‘Well, I don’t.’
‘Sometimes you seem to care for him,’ said the Pasha’s lady, ‘and sometimes you don’t.’
‘I care for him,’ said the Pasha impatiently. ‘But there are times-’
‘When you forget that you have a son.’
‘I never forget that I have a son,’ said the Pasha. ‘Would that I could! I do not forget. But there are times when other things are more pressing. And this is one of them. I need to speak with you. Without the boy.’
‘What am I to do with him?’
‘How the hell do I know?’ said the Pasha, boiling over. ‘He shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have brought him!’
‘But I have brought him,’ said the Pasha’s lady. ‘What am I to do with him? While we talk?’
‘Let him stay here.’
‘I cannot talk to you in the street! Not about this!’
‘You are talking already.’
‘Not about … what I want to talk about.’ The Pasha’s lady considered. ‘Very well,’ she conceded, ‘he can sit over there, in the square, and watch the trams. And we can talk over here.’
‘Where everyone can hear us?’
‘Where I can keep an eye on him.’
The Pasha gave in. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Then send him over there.’
Karim had been hearing all of this and Mahmoud, watching from outside the carpet shop, where the rolls standing on end provided a screen, saw that he was troubled. He plucked continually at his mother’s arm.
She stroked him gently on the cheek. ‘It will be all right,’ she said. ‘I will not go away. I shall be watching all the time. You just go over there. See — there’s a nice seat! Sit there and watch the trams. It won’t be too long.’
Karim reluctantly obeyed.
‘You shouldn’t have brought him,’ the Pasha repeated.
‘What did you wish to see me about?’
‘This mad prank of yours. Sending the body to me. In a chest.’
‘It is a bride box,’ said the Pasha’s lady. ‘I thought that appropriate.’
‘I have told you: you are still my wife.’
‘It is not that. The body is that of the girl Karim loved.’
‘The girl Karim loved!’
‘And that was her bride box. She brought it with her, thinking she was going to marry him.’
The Pasha seemed to be struck speechless.
‘Now you can see why the box was appropriate,’ said the Pasha’s lady.
‘What have you done?’ cried the Pasha in anguish.
‘I? I have done nothing. It is what you have done. And haven’t done. That is important.’
‘But the girl … How could you do something like this?’
‘It had to be done. It was the only way. He would have gone on loving her otherwise. And she would never have surrendered him.’
‘But …’
‘It had to be. There was no other way.’
He seemed stunned.
‘Down there,’ she said, ‘where there is so much space and the sky, and the sand, and that is all, you see things more clearly. You should come back. It would help you to see things clearly, too.’
‘I wouldn’t have seen them like this! What have you done, you terrible woman?’
‘I have done what I had to do.’
‘The police will track you down. And put you in prison. And then where will Karim be?’
‘They are already knocking on the door,’ said the Pasha’s lady. ‘The Parquet has already been.’
‘But this is a disaster!’
‘For Karim?’ said the Pasha’s lady. ‘Or for you?’
The Pasha put his face in his hands.
The Pasha’s lady regarded him for a moment with satisfaction.
‘What is to be done?’ he said hoarsely.
‘It is not as bad as it seems,’ said the Pasha’s lady. ‘And it is not quite as you think. You have always been ready to believe the worst of me. But it was not I who killed the girl.’
‘Not you?’
‘There are those who serve us loyally. They have an eye to what needs to be done. They are true to our family — yours, as well as mine. They could see that a marriage such as this would do great harm to the family. They decided it could not be.’
‘My people, or yours?’ asked the Pasha.
‘Do not they serve us both?’
‘Who?’
The lady did not reply. She stood there thinking. Once she looked across the square where Karim was watching the trams delightedly. ‘One who wishes you well, and has always wished you and your family well.’
‘He took it upon himself?’
The Pasha’s lady nodded. ‘I had sent the girl home. With her bride box. And on the way he must have decided that she should not come again.’
They remained talking for just a little longer. Once or twice the Pasha again put his head in his hands. If he had been the dominant one before, now it was she. He seemed to dwindle before Mahmoud’s eyes. By the end he was almost in a state of collapse. The Pasha’s lady, on the other hand, seemed to grow visibly. She dominated the exchanges now. Mahmoud could no longer hear what was said but rather thought that all of the lady’s pent-up anger was being poured out on the Pasha’s bowed head. He no longer spoke but listened in silence. At the end he drew himself up and almost tottered away.
The lady, perhaps weakened, too, found a seat and sat down by herself for a little while. Once or twice Karim looked back at her and she waved a hand to him. To show that all was well? Karim was clearly not sure. He kept looking at her and seemed to want to come over to her but then thought better of it and stayed where he was, watching the trams. A row broke out between two of the drivers. Both drivers descended from their trams and for a moment it looked as if they would come to blows. Such incidents were fairly common at Cairo’s crowded streets and no one paid much attention. But the argument was sufficiently fierce as to draw Karim’s attention and perhaps he forgot what had been troubling him before. His father now had gone away and his mother was sitting calmly by herself. Reassured, Karim concentrated on the trams.
Mahmoud wondered whether to carry on as he had intended and speak to the lady. He had read into her letter a possible plea for help. Now he was not so sure. She seemed able to look after herself pretty well. In the end his doubt was resolved for him by the lady catching sight of him and breaking into a welcoming smile. He walked across to her.
‘How nice to see you!’ she said, as if surprised.
‘I got your letters,’ said Mahmoud.
‘Oh?’
It was as if they were of no interest to her now.
‘Letters?’ she said vaguely.
‘Notes, rather. To say that you were coming to Cairo.’
‘Oh?’
Again it was as if she had completely forgotten them.
Mahmoud decided that he had been reading too much into them.
‘I hope you enjoy your trip to Cairo,’ he said. ‘And Karim, too.’
‘Karim, yes,’ said the Pasha’s lady. ‘It is a while since he was last in Cairo and he has forgotten. It is all very exciting for him. But also very confusing. In a little while he will begin to get headaches. A sort of migraine. Then I shall have to take him home.’
Mahmoud muttered something about medication.
The Pasha’s lady smiled. ‘You are a nice man, Mister el Zaki,’ she said, patting him on the knee. ‘And there are not many around.’
She stood up and Karim ran obediently back to her.
Later, he told Owen about it. Especially about the part concerning Suleiman.
‘A cable came in this morning,’ said Owen. ‘They’ve picked up Suleiman and are sending him up to us.’
‘To you?’ asked Mahmoud. It was always a vexed question, this: who really ran the show in such circumstances? The Mamur Zapt or the Parquet? The British or the Egyptians? Usually both sides took care to see that it did not come to a head. The British deferred to the Egyptian authorities, so long as the authorities did what they were told.
Here, the issue was simpler than it usually was. Suleiman had been picked up in the Sudan, which meant that he had been picked up by the British. Egypt had no powers in the Sudan. Which was another thing that rankled.