A Cold Touch of Ice

‘My brothers knew from the start that they would be soldiers. For a long time I thought I would be a soldier, too, and joined them in their horse-riding. But then they went off and it suddenly became apparent that all there was for me was marriage to some absolutely dreadful man.

‘I bought time. I said I wanted to travel. Some relations took me out with them to the Bosphorus. And then I looked around.’

‘And took up camel-riding instead of horse-riding?’

She laughed.

‘It looks like that,’ she admitted. ‘And maybe there’s some truth in it. I sometimes think I took it up only in order to outdo my brothers. They are both great riders, horse-riders. I wanted to be not only a better rider, I wanted to be a different one.’

‘At any rate, to ride to a different tune.’

‘That is so. That is exactly so.’

‘It is hard, though, especially out here,’ he said, thinking of Zeinab, ‘to be a woman and to be independent.’

‘Less hard than you think, if you’re a foreigner. There are no people from home to order me around and the locals don’t know what to make of me.’

‘But on your travels –’

She shrugged.

‘I carry a gun. In fact, though, the Bedu have never bothered me. It’s only in the towns that there has ever been any trouble. And then it’s usually been only from interfering officials. In the desert, at least you can get away from all that. There’s space, there’s freedom. You can choose your own route.’

‘As you evidently did in the Sinai.’

She gave him a sharp look.

‘You do do your homework,’ she said. ‘You have been making inquiries?’

‘No. I just heard.’

‘Well, it is not important. Is it important to you?’

‘Not to me. To the authorities, perhaps.’

‘The authorities!’ she said contemptuously.

They went out on to the verandah and stood looking down at the river. While they had been dining, the moon had risen. The leaves of the palm trees along the bank had turned silver and immediately below them the water was full of silver sparkles, too, where some men had waded out into the river to fill their water-bags. As they watched, the wind stirred the palm leaves and a long silver ripple ran out from the shore right across the river.

‘Let us go for a walk along the bank,’ she said. And, later:

‘It is a pity you are not coming with me,’ she said.

3

‘Effendi,’ said the warehouse foreman, almost weeping, ‘on my oath, I did not know. Am I a genie, to see what lies hidden inside the bales?’

‘Did not they seem heavy? Heavier than usual?’

‘If they did, Effendi, the camels did not tell me.’

‘The porters, then; did not they remark on it?’

The foreman looked at the warehouse porters, great, bull-necked men, who would think nothing of carrying a piano single-handed.

‘They remark on much, Effendi. Too much. But they did not remark on this.’

Owen thought it likely that they wouldn’t even have noticed.

‘Where did the bales come from?’

‘Sennar, Effendi.’

‘Sennar? That is a long way.’

‘It is. But, Effendi, on their way they pass through Assuan, and there they are sorted into different lots. Most go on to the cotton markets, but some are rejected, and it is those which come to us.’

‘So the guns could have been put in either at Sennar or at Assuan?’

‘They could, Effendi. They would not have been put in during the march, for the camel men would not have it. But –’

‘Yes?’

‘Effendi, why were they put in? And why,’ he said, distressed, ‘were they sent to us?’

‘That is what has to be looked into.’

Owen asked for the names of the firm’s agents at Assuan. The foreman gave them to him.

‘But, Effendi, they may know nothing about it. Do you know the great traders’ market at Assuan? It is by the river. The caravans come in and camp and unload their goods. The bales would have stood as unloaded, waiting for another caravan, one of ours, to pick them up and carry them on. There are many people in the camp, Effendi, hundreds, if not thousands, and they walk around freely. Anyone might have come to the bales in the night.’

Owen nodded.

‘The bales were brought here, then, from Assuan. How long would they have stayed in your warehouse before they were opened?’

‘They would not have been opened. We would have auctioned them as they stood.’

‘But surely buyers wish to examine the goods before bidding?’

‘The goods are taken up to our place near the Market of the Afternoon on the day before the auction. Then anyone can come in and see them.’

‘Would they open the bales?’

‘Not usually. They come and feel the cotton, Effendi, that is all they need.’

‘So that if someone knew that the goods were arriving, they would break in either to your warehouse or to your place near the Market of the Afternoon and take the guns?’

