The Night of the Dog (12 page)

“Anyone talk to her?”

“I couldn’t see what went on behind the screen. But she didn’t come with anyone. And afterwards she left on her own.”

“You don’t know where she went?”

“As it happens,” said Georgiades, “I do.”

“You followed her?”

“No,” said Georgiades. “I wanted to hear what the others were saying. I got someone else to follow her. A small boy. For a large reward.”

“Not Ali? That boy in the cemetery.”

“That little bugger,” said Georgiades, “may be most places in Casiro but he’s not everywhere. No, another urchin. Equally unscrupulous.”

“Anyway, he followed her home?”

“That’s right. She’s moved, but not far. Still within a stone’s throw of the Scentmakers’ Bazaar.”

“She could still be important.”

“Yes. So I’ve set this boy up with a regular income. He’s keeping an eye on her. Debit the Curbash Compensation Fund with a few more milliemes.”

The Mamur Zapt winced.

Eventually Owen had to summon Yussuf.

“Yussuf,” he said, “things can’t go on like this. You’ll have to sort things out between you and your wife.”

“I have no wife,” said Yussuf obstinately.

“Yes, I know all about that,” said Owen, “but it won’t do. We haven’t had any decent coffee for days. Besides, it’s depressing everybody.”

That was true. Yussuf’s unhappiness had spread a cloud over the whole orderly room. Normally it buzzed with cheerful conversation. The orderlies didn’t do a lot of work but they did do a lot of talking, and their general cheerfulness had a lifting effect on the corridor as a whole. Owen would hear them as he sat at his desk; and if by some incredible chance all the bearers at once were sent out with messages and the orderly room fell empty he was at once conscious of a gap. Since Yussuf had fallen out with his wife, however, the sounds from the other end of the corridor had become more subdued. At first the other orderlies had merely seized upon it as an excuse for extra banter. Gradually, however, they had all been infected by Yussuf’s low spirits and now the orderly room was an oasis of gloom.

Even McPhee, the Assistant Commandant, had noticed it and that morning he had come along to see Owen.

“We can’t have this,” he said. “It’s depressing everybody. You’d better have a word with him. I’d do it myself but he’s your bearer.”

Although, strictly speaking, the bearers were not assigned to individuals and worked as a pool, carrying messages for anybody in the building, in practice they identified themselves with particular people. When Owen had first arrived in the building Yussuf had decided, unilaterally, to be his bearer and now it was a source of great pride to him that he was the one who carried the Mamur Zapt’s messages. Owen did not in fact have many messages—he preferred to use the telephone—and Yussuf had time on his hands. It had seemed to him a natural extension of his duties, and somehow consistent with Islamic notions of hospitality, to assume responsibility for seeing that Owen was properly supplied with coffee. The same generous spirit had seen him extend his service to the rest of the corridor, and now the whole floor depended on it. When the service faltered, therefore, everyone along the corridor was afflicted; and Owen, as the person responsible in custom for Yussuf, was seen as the man to put it right.

What precisely he could do about it was not immediately clear since even the Mamur Zapt’s writ did not normally extend to the domestic relationship between man and wife. The consensus along the corridor was that Yussuf’s wife was all right really apart from her inability to produce any children and that this was the root of the trouble. The other bearers took the traditional view that the right thing to do was for Yussuf to get rid of her and find another one; but for reasons known only to himself Yussuf was reluctant to do this. A refinement was therefore suggested, namely that he should keep his first wife and merely add a second. Here too, though, there were difficulties. Yussuf couldn’t afford it and his first wife wouldn’t allow it. She had marched indignantly out when the proposal had been put to her and the matter had remained unresolved ever since.

“I have no wife,” Yussuf repeated obstinately.

“Then it’s time you did,” said Owen. “Either take Fatima back or find yourself another woman.”

Yussuf was silent.

