”

In fact, Deesa had been the first person Owen had talked to who had been in the habit of using the café, and, as a student, the perspective he afforded was doubly useful.

“Why did they come to Ali’s café anyway?” asked Owen. “It’s quite a distance from the Engineering School.”

“There’s a lot of crossing over,” Deesa said. “Take me. What was I doing at Ali’s? I’m a medical student. Well, I’ve got friends at the Law School and they often go to Ali’s—it’s very handy for them—and if I want to see them, I know I’ve a good chance of finding them there.”

“Yes, but you said these two didn’t mix in much. Did they have any friends? Who came in the café, I mean?”

“I can’t say I ever noticed,” Deesa admitted. “If they did have any friends, they were as quiet as themselves. Anyway, that might not have been the reason for their coming to Ali’s. They might have come for the opposite reason—to get away from other Engineering students. I sometimes feel like that,” said Deesa, laughing.

“What did they do in the café?”

“Do? Drink coffee, talk, read. They used to read a lot. They brought their books with them. They used to go through them together.”

“What sort of books?”

“I don’t really know. Engineering books, I suppose. Now I come to think of it,” said Deesa, “I did once see one of their books. We were at the next table. It had a lot of drawings in it, diagrams, that sort of thing.”

“It seems very sad,” said Owen. “Ordinary students, getting on with their work. And then to die like this!”

“I know,” said Deesa. “We’re all very upset.”

What Deesa had told him tallied with what he had already heard. The two students had been in their second year. They had completed their first year successfully, though without being outstanding in any way. Their teachers remembered them as being very quiet. Both had come up from the country, though from different parts, and had been overawed at first by life in the city. Perhaps that was what had drawn them together, for the staff remembered them as inseparable from the first.

Owen had not yet had time to look into their families. If they were from the country it was unlikely that they were the children of the professional families whose offspring filled most of the Higher Schools. Very few professionals were prepared to work for long in country districts.

More probably they were here by virtue of the patronage of some local Pasha, exercised as the consequence of some operation of the intricate network of favor and obligation that bound Egyptian society together.

Someone would miss them, though. Some uncomprehending family in Upper Egypt would have learned by now and would be grieving.

“What sort of café was Ali’s?” asked Owen.

“It was all right. Nothing special. It was handy for the law students, that was all.”

“What about Ali himself?”