‘What are you doing here?’
‘I have been at a meeting.’
That was another shaker. Women didn’t go to meetings in Egypt, certainly not at the National Assembly. Even if they were, as Zeinab was, dressed in black from head to foot and heavily veiled. Except that…
‘Labiba?’ he said.
Zeinab nodded.
‘Circumcision?’
‘Certainly not! In the Assembly? They would be shocked!’
‘I meant are you talking about circumcision? Is that the subject of the meeting?’
‘They would still be shocked. No, health. Sub-heading (very small letters): women’s health. That gets rid of the old dodderers, who would otherwise come to hear how their heart was getting on. It does, admittedly, attract some rather strange men, but Labiba is firm with them.’
‘Is she chairing?’
‘No, that Scotsman is. You know, the one who cuts you up.’
‘Cairns-Grant?’
‘Probably. He has a workman’s hands. But then he would.’
‘How’s the meeting going?’
‘It’s coming to an end soon. I thought I would leave early as the man next to me is getting too excited.’
‘I don’t blame him,’ said Owen, glancing along the corridor. No one was coming. He put his arm round her.
‘Not here!’ said Zeinab, alarmed.
The door of the committee room opened again and they quietly disengaged. Out came Mohammed Jubbara, Hamad el Sid and al-Faqih Mas’udi. Owen wasn’t sure whether they had seen. Behind them, close behind, was Suleiman. His eyes were burning.
Mas’udi stopped.
‘Can I get you an arabeah?’ he said to Zeinab.
‘No thank you. I have a word or two I want to say to the Mamur Zapt,’ she replied sweetly.
Mas’udi gave him a startled look.
Back at her apartment Zeinab did, indeed, have a word or two to say.
‘You have an unhealthy mind,’ she concluded severely, ‘in an over-healthy body.’
Out at the barrage little clumps of papyrus were spiralling in the sun. When they neared the barrage they wavered for a moment uncertainly and then accelerated in towards the piers. Just before they reached them, they were sucked downwards and lost in the grating.
In the shallows of the river’s edge two men were loading building water-skins on to a donkey. When they had finished, they led it up on to the bank. One of them put a large hamperlike wicker basket on top of the water-skins and then perched himself above that. The other man gave the donkey a thwack on the flank.
The noise startled the doves in the palms and they fluttered agitatedly. They were all right, thought Owen. It was the ones in the basket that needed to worry.
He followed the donkey up into the Gardens. There were fewer people there than on his previous visits; or perhaps it was that, with the sun now almost directly overhead, they had retreated into the shade.
Over towards the regulator, Ferguson was ominously busy with white tape and a measuring rod. He waved to Owen as he went past.
The workmen, as Owen had hoped, were having lunch. He squatted down beside them at the tray.
‘You here again?’
‘Babikr asked me to send you greetings.’
The men received them in silence. Although Owen had embroidered a little when he was talking to Babikr, he had probably reflected their feelings.
‘He asked me to tell you he had sworn an oath.’
The men looked up.
An oath, was it?’
It did not excuse, but did explain.
‘Yes. He said he was beholden.’
‘Ah!’
They went back to their eating.
‘I think better of him,’ said Owen, ‘but still I am worried.’
He knew they were listening.
‘Why is that?’ one of them said.
‘Well, what sort of oath is it that dare not declare itself?’
‘A bad oath,’ someone said.
‘That is exactly what I thought. And then I thought: where does a bad oath stop?’
‘It’s stopped so far as Babikr is concerned,’ said someone.
‘For the moment. But where does the man who exacted the oath want it to stop? Why cannot he come forward and tell us the extent of the oath?’
‘If it was a bad oath, perhaps he is afraid,’ volunteered someone.
‘That is what leaves me afraid,’ said Owen. ‘And so I ask: to whom has he sworn the oath? Is there one of you who could tell me?’
They shook their heads. That did not surprise Owen. Nor did it trouble him. No one would wish to do it openly, but they might well come later in private, whether as an individual or after the group had consulted among itself. As they had done before.
‘You see,’ he said, ‘if it has not stopped, further harm could befall. To Babikr. To us all.’
(T«5S’t?)
‘Yes,’ said Georgiades, ‘but you’ve never given me flowers.’
‘You don’t look like a flower person to me,’ said the gardener, inspecting him critically.
‘I’ve got a wife, haven’t I?’
The two had become great buddies. They were sitting on the edge of a gadwal drinking the gardener’s tea, which, with Eastern hospitality, he had also offered to Owen.
‘Perhaps I will give you flowers,’ said the gardener, relenting.
‘You gave some to Babikr,’ Georgiades pointed out.
‘Not to Babikr; for Babikr. For him to give to another.’
Ah, there’s a woman in it, is there? And not his wife. For his wife stays in the village.’ Georgiades shook his head sorrowfully. ‘That a man like you should encourage vice!’
‘I did not encourage vice,’ said the gardener, stung. ‘I merely gave him some flowers. For which he paid me ten milliemes.’
‘Without knowing who they were going to? They might have been going to the Lizard Man for all you know!’
‘They were not going to the Lizard Man!’
Are you sure? I wouldn’t rule it out. Babikr was a friend of the Lizard Man, wasn’t he?’
‘He had other friends as well.’
‘Up here in the city?’
‘Look,’ said the gardener, ‘I know who the flowers were for and it wasn’t the Lizard Man!’
‘Whisper it to me,’ challenged Georgiades, ‘and I’ll believe you.’
The gardener opened his mouth.
Then closed it again.
Firmly.
‘If I tell you,’ he said, ‘the Lizard Man might hear me!’
Chapter 8
One of the sights of Cairo was the water-carts. Every morning and sometimes at other points during the day they would go through the streets dampening down the dust. There was a tank at the back of the cart from which the water would spray out in little fountains. Urchins would dart in and out under the jets and after the cart had passed there would be a brief moment when the air was full of the seaside smell of water on hot sand. Cairenes loved that moment. They would come out into the doorways and sniff the air like dogs.
There was a water-cart ahead of Owen now. But it was not spraying the streets. It was standing at a corner and a group of water-carriers were filling their bags from the tank.
‘They won’t want to do that next week,’ Owen said to the driver as he passed. ‘Not when there’s water in the canal. What will you do then?’
‘Old man Fayoum will just move it further into the Gamaliya,’ said one of the water-carriers.
‘Ah, it belongs to Omar Fayoum?’
‘It certainly does. And they say he’s going to get another like it soon.’
‘He must be doing well, then.’
‘Never done better, he says. The last few months especially. Though I don’t know how that could be. It’s the same water, isn’t it? And it takes the same time to carry.’
‘Ah, but does it?’ said the man next to him, stooping to pick up his skins.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Owen.
‘Well, they do say he’s found another place where he can get it.’
‘That’s a lot of nonsense!’ said someone standing on the other side of the cart. Owen couldn’t see him clearly but thought it might be Ahmed Uthman, the husband of the woman who had taken Leila in.