At the far end of the room was a dais with large cushions. This was where the host normally sat, along with his most honoured guests. There was a group on it now, sprawled about on the cushions, all talking animatedly.
Two of Owen’s acquaintances went off to find their host. They returned leading him triumphantly.
He was Fakhri.
He recovered at once, grasped Owen’s hand in both his own and embraced him.
“It would take too long to explain,” said Owen.
However, his friends were determined to explain, and Fakhri got the general picture.
“But we have met already!”
“You have?”
Fakhri bore Owen away.
“Whisky?” he said. “Or coffee?”
“I would say coffee but I have had so much already-”
“Whisky, then. For me also. After such surprises-”
“Sorry,” said Owen.
“Such nice surprises. I take it you are not on duty?”
“Far from it,” said Owen, with conviction.
“Then enjoy your evening. Come! I will introduce you-”
But another group of guests arrived, who solicited Fakhri’s attention. Owen went off to find his acquaintances. The playwright was in a little group about the fountain. Owen started across to join him.
The party was Western-style. That is, women were present. There were Syrians, Jews, Armenians, Greeks, Tripolitans and Levantines generally; there were scarcely any Egyptians. None were unattached. That would have been flouting convention too far.
One of them Owen recognized. It was the girl he had noticed at Nuri’s. She looked up and caught his eye.
“Why,” she said, smiling, “le Mamur Zapt. ”
Fakhri appeared, hot and bothered from greeting three lots of guests simultaneously.
“You know each other?” he said. “Captain Carwall-” he mumbled the word “-Owen.”
“What?” said the girl.
“Owen.”
“I know,” said the girl. “Le Mamur Zapt. ”
Fakhri looked at Owen a little anxiously.
“Pas ce soir, ” said Owen.
“Ah!” said the girl. “You are Mamur Zapt only sometimes. That is imaginative.” She turned to Fakhri. “Don’t you think,” she asked, “that it is one of the weaknesses of the British that they can usually be only themselves?”
“It is one of their strengths,” said Fakhri. “They never doubt that they are right.”
“While we doubt all the time. Perhaps. But it is a weakness, too. The world is not so simple.”
“Cairo is not so simple, either,” said Fakhri, with a sidelong glance at Owen.
He slipped off to greet some new arrivals.
“I saw you the other day at Nuri’s,” said Owen.
“My father,” said the girl.
“Nuri is your father?”
“Oui. ’’
He considered her. Something in the face, perhaps? A strong face, not a pretty one. But the figure was willowy, unlike Nuri’s barrel-like one.
“You must take after your mother.”
“In more ways than one.”
“How is she?” asked Owen. “The attack on your father must have been a great shock.”
“She is dead.”
“I am sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
The girl looked out into the courtyard where the fountain caught the moonlight.
“I think they loved each other,” she said suddenly. “They never married, of course. She wouldn’t go in his harem.”
Seeing that Owen was trying to work it out, she said: “My mother was Firdus.”
She saw he was still puzzled.
“The courtesan. You wouldn’t know, but she was famous.”
“And obviously beautiful.”
The girl regarded him sceptically.
“She was, as a matter of fact. But that is not one of the things I have inherited from her.”
“I don’t know,” said Owen. “Is Ahmed your brother?” he asked. “Half-brother. His mother was a woman in the harem.”
“We met him at your father’s that day.”
“C’est un vrai imbecile, celui-la, ” said the girl dismissively.
“He doesn’t like the British.”
“You can’t expect originality from him.”
Owen laughed.
“He doesn’t seem to care greatly for your father, either,” he said. “Naturally,” said the girl. “None of us do. We are angry for our mothers.”
“You are,” said Owen. “Is Ahmed?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Ahmed is just angry,” she said. Then she looked hard at him.
“Why do you ask?”
“Interested,” said Owen.
“Surely you don’t think-” She began to laugh. “It’s too ridiculous,” she said.
“Is it?”
“If you knew Ahmed-” She broke off. “Why,” she said, “you sound just like the Mamur Zapt.”
And turned on her heel and walked away.
Owen rejoined the group around the playwright. They were talking now about the way in which old parts of Cairo were being torn down to make way for new buildings in the European style. Was this progress or was it deterioration? The debate continued happily and vehemently.
A little later in the evening, or morning, Fakhri detached him.
“I would like you to meet one of my colleagues,” he said, and led Owen over to a little group in one corner. Two earnest young men were addressing a somewhat gloomy middle-aged man, who looked up with relief when he saw Fakhri approaching.
“Mon cher!” he said.
They shook hands and embraced.
“I have been here all night and not had a word with you!”
“It was good of you to come,” said Fakhri. “Have you put it to bed?”
The man glanced at his watch.
“The first copies will be coming off in an hour,” he said. “I shall have to go soon.”
“Not before you have had some more coffee,” said Fakhri, and clapped his hands.
A splendid suffragi, or waiter, in a spotless white gown and a red sash around his middle appeared at once with a coffee-pot.
“You need it to keep awake,” said Fakhri. “Anyway, why do you have to be there? Can’t they manage without you?”
“No,” said the man gloomily. “It will all be wrongly set, the columns won’t be straight and some of it is bound to be transposed.” “They used to be all right," said Fakhri. “Well, fairly all right.” “They were always hopeless,” said the man, “and now they’re worse.”
“Daouad always sees the gloomy side of things,” Fakhri said to Owen. “However, it is true that things are not easy for him.”
“Not easy,” said Daouad, roused. “I’ll say they’re not easy! You don’t know what problems are!” he said to Fakhri.
He turned to Owen.
“There’s no direction! Not since Kamil died. They’re all at each other’s throats, el Gazzari, Jemal, Yussuf, Abdul Murr. And I’m in the middle! If I print something that Jemal likes, el Gazzari won’t have it. If I put in one of Gazzari’s huge sermons, Jemal comes to me and says it has to go or his people won’t distribute it.”
He gulped his coffee.
“That’s why I have to be there,” he said to Fakhri. “It was all right when I left the office but who knows what they’ve done since? They’ll have pulled articles out, pushed articles in-”
Fakhri patted him on the shoulder. “Only a man like you could cope,” he said,
Owen knew now why Fakhri had introduced him. Daouad was the editor of a! Liwa
‘ Working to so many people is impossible,” he said sympathetically. “It is,” Daouad agreed fervently.
“And they are so extreme! They won’t compromise at all.”
“Not one bit,” agreed Daouad.
“I don’t know how you manage. Is there any sign of someone getting control?”
“That might be worse,” said Daouad gloomily. “If it’s el Gazzari, I couldn’t go on. I can’t even talk to him. And Jemal wouldn’t be much better. They never listen to me!” he complained to Fakhri.
“They couldn’t do without you,” said Fakhri.
“What about Abdul Murr?” he asked.
“He’s got more sense,” Daouad conceded. “I could work with him.”
“I would have thought there was a chance of Abdul Murr,” said Fakhri. “In the end both Jemal and el Gazzari must see that things can’t go on like this. Someone has to be in charge. Abdul Murr is a reasonable man. They can both work with him, even if they can’t work with each other.”