Perhaps I am being unfair to the oasis. Mahmoud's Mahmoud and he'll never change. Or, as is his wont, he changes all the time from mood to mood, drinking the alcohol that his religion forbids him and attending the Friday prayer in the mosque as a social obligation, so that he won't lose people's respect, though at the same time I see him some evenings jump out of bed in the darkness, wash and then, weeping, devote himself wholeheartedly to lengthy prayer. This doesn't happen often and makes me very surprised. I don't know whether to feel pity for him or to laugh at him. But I do ask myself, 'What does Mahmoud really believe?' And what do I believe too? I gave up thinking about that long ago. I no longer go to church and I no longer pray on my own. Perhaps I believe that the Divinity will reveal Himself to me one day, but the subject no longer bothers me.
I happened to glance at the children playing. How comfortable to be a child! How comfortable to be ignorant! The boys had dug channels in the ground and were pouring water into them and putting small green twigs along the length of them so that they could irrigate gardens like those of their fathers. The most important thing, though, was that they weren't forgetting to build high walls of sand around their gardens. They had been taught about the walls since they were little. The girls were playing on their own far from the boys. More walls!
I love, though, the sight of the little girls at play. The only place I see cheerful colours is in their long-sleeved embroidered dresses. I would also love to know how the girls make those long thin braids that frame their heads like decorated crowns. Who, though, will show me? Their mothers? They travel on the road only in groups going to funerals or weddings, and all that one can see of them is their wide blue cloaks -
dumb lumps, moving slowly and silently like a warning of ill tidings, so that I want to scream when I see them, 'Where are the people?'
Eventually I got up, feeling giddy from the sun in which I'd been sitting too long, and I had to climb the remaining steps slowly and carefully.
The hot, dark house was much better. I closed the door and was looking forward to taking a cold bath, stretching myself out on the bed, and chasing away all thought — of Mahmoud, Alexander, the sheikhs, the women, the children and the whole oasis — and then sleeping a dreamless sleep, but before I could enter the bathroom I heard rapid knocks in quick succession on the door.
Who could it be? No one knocked on our door, and these weren't the familiar knocks that Mahmoud would make before inserting the key in the lock.
Who could it be?
'Who is it?' I asked fearfully. 'Who is it?'
A tense voice, sounding as though the speaker's mouth were pressed close to the door, responded, 'Maleeka!'
11. Mahmoud
As though I need more problems!
What's this business about Fiona coming, in the midst of this oppressive atmosphere in which we're living? I hope my letter reaches Alexandria before she arrives on her steamer and before she makes up her mind to come to Siwa. She may be insane, but she won't find a caravan guide insane enough to agree to bring her here unaccompanied. The true problem, though, is that she may actually find someone to agree, and have things end in catastrophe. I'll be the one held responsible, naturally. I'll have to protect her, when I don't even know how to protect Catherine or myself.
I looked out of my office at the forecourt of the station, where crouches the great cannon that the army left behind. I think it's wonderful! A short gun mounted on two wooden wheels like those of a horse-drawn cart. Of what use is it here, in the absence of any soldiers trained in how to fire artillery? I imagine they left it as a reminder of the awe-inspiring dignity of the state. How we need that dignity now!
The oasis is seething. Every day quarrels and protests from the families.
I returned to sit at my desk with the latest correspondence from the ministry before me. Reproaches, reproaches, reproaches. Then advice on how to do things. I am to use determination and strength with the native population because leniency will not work, as experience has demonstrated. Excellent, my dear ministry, but where are the additional troops and weaponry?
Sergeant Ibraheem, who knew the oasis before me, also gives me his advice: I have to do as my predecessors did and select some of those who were refusing to pay and flog them in the forecourt of the station, or imprison them along with their families. This would be a lesson to the rest. One day, I said, 'Ibraheem, those people saved your life. Does it really please you to see them being treated like that?' 'No, Excellency, it doesn't please me, but what else can one do? We and they both belong to the government and the government shows mercy to none until it gets what it wants. You may excuse them, but then it will send a new military expedition, which will not be content with flogging and imprisonment. It's the lesser of two evils.'
I couldn't argue with Ibraheem's logic. I proposed to him, when he was back on his feet, that I should send him back to the Protected City and ask Saeed Bey to have him pensioned. I thought I was helping him, but a sad look appeared in his eyes and it seemed as though he was about to cry as he said, 'I can still serve Your Excellency with my limp.'
I asked him in amazement, 'When did I ever charge you with anything that was beyond your powers to perform, Ibraheem?'
'Right now, Excellency,' he said, 'it is beyond my powers to return to Cairo. I need the money I'm putting aside here. I have a pack of children to look after in the village. Saeed Bey, God protect him, knows my case. He told me, "Go with His Excellency the district commissioner. You'll get a raise there and you may be able to save something." He knows my situation because he's from my village and he's the head of our Sufi order and one of the righteous. He likes to help people. He saw how things were with me when they pensioned me off from the army that they disbanded after the British war. The children and I were starving, and if it hadn't been for Saeed Bey using his good offices to get me a job in the police, I'd have been done for, and the children along with me.'
'But I'm thinking now about your interests and your health after the accident.'
'The accident was God's doing. It might have hit you, God forbid, or I might have died, but God, glory be to Him, granted me a new life. So don't deprive me, Excellency, of the chance to benefit from it.'
'As you wish, Ibraheem,' I said.
To myself I said, 'Maybe I wanted him to go away so that I could forget once more the moment of ignominy that he never noticed. It's better, though, that he remain to remind me of it. There's no new life left for me to flee to.'
I did not, however, take his advice about flogging and imprisoning the local population. I went with Sheikh Sabir to meet the agwad of the families that were refusing to pay. I tried to take advantage of the good feeling that followed my 'heroic act' in saving their son, tried to convince them that it was in their interest to pay so that the government wouldn't punish them as it always had. Some responded with words of anger and protest at the excessive demands of the government and others replied with sweet words, but payment continued to be delayed.
It was my counsellor Ibraheem too who drew my attention to the fact that most of the families whom Sheikh Sabir complained were not paying were Westerners. I said, 'Perhaps he's better at persuading his own clan of the Easterners,' but Ibraheem replied, 'God only knows, but I don't see many Easterners paying.'
On my way home from the station I was thinking, 'What is Sheikh Sabir trying to get? If what Ibraheem is hinting at is true, he wants to bring about the downfall of the Westerners, but the government cares only that the taxes are collected, and if it decides to send a military expedition, as usual, it won't discriminate between Easterners and Westerners. He's too intelligent not to know that, so what does he want? Anyway, it doesn't matter.'