“And you think there could be a-a Wekil on the hotel staff?”
“I don’t think we have to assume that there’s necessarily any Senussi connection at all, Miss Colthorpe Hartley.”
“Quite,” said Naylor, remembering that he was not supposed to be alarming the civilians. “Quite so. You mustn’t be alarmed, Lucy. The Army is here to protect you.”
“If the Army is all like you, Gerald, dear,” said Lucy, “I am sure I feel greatly encouraged.”
There were fourteen for dinner at the Charges. There were two couples from the French consulate, another couple from the Italian, Owen and Zeinab, Madame Moulin and the Charge, a Syrian businessman and his wife, who hardly said anything the whole evening, and a visiting American lady who spoke a great deal, which served Paul right, who was supposed to be looking after her.
Madame Moulin had taken a fancy to Zeinab and after dinner motioned to her to come and sit down on the chaise longue beside her. The Charge had gone Arab to the extent of having dispensed with chairs and the guests sat around on cushions. In deference to senior visitors, however, which would shortly include his mother, who was, he informed Owen, very demanding, he had acquired a low chaise longue. Zeinab swept elegantly across the room and soon she and Madame Moulin were chatting happily away.
French was, actually, the language Zeinab naturally spoke. The Egyptian upper class was thoroughly French in style. The children grew up speaking French and went to French schools; the women took their fashions direct from Paris; the men used French rather than Arabic in their normal intercourse at work. It was customary for wealthy Egyptian families to spend some part of each year in France, either on the Riviera or, more often, since Egyptians were unimpressed by mere sunshine, in Paris. They read French newspapers, went to the French theater, enjoyed French music (not Arabic) and Italian opera, collected French paintings.
They also brought back to Cairo a taste for French-style conversation and the level of intellectual discussion was much higher among educated Cairenes than it was in the expatriate communities. The bright young men around the Consul-General and the Sirdar were much more at home in these French-speaking native Egyptian circles than they were among the stolid English. Paul was often in despair after another dour evening with the British elite and greatly preferred the company he met at Samira’s. The only drawback was that even at the most elevated levels you were unlikely to meet women on equal terms. The Ministers all preserved their harems. Even a person as free-thinking as Nuri Pasha, Zeinab’s father, would never think of inviting his wife or wives to a gathering such as the present one. It was only in circles where there was a combination of wealthy, relative youth, and a slight Bohemian flavor that women would be present who were at all emancipated.
Zeinab, who was as strong-willed as her father and as independent as her mother, a famous courtesan who had rejected Nuri’s itself emancipated proposition of a formal place in the harem, found only a few circles in which she was acceptable, so she rather enjoyed social occasions like the present one.
Madame Moulin, whose shoulders bore, though at a certain remove, some of the burden of the French Presidential mantle, was glad of the opportunity to talk to one of the daughters of France’s dominion abroad. She still considered Egypt part of that dominion, believing the present to be merely a temporary hiccup in the natural process of historical continuity. As with many French people, her imperialism took a cultural form and she was delighted to find so striking an example of exported French culture as Zeinab. Indeed, she was a little daunted, for Zeinab was more Parisian than she was. Her clothes rather exposed the provincial character of Madame Moulin’s own dress and they were worn with an elegance which, Madame Moulin assured her, could be found only in Paris.
Zeinab appeared to lap this up, though that could well have been just politeness, for Zeinab took all this pretty much for granted. She was, however, intrigued by Madame Moulin’s description of domestic Provencal life, which seemed to her as exotic and, it must be confessed, unsophisticated as that of the Shilluk tribes in the furthermost reaches of the Sudan.
After a while Madame Moulin beckoned Owen over.
“You have a beautiful fiancee,” she informed him.
Taken by surprise at this sudden formalization of their relationship, he found himself falling back on the Charge’s “Naturally. Naturally.” He stole a glance at Zeinab’s face. It was expressionless.
“I certainly think so,” he said.
The French made much less fuss about the nature of relationships, whether formal or informal, than the English did. It was part of their general belief that whoever shared the French culture was French. It was quite all right, therefore, for a white to marry a black, or, in this case, a brown a brown.
“What is important,” declared Madame Moulin, “is character.”
Zeinab, puzzled, was half inclined to take this as a personal reflection.
The Charge, overhearing, thought that Madame Moulin was getting at him again.
She was, however, thinking about the unfortunate Berthelot.
“He should have been in the Army,” she said, looking at Owen. “It would have made a man of him.”
Now it was Owen’s turn to feel uncomfortable.
“ Comment? ” said Zeinab, at a loss.
“Berthelot!” said Madame Moulin firmly. “This gambling of his. It is weakness of character. It runs in the family. On Moulin’s side. How many times have I told Moulin not to encourage him! But he took no notice. I told him again last year when Berthelot came. ‘To go is to encourage him,’ I said. But go he would.”
“To Cairo?” Owen hazarded.
“No, no!” said Madame Moulin impatiently. “To Cannes. Last year. When Berthelot came. He wanted Moulin to go back with him. ‘At your age!’ I told Moulin. ‘You ought to know better.’ ”
“Monsieur Moulin was going there to play?”
“What else does one go to Cannes for?” asked Madame Moulin scornfully.
Nikos knocked on the door discreetly and stuck his head in.
“He’s here now,” he said.
“OK, show him in.”
A stocky, gray-haired figure in a white galabeah but without either turban or fez came into the room. He was carrying a skullcap, which he fingered uneasily.
“Greetings, Sidky,” said Owen.
The man looked uneasy at this familiarity with his name but responded with the usual courtesies. Nikos took up position against the wall, from where he could see the man’s face. It was Nikos who had found out the details.
Owen motioned Sidky to a chair, on which he perched uncertainly, as if the object and situation were new to him.
“You have good fields, Sidky. What crops! Peas, beans, cauliflowers, pumpkins, mangoes, figs! And the watermelons! I have never seen such big ones.”
“The earth is good,” said Sidky modestly.
“It is good because it is well-watered.”
“Mother Nile has been kind to us.”
“Such a plot must be highly sought after. Was it always in your family?”
“Since my great-grandfather’s time. The plots were small then. There was not much on that side of the river then- just the fields along the river and around the villages.”
“The other water that builds a plot is the sweat of the men that work it. For many years now it has been your family’s sweat that has watered the fields.”
“True,” assented Sidky.
“Then why do you wish to sell your land now, Sidky? It is good land and you are not a poor man.”
Sidky seemed troubled. He stared at the ground and fumbled with his skullcap. After a while he raised his head and looked at Owen.
“It is good land,” he said, “and my family’s land. I had not thought of selling it. But one came to me and said, ‘That is good land and I will pay you well for it, Sidky.’ ‘That may be,’ said I, ‘but you will not pay me what the land is worth to me.’ ‘I wouldn’t be so sure, Sidky,’ the man said; and he named a figure which took my breath away.”