The Mamur Zapt and the Men Behind. Michael Pearce

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      ‘You’re a strange man,’ she said today.

      ‘Why, mother?’

      ‘It’s a strange man who has two shadows.’

      Owen thanked her for the warning, bought his oranges and went on.

      He left the trees behind him and was walking now between old mameluke houses. Their walls rose directly from the street in a steep unbroken line until high overhead a row of corbels allowed the first floor to project out over the heads of the passers-by. Higher still, heavily-latticed oriel windows carried the harem rooms, where the women lived, a further two feet over the street.

      At ground level, though, there was only the high, unbroken line of the wall and the occasional heavy, studded door barred against strangers. All the doors seemed shut. There seemed no escape from the street except that far ahead he could see a break in the line of the houses.

      He suddenly felt an intense prickly sensation behind his shoulders.

      Just ahead of him he could see a door which was not properly shut. He slowed down, hesitating.

      The prickly feeling suddenly became overwhelming. He pushed at the door and then, as it swung back, leaped through it.

      The door crashed back against an inside wall and then swung out again. As it closed he jammed his shoulder behind it and held it shut until he could pull the heavy wooden bolts across.

      Then, sweating and feeling rather foolish, he stood looking into the inner courtyard.

      At this time of day, with the sun directly overhead and the walls offering no shadow, it was, of course, deserted. Along one side, though, was a takhtabosh, a long recess with a carved wooden roof supported in front by pillars, which gave it a cool, cloister-like effect. This was where superior servants might be expected to sit and Owen was slightly relieved to see nobody there.

      He walked down the takhtabosh to the other end. As he had hoped, there was a smaller door leading out on to a street beyond. It was one of the oldest tricks in the game in Cairo for a thief pursued by the police to dash in at one door and then immediately out at the other while the police were still requesting permission to enter by the first. Owen had often been thwarted by it himself.

      The street beyond was a small back street in which there was nothing but one or two donkeys, hobbled and left to doze. The sand here was worn so fine that it was almost silvery and reflected the sun unbearably into his eyes.

      Again Owen hesitated. It would be easy now to slip away through the side-streets. But the Mamur Zapt, Head of Cairo’s Secret Police, ought to be of sterner stuff. Reluctantly he turned left and went back parallel with the way he had come.

      After a little way a narrow alley ran back between the houses. He leaped straight across it and braced himself against the opposite wall. Nothing happened. The alleyway was empty.

      He began to walk deliberately along it, noting in passing anything which might offer protection, but keeping his eyes steadily on the daylight at the other end of the alleyway. If anyone looked into the alley he would see them first and the second or two it would give him, while their eyes got used to the darkness, would be all that he would have to get out of their line of fire.

      He himself was unarmed; a situation which, he told himself fervently, he would remedy as speedily as possible, if he ever got out of this.

      The light at the other end of the alleyway came nearer. He found himself sweating profusely.

      It was getting so close now that if anyone appeared, his best chance was to jump them. He tensed himself in readiness.

      He was at the entrance into the alleyway now. Directly ahead was the broad thoroughfare of the Masr el Atika.

      For a moment he listened and then cautiously, very cautiously, he stuck his head out and looked up and down the street. At first it seemed deserted. But then, at the very far end, he thought he saw, just for an instant, two men. He had time to notice only that they were in European-style shirts and trousers, and then they were gone.

CHAPTER 2

      ‘Is this the way,’ demanded the note, ‘that the Khedive’s servants should be treated?’

      Privately, Owen suspected it was. However, as the note had come from the Khedive himself he thought it politic to reply soothingly, deploring the insult offered to the Khedive and the injury suffered by his servants, and assuring His Highness that he would do all he could to track down the malefactors.

      ‘You’d better go, too,’ said Nikos, the Mamur Zapt’s Official Clerk. ‘It won’t do any good but it will look better that way.’

      So Owen betook himself to the Khedive’s afflicted servant, Ali Osman Pasha. The previous day, on his way home from an audience with the Khedive, Ali Osman had been set upon by a mob. His arabeah had been overturned and he himself desperately injured. If his driver had not been able to sound the alarm, he would undoubtedly have been killed. He was now at home recovering from his wounds.

      Owen walked in past the guardian eunuchs, named according to custom after flowers or precious stones, across the courtyard, his feet crunching in the gravel, and into the reception room, the mandar’ah, with its sunken marble floor and fountain playing. There was a dais at the back with large leather and silk cushions, on which a man was lying.

      He groaned as he saw Owen and waved a hand. Slaves rushed to escort Owen across the room.

      ‘My dear fellow,’ said the recumbent man. ‘Mon très, très cher ami!’

      ‘I am sorry to see you so afflicted, Pasha,’ said Owen.

      ‘I was fortunate to escape with my life. They would have killed me.’

      ‘Outrageous!’

       ‘Sauvages! Jacobins!’

      Like most of the Egyptian upper class, the Pasha habitually spoke French. He looked on the French culture as his own, identifying, however, more with Louis-Philippe than with the present Republic.

      ‘They shall be tracked down.’

      ‘And tortured,’ said Ali Osman with relish. ‘Flayed alive and nailed out in the sun.’

      ‘Severely dealt with.’

      ‘I would wish to be present myself,’ said the Pasha. ‘In person. Please make arrangements.’

      ‘Certainly. Of course, it may all take a little time … Legal processes, you know …’

      Ali Osman raised himself on one arm.

      ‘Justice,’ he admonished Owen, ‘should be swift and certain. Then people know what to expect.’

      ‘Absolutely! But, Pasha, surely you would not wish it to be too soon? Might not your injuries prevent—?’

      ‘Grievous though they are,’ said Osman, ‘for this I would make a special effort.’

      He СКАЧАТЬ