Mahmoud caught the look and burst out laughing.
“We’re going to have a job, aren’t we?” he said. “Almost any ground is dangerous! However-” he leaned forward and gently touched Owen on the sleeve in a gesture that was very Arab-“I’m not always so unreasonable!”
He thought again.
“It’s the gun,” he said. “That’s what makes me think it must be a ‘club.’ And one of the more professional ones. Ordinary fellahin like Mustafa don’t get near such things. If they bought a gun-if they could afford to-it would be of the pigeon-shooting sort. A shotgun for scaring the birds. A rifle that came with Napoleon. Not the latest issue to the British Army.”
“Could you buy one? If you had plenty of money? If you were that other-man-with-a-grudge, for instance?”
Mahmoud shook his head. “Not unless you knew somebody.” “You can’t rule that out as a possibility.”
“You can for Mustafa. He’s never been out of the village.” Mahmoud brooded a little.
“And that’s the problem,” he said presently. “You see, if you can get hold of a gun like that and you want someone killed, why go to Mustafa? There’s a gap. Between the professionals behind the scenes and the very far from professional man who’s supposed to do the actual work.”
Two shoe-shine boys came round the corner and launched themselves immediately at their feet. They both tucked their feet under their chairs and Mahmoud waved the boys away.
“And there’s another thing,” he said. “The hashish.”
“They gave him too much.”
“Yes.”
Mahmoud looked at Owen.
“You know what I think?”
“Tell me.”
“It all sounds terribly amateur.”
“Yes,” said Owen. “Like me.”
Although Owen had told Mahmoud about the article in al Liwa he had kept back one piece of information. Now, as they walked back towards the centre of the city, he said:
“I know someone who was at the meeting, in the village. This person hates Nuri, is a Nationalist, is, I would say, a bit incompetent and from what I have heard would be quite likely to sympathize with Mustafa.”
“You should join the Parquet,” said Mahmoud, surprised. “Who is he?”
“The person who wrote the article in al Liwa. ”
“Whose identity you have already checked.”
“Yes,” said Owen. “Ahmed.”
One of the Mamur Zapt’s privileges was a box at the Opera. At first Owen had been a little surprised. But no, it was not an imaginative bribe. It was a perfectly genuine prerequisite of office and Owen soon began to make regular use of it. Although he came from a musical family and a Welsh village with a deep-rooted musical culture, he had never been to the opera before he came to Egypt. Soon after taking up his position, however, he went to a performance of Aida, which had been written, of course, specially for the Opera House at Cairo, and was hooked. He went to every new performance during the season. Indeed, he went several times and had recently made a resolution to cut down his attendances at the Opera House to twice a week.
Coming back from the Opera House that evening he passed an Arab cafe in which some young men were sitting. They were in high spirits and had probably been drinking. As Owen approached, one of them said something to the others and there was a burst of derisive laughter, almost certainly at Owen’s expense. Then, as he continued past, one of the others, in an obvious attempt to outdo, leaned out into the street and shouted something abusive almost directly up into Owen’s face, cursing, as is the Arab custom, not Owen himself but his father.
Without stopping and, indeed, without thinking, Owen at once replied that he would certainly have returned the compliment had his addresser only been in the position to inform him which of his mother’s two-and-ninety admirers his father had been.
There was an instant of shocked silence behind him and then, almost immediately, the rush of feet.
Owen cursed his over-ready tongue. One thing the Agent would not tolerate was brawling in the street with Egyptians.
The footsteps came up to him and he braced himself.
And then a hand was placed gently on his arm and a voice said politely: “Please, please. I am so sorry. I did not think for one moment that you knew Arabic, still less the correct Arabic abuse. We are all very sorry. Please come and join us for some coffee and let us try and convince you that we are not as boorish as we appear.”
Two contrite young men looked at him pleadingly. Owen could not resist and went back with them to the table where a space was quickly made for him.
The rest of the cafe looked on with approval, having enjoyed, in typical Arab fashion, both the abuse and the courtesy.
The men apologized. They were, they explained, filling in time before going to a party. They had been talking politics and one of their number had been carried away. It was not said, but Owen guessed, that the topics had included the British in Egypt. The conversation turned tactfully in another direction.
They inquired how Owen came by his Arabic and when he mentioned his teacher it turned out that two of them knew him. This reassured Owen, for the Aalim was not one to waste his time with fools.
Indeed, they were far from fools. They were all journalists, it appeared, working for the most part on arts pages. One of them was introduced as a playwright.
Owen said he had been to the Arab theatre but found the plays excessively melodramatic.
“That’s us,” said one of the men. “All Arabs are melodramatic.”
“No, it’s not,” said the playwright. “We’re dramatic. It’s the plays that are melodramatic. They’re just bad.”
“Perhaps you will improve the standard,” said Owen.
“Gamal’s latest play is good,” one of the men said.
“Is it on somewhere? Can I see it?”
They all roared with laughter.
“Alas, no!” said Gamal. “But when it is put on I shall send you a special invitation.”
Owen said he had just been to the opera. They asked him how it compared with opera in Europe. He was obliged to admit that the only opera he had seen had been in Egypt. Two of the journalists had seen opera in Paris. They thought Cairo opera provincial.
The conversation ran on merrily. Some time later Owen glanced at his watch. It was well past two. Opera finished late in Cairo; parties started even later, evidently.
The thought occurred to one or two of the others and they rose to go. Owen got up, too, and began to say his farewells. His acquaintances were aghast that he should be leaving them so early. They insisted that he came to the party with them.
Owen was taking this to be mere Arab politeness when the playwright linked his arm in Owen’s and began to urge him determinedly along the street.
“A little while,” he coaxed, “just a little, little while.”
“We want you to meet our friends,” they said.
The house was a traditional Mameluke house. It went up in tiers. The first tier was just a high blank wall with a decorated archway entrance. Above this a row of corbels allowed the first floor to project a couple of feet over the street, in the manner of sixteenth-century houses in England. And above this again a triple row of oriels carried out into the street a further two feet. There was no glass, of course, but all the windows were heavily screened with fine traditional woodwork.
Through the archway was a courtyard with a fountain and some people sitting round it. They belonged to the party, but most of the guests were inside, in a mandar’ah, or reception room, opening off the courtyard.
The mandar’ah had a sunken marble floor paved with black and white marble and little pieces of fine red tile. In the centre of the floor was a fountain playing into a small shallow pool lined with coloured marbles like the floor.
A number of people stood about the room in groups, talking. Other groups reclined on large, fat, multi-coloured, leather cushions. Some had Western-style drinks in their hand. Quite a few were drinking coffee. All were talking.