The Snake-Catcher’s Daughter. Michael Pearce

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      The Sheikh winced.

      ‘We don’t like to use that word. The ceremony, you know, is not entirely regular. It’s not something that’s, well, officially recognized. We know it goes on, of course. There are people who, not to put too fine a point on it, are drawn to such things. I dare say you know the kind of people I mean?’

      Owen, thinking of McPhee, said he did.

      ‘I wouldn’t want to encourage them by letting them think they have my approval. So I would prefer, if you don’t mind, not to use the word. To do so would be to admit that I know about such things.’

      ‘Well, yes, but … then why are you here?’

      ‘I have come to lodge a formal protest at Bimbashi McPhee’s presence.’

      ‘At what?’

      ‘An unspecified event in the Gamaliya district.’

      ‘You can’t protest at his presence if you’re unable to say what he was present at!’

      ‘From my point of view,’ said the Sheikh, ‘the protest is the important thing, not the event.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘There’s a lot of feeling in the Gamaliya about the incident.’

      ‘I see.’

      ‘Which might boil over.’

      ‘What do you expect me to do about it?’

      The Sheikh looked surprised.

      ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to lodge a protest, that was all.’

      Owen understood. The Sheikh was anxious to guard his back in terms of relations with his flock.

      He thought for a moment.

      ‘I don’t know that I can accept a formal protest,’ he said. ‘If there wasn’t an event, there can’t have been a presence at it.’

      ‘Oh!’

      ‘I don’t think I could offer an apology. Formal, that is. However, I might be willing to issue a general statement deploring recent events – unspecified, of course, – in the Gamaliya. Would that help?’

      ‘From my point of view, yes.’

      ‘And from my point of view? Would that be enough to head off trouble?’

      ‘I doubt it,’ said Sheikh Musa.

      Owen felt like kicking McPhee’s backside.

      Owen still had hopes it would all quietly fade away. The heat would surely dissuade potential troublemakers from causing a riot and by the time the hot spell was over, with luck they would have forgotten about it. As for Garvin and McPhee, Garvin would soon be departing on leave. He usually liked to return to his old haunts at Alexandria and go duck shooting. With luck, he would return in a less savage frame of mind. Perhaps McPhee, too, could be induced to take a break: go and look at some of the monasteries in Sinai, for example. In heat like this people tended to get things out of perspective.

      He had better watch that this didn’t happen in his own case. Perhaps he should take a holiday, too? The trouble was that Zeinab would insist on going to Paris. She regarded everywhere else as boringly provincial. The Government, on the other hand, insisted that its employees take their leave locally. Perhaps, on second thoughts, it might be best not to take a holiday. Besides, if Garvin and McPhee were away, someone had to look after the shop.

      However, he must certainly guard against getting things out of perspective. He ought to take it easy for a bit. Working on this theory, he stepped out of the office mid-morning and went to his favourite café, taking the next day’s newspapers or, at least, the Arabic, French and English ones with him. He could always pretend that it was work. One of the Mamur Zapt’s duties was control of the press, a necessary function (in the view of the British) in a city of more than a dozen religions, a score of nationalities, a hundred different ethnic flavours and over a thousand sects, half of which at any given time were at the throats of the other half. To this end, he received advance copies of all publications.

      Control, though, was another matter. Debate in the Arab world tended to be conducted at voice top anyway, and in the press the normal temperature was feverish. Cairo had taken to newspapers late but with gusto and there were hundreds of them. Each faction had at least two newspapers (two, because any group in Cairo could be guaranteed to split at least two ways) and they vied with each other in the extremity of their views and the vehemence with which they expressed them. Even the weather reports were fiercely disputed.

      How to distinguish the normal incandescent from the potentially explosive? Owen usually did not try. After a year or two’s experience he developed a sixth sense which alerted him to passages likely to bring rival communities to blows. The rest he left well alone, on the assumption that readers were more interested in the violence of rhetoric than in the violence of action: an approach, however, which his superiors did not always understand.

      The real value of the newspapers (to Owen) was that beneath the hyperbole it was sometimes possible to detect new concerns and growth of feeling. They were sometimes, despite everything, a useful source of intelligence. Another, of course, was the gossip of Cairo’s café culture. What better, then, than to combine the two? Where better for the Mamur Zapt, the Head of Political Intelligence, to sit than in a well-populated Arab café with all his intelligence material to hand? So, at least, argued Owen; and turned to the sports pages.

      He became aware of someone trying covertly to attract his attention. It was a man at an adjoining table. His face seemed familiar, although it took a little while for Owen to place him. Not one of his agents but a man who sometimes gave his agents useful information. A Greek, with the dark suit and pot-like red tarboosh of the Effendi, or office worker.

      ‘Have you heard about Philipides?’ he said.

      ‘Philipides?’

      ‘He’s coming out tomorrow.’ Misunderstanding Owen’s puzzlement, he said: ‘It may not be in the Arab papers. It’s in the Greek ones.’

      ‘What’s special about Philipides?’ asked Owen.

      The man smiled, obviously thinking Owen was playing with him.

      ‘The Mamur Zapt, of all people, should know that,’ he said.

      He put some milliemes out for the waiter.

      ‘Garvin ought to be interested,’ he said. ‘Or so they say.’

      He went off through the tables. Owen sipped his coffee and searched his memory. The name meant nothing to him.

      On the other side of the street he saw someone he knew and waved to him. The man waved back and came across. His name was Georgiades. Another Greek, but this time definitely not an Effendi. No tarboosh, an open-necked shirt, casual, crumpled cotton trousers held up by a belt over which his stomach bulged uncomfortably. He pointed proudly to it.

      ‘See that?’ he said. ‘Another notch! Rosa’s cutting down on the food. It’s been a struggle for her. All Greek women are taught to fatten СКАЧАТЬ