Chapter 6
‘Garotted' screamed the newspapers.
The news, despite Owen’s efforts, had leaked out at once. Ordinarily it would have created no stir. In Cairo people were being garotted all the time, or it felt as if they were, and what was one among so many, particularly if she was merely a water-carrier’s daughter? This time, however, there was something different.
‘Could there be a connection with the Cut?’ asked the newspapers.
‘No, there could not,’ said Owen, and to make sure he excised the suggestion from the newspapers. Censorship of the press was one of Owen’s barmier duties.
The press, always resourceful, came back the next day, less directly.
‘Will this cast a blight over the forthcoming festivities?’ it enquired.
‘No, it won’t,’ said the Mamur Zapt, and in the interests of conviviality he cut that out, too. He knew, however, that in the circulation of rumour word of newspaper was less important than word of mouth, and sat back resignedly to await developments.
They were not long in coming. There was trouble with the Muslim gravediggers, said Paul over the phone. When Owen got to the meeting, however, he found that the trouble, at first sight, was not what he expected.
‘There seems to be some problem about the Cut,’ said Paul, who had convened the meeting on behalf of the Consul-General.
‘It’s about who does the actual cutting,’ said Garvin.
‘I thought we’d settled that. Isn’t it the Jews’ turn?’
‘Yes, but if you remember, there was the problem about the pay. They wanted extra because it was the Sabbath.’
‘Well, we’ve fixed that, haven’t we? I got the Old Man to speak to Finance.’
‘Yes, but now the Muslims are saying, why should the Jews be paid extra? It’s rank discrimination. There’s a traditional rate for the job. Why should they be paid more?’
‘Because they won’t do it, otherwise.’
‘Ah, but the Muslims say they will. At the old rate.’
‘What do the Jews say?’
‘They say it’s their turn.’
‘Has this happened before?’ asked Paul.
‘It happens every year. There’s always been trouble about who was going to do the Cut. The way we resolved it is that they take turns. It’s worked up till now. It’s just that this year it’s different because it’s the Jews’ turn and the Cut falls on a Sabbath.’
‘Couldn’t the Jews still do it but at the old rate?’
‘They say that the Government would be going back on its word.’
‘Well, that’s not unknown, is it?’
‘They’re not going to like it,’ warned Garvin.
‘The Muslims are not going to like it either,’ said the Kadi. ‘They’re counting on getting the work now.’
There was a little silence.
‘How about them both doing it?’ suggested Paul. ‘Together?’
‘They’d be at each other’s throats. And don’t forget they’d have spades and picks.’
A further silence.
‘Why don’t we get somebody else altogether?’
‘What about the Copts?’ said the Copts’ representative eagerly.
‘There’d be a bloody massacre,’ said Garvin shortly.
‘I was thinking of British soldiers,’ said Paul.
‘There’d be a bloody massacre,’ said Owen.
Yet further silence. Prolonged.
‘We could call the whole thing off. I suppose,’ said Paul. ‘After all, we don’t really need a cut, do we? We don’t even need water in the Canal. In fact, it would be better without it. Then they could get straight on with filling it in. Why don’t we just call the whole thing off.’
‘That way we really would have a riot!’
The meeting adjourned without reaching a conclusion. ‘There’s still time,’ said Paul.
‘Not much,’ said Garvin. ‘The Cut is next week.’
‘I do think we should try to resolve this as quickly as possible,’ said the Kadi. ‘We wouldn’t want it to get out of hand.’
‘Why should it get out of hand?’
The Kadi looked at Owen.
‘I understand something has come up about the girl? You know, the one found under the “Bride of the Nile”.’
‘The autopsy findings have been revised.’
‘Yes. That’s what I heard.’
‘That Maiden thing? A lot of bosh!’ declared Garvin. ‘Muslim girl? Jewish diggers? A public occasion? Bad feeling? Big crowds? I don’t regard that as a lot of bosh.’
‘I don’t either,’ said Owen. ‘I’ve got people down in the Bab-el-Foutouh keeping an eye on things.’
‘If what I have heard is true,’ said the Kadi, ‘I think I would be down there keeping an eye on things myself!’
At almost any hour of the day near the Bab-el-Foutouh, because of its position next to the Muslim cemetery, you would see a funeral procession coming down the street. First, you would hear the death chant and then into view would come a little procession headed by religious banners and closed by a horned coffin covered with a pall of brocade, borne high on the shoulders of the mourners, who surrounded it and took their turn in the work of merit. Sometimes there would be a bread camel carrying loaves for distribution to the poor and sometimes students of El Azhar carrying a Koran upon a cushion, or fikees reciting.
When such a procession passed, the onlookers would first stand aside respectfully and then press forward behind it in sympathetic support.
This time the procession was a small one and generating interest rather than excitement. Owen stepped in beside a vegetable stall to let it pass.
‘It won’t be like this when our Leila comes along,’ said one of the women shopping at the stall.
‘No. She’ll get more attention in her death than she ever did in her life,’ said another woman beside her.
‘It’s bad, though. She was a pretty little thing. And to think of her wasting herself on that old skinflint, Omar Fayoum!’
‘Ah, well, it didn’t come to that, did it?’
‘Perhaps it would have been better if it had!’
‘She was unlucky, that girl. Her mother ought to have seen to it before.’
‘She wasn’t there, though, was she? There wasn’t any family, either. There was just that mean old man and all he cared about was her bringing him his meals on time.’
‘Yes, but you’d have thought someone would have said. One of the neighbours, perhaps.’
‘They didn’t know. Not till they came to remove the hair.’
‘You’d have expected, though, that someone would have taken an interest in her when the mother died. With her being so very young. I mean, what happened when she started having her monthlies?’
‘She had to work it out for herself, I suppose. She wouldn’t have had any help from that old man, that’s for sure. Those water-carriers are a hard lot. Though they do say that when her father threw her out, Fatima took her in.’
‘Well, that was something. To think of that poor girl without even a roof over her head! In that condition, too!’
‘My old man says that Ali Khedri ought to be sewn up in one of his own water-skins and sent for a sail down the river!’
‘So he should! His own daughter! Mind you, she was wrong, too. Carrying on with that boy. When she was going to marry Omar Fayoum.’
‘Who wouldn’t carry on, if they were going to marry Omar Fayoum!’
Both women laughed, then tut-tutted to themselves reprovingly.
‘We shouldn’t talk like this, should we? Not about the dead.’
They completed their purchases.
‘I wondered where she’d got to. When I didn’t see her, I thought she might have gone back to her village.’
‘That’s where she should have stayed. Why did they have to leave? Water-carrying is no life for a man.’
‘She’d have been better off down there, that’s for certain. There’d have been women there who’d have known what to do. I’ve got no time for that old man but really you can’t blame him. This is women’s business. If she’d stayed down there all this might never have happened.’
‘Yes.’ They paid and began to move away. ‘Mind you-’ the woman hesitated. ‘They say it wasn’t that, you know. Not in the end.’