‘They could, Effendi. But our warehouse is safe. We have an interest in making it so. And at our place near the Market of the Afternoon we have a watchman.’

Owen had his own theories about the efficacy of watchmen; especially near the Market of the Afternoon.

‘But, have you thought, Effendi,’ said the foreman, ‘there is no need to break into either; provided you are prepared to pay the highest price at the auction.’

‘I really don’t think –’ began Owen.

‘I think you should,’ said Paul.

‘Appointment of a librarian? Look, I’ve got important things to do –’

‘Not as important as this,’ said Paul.

Paul, now, as Kitchener’s right-hand man, was in a position to insist, so, grumbling, Owen went.

When he entered the room he was staggered by the status of the people present. There was Paul, of course, and his opposite numbers from the principal Consulates. There was the Turkish representative, Ismet Bey. And there was one of the Khedive’s senior cabinet ministers. That was, possibly, explicable since the appointment was to the Khedive’s Library. Even so, they were only appointing a librarian, which was hardly the stuff of international disputes.

Except that it appeared to be.

‘But I am a scholar!’ said the German representative, beaming.

‘A very distinguished one,’ said Ismet Bey.

‘One who, moreover, enjoys the full confidence of the Khedive,’ declared the cabinet minister.

‘No, you’re not; you’re Number Two at the German Consulate,’ said Paul.

‘In Germany, that does not preclude scholarship,’ said the German representative easily.

Stung, Paul retorted:

‘No, but it ought to preclude taking up a sensitive senior post in His Highness’s service!’

‘Sensitive?’ murmured Ismet Bey.

‘Senior?’ said a representative of one of the other Consulates doubtfully.

‘A key post,’ declared Paul, ‘and one that has hitherto been occupied only by distinguished scholars of independent standing.’

‘A tradition I hope to maintain,’ murmured the German representative.

‘But you are not independent. You are –’

‘German?’ suggested Ismet Bey. ‘The post has always been occupied by a German.’

‘On scholarly grounds,’ put in the German representative.

‘There is, of course, an argument for appointing an Egyptian began the cabinet minister.

‘– at some time in the future,’ said Ismet Bey, ‘though at the moment –’

‘On scholarly grounds,’ murmured the German representative.

‘Britain accepts that in the past the post of Khedive’s Librarian has always been reserved to German nationals. However, –’

However, thought Owen, that was all right when the incumbent was someone as unworldly as old Holmweg, the man who had just retired. He was beginning to pick up the hidden agenda now. For some reason Paul, and, presumably, the British government, were set against having someone as politically astute as Paul’s opposite number in the post. But why? It was, after all, only a librarian.

‘– my government could not accept the appointment to the post of someone who would give it a different character.’

He turned to the German representative.

‘Not, of course, that we wish to cast any reflection upon Dr Beckmann. Nor upon his scholarship. It is just that we feel that his qualities, great though they are, are not ones entirely suited to the post, at least for the immediate future. No, gentlemen, I am sorry: I am afraid we will have to cast our net wider.’

He gathered up his papers.

‘Cheeky bastards!’ he fumed, as he and Owen walked away together. ‘Do they think we’re daft, trying something like that on?’

‘But, Paul, does it really matter?’

Paul stared at him.

‘Matter? Of course it matters. It means that he’d be able to carry on even if the Consulate went!’

The whole community turned out to watch the funeral procession. Both sides of the street were lined with people and that was so all the way from the Nahhasin to the Italian church. They bowed their heads and beat upon their chests. Many were openly crying. Used as he was to the extravagance of Arab protestations of grief, Owen could not help being moved. For this was not one of their own that they were mourning but a foreigner.

Since the funeral was that of a foreigner, there was a hearse. With Arab funerals there was no hearse; the body was carried upon a bier. Usually there was a kind of horn at one end, on which the turban was hung. The whole was often covered with a rich cashmere shawl. The bier was borne by the dead man’s friends, often, it seemed to Owen, precariously, for the feeling was intense and grief-stricken mourners would pluck at the bier, threatening to overturn it. Even today at times they pressed in on the hearse, touching the sides as if it was only through touch that they could communicate the strength of their feelings. Communicate or demonstrate? To Westerners there often seemed something histrionic in the affectation of grief. Owen knew, however, that there was nothing false about this. They were mourning someone dear to them.

