“Never mind my innocent soul!” snapped Nikos. “What the hell is going on?”
Nikos rarely swore.
“I’ve told you,” said Owen reasonably.
“You’re doing this just to get even with Brooker?”
Owen nodded. Since coming to Egypt he had discovered that he had something of a bent for administrative politics.
Nikos took a moment to gather himself together.
“All right, then,” he said, dumping the day’s newspapers on Owen’s desk.
“I hope you know what you are doing,” he said, as he went out.
“So this is how one gets to be Mamur Zapt!” said Georgiades. He shook his head, marvelling. “Ah, what a thing it is to lack scruple! I’ve often wondered what it is that’s been holding me back.”
He followed Nikos off down the corridor chuckling.
Owen turned his attention to the newspapers. Every morning when he got in he read them alclass="underline" all the Arabic ones, all the French ones and all the English ones, that is. Georgiades read the Greek ones and Nikos the Coptic, Armenian and Italian ones. Owen’s legal adviser read the Turkish ones, which were especially important. Another experienced man read the Jewish ones.
Nikos also read the London Times, the Morning Post and the Illustrated London News, although Owen assured him they were of no help at all.
Owen read for “feel” only. The papers would be read again, more thoroughly, by the censors, who would pick up cases where action was unavoidable and alert him to anything he had missed. Owen himself seldom remembered detail. His concern was rather to take the political temperature of the city.
To do that meant taking several temperatures, not one. Cairo was a polyglot city of many communities. The bulk of its population, as elsewhere in Egypt, spoke Egyptian Arabic. But there were also sizeable communities of Greeks, Italians, French, Syrians, Armenians, English, Jews and Turks. The Turks had an importance out of proportion to their numbers because until recently they had supplied the ruling class and occupied most of the administrative and military positions. The language of administration, and certainly of the law, tended, however to be French, although English was taking over. French, too, was the language of upper-class Cairenes, reflecting their many links with French culture and society. Well-to-do Cairenes sent their children to French schools. Their wives looked naturally to Paris for their fashions. They themselves not only spoke French but thought French.
To move with ease in Cairo society you really needed a command of three languages: Arabic, French and English. The polished young men about the British Agent managed this without difficulty. Many of the other British administrations were fairly at home in Arabic at least. Only the Army, lacking both Arabic and French, was completely isolated linguistically; linguistically, and therefore socially.
Owen’s own Arabic was excellent, his French fair only, though a girl in Alexandria the previous year had improved it considerably.
He read over the Arabic papers, keeping an eye open especially for anything that would support what Fakhri had said the night before. He found nothing to suggest that Fakhri’s foreboding was generally, or even widely shared. However, that did not make him discount Fakhri’s words altogether. The Egyptian might well be reflecting faithfully the views of the part of upper-middle-class Cairene society with which he was familiar. Such people might well see themselves as potential targets for attack and he might well be registering accurately their apprehension. So long as such views were restricted to them Owen did not mind. What would concern him would be if they showed signs of spreading to other people. Put ideas in people’s heads, Garvin might have said, and there’s always a chance that they will act on them.
He read, therefore, Fakhri’s own paper with particular care. It was an intellectual weekly with a fairly limited circulation, and in itself hardly likely to stir a man’s adrenalin. However, it was well known. Other journalists and, indeed, other editors might well read it; and if they read it they might take things from it.
Like most Cairo editors, however, Fakhri knew exactly where to draw the line. In the present number he had drawn it with a finesse that earned Owen’s professional admiration. The connection between Nuri and the Denshawai Incident was made, but circumspectly and in the most general of terms. Even the account of the student demonstration, which occupied most of the front page, was handled in a way to which it was difficult to take exception. Legal exception, that was. Exception might well be taken on other grounds. The account itself was sharp to the point of viciousness and the editorial, which commented on it, provocative to the limits of admissibility. The writing did not, however, actually step over the line which divided it from the inflammatory and defamatory.
Not so al Liwa, which, like Fakhri’s paper, covered the demonstration at considerable length. Most of the length in al Liwa’s case was due to passages of extended vituperation which were saved-if they were saved-from being defamatory only by their generalness and imprecision. Owen skipped through the bloodsucking imperialists bit, noted with pleasure that the Sirdar was being blamed for the whole thing-incorrectly, since the Army had nothing to do with it-and was amused to find that the original target of the demonstration was quite lost sight of: the article ended by inviting the Khedive to march with the demonstrators.
Owen wondered how much Ahmed had contributed or whether, indeed, he had written it entirely.
However, that was not the only interesting article the paper contained. Buried on an inside page was another article which, Owen began to suspect, was the article which Fakhri had really wanted him to see.
It was about Mustafa, Nuri’s would-be assassin, and was called Mustafa’s Mistake. The mistake, according to the article, lay in Mustafa’s thinking that his was a personal wrong which could be remedied by private action. In fact, it was an instance of a general problem, that of landlord-fellahin relations, and the only way to put that right was through political action. Baldly-and the article was anything but bald — that meant joining the Nationalist Party. This, the paper assured its readers, Mustafa had been on the brink of doing when, alas, he had been carried away by the sight of his enemy. Only the day before he had spoken at a public meeting organized by the Nationalist Party in his village. He had been one of many willing to stand up and testify to the wrongs the fellahin were suffering. Although he had not-yet- formally joined the Nationalist Party, it would stand by him. His hand, the article concluded with a flourish, may have held the gun but it was the landlords themselves who had pulled the trigger.
Owen read it through again, thought for a moment and then reached for the telephone.
“It’s true,” said Mahmoud. “He was there. He did speak. I checked.” Mahmoud had been in court all day. Like Owen, he could not give all his time to the Nuri affair, important though it might be. A hearing had been scheduled for that day in connection with another case, and as he had been responsible for drawing up the proces-verbal he had had to attend. Unusually, the Parquet’s analysis had been challenged and Mahmoud had had to spend the morning defending it and the afternoon-while, he pointed out to the clerk of the court, the judges were having their siesta-revising his submission. He was in a jaundiced frame of mind by the time he got back to his office, late in the afternoon, to find Owen’s message waiting for him. They had arranged to meet that evening, which gave him an opportunity to get his men to do a quick, independent check. First reports had come back to him before he set out.
“Someone must have heard him speak,” said Owen, “and thought they could use him.”
Mahmoud nodded. “It’s a possibility. I’ll get my man to check if anyone talked to him afterwards.”