“I am afraid it would have to be Captain Owen,” he said.
“Very well,” said Owen. “I’ll ask her.”
Zeinab rose from the table in a fury and flounced out.
“What have I done?” asked Mahmoud, bewildered and uncomfortable.
“It’s nothing,” said Owen, wondering whether he should follow her. It looked a bit silly if you followed a woman around like a lap-dog. On the other hand there would be trouble tonight if he didn’t. He decided to strike a balance. He stayed at the table talking with Mahmoud for another moment or two and then went out into the street. Zeinab was nowhere to be seen.
From the far end of the corridor came the sound of angry dispute. After a while Owen could stand it no longer and went along.
“What the hell’s going on?”
Outside the door, where the orderlies sat on the ground in a row, their backs to the wall, a woman was berating the coffee orderly, Yussuf. When she saw Owen she stopped, abashed. Yussuf gave her a great push.
“Away with you, woman!” he shouted furiously. “You bring me shame.”
The woman fired up again.
“Yours is the shame,” she said. “Yours was the shame already.”
Yussuf tried to urge her away but she resisted his efforts.
“You bring shame on your family,” she called out, so that everyone could hear. Heads began popping out of windows. The other orderlies watched with delight.
Yussuf caught hold of her and propelled her towards the gate. At the last moment she twisted away from him and ran back towards the orderlies. Yussuf bore down on her in a fury. Afraid that he was going to hit her, Owen intervened.
“Enough of this!” he snapped. “Be quiet, woman!”
The woman fell silent, though she kept darting angry glances at Yussuf.
“Who is this woman?” Owen asked Yussuf. “Your wife?”
“My sister, effendi.”
Owen remembered the boy in the Coptic Place of the Dead.
“I have met your son, I think.” The woman looked startled, then pleased. Then worried.
“He is a good boy, effendi,” she said hastily. “He runs a little wild but there is no harm in him.”
“He is clever beyond his years.”
The woman looked even more worried.
“But he means no harm, effendi,” she insisted.
“He is a good boy,” said Owen reassuringly. He turned to Yussuf, associating him with family merit. “And you have a good nephew, Yussuf. You must come and speak to me about him when he is older.” The remark, with its suggestion of possible patronage at his command, soothed Yussuf’s ruffled pride. It also impressed his sister, who quietened down and looked at him with new respect.
“What is all this about?” Owen addressed himself to Yussuf. When Yussuf made no reply, Owen turned to his sister. “What has brought you here?”
“I wanted him to speak to his wife,” she said in a low voice.
“Indeed? And what about?”
“He has put her away. And now he expects me to clean and cook for him.”
“Our mother is dead,” said Yussuf, “and I have no woman in my house.”
“I have my own to look after,” she protested.
“That is true,” said Owen. “She has her own to look after. Cannot you pay a woman to come in?”
“Why should I pay,” asked Yussuf, “when I have a sister?”
“Why should your sister work for you,” the woman retorted, “when you have a wife?”
“I have no wife.”
“You had one last week.”
“But I haven’t one now!” Yussuf roared.
“What was the difference between you?” Owen asked.
Yussuf did not reply.
“Nothing worth losing a wife over,” his sister said.
Yussuf turned on her in a fury.
“You be quiet, woman!” he shouted. “What do you know about it?”
“I know what all the world knows,” his sister maintained stoutly, “and that is that Fatima has always been a true wife to you.”
Owen was rather relieved to hear this. If she had been unfaithful it would have been tricky to intervene.
“Is her fault so bad that it cannot be overlooked?” he asked. “No doubt she already repents.”
“You might not be so lucky next time,” Yussuf’s sister observed.
Yussuf glared at her.
“He won’t find it so easy to get another wife,” she said to Owen. “They all know what he is like.”
Yussuf boiled over.
“I?” he shouted dramatically. “I? What about her? Is she not to blame? I have given her house, clothes, a good bed. I do not beat her. Much. I give her money-”
“No, you don’t,” his sister said. “That is why she is always onto you.”
Yussuf raised his hand threateningly. His sister, a woman of spirit, squared up to him. One of the orderlies, in defiance of the Prophet, began to lay bets.
Owen stepped in.
“Be off with you!” he said to the woman sternly. “Take this up at another time.”
He ushered her firmly towards the gate.
“I will speak to him,” he said to her when they had got out of earshot, “and see if I cannot resolve this matter.”
She went quietly enough. Owen admired her independence, but felt that reconciliation was more likely to be achieved in her absence.
Georgiades had asked Owen to meet him at a donkey-vous beside the Ezbekiya Gardens.
Owen liked the Ezbekiya, though gardens it was not. What it was was a dirty patch of fenced-off sand with a few straggly trees and occasional tufts of scrawny grass. In a land where, with a little water, anything would grow, and private gardens were a blaze of bougainvillaea and oleander, Cairo’s public gardens remained bits of desert, and the only colour in the Ezbekiya was provided once a week by the uniforms of the incredibly incompetent Egyptian regimental band. The Ezbekiya did indeed have its moments, in the very early morning when there were few people about and the big falcons sailed over it with their unexpectedly musical cries and the Egyptian doves cooed softly in the palm trees, but on the whole what Owen liked was the Ezbekiya’s outside.
All round the gardens were railings. And all along the railings were open-air stands, shops, stalls, restaurants, street-artists and tradesmen. Everything the ordinary Egyptian needed was there. The barber sat on the railings while his customers stood patiently in front of him to have their heads shaved. The tailor hung his creations on the railings. The hat-sellers marked off their territory with towers of tarbooshes, all fitting one on top of the other. The whip-makers plaited their whips through the railings and hung them from the trees.
There were trees all round the Ezbekiya, most of them comparatively young. Circular spaces about a yard wide had been cut in the pavement to receive them. To guard their roots the spaces were covered with gratings except for a few inches round the trunk. In this hole the chestnut-seller lit his fire, and on the gratings he set out his pans of roasted chestnuts. At night the coffee-sellers and the men who sold cups of hot sago brought their wares too; and all through the day there were sweet-sellers and nougat-sellers and nut-sellers and lemonade-sellers and tea-sellers and pie-sellers and cake-sellers-everything the sweet-toothed Egyptian might be persuaded to spend his little money on. Around each stall there were usually people talking, and the place which attracted the most conversationalists, after, perhaps, the pavement restaurants, was the donkey-vous.
This was the donkey-boys’ stand. The donkeys, the little white donkeys of Cairo, lay about in the road and on the pavement among the huge green stacks of berseem brought there for their dinner by forage camels. They were very rarely disturbed, at least by foreigners, since to hire a donkey cost a foreigner as much as a cab and pair of horses. But in their saddles of red brocade and their necklaces of silver thread with blue beads they looked very picturesque and the tourists loved to photograph them. For that, of course, they paid, and that, during the tourist season, was what the donkey-vous was all about. That, and conversation.