Owen was, on the whole, relieved, in view of what he had said to Amina, that Salah-el-Din did not decide to pursue his fortune abroad where he might have run into Malik and tried yet again to marry her off to him.
Amina did in the end make a good marriage; in fact, several of them.
When, during one of these, she was based for a time in Cairo, Owen caught sight of her occasionally. For the sake of peace and quiet he tried to keep this secret from Zeinab, usually without success, as her intelligence system was infinitely superior to his. She had, actually, nothing to fear, as he frequently pointed out to her. Zeinab, however, remained unconvinced. It was true that she still retained a decided advantage in height. Amina, though, was catching up rapidly in terms of maturity and experience; and then there was the troubling discrepancy in age. Zeinab watched Owen like a hawk.
Leila made the journey in each month from Tel-el-Hasan to draw her money from Owen’s office. She was needed less at her brother’s house now that her sister had been released, and one day she shyly mentioned the growing warmth of her relationship with one of Ibrahim’s friends.
Owen took the hint and the next time he dropped in on the barber’s circle at Matariya took the opportunity to praise her virtues; not least among which was her possession of a nest-egg securely lodged with the Mamur Zapt.
The barber’s friends rejoiced at his good fortune.
‘The love of a good woman is beyond the price of rubies,’ he said. ‘However, if she has some rubies as well, it is even better.’
It would go some way towards compensating for the collapse of his other prospects. The Racing Club, it seemed, was no longer interested in purchasing land for gallops. Despite this, he remained committed to Progress.
‘One day,’ he prophesied, ‘there will be houses from here to Cairo! And the pilgrims will go to Mecca not by camel, no, nor even by train; but by flying carpets which will take them up and carry them to Mecca in the blink of an eye!’
The whole circle-and Owen-united in declaring this to be a load of utter bollocks. However, a future historian might interpose that some eighty or ninety years later this was, in a way, precisely what did happen.