“Fatima has faults,” Owen pursued. “No woman is without faults. Nor no man either. You yourself, Yussuf, are not without blame. Fatima has been a good wife to you. For the sake of that, take her back.”

Yussuf stared straight in front of him. He gave no sign of having heard.

“You have shown her you are a strong man, one who must be obeyed. If she didn’t know that before, she will know it now. She has learned her lesson. Be just as well as strong, O Yussuf.”

Owen had fallen into the familiar rhetorical style of the Arab. It was partly the language itself that suggested it. When he had first come to Egypt Garvin had insisted that he stay with an Arab family perfecting his Arabic. Owen had a facility for languages and had learned his lessons well. He spoke Arabic now without strain and from the inside, not needing to translate, thinking in the Arabic mode.

Yussuf stirred, responding, possibly, to the familiar patterns.

“She has done wrong,” he said.

“Indeed she has,” Owen agreed hastily. “But now she knows better.”

“She should acknowledge her fault.”

“And probably wishes to,” said Owen, hoping that Yussuf’s wife was not as formidable as his sister.

“She has not said so.”

“Well,” said Owen, “you can hardly expect her to.”

“She will have to say so before I take her back.”

“Do not be too hard,” Owen counselled. “The wise man is merciful as well as just.”

“If she acknowledges her fault,” said Yussuf, with the air of one making a great concession, “then I will take her back.”

Owen praised Yussuf’s justness and mercifulness, wondering, however, whether such an acknowledgement could be secured.

“There will have to be someone to go between you,” he said.

Yussuf was prepared to accept that.

“Though not Soraya,” he added darkly.

“Who is Soraya?”

“My sister.”

Owen thought that rather a pity as she had seemed very competent, quite capable of sorting out both Yussuf and his wife. However, this was a point Yussuf stuck on, so in the end it was agreed that they would ask Leila, the wife of the senior bearer. Privately Owen intended to make sure that she was given a very strong briefing beforehand. For the moment, however, it looked as if the matter was on its way to being resolved.

“Fatima will know,” he said to Yussuf, “that she has a husband who is just as well as strong, merciful as well as just.”

“She is a fortunate woman,” Yussuf agreed.

“And you will take her back.”

Yussuf hesitated.

“It—it may not be so simple, effendi.”

“Why not?”

“Effendi—”

“Yes?”

“I have already pronounced the divorce,” said Yussuf with a rush.

Under Islamic law it was possible to divorce by simple declaration. The husband merely had to say, in the presence of witnesses, “I divorce thee.”

“Did anyone hear you?”

Yussuf hung his head.

“Yes, effendi.”

It transpired that the whole street had been summoned to hear the declaration.

“That is a pity. However, you can revoke your word and take her back.”

It was allowable under the law for a husband who changed his mind to receive his wife back without ceremony. Twice.

Yussuf’s head dropped even lower.

“Effendi—”

“Yes?”

“It was the triple vow.”

If the words were spoken once, or even twice, the woman could be taken back. When the words were spoken for the third time, however, the divorce was irrevocable. And that applied whether the words were spoken on separate occasions or all together. Thus if a particularly irate husband pronounced the words three times in the heat of the moment the divorce was permanent and could not be reversed.

“You said it three times?”

“Yes, effendi,” said Yussuf unhappily.

“That’s all right,” said Zeinab, “it happens all the time.”

“They say it three times?”

“Yes. And afterwards they’re sorry. It’s too late then, of course.”

“He’ll have to marry someone else.”

Zeinab curled her legs up under her on the divan. “Why?”

“Because we can’t go on like this. It’s affecting everybody.”

“I didn’t mean that. I mean, why does he have to marry someone else? I would have thought it mightn’t be too easy. You say he’s got a bit of a reputation as a skinflint.”

“I didn’t say that. His sister did.”

“Well, she should know. If it’s true, he might find it difficult to get anyone to agree. Mothers are not going to let their daughters go to someone who’s mean with money. A bit of beating is all right, you can put up with that, but if a man is tight with his money there’s always trouble in the house. Besides, there’s nothing in it for the family.”

