‘No, thanks.’
‘Ve-ery good! She make wonderful bump-bump. You like?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘You prefer boy? I have brother. Handsome! Not like me, Effendi.’
‘No, thanks.’
‘No boy?’
‘No, nor girl, either.’
The urchin was temporarily silenced, while he considered the restricted possibilities.
‘Effendi,’ he said at last, ‘I know a special house. All sorts. You want something different, can do. Dog, perhaps? Donkey? You want donkey?’
Owen turned to give the urchin his full attention.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Sidi, Effendi.’
‘Sidi, I am surprised at you. Is this the only way you can make money? I would have thought a resourceful boy like you would be growing fat on the pickings from the docks.’
‘Effendi,’ said the boy indignantly, ‘I am. I get my share. But it is only a small one. Ibrahim says it will be bigger when I can carry a load myself. The men who carry the loads get first choice of the pickings. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise. But, Effendi,’-(confidingly)-‘I would prefer not to carry the loads. The sacks are heavy and in the sun it is hard work. I would prefer to share in the pickings and not carry the loads.’
‘Wouldn’t we all. Tell me about your friend, Ibrahim.’
‘He carries the loads, Effendi, two, perhaps three, times a week.’
‘I would like to meet him. It could be to his advantage.’
‘Effendi, I don’t know-’
‘And yours.’
Owen put his hand in his pocket and jingled some coins. ‘Oh, well, Effendi, that’s different!’
The boy slipped away and returned some ten minutes later with a thin, wiry man in an embroidered skull cap. Sweat was running down his face and he was mopping his neck with a dirty handkerchief.
‘Hard work!’ said Owen sympathetically.
‘Effendi, I will not deny it.’
‘And for not much money.’
‘That, too, I will not deny.’
‘Even with the pickings.’
‘They are few, Effendi. A burst sack, a broken packing case. And then, besides, most of the regular work is with coal and there is not much reward in that.’
‘I think I could add to your rewards.’
‘What is it you had in mind, Effendi?’
‘I need to know if a certain consignment comes in.’
‘Will not the office tell you?’
‘The consignment I speak of is not likely to be known in the office.’
‘It is hidden goods, then?’
‘It is likely to have been concealed.’
‘That may make it difficult.’
‘The reward will be commensurate.’
‘I could not do it on my own, Effendi.’
‘If the word were spread,’ said Owen, ‘and what I seek, found, you would take your share. For the finder, the reward would be great. So great that he might not even have to carry loads any more.’
‘That indeed would be a reward worth earning.’
Ibrahim stood for some time considering the matter. The sweat was still running down his face. From time to time he dabbed at it with his handkerchief.
‘Well, Effendi,’ he said at last, ‘there is nothing to be lost by doing what you ask and there could be much to gain. I will do it. What is it you ask?’
After he had gone, Owen became aware that the urchin was still standing by him.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, and put his hand in his pocket.
Sidi took the coins with surprising inattention.
‘Effendi,’ he said, ‘that reward you mentioned: would it apply to me?’
‘If you found what I want, yes.’
‘I would buy donkeys,’ said Sidi. ‘It would be better if they carried the loads, not me.’
‘With such an abundance of management insight, Sidi, you are bound to prosper.’
‘I hope so, Effendi. Now, about my sister: are you sure-?’
In the Bab-el-Khalk, the headquarters of the Cairo Police, the heat was stupefying. Owen, working at his desk, had wedged a sheet of blotting paper beneath his writing hand to soak up the persistent trickles of sweat that ran down his arm and threatened to turn everything he wrote into an indecipherable damp smudge. The water in the glass beside him was lukewarm again; only a few minutes before, his orderly had come round to fill the glass with ice. Yusef had said the ice was melting even in the ice house. It had been melting, he said, even when the cart arrived and the men had carried the ice loaves, each tenderly wrapped in sacking, down into the cellar.
The Bab-el-Khalk was as quiet as a morgue. Christ, what would the morgue be doing if the ice was melting! He decided not to think about that. Instead, he changed the image. As quiet as a tomb. Yes, he quite liked that. As quiet as a tomb and as dark as a tomb, with all the shutters closed against the sun, as they had been since early morning.
But not so quiet! Voices, feet running. Someone running along the corridor. The pad of bare feet, the slap of slippers.
Yusef burst into the room.
‘Effendi! Effendi! A man-’
A man with his galabeeyah hoisted up round his knees, the better to run, his feet bare, his turban dishevelled, exposing his skull cap, his face running with sweat-’
‘Effendi! Mustapha is being attacked again!’
‘Mustapha?’
‘The cafe! Oh, Effendi, come quickly! It is terrible!’
Owen jumped to his feet, grabbed his topee-better than a tarboosh if there was a prospect of being hit on the head-and ran out of the room. He found the man running beside him.
‘Quick, Effendi! Oh, quick!’
Well, yes, but how? Arabeah? There was a line of the horse-drawn carriages in front of the Bab-el-Khalk but no one would describe them as speedy. Donkey? There would be donkeys tied up in the courtyard, but somehow-Got it! The Aalim-Zapt’s bicycle! He ran down into the courtyard. There it was, green, gleaming, modern!
‘Tell the Aalim-Zapt!’ he shouted, as he sped through the gate.
He hurtled across the Place Bab-el-Khalk. That was easy. It was when he came to the more crowded streets of the native city that he ran into trouble. A massive stone cart was almost entirely blocking the thoroughfare, useless to shout, a little gap at one side-Christ, another one just behind! Another gap, at the expense of a chicken, Jesus, stalls all over the road, onions, tomatoes a few more onions and tomatoes when he’d finished, and now a bloody Passover sheep! Fat, obtuse and in the way! A flock of turkeys, a man carrying a bed, a line of forage camels, three great loads of berseem flopping up and down on either side-steer clear of them-and now a donkey with a rolled-up carpet stretched across its back, the two ends sticking out right across the street, a man sitting on top-! Or was he on top, still? Owen did not dare to look.
He became aware of someone running beside him.
‘Nearly there, Effendi!’ said the messenger indomitably.
One last street, a crowd outside, well, you’d expect that. He jumped off the bicycle.
‘Out of the way! Out of the way!’ he shouted.
‘Make way! Make way for the Mamur Zapt!’ shouted the storyteller.
He pushed his way through. Hands helped as well as hindered.
Suddenly he was through, popped out the front, like a cork out of a bottle.
The cafe was a scene of destruction. Chairs, tables, hookahs lay all over the floor. In the middle of the room, prone on his face, lay Selim.
Mustapha’s wife was on her knees beside him. There was blood all over her burka.
‘A lion!’ she kept saying tearfully. ‘A lion!’
Owen bent down. There was a huge gash on the back of Selim’s head. Owen bent closer.
‘He breathes,’ he said.
‘A lion!’ said the woman, in tears. ‘A wounded lion!’
The wounded lion groaned.
‘Water!’ said the woman. ‘Bring water!’
Mekhmet, terrified, plucked at her sleeve.
‘Lady,’ he said. ‘Lady!’
‘Fetch water.’
‘But, Lady-’
‘Go on, you stupid bastard!’ said a voice from across the room. It was the owner of the cafe, Mustapha, pale and limp, sitting exhaustedly on the bottom of the stairs. ‘Fetch water, can’t you?’