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Owen asked him how things were.

‘Pretty well, Effendi,’ he replied mechanically.

And, indeed, they were probably not all bad. You got regular meals, you were free from the usual back-breaking work of the fellah, and you could spend the day chatting to the other prisoners.

Babikr liked a good chat; but so far he had said nothing about his attempt to blow up the Manufiya Regulator. Owen knew that because he had put a spy in the cell with him.

He had decided to try a different approach.

‘Your friends at the barrage are well,’ he said. Babikr nodded acknowledgement. ‘But they do not send you greetings. They will not come and see you. Why is that, Babikr?’

In fact, the workmen would have come and seen him but Owen had prevented them.

Babikr flinched slightly.

‘I do not know,’ he said.

‘It is because they do not understand you. They do not understand how you could have done a thing like this. Were you not one of them? Did you not work together? Had you not stood side by side when the sun was hot and the work hard? They thought they could count on you, Babikr. They thought they knew you.’

He waited. Babikr shuffled his feet unhappily.

‘But they did not know you, Babikr. They could not have known you if all the time you meditated such things. Can this be the Babikr we thought we knew, they ask? And they are bewildered. They cannot understand how this could be. They say, if we only knew why he had done this thing, then, perhaps, we could understand.’

Babikr stood there miserably, head lowered.

‘Why did you do it, Babikr?’

He waited, but Babikr did not reply.

‘That you did it is a bad thing. For that you must pay. But you must have had a reason, and if your friends knew that reason, then perhaps their hearts would not be so wounded. You had friends among them, Babikr. Can you not speak to them?’

‘No, I cannot,’ said Babikr in a low voice.

‘You have shamed them. They have to live with that shame. If they knew why you had done it, perhaps that would help them. Can you not help them, Babikr?’

Owen could see that the man was feeling the words keenly; but still he would not speak.

‘They say, perhaps it was against us that he acted. Perhaps in his heart he hated us. Perhaps we have done wrong things.’

‘No, no!’ said Babikr. ‘No!’

‘Or against Macrae Effendi. Or Ferguson Effendi.’

‘No.’

‘Then why, Babikr? No one does a thing like this without reason. Could you tell them the reason? You have left a hole in their hearts, Babikr. Could you not at least make easy the wound?’

‘I cannot,’ said the man, distressed.

‘Why not? I refuse to believe, Babikr, that you are unfeeling to your friends.’

‘Effendi, I am not. Believe me, I am not!’

‘Well, Babikr, I will tell them that. That, at least, they will be glad to know.’

‘Thank you, Effendi,’ said the man brokenly.

‘But cannot you tell them more?’

‘Believe me, Effendi, I cannot. I would, but-’

‘What is it that stops you?’

Babikr shook his head in misery.

‘Is it that you are not alone in this? That you think of others? That,’ said Owen with sudden inspiration, ‘you are perhaps bound to them?’

‘I have sworn an oath,’ said the man, in a low voice.

Owen considered for a moment. This was where it could go wrong.

‘Then I can understand you,’ he said at last, gently. ‘May I tell your friends that, Babikr? That you had sworn an oath?’

‘You may, Effendi. I would be glad if you would.’

‘I will. But, Babikr, some oaths are good, some bad. They will want to be sure that this was a good oath. What shall I tell them?’

‘Tell them I was beholden.’

‘Ah, it was something you owed?’

‘Yes, Effendi.’

‘To a man, or to men?’

Babikr looked him straight in the face and shook his head. Owen knew that, for the moment, he had taken it as far as he could.

He was still sitting there thinking it over when Yussef, his orderly, announced that there was someone who wished to see him. Owen knew from this that he was an ordinary Arab. Most others, that is to say, those who were not Arabs or who did not think of themselves as ordinary, described themselves as effendi. Effendi wishing to see Owen usually presented themselves directly to Nikos, the Mamur Zapt’s official clerk. The ordinary Arab, abashed by the huge facade of the Bab-el-Khalk, lingered out- side on the steps until he could pluck up enough courage to accost an orderly, who would, in lordly fashion, instruct him to wait outside the orderly room until his betters decided what to do with him.

The man, when Yussef brought him along, confirmed Owen’s assumption. Almost. He was not the lowest of the low for his dress was of good cloth. The white turban bound round his tarboosh, for example, was of cashmere. But he was wearing a turban and not the pot-like tarboosh by itself, which would have been the mark of the effendi; and he was wearing a galabeeyah not a suit.

Owen rose to greet him and led him across to the two cane-work chairs put beneath the window where there was a chance of catching a breath of air. The windows were shuttered against the sun but through the slats there occasionally crept a waft of something which was not entirely tepid.

Yussef hovered for a moment outside the door. Owen knew why. He was wondering whether the man merited coffee. Evidently he decided that he did, for a little later Owen heard the pad of returning feet and smelt the coffee. That in itself was significant, for Yussef’s judgement in these matters was usually fine. All the same there was something about the man that was slightly puzzling, something that Owen was not familiar with.

His name, he said, was Al-Sayyid Hannam, and he had come about his son.

‘You are Suleimans father?’

‘Yes.’ He sighed. And sometimes I wonder what I have done.’

All fathers do that.’

All fathers have hopes for their sons; and when they see themselves disappointed, they ask themselves why.’

‘Sometimes it is mere youthfulness.’

‘That is what I told myself. When this foolish business of the girl first came up.’

‘You knew about it?’

The man nodded.

‘Suleiman, since he came up to the city, has been staying with the family of a business friend of mine. When he learned what was happening he was troubled and spoke to me. I said: “Let it be. The boy is young. It will come to nothing.” But that was before I knew who or what she was.’

A water-carrier’s daughter?’

‘That would be bad enough. For I had set my hopes higher. I had sent my son to the city in the hope that he would do better than his father.’ He looked at Owen. ‘Not that I am complaining. God has smiled on me and I have prospered. But I work the land. Our family has always worked the land. Well, that is good; but it is hard work and a father always wants better for his boy. I had friends and they found him a place with the Water Board. It is a good job, I told him: water is a thing of the future as well as a thing of the past, and you will rise with the future.’

‘And so he has,’ said Owen, ‘if what he told me is true.’

‘I say nothing against him at work. It is when he is not at work that I am troubled.’

Owen was used to people discussing their family problems with him. Yussef did; his barber did; Nuri Pasha did; all Egyptians did. It was the principal subject of conversation, taking the place of the weather in England. He wondered, however, if Suleiman’s father knew where things had got to.

‘You have doubtless heard,’ he said, ‘what has befallen the girl?’

‘I have heard she is dead. Well, that is bad, and, although her father may not believe it of me, I grieve for him. I grieve for my son, too, for I cannot believe that his love was anything but honourable. Foolish, perhaps, but not dishonourable. All the same, mixed with my grief, is a certain relief.’

‘You have heard of what she died?’