“I would have thought a family would have been only too glad to get an unmarried daughter off its hands.”

“Not if they’re going to come back again immediately because their husband is forever divorcing them.”

“Yussuf’s not like that.”

“It’s the money, you see,” explained Zeinab, who tended to take a very practical view of these things. “A lot of families will say that as soon as he’s got the dowry you’ll get the girl back. And then you’ll be worse off than when you started. You’ve still got the girl but you haven’t got the money.”

“Perhaps he’d be willing to take someone without a dowry. In the circumstances, I mean.”

“Him? Yussuf? Not if what his sister says is true.”

“If I leaned on him.”

“That might help,” Zeinab conceded.

“I could even pay the dowry.”

“I’d watch that if I were you. Otherwise they’ll all be doing it.”

“There are lots of poor families.”

“If you were prepared to pay the dowry—”

“It might be worth it.”

“What I can’t see, though,” said Zeinab, “is why bother with all this? Wouldn’t it be simpler just for him to marry Fatima again?”

“He can’t. That’s the whole point. He’s used the triple vow.”

“But that’s no problem. I’ve told you. People are always doing it.”

“But—”

“There’s a way round.”

“There is?”

“Yes. It’s simple. What you’ve got to do is to get her to marry again. You go to a friend, or if you haven’t got one there are people who specialize in it, and then you get them to marry her on condition that they divorce her immediately afterwards. Once that has happened you’re free to marry her again.”

“The triple vow doesn’t apply?”

“Not anymore.”

Seeing that Owen was having difficulties in getting used to the idea, she took him by the hand and pulled him down beside her on the divan.

“It’s all right,” she said. “In fact, it’s quite common. Men are always divorcing their wives and feeling sorry afterwards. So there’s got to be some way round it.”

“It happens all the time?”

“Sure,” said Zeinab, snuggling down. “All the time.”

And then the trouble started.

The first sign was slogans daubed on the wall of a kuttub, a religious school where small children went for their first instruction in the Koran. The slogans were in ill-formed, illiterate script and Owen at first put it down as the work of children; not the children who went to the kuttub, who were infants, but older youths.

“It’s the youths,” he said to the Moslems who complained. “I don’t know what things are coming to. Children have no respect for their elders nowadays.”

That at least they could agree with and went away shaking their heads, believing it to be merely another instance of the general moral decline which was overtaking the world. But when the slogans appeared on the wall of two mosques and camel dung was dropped on the entrance of one of them they were very angry and came back to Owen and said that these were godless young and should be put down. The connection with sectarianism was made gradually and only came after a succession of similar events. Women going to the mosque had their veils snatched off; a Moslem water-seller was set upon and beaten; Moslem stalls in the market were upset; and during the evening call to prayer a bell had been rung loudly.

Owen found it hard to take such incidents seriously.

“These things happen all the time,” he said sceptically when Nikos came in to report them.

“And people don’t notice them. But now they are. That’s the difference.”

Nikos also brought in some leaflets which his agents had confiscated.

“This is a difference too,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve had ones like this for quite a while.”

The leaflet accused the Moslems of kidnapping children and using them for ritual purposes. Afterwards, it was alleged, the victims were placed in the children’s brothels in which Cairo abounded. There was, of course, no point in trying to check the veracity of the allegations. The matter was mystic as much as factual, drawn from deep-lying sub-strata of racial prejudice and religious fear. Similar accusations were made at different times against all the churches. They surfaced at intervals, burned hot for a time and then slipped back underground, to be stored again in layers of social and religious memory.

If there were leaflets there was organization. And if there was organization there was money. And if there was organization and money, then there was design and planning. The incidents were not spontaneous. They were part of a pattern. He had hoped that the affair of the dog and the death of the Zikr were isolated instances, that with the death of those responsible the matter could end there.

It looked as if it was only beginning.

