“I shall complain to the Agent,” said Guzman, and rang off.
Owen sighed.
Nikos, who had been listening throughout, rang through again.
“Why didn’t you put him on to Brooker?” he asked.
In this outer part of Cairo the houses were single-storey. A low mud brick wall screened them and their women from the outside world. Beyond the houses was the desert, flat, grey, empty, except for a few wisps of thorn bushes.
Mahmoud met Owen in the open square where the buses turned.
“I thought it better like this,” he said. “Otherwise you’d never find it.”
He led Owen up a dark alley which narrowed and bent and doubled back on itself and soon lost its identity in a maze of other alleys threading through and connecting the houses. In the poorer suburbs there were no roads. The alleys were the only approach and these were thick with mud and refuse and excrement.
In the dark Owen could not see, but he could smell, and as he stumbled along, his feet skidding and squashing, he could guess. There were, too, the little scurries of rats.
The only light was from the sky. Out here there was no reflected glare from the city’s lights and you could see the stars clearly. The sky seemed quite light compared with the dark shadows of the alleys.
Occasionally you heard people beyond the walls and often there was the smell of cooking. Once or twice the voices came from the roofs where the people had taken their beds and lay out in the evening cool.
The alleys became narrower and the walls poorer and more dilapidated. There were gaps in them where bricks had fallen away and not been repaired. You could see the spaces against the sky.
Some of the bricks had fallen into the alleyways and there were heaps of rubble and other stuff that Owen had to climb over or wade through.
They came out into what at first Owen thought was a small square but in fact was a space where a house had fallen down. He heard Mahmoud talking to someone and then felt Mahmoud’s hand on his arm gently guiding him along a wall. There was a small doorway in the wall, or perhaps it was just a gap. Mahmoud slipped through it and drew Owen after him.
They were in a small yard. Over to one side there was a little oil lamp on the ground, around which some women were squatting. They looked up as Mahmoud approached but did not move away, as women usually would. They wore no veils, and in the light from the lamp Owen could see they were Berberines, their faces marked and tattooed with the tribal scars.
He followed Mahmoud into the house. There was just the single room. In one corner there was a low fire from which the smoke wavered up uncertainly to a hole in the roof, first wandering about the room and filling the air with its acrid fumes. On the floor was another oil lamp, and beside it two people were sitting, one of them a policeman. The other man looked up. He was gaunt and emaciated and plainly uneasy.
Mahmoud muttered something and the policeman left the room. They squatted down opposite the other man.
The smell of excrement was strong in the air. So was another smell, heavy, sickly, sweet. Owen recognized it to be hashish.
The man waited patiently.
Eventually Mahmoud said: “You travel the villages?”
“Iwa,” said the man. “Yes, effendi.”
“You take them the drug?”
“Yes, effendi.”
“Do you take them just the drug, or do you also take them the one that chills?”
The man’s face twitched slightly. “Sometimes I take them the one that chills,” he said in a low voice. He put out his hand pleadingly.
“But not often, effendi. Sometimes-just for a rich omda-that is all.”
“It is bad,” said Mahmoud sternly. “It is bad. Nevertheless, that is not our concern tonight. Our concern is with something other. Tell us about the other and we shall not ask questions about this. Do you understand?”
“I understand, effendi,” said the man submissively.
“Good. Then let us begin with what you have already said. You travel the villages with the drug.”
“Yes, effendi.”
“Among them the village that we know.”
“Yes, effendi.”
“And at that village you sell the drug.”
“Yes, effendi.”
“To all the men? Do most of the villagers buy?”
“Most of them. They work hard, effendi. This year there is little food. It fills their stomachs,” the man said quietly.
“And among the men,” said Mahmoud, “you sell to the one we spoke of?”
“Yes, effendi.”
“Every time? Or most times?”
“Since Ramadan,” said the man, “every time.”
“Little or much?”
“Little, effendi.”
The man looked at Mahmoud.
“He is a good man, effendi,” he said. “He would not take it from his children.”
“So he bought only a little. But not last time.”
“Last time,” said the man, “he wanted more.”
“Why was that? Did he say?”
“He said that one had given him the means to right a great wrong and that he wished to strengthen himself that he might accomplish it.” “And what did you say?”
“I warned him, effendi.” The man spoke passionately, pleadingly.
“I warned him. I said, ‘The world is full of wrongs. Try to right them and the world turns over. Better leave it as it is.’ ”
“And he said?”
The man looked down. “He said, effendi, that a drug-seller was without honour.”
The lamp flickered and the shadows jumped suddenly. Then the flame steadied and they returned to their place.
The man raised his eyes again.
“I warned him,” he said. “I told him that the one who had given him the means was a wrongdoer, for his was not the grudge. That troubled him. He said the one who had given him the means did not know what he intended. I asked him how could that be? But he would say no more.”
“And you said no more?”
"And I said no more.”
“He had the money.”
“He had the money,” the man agreed.
He looked down at the lamp. Mahmoud waited. The silence continued for some minutes. Owen was not used to squatting and desperately wanted to stretch, but he knew that the silence was important and dared not break it.
Eventually the man looked up.
“I think I saw the man, effendi,” he said diffidently, “the wrongdoer.”
“How was that?” asked Mahmoud mildly, almost without interest. “It was the day of the meeting,” said the man. “Afterwards I saw one from outside the village talking to him. And then again the next day. I stayed in the village that night,” he explained.
“This one from outside the village,” said Mahmoud, “was he young or old?”
“Young, effendi,” said the man immediately. “Not much more than a boy.”
“Rich or poor?”
“Rich. One of the well-to-do.”
“If we showed a man to you,” said Mahmoud, “could you tell us if it was he?”
The man looked at him with alarm. “Effendi, I dare not!” he said. “They would kill me!”
“They?” asked Owen. It was the only time he spoke.
“When one acts in a thing like this,” said the man, “one does not act alone.”
“The man was not alone, then?” said Mahmoud.
“When I saw him he was alone,” the drug-seller said. “I spoke without meaning.”
“If you saw him,” said Mahmoud, “you would know him.”
“I would know him,” the man agreed wretchedly. “But, effendi-” “Peace!” said Mahmoud. “We will bring you where you will see him but he will not see you. No one will ever know. I swear it.” “Effendi-” began the man desperately.
“Enough!” Mahmoud held up his hand.
“Do this thing for us,” he said, “which no one shall ever know about, and you shall go in peace. Do not do this thing, and you will never go.”
The man subsided, shrank into himself. Mahmoud rose. He put his hand gently on the man’s shoulder.
“It will soon be over, friend,” he said. “Go in peace.”
“Salaam Aleikham, ” said the man, but automatically.
Owen followed Mahmoud out into the courtyard. The two policemen came across and waited expectantly. Mahmoud spoke to them for a couple of minutes and then they went into the house. They emerged with the slight figure of the drug-seller between them. Owen and Mahmoud set out along the alleyway with the others following close behind. In this part of the city it was better to travel as a party. When they reached the space and light of the main road Mahmoud spoke to the constables again and then they went off separately, on foot. He and Owen walked slowly back to where Owen had left his arabeah. “We’re going to find it’s Ahmed, aren’t we?” said Owen.