‘Oh, my God!’ said the owner. ‘Get on with it, you fool. Get some coffee!’
A woman stuck her head out of a door at the back. ‘Don’t shout at him!’ she said indignantly. ‘He’s a poor, afflicted creature! He’s doing his best!’
‘He’s not doing anything at all!’ shouted the cafe owner. ‘He’s just standing there!’
‘You’ve confused him! Come on, Mekhmet, love,’ she said kindly. ‘Take no notice of him!’
The owner groaned and put a fist to his head.
‘It’s impossible!’ he said. ‘The man’s a halfwit. Tell him anything and he gets confused. You can’t run a cafe business like that! I’m only employing him because he’s her sister-in-law’s cousin.’
The woman emerged from the back with some coffee for Owen.
‘You’re only employing him because he’s cheap!’ she said tartly. ‘You thought you could get something for nothing.’
‘I was wrong, then, wasn’t I? I haven’t even got something!’
‘You’re a hard-hearted man,’ she said. ‘If you turn your face from God’s poor, He will turn his face from you!’
‘You get back inside, woman!’ shouted Mustapha indignantly. ‘Showing yourself off in public to all the men!’
‘If you’re going to shout at Mekhmet when he brings the coffee, and you’re going to shout at me, who’s going to bring it, I’d like to know? You just tell me that!’
She stalked off. The cafe owner mopped his brow.
‘Just look at that!’ he said. ‘Women are all the same. Difficult! She wouldn’t have married me if it hadn’t been for the dowry. Now she expects me to provide for everybody! Anyone who’s simple or lame or blind she invites in. Turn my face from God’s poor? I’m going to be one of God’s poor if she carries on the way she’s going.’
‘The fact is, you need a man about the place,’ said Owen. Mustapha looked at him.
‘You on that again?’
‘It’s the answer to your prayers.’
Mustapha was silent for some time.
‘Is he smart?’ he said at last.
‘He’s big,’ said Owen.
The cafe owner chuckled.
‘Like that, is it? Well, it’s not altogether a bad thing. Get somebody smart and the next thing you know, they’ve got something going on the side. Big and willing, that’s all you want. At least, that’s what the farmers used to say back in the village when I was a boy. And-he’s not going to cost anything?’
‘Even less than Mekhmet,’ said Owen.
The Grand Duke’s visit had been announced the day before and the newspapers were full of it. The tone was broadly welcoming. Even the Nationalist papers-and most of the papers were Nationalist-took a positive view of the visit as a mark of international recognition.
There were, of course, as always in Cairo, exceptions. For the most part these were confined to the Balkan communities and Owen realized now for the first time how many of these there were in the city. He had been hazily aware, for example, of the Montenegrins parading in their big boots outside the chief hotels for the benefit of tourists, but had not realized until now that they formed a substantial community. He had vaguely registered that Serbs were always fighting Croats and Bosnians Herzegovinians, but since in Egypt at any rate they were prudently not fighting Muslims he had taken this as merely the expression of an over-exuberant national spirit and left it to the ordinary police. Lots of them though there were, there had not been enough for him to register them as a significant political presence. Up till now.
Each community, it soon transpired, was holding a public meeting to protest against Duke Nicholas’s visit. Indeed, some of them were cooperating in holding joint meetings so things must be really serious. Since the meetings were all obligingly announced in the press, Owen assumed at first that he had little to worry about.
‘It’s not public meetings that lead to assassinations,’ he said to Paul, when the Consul-General registered alarm at the vehemence of some of the meetings, ‘but private ones.’
‘What a decent British thing to say!’ said Paul. ‘I only hope that you are right.’
However, he took the precaution of posting observers at all the meetings, whereupon he found that all the meetings were plotting the Grand Duke’s assassination. He was much perturbed and started following developments very closely; until he found that the exuberance of spirit that he had detected earlier worked against agreement on specific proposals. He continued to follow developments but sat back and relaxed until one morning Nikos brought him news of yet another protest meeting scheduled for the following evening in Old Cairo.
‘Babylon?’ said Owen, surprised. ‘I didn’t think there were any of them there. I thought it was only Copts and Greeks.’
‘And a few others,’ said Nikos, who was himself a Copt and viewed all other races as interlopers.
Babylon, as Old Cairo was confusingly known, was situated about three miles south of the modern city. It was built on the site of the old Roman fortress, very little of which now remained. The scanty ruins of the walls had been largely incorporated into the Coptic Ders. A peculiarity of the area was that many of the Coptic and Greek churches had been built within walled enclosures known as Ders. These usually contained shops and schools and houses as well as churches so that they took on the character of fortified precincts.
It was in one of these Ders, or precincts, that the meeting was to be held. Like most public meetings in Cairo it was held in the open air, in a small square at the heart of the enclosure. When Owen arrived, the square was already comfortably filled. Most people were in ordinary Arab dress, tending towards the black and grey of the Copt rather than the blue and white or striped of the ordinary Egyptian fellahin. Owen was surprised. The Copts had survived for centuries by keeping their heads down. What now was bringing them out in protest? Surely not a Russian Grand Duke?
As he continued to look, however, he saw that most of them were not actually Copts, but he could not make out what they were. Some of them wore crosses, so they were Christians, but their features were not those of Copts. Copts’ faces were round; these were aquiline. Some of them wore boots, too, the high-heeled boots of the Montenegrins; and some were in breeches. He wondered who they could be.
At one end of the square was a raised platform for the speakers and now the speakers were coming out. They filed across the stage and sat down on the chairs provided. Behind them a huge banner was suddenly unfolded. It said, in great fiery letters: ‘Death to the Grand Duke!’ Which was not very promising.
A man stood up and began to address the meeting, in Arabic. He said that the meeting had been called in order to allow people to express their views on the subject of the forthcoming visit of the Grand Duke and decide what action, if any, should be taken. He then began to call on the speakers.
One after another they came forward and spoke of what the Russians had done. If half of what they said was true, thought Owen, they had every reason to feel bitter. God, it was terrible! Each one recited a litany of atrocities.
It took him quite a while to work out where each speaker was from. Armenia, yes, that was fairly clear, and Georgia- there seemed a lot of Georgians about, judging by the applause. Azerbaijan, well, yes, just about; but Dagestan? Dagestan! And Abkhaz? Where the hell was Abkhaz? What the hell was Abkhaz, come to that!
And now someone else was coming forward, someone who seemed vaguely familiar-God, it was Sorgos!
He stood for a moment looking down at the crowd. He had discarded his stick and looked years younger. A torch nearby lit up the sharp face and the thin bony hands clutching the edges of the rostrum. He seemed like some great eagle standing there. He now raised one of the hands.
‘The task,’ he said, ‘is not to complain about what has been done to us; but to avenge it!’
The whole front of the crowd jumped to its feet and began applauding vigorously. For several minutes Sorgos was unable to speak. Then he raised his hand again. The noise died away.