“The dam,” said Georgiades. “Is it something to do with the dam?”
“Not up here,” Owen objected. “It can’t be, surely.”
The water was coming from the sakiya. It was just reaching the field of cauliflowers. More and more trickles appeared in the channels and in some of them it was now flowing freely.
“Did they walk anywhere?” Georgiades asked Ali’s uncle.
“No, effendi.”
Ali’s uncle seemed daunted by it all. Perhaps it was leaving the city for the great open spaces. But then, Ali’s uncle was easily dauntable.
“I heard them talk of the river,” he volunteered, though, hopefully.
“What did they say?”
“One could travel by river.”
“Who could?”
“I do not know, effendi. I did not hear.”
He had caught the mention of travel by river, though from where and where to and for what reason had passed him by, as did most things in life, Owen uncharitably felt.
He and Georgiades walked down to the water-wheel. A raised, banked-up main channel ran back alongside the path in the general direction of the river. At intervals subsidiary channels took the water off and distributed it through the fields. They could see the water running down the furrows between the plants and suddenly turning the parched soil into soft, fertile mud.
As they neared the river they saw that the water came from the water-wheel. It was a traditional native wooden one, consisting of a heavy horizontal wheel, turned by a buffalo working round it, and connected through cogs to a large vertical wheel at the river’s edge. There were buckets set all ’round the vertical wheel which scooped up the river water as the wheel turned and emptied it into a steep gutter from which it flowed into the distributing channels.
On the top of the buffalo was a small boy.
“That is a big buffalo,” said Georgiades, “for a small boy.”
“It is my father’s buffalo,” the boy said proudly.
“Oh? Then you are not a boy hired for the day but work on the buffalo as your father’s son?”
“That is true,” the boy agreed.
“That is a heavy responsibility for one so young.”
“I am nine,” the boy said.
“Are you?” said Georgiades, affecting surprise. “I would have said thirteen.”
“I am big for my age.”
“That is fine, but it means you get taken for a man when there is work about.”
“I could do a man’s job,” said the boy, “but my father won’t let me. He keeps me on the buffalo.”
“Well, that is important. And hard! I expect you work all day?”
“All day and every day. ”
“And all alone, too. You don’t see many people here.”
“Only the people in the fields.”
“And the occasional stranger.”
“Not many of them.”
“Are there any?”
“There were some the other day. They came like you in an arabeah.”
“And did they come down and talk to you?”
“No. They stayed with the arabeah.”
“It was too hot for them, I expect.”
“It was the afternoon. Still, there was a Sitt with them.”
“A lady? Then she would not want to walk far. I expect she just wanted to see the fields.”
“They are good fields,” said the boy with an air of experience.
“Indeed they are. Lucky the man who owns them. Not your father?”
“No. They belong to Sidky.”
“Does he live in the village?”
“No, no. He’s a rich man. He lives in the city.”
“And doesn’t come down here very often, I expect.”
“He was down here the other day. He came with another man and showed him the fields.”
“They are good fields.”
“Yes. I think the man liked them, because he came again.”
“By himself?”
“No, no. With the others.”
“Others?”
“The man I told you about. There was the Sitt and another man.”
They stood talking with the boy while the buffalo wound ’round and ’round and the sakiya squeaked and the water plopped out from the buckets into the gutter. As the sun began to set, the opal of the sky was reflected in the changing colors of the river, blue then green then yellow then red, and finally white. A man began to come across the fields toward them.
“That is my father,” said the boy.
The man came up, unhitched the buffalo and lifted the boy down. They stood exchanging greetings for a while and then man, boy and buffalo set off back across the fields while Owen and Georgiades went back to the arabeah.
“It is all very beautiful,” said Georgiades, “but I find it hard to believe that Madame Chevenement and Berthelot are interested in taking up market gardening.”
It was only half past three and the terrace was still deserted, but already the keenest vendors were creeping back to take up strategic positions in front of the railings. The choicest positions were those nearest the steps and the vendors here guarded their privileges jealously. Despite the heat, they had already reassumed their pitches but since there were as yet no customers above they had squatted down in the dust and were engaged in desultory conversation.
It was a good moment to catch them. Mahmoud had talked to them all separately, but for that it had been necessary to abstract them from their normal setting and converse in privacy. The artificiality had made them uneasy and he felt they might talk more freely in more natural surroundings. Besides, there were some advantages in them hearing what their neighbors said, as soon became apparent.
Mahmoud was still trying patiently to identify the dragoman who had been on the terrace and soon after he and Owen had joined the squatting circle he brought the topic up. Which of them had the dragoman actually spoken to?
“Farkas,” said the strawberry-seller definitely.
The filthy-postcard-seller at once denied it.
“It wasn’t me,” he said.
“Yes, it was,” the strawberry-seller insisted. “I was hoping his party wanted some strawberries and he was coming to me but he walked right past me. Mush kider — is that not so?” he appealed to the flower-seller beside him.
“No,” said the flower-seller. “He wasn’t coming to you, he was coming to me. I thought perhaps the Sitt wanted some flowers.”
“She wouldn’t have wanted flowers, not if they were going out. She would have had to carry them. On the way in, perhaps.”
“She certainly wouldn’t have wanted strawberries. It would have made her hands too messy and then she would have had to have gone back to her room to wash them.”
“She could have just popped them into her mouth,” said the strawberry-seller.
This kind of batty, circumlocutory conversation ensued whenever you questioned Arab witnesses. When Owen had first come to Egypt it had regularly driven him to fury. It was Garvin, curiously, who had once taken the trouble to explain to him that that was how an Arab conversation worked. On arriving in Egypt and before taking up his duties as Mamur Zapt, Owen had been posted to Alexandria for a spell under Garvin to learn his trade. His duties had involved going round with Garvin to some of the little rural villages along the coast and hearing lawsuits brought by the villagers. Proceedings were always protracted and on one occasion Owen had boiled over.
Afterward Garvin had taken him aside.
“Look,” Garvin had said, “for Arabs, truth is not something you know privately and then describe. It is something you work out together.”
“But, Christ!” said Owen. “If they’re a witness-”
“It’s the same thing. What you saw is ingredients for a picture and it’s not until the ingredients have been put together, and that has to be done socially, that you know what the picture is.”
The apparently circumlocutory nature of the discussion was necessary because it was a way of making sure you had all the pieces of the picture that you wanted to fit together. It also allowed each piece to be weighed and tested against a variety of perspectives so that in the end you got something which everyone could agree was a more or less faithful representation of the facts.