The Moslem response was not long in coming. Fighting broke out in one of the markets, two people were stabbed and a third sprained his ankle when a stall of onions collapsed. The stab wounds were presented to Owen when he went down to inspect. Both victims were brought to him limp in the arms of their supporters and their condition appeared dire. However, closer inspection suggested that the volume of groans was in inverse proportion to the extent of the damage and Owen soon pushed them away. More important was the fact that one was a Copt and one a Moslem, which gave hope that, honour being satisfied on both sides, the exchanges might not be carried further. He lectured all sides sternly, posted a constable conspicuously, and went back to his office relieved that matters were no worse.

Over the next few days, however, there were a number of such incidents and some of them did not end so happily. There were other stabbings, some of them serious. Attacks on individuals became so frequent that there were notably fewer people on the streets after dark than was usual. Gangs of youths gathered outside shops. At first they contented themselves with shouting insults and throwing stones. Then one gang went further. It broke into a shop and wrecked it, terrifying the owner. After that, such attacks became the pattern and often, now, the attackers were not satisfied with merely terrifying the owners, they beat them up as well. One gang set fire to a shop after wrecking it and then that too became a feature of the attacks.

Similar incidents occurred all over the Old City and the manpower Owen could command was stretched to its limit. McPhee had all the ordinary police out in support and Garvin brought in extra police from the country districts around Cairo.

“We need more,” said Owen. “It’s still growing. That won’t be enough.”

“It’s got to be enough,” said Garvin. “There aren’t any more.”

“Can’t you transfer some from Alexandria?”

“What happens if it spreads there?”

“It would be better to have city police. They’re better at this sort of thing.”

The country police were sufficiently confused simply by being in a big city, without adding in all the complex requirements of urban policing under riot conditions.

“Can’t you grow your own?” asked Garvin. “Take more people onto your payroll?”

“Haven’t the money,” said Owen, remembering the Curbash Compensation Fund with bitterness. “I spoke to you about that.”

“I suppose I could try again,” said Garvin. “There might be some spare cash floating around since it’s getting near the end of the year.”

He rang back later.

“No chance,” he said. “They’re up to their eyeballs in balance sheets, especially with Postlethwaite looking over their shoulder, and won’t even listen to me.”

“They’re all bloody Copts in the Ministry of Finance, that’s the trouble,” said Owen.

The pressure now, though, seemed to be coming from the Moslem side. Crowds gathered outside the main mosques and there were huge demonstrations; spontaneous, according to the Moslems, organized according to Owen.

“Osman?” he asked Georgiades.

Georgiades nodded. He had been out on the streets all day and his face was running with sweat.

“Yes,” he said. “Osman. Plus money.”

The following evening there was a particularly ugly incident, although this time, against the tide, it appeared to be the Copts who were responsible.

It took place not at the Blue Mosque but further along the street in front of the great Mosque of el-Mouayad. Some Moslem students who had been visiting the mosque were set upon as they left by a much larger gang of Copts and in the fracas at least one of the students appeared to have been killed. Owen was unable to check every incident himself and sent one of his men over. The agent, a good one, reported that the affair wasn’t quite as dramatic as first accounts had suggested and had been on a far smaller scale, but that students had definitely been involved and at least one of them appeared badly hurt. The involvement of students was something that Owen had been hoping to avoid. The students of el-Azhar, the great Moslem university of Cairo, were only too ready to take to the streets in defence of religion or, indeed, anything at all, and once they were participating it would be very difficult to keep the matter localized. His worst fears were realized when the next day word came from Georgiades that a monster procession was being formed which would march from the gates of el-Azhar through the Old City to converge on the Mar Girgis, where a demonstration was planned.

The only good thing about all this was that the procession was going to march through the Old City.

“It will be a shambles,” Nikos confidently predicted.