Sidi Morelli was a Roman Catholic and the funeral service was being held in the Catholic church used by the Italian community. Sidi Morelli’s neighbours, as Muslims, would not go in. This public demonstration of grief and affection was therefore their way of participating. Some were no doubt there merely because they enjoyed a good funeral; but Owen was struck by how many in this most conservative of neighbourhoods were prepared to come out and display their feeling for an infidel.

Beside him, outside the warehouse, while the hearse was waiting, were Sidi Morelli’s three domino-playing friends.

The coffin was brought out of the house and laid in the hearse.

‘We ought to have been carrying that,’ said Fahmy.

‘Let each man die in his own way,’ said Hamdan pacifically.

‘Perhaps it is as well,’ said Abd al Jawad. ‘For it is a long way to the church and he is a heavy man.’

‘There would have been many to assist,’ said Fahmy.

The hearse moved forward a few paces and another carriage drew up outside the house. Signora Morelli and members of her family got in. As she came out of the house she saw the three friends and came across to them and said something. The men were openly moved.

The carriages advanced. The road filled up behind them. Hamdan, Abd al Jawad and Fahmy put themselves formally at the head of the procession.

As the ranks passed in front of him, Owen suddenly saw among them the alert figure of Ibrahim Buktari, Mahmoud’s prospective father-in-law. He was talking animatedly to the efficient young Egyptian whom Owen had noticed at the coffee house. He waved an arm when he saw Owen and Owen fell in beside them.

‘This is Kamal,’ said Ibrahim Buktari; ‘and this,’ he said to the young Egyptian, ‘is a friend of Mahmoud El Zaki’s. A soldier, like yourself.’

‘Soldier?’ said the young Egyptian, surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have thought Mahmoud would have had any friends who were –’

He stopped, embarrassed.

‘Soldiers?’

‘British soldiers.’

‘A hundred years ago,’ said Owen. ‘I’m not a soldier now.’

‘Once a soldier, always a soldier,’ said Ibrahim Buktari.

‘Where are you stationed?’ asked Owen.

‘At the Abdin Barracks, at the moment. I’ve just got back from the Sudan.’

‘Ah,’ said Owen. ‘Have I met your uncle? Wasn’t he one of Sidi Morelli’s domino-playing friends?’

‘That’s him up there,’ said Ibrahim Buktari.

‘Fahmy Salim?’

‘That’s right,’ said the young Egyptian.

‘He was worried about your being sent to the front.’

‘What front?’ said Kamal bitterly. ‘The British are keeping us away from any front.’

Ibrahim Buktari clicked his tongue reprovingly.

‘You’ll get your chance,’ he said.

‘But when? asked the young man. ‘And who against? It’s not the Sudanese that I want to be fighting.’

‘It doesn’t matter who it’s against,’ said Ibrahim Buktari. ‘The important thing, for a young soldier, is to be fighting.’

Kamal laughed and laid his hand on Ibrahim’s arm affectionately.

‘You’re a fine friend for my uncle to have!’ he said. ‘I’ll tell him what you said!’

‘Tell him! And then I’ll tell him that the one thing a young officer wants is war. That’s the way to quick promotion.’

‘Yes, I know. That’s what they all say. But that’s not the only thing, you know. You need to be fighting on the right side.’

‘Nonsense!’ cried Ibrahim Buktari, greatly enjoying himself. ‘There is no such thing as the right side. Not here in Egypt, there isn’t. Sides are all over the place, and the only thing that counts is to be on the winning side!’

‘Shocking!’ cried Kamal. ‘To have respectable elders leading young men astray! What is the country coming to!’

They embraced each other, laughing. This was obviously a continuing pretend argument between them.

Then they sobered up and the young Egyptian excused himself.

‘I must go and walk beside my uncle. It is a long way in the heat and he is much stricken by Sidi Morelli’s death. He may need help before the end. And perhaps,’ he said to Owen, ‘you can talk some sense into this old firebrand. The only people he listens to are the British!’

‘Outrageous!’ shouted Ibrahim Buktari. But the young Egyptian was gone.

