Salah was waiting for him with outstretched hand, some chairs in the shade and a flask of rather good coffee.
‘Yes, I’ve got to see him,’ he said. ‘They’re always breaking out. I know that this time there was an excuse-the wind blew down part of the fencing-but really, we can’t go on like this. Suppose a stray one frightened the horses? During a race? I mean, the racing is about to start, and there’ll be a lot of money riding on the horses, and you just can’t have the whole thing being interrupted by ostriches! We’d become a laughing stock!’
‘Does it happen that often?’
‘Oh yes. There was one the other day-you saw it, I believe. Malik tried to shoot it. It would have been a good thing if he had. But he had bad luck, I understand. No, they’re breaking out all the time. There was another one two or three days before, caused a lot of damage.’
‘Well, I suppose it’s all part of the mamur’s job. At Heliopolis, at any rate.’
Salah laughed.
‘Heliopolis is a bit different from the usual district. I quite like it, though. The Syndicate’s good to work with. They get on and do things, and that’s what this country needs.’
He looked sideways at Owen.
‘I’m quite a Nationalist, you know. Not a Party member, of course. I wouldn’t go as far as that. That was what you wanted to talk to me about, wasn’t it?’
Owen nodded.
‘The Syndicate said that it had evidence that some of the workforce were professional agitators. I just wondered how reliable that evidence was.’
‘Pretty reliable. It asked me to do a bit of digging, in my spare time. That was before I took up the post here. I checked on the backgrounds of some of the men they mentioned.’
‘The man I am interested in is named Wahid. He works in the track-laying gang.’
‘I know the man. Yes, he was one of them. I can tell you quite a lot about him. He was one of those who failed the secondary certificate so he couldn’t go on to one of the higher colleges. I think he always felt bitter about that, I think that may explain-Anyway, he’d failed and that was that. He had to go into an office as a junior effendi. He went into Public Works.’
‘Not Railways?’
‘No, no. This was some time ago, five or six years ago. And he went in as an effendi, not as a labourer. He stayed there for about three years and became increasingly dissatisfied. He wasn’t getting anywhere, or, at least, not as far as he thought he ought to be getting and he put it down to bias. Anyway, one day, after an argument, he walked out. There’s a gap in the record after this. He appears to have done a number of odd jobs, some of them possibly in the docks, for the next time we heard of him, which is when he applied for a job with the electric railway, he produced a reference from a warehouse at Bulak.’
Salah looked at Owen.
‘The reference was false. When I checked at the warehouse they’d never heard of him.’
‘The company didn’t check at the time?’
‘They didn’t bother. He seemed the sort of man they wanted-experience of hard labour, shifting sacks of grain, that sort of thing.’
‘Why did you check the references?’
Salah stared at him.
‘Why did I check the references?’
‘Him particularly.’
‘He was one of several. The company asked me-’
‘They picked him out? Why was that, I wonder?’
‘Because he was difficult, I suppose.’
‘I can understand that. But that doesn’t necessarily make him a Nationalist. I’m still looking for evidence of a Nationalist connection.’
‘There’s plenty of that. He’s been seen at Nationalist meetings.’
‘So have half the workforce, I imagine.’
‘Playing an active part.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Distributing leaflets.’
‘That’s more like it. But it hardly makes him a professional agitator.’
‘Have you heard him talking to his gang? He’s always stirring up trouble!’
‘I’ve no doubt about that. But professional!? Paid?’
‘There’s no direct evidence. But-’
Owen was silent. He thought it very likely that Wahid was a Nationalist. He was pretty sure, from what the men had said, that he tried to raise them to action in pursuit of their grievances. But that didn’t make him a planted agitator.
‘I’d need more evidence of a direct Party connection,’ he said, ‘before I could be sure that the Nationalists were behind this.’
‘There is evidence,’ Salah insisted.
‘Can you produce it?’
‘You will have it,’ promised Salah.
Sand had drifted against the fences of the pens, in several places bending them over. Men were working on them to repair them. The ostriches were huddled on the far side of the pens.
The old Arab, Zaghlul, whom Owen had seen on the day of the ostrich hunt, was overseeing the work.
‘Yes,’ he said impatiently, ‘the fences were damaged. What do you expect? Think the sand’s going to miss me out?’
‘The fences need to be kept in good order,’ said Salah sternly. ‘Things are not like they used to be!’
‘What do you think I’m doing to the fences? And I know things are not the way they used to be; they’re a great deal worse!’
‘We can’t have these birds getting out.’
‘Do you think I want them to get out? Each one costs me a packet, I can tell you. That’s money walking away, that is. And if they don’t get away altogether, some fool tries to shoot them!’
‘You go easy on the “fools”. We’re talking Pashas here!’
‘What do I care about Pashas? Or the Khedive either. Put a bullet in my birds and I’ll put a bullet in them!’
‘These birds of yours are nothing but a nuisance. They frighten the horses. Do you know what a racehorse costs?’
‘I know what an ostrich costs. And the birds were here before the racehorses.’
‘Yes, well, you keep them on this side of the railway line! Otherwise there’ll be trouble.’
‘There’s been no trouble up till now. It’s building this new city that’s causing the trouble. City!’ said the old man contemptuously. ‘What do they want to build a city for out in the desert? The desert’s the desert. Keep it like that!’
‘Things don’t stand still. They’re going to build the city and there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re going to have to live with it. And that means seeing that your birds don’t get out.’
‘They’d be all right if they were left alone.’
‘If they stay in the pens they will be left alone.’
‘No, no, it’s in the air. They can smell it. It frightens them. That’s what makes them panic.’
‘What’s in the air?’
‘People. Houses. That new railway line. The old one’s all right. They’ve got used to that. But now they’re building a new one. What do they want another one for? They’re building them all over the place. How many more are there going to be?’
‘There aren’t going to be any more. Just this one. And they’re having it because it’ll go straight to Heliopolis. It won’t come near your pens.’
‘There’s something wrong with it, isn’t there?’
‘What do you mean, something wrong with it?’
‘It’s electric, isn’t it?’
‘Well?’
‘There you are, then. It’ll be getting out and affecting my birds.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘Well, I can tell you, if it starts affecting my birds, I’ll be over there with my gun! I’ll soon put a stop to it!’
‘It won’t affect your birds at all.’
‘It had better not. And you’d do better to be worrying about all that stuff getting out than about my birds getting out. I’ll look after my birds. And I’ll look after that new electric railway, too, if you don’t watch out!’
Since he was out at Matariya, Owen thought he might as well go over to the village. With any luck he would meet Mahmoud and find out if he had made any further progress.
The village was only a mile from the ostrich farm but by the time he reached it, even in what he had thought the fresher atmosphere of out of town, the sweat was running down his face and his shirt was sticking to his back. When he got to the village he went to the well and scooped water over his face and drank a little from the bucket he had pulled up. It tasted of sand.