And on the whole it was. The streets were thin and crowded anyway. When hundreds of students tried to proceed along them they very speedily became totally blocked. The organizers of the march had foolishly neglected to warn the shopkeepers in advance, with the result that shops were still open and their goods, as was the custom with Cairo shops, spread across the pavement. Agitated shopkeepers rushed out into the street when they saw the marchers approaching and tried to rescue their wares. The marchers, who were initially good-humoured, slowed down in an effort to help. Those behind ran into those in front, some tried to crowd past, and in a very short time the result was, as Nikos had forecast, a shambles. One bewildered donkey was enough to block off a street—and that was without any help from Owen.

The marchers became impatient with the slowness of their progress and spread into neighbouring streets. These filled up and blocked too and the whole Old City was brought to a standstill. Confused marchers mingled with bewildered shoppers, excited but ill-informed spectators tried to sort things out and soon everything was in total chaos.

It was hours before the first students managed to permeate the streets and come to within a hundred yards of the Mar Girgis.

Where Owen was waiting. McPhee had put carts across all the streets leading to the church, barricading them completely. In front of each barricade a row of hefty constables was drawn up with truncheons in their hands. Behind the carts were other men. Owen took care to let the demonstrators see that these were armed.

The demonstrators came to a halt. Because they had arrived independently and in twos and threes they had outstripped their organizers and were at a loss what to do. As their numbers grew they formed a wedge between the barricades and the main body of the procession, which was forced to stop short some way away from the barricades.

Owen could see the head of the procession from where he stood. It appeared to be carrying something.

It was some time before the organizers were able to sort things out. Eventually, however, they managed to open a channel in the wedge and bring the leaders through to the barricades. Among them was Osman.

Owen could see now what they were carrying. It was a stretcher. On it was a pale-faced corpse with an arm flipping over the edge of the stretcher. The corpse was that of a young man. Presumably the student had died.

As it approached, the cries of the students rose to a frenzy. Everywhere now was a sea of raised fists and shouting faces.

Banners tossed and lurched among the faces. The first stone hit the carts.

Osman Rahman pushed his way forward.

“Why have you done this?” he said, pointing to the carts.

“To stop you from going any further,” said Owen. “Tell your people to go home.”

“They have a right,” Osman protested angrily.

“Tell them to exercise their rights peacefully.”

Osman turned round and began to harangue the crowd. He was, of course, telling them no such thing. He was using the opportunity to denounce the British as well as the Copts, bracketing them together as Christians combining against true believers. The voice rose on a wave of passion. Owen could not tell whether this actually was the demonstration, conveniently moved in view of the circumstances, or whether Osman meant to whip thing up to the point when the crowd would storm the barricade. The rhetoric was violent enough. On the other hand Osman was a practised orator and knew what he was doing. The crowd had settled to listen to him. No more stones were being thrown.

The stretcher was being passed over the heads of the crowd. Once or twice as a hand grabbed and missed it lurched and threatened to tilt the corpse onto the crowd. Somehow it always righted itself and reached the front, where new hands seized it and raised it high so that everyone could see it. There was Osman, raised on the knees of his supporters, and the corpse limp on the stretcher beside him.

From time to time Osman turned and gesticulated at the stretcher and every time he did so a cry of anger rose from the crowd. The constables twitched apprehensively.

McPhee slid along in front of them and stood beside Owen.

“Do we wait?” he said. “Or do we hit them before they come to the boil?”

Although McPhee, as Assistant Commandant, was nominally ranked higher than Owen, in operations of this sort the Mamur Zapt, responsible for order in the city, was in control.

Owen was undecided. It was usually best to break up a demonstration in the early stages. It might already be too late. On the other hand it could still all end peacefully.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the stretcher give a great jump. One of the arms holding it was getting tired.

Something about the corpse attracted his attention.

The stretcher jerked again.

The corpse seemed to brace itself against the tilt but that could not be, unless—

Owen watched it carefully and waited for the arm to tire again. When the jerk came he was ready for it.

“Have you a cigarette?” he asked McPhee.