‘He’s all right,’ Ibrahim Buktari said to Owen. ‘I’ve known him since he was a boy. Full of wrong ideas, of course. But then, the young always have been.’

That evening Owen went round to see Zeinab. She lived in the fashionable Ismailiya Quarter, and had an appartement of her own. This was unusual for a single Egyptian woman; but then Zeinab was unusual in many respects.

She was the daughter of a Pasha, which explained how she could afford to own an appartement but which did not account for the audacity of maintaining a separate establishment itself. Most Pasha’s daughters were as harem-bound as other Egyptian women and spent their lives at home with their families until they could be suitably married. The circumstances of Zeinab’s birth and upbringing were, however, mildly out of the ordinary, even by Egyptian standards.

Her mother had been one of Cairo’s most famous courtesans and the young Nuri Pasha had been desperately in love with her, to such an extent, indeed, that he had scandalized Cairo society by proposing marriage. To his surprise, and the even greater surprise of society, she had turned him down, preferring to keep her independence. This had endeared her to Nuri – who liked a bit of spirit in his women – even more, and the two had lived happily together until, tragically, Zeinab’s mother had died giving birth to Zeinab.

The shattered Nuri had clutched at the baby as representing all that was left of the great passion of his life, acknowledging Zeinab as his daughter and bringing her up as, in his view, a Pasha’s daughter should be brought up.

This was not quite, however, as other Pashas’ daughters were reared. Like most of the old Egyptian ruling class, Nuri looked to France for his culture, and had brought Zeinab up to share that culture. Being Nuri, however, he had rather overdone it, with the result that Zeinab was as much a Frenchwoman as she was an Egyptian. She spoke French more naturally than she spoke Arabic.

Consistent with this approach, the doting Nuri had throughout her childhood allowed her considerably more licence than her peers enjoyed, rejoicing, indeed, in every expression of independence as reflecting something of the spirit of her mother.

True, still, to his enthusiasm for things French, especially women, he had encouraged her, as she approached womanhood, to assume the ton of the young Parisienne. Basing himself, however, largely on the latest magazines that he had received from Paris, he had tended to confuse the current normal with less widely shared notions of the New Woman, which, admittedly, he interpreted as merely the adding of a piquant new flavour to the more traditional ones of sexual attraction. The upshot of all this was that by the time she was eighteen Zeinab had come to take for granted a degree of freedom unusual among Muslim women; and what Nuri was reluctant to grant, she took.

Zeinab, too, was enthusiastic about French culture, although her interests were more aesthetic. The Cairo art world, where she found most of her friends, was heavily French in tone, and had the additional advantage of taking a more relaxed view of women than the rest of Egyptian society. She was able, therefore, to pursue her interests in painting and music more or less in peace, and sometimes thought that one day she might establish a salon along the lines of that of the great Parisian ladies.

First, however, she would have to get married, and this presented a problem, since the only man she could contemplate was someone who shared her views on personal freedom, and there appeared to be no rich young Egyptian men in that category. That only left Owen; and he, alas, was English.

Meanwhile, she was just coining up to thirty.

‘Mahmoud? Married?’ she said now, raising herself upon her elbows. She seemed disconcerted. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was the marrying kind.’

‘I think it was a bit of a surprise to him, too.’

He told her about the evening.

‘School?’ said Zeinab. ‘She must be about fourteen.’

‘I think she’s left school now.’

‘Well, that, I suppose, is something.’

‘I met her father. He seems all right.’

‘The trouble is,’ said Zeinab, ‘that Mahmoud is not marrying the father.’

‘I know. It does seem strange. But there you are, Time passes.’

‘Yes,’ said Zeinab.

‘Owen, I’ve had a letter this morning –’

It was McPhee, the Deputy Commandant of the Cairo Police.

‘Everyone’s had them,’ said Owen.

‘Not just me, then.’

McPhee seemed pleased. He turned to go. Then he came back.

‘I’ve had them before,’ he said.

‘The same writing?’

‘It’s a letter-writer’s hand,’ said McPhee, who, despite his eccentricity, knew his Egypt.

‘Got one?’

McPhee laid it before him.

‘It’s the same as mine,’ said Owen. ‘And the same as everyone else’s. Whoever it is always used the same writer.’