McPhee was surprised.

“Thought you didn’t smoke,” he said.

However, he fumbled in his pocket and produced his usual cheroots.

Owen had seen it done during his time in Alexandria, where hysterical prostitutes were quickly restored to life and reason by an experienced old Austrian police officer of the Labban red-light quarter.

He lit the cheroot and, concealing it in his curved palm, edged towards the stretcher. The corpse’s hand hung stiffly over the side.

Owen pressed the glowing end of the cheroot on to the dead man’s hand. If things were as they seemed it wouldn’t matter.

The “corpse” shot upright with a yell. As it did so the deathlike covering of flour fell from its face.

There was a moment or two of stunned silence. And then the crowd began to laugh.

The next morning the episode was the talk of all the bazaars in Cairo; and the bazaars enjoyed it greatly. From the bazaars the tale passed via servants into households and thence to the clubs, not so dissimilar from bazaars in their capacity to retail and embellish a story. Word came that the Sirdar liked it and Garvin was obliged to pass on to Owen a note of approval from the Consul-General.

“At least no one was killed,” said Garvin sourly.

More to the point, the affair earned Owen a few days’ breathing space. Not everyone in the Old City was an admirer of Sheikh Osman and there were quite a few Moslems as well as Copts who rejoiced in his discomfiture. For a few days Osman could not bring himself to show his face in public and there was a noticeable lull in hostilities.

“It won’t last,” said Georgiades. “Some brainless Copt is sure to attack a Moslem.”

“Or vice versa,” said Nikos.

Meanwhile Yussuf’s affairs were progressing. The go-between had produced some degree of accord. Yussuf’s wife, Fatima, was flattered by Owen’s interest in the state of her marital relationship and after some hard bargaining agreed to return to Yussuf. The only problems now were technical. Here, too, progress was made. A man was found, a friend of one of the bearers, named Suleiman, who agreed—for a consideration—to become the temporary bridegroom. Yussuf applied to Owen, who, after swearing aloud to Allah that never again, under absolutely any circumstances, etc., etc., found the necessary money. And the very next day Yussuf, supported, as was proper, by every bearer in the place, went forth to tie and untie and retie the marital knots.

An hour or so later Owen was working peacefully in his office when the door slammed at the end of the building and feet came running along the corridor.

A bearer burst into the room.

“Effendi! Oh, effendi! Something terrible has happened!”

“Has Suleiman pulled out?”

“Oh no, effendi.”

“The marriage went ahead?”

“Yes, effendi. But afterwards—”

“Yes?”

“He wouldn’t divorce her.”

“Not divorce her?”

“No, effendi. He said he had changed his mind. He said that Fatima’s beauty was like the moon and the stars—”

“Yes, yes. He refused to use the vow?”

“That’s right, effendi. We pleaded with them. We said it was wrong. But Suleiman said that Fatima’s beauty—”

“OK, OK. The upshot is they’re still married?”

“Yes, effendi. Suleiman said—”

“We’ve had that.”

The bearer looked injured.

“—that it wouldn’t have counted anyway because he would not have been able to use the words with a true heart.”

“Of course it would have counted.”

“That’s what we said, effendi. But he wouldn’t listen to us.”

“Bloody hell!” said Owen.

“They went back to Suleiman’s house,” said the bearer, gratified, “and barred themselves in an upper room. We heard them laughing, effendi. And then they made the noises.”

Yussuf was in a state of deep shock. Later in the afternoon Owen went along to the bearer’s room. He found Yussuf squatting on the floor with his back against one of the walls staring dazedly into space. He did not even look up.

Both Georgiades and Nikos made use of the lull.

“I’ve found out something,” said Georgiades, coming into the office the morning after the crash of Yussuf’s hopes.

“What?”

“Where Osman gets his money from.”

Owen laid his pencil down.

“The Goldsmiths’ Bazaar. He’s taken to going there regularly.”

“To borrow?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so. To be given.”