‘We could look out for him, I suppose,’ said McPhee. ‘Though there are dozens of letter-writers in the city.’

‘The ones to you, and to the Mamur Zapt,’ said Nikos, the Secrets Clerk, ‘were both posted in the Box.’

Fastened to the wall outside the Governorate was an old wooden box in which from time immemorial it had been the habit of the citizens of Cairo to deposit petitions, complaints about the price of bread, denunciations of their neighbours and accusations against their neighbours’ wives, together with sundry informations which were thought might be of interest to the Mamur Zapt. And some of them were.

McPhee had told him once – McPhee was a fount of such curious knowledge – that it was like the ‘Bocca del Leone’ at Venice, a letterbox decorated with a lion’s head, into which Venetians could drop communications which they wished to bring to the attention of the authorities. In Venice the communications had to be signed. In Cairo the informant could remain anonymous, but Owen, who liked the custom, felt that didn’t matter. In principle it was a way of giving every citizen a chance to communicate with the highest in the land; although these days the Mamur Zapt was not, as he once had been, the right-hand man of the Sultan, the most powerful of all his Viziers.

‘The point is,’ said Nikos, whose duty it was to unlock the Box every morning and bring its contents to Owen, ‘we could have the Box watched.’

Neither Owen nor McPhee liked the idea. To McPhee it was an affront to the spirit of the city. Owen was uncomfortable with the idea too, though he rationalized his discomfort away on the utilitarian grounds that once the anonymity of the Box was breached, its value as a democratic means of communication would be lost.

Nikos, the ever-realistic Copt, shrugged. He wasn’t, after all, the one who had been receiving the death threats.

For some days now the weather in Cairo had been unusually hot. Fans were whirring overhead in all the offices. The green shutters on the windows were kept closed. The windows themselves hung open and a little air, and a thin sunlight, came through the slats. In Owen’s, as in all Cairo offices, a vessel of drinking water stood in the window where the incoming air might cool it. Not today, however; the water was lukewarm. Owen summoned the office orderly and asked for some ice.

The orderly spread his hands.

‘Effendi, there is none in the ice box. There has been a run on it this week. Everyone else has thought the same as you; only they have thought of it first.’

Owen looked at his watch. It was a bit early to go to the Sporting Club.

‘However,’ said the orderly cheerfully, ‘the ice man comes this morning and when he comes I will bring some ice along for you.’

He still hadn’t come by lunchtime, but when Owen went down into the yard he saw the donkey with its great heavy bags on either side coming in at the gate.

‘No, Effendi, I am not late,’ protested the ice man. ‘I am very busy, that’s all. All the offices want ice, but I’ve only got one donkey, haven’t I?’

‘Well, have you?’ said Owen. ‘I would have thought there were other donkeys that might be called on. And other ice men, too, at a time like this when you need help.’

‘Effendi, they are as I am: working themselves to death. In this heat everyone wants ice. The palace wants ice, the hotels want ice, all the barracks want ice. So they cannot help me when I do the government offices. And the government offices want ice most of all. Fortunately I am a man of diligence and resource and so they get ice. Eventually.’

He fished in one of the saddlebags and produced a loadshaped block of ice wrapped in sacking.

‘You want ice, Effendi? You have it. So what are you complaining of?’

Once the funeral was over, the Signora assumed control of the business. The auctions started again.

‘I thought you said there was some cotton?’ said the crumpled Greek.

‘There is,’ said the Levantine wearily, ‘but it’s still in the warehouse. As I told you, the Parquet’s interested in it.’

‘Still?’ said the Greek, aghast.

‘Still.’

‘You don’t know when –?’

The Greek thought for a moment.

‘Presumably you’ve got loads coming into your warehouse all the time?’

‘That’s right.’

‘With cotton?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Any coming in soon?’

‘There is, I believe,’ said the Levantine coldly, ‘a load coming up from the Delta sometime.’

‘Ah, the Delta?’ The Greek seemed interested; indeed, strangely, cheered.

‘It’ll be coming in next month.’

‘Alexandria,’ said the Greek with satisfaction. ‘I like the sound of that.’

‘What?’ said the Levantine.