The Mamur Zapt and the Camel of Destruction

‘No, not lax. Not just lax. Different. They were bad men, Owen effendi. They changed him. He had always been a good man, a good son, a good brother …’

She began to weep steadily.

‘Effendi, you are too rough with her,’ said a voice from outside the archway. ‘Didn’t I tell you she doesn’t know about this sort of thing?’

The sobbing stopped abruptly. There was a sharp intake of breath.

‘Ali, you are disgusting!’ said Aisha, and stalked out into the sunlight.

‘First, it was the kuttub. Then it was the hospital. Then it was the Place for Old People. I tell you, they’re determined to get you one way or another. Next thing, it will be the cemetery!’

‘Next thing it will be the mosque. That comes before the cemetery.’

‘It already is the mosque. Have you talked to Sayid ben Ali Abd’al Shaward lately?’

‘Not him too! I tell you, they’re determined to get us one way or another. The little we’ve got, they want to take away! That’s how it always is for the poor man.’

A general mutter of agreement ran round the circle squatting round the barber’s chair.

‘Abd el-Rahim is not a poor man!’ someone objected.

‘I’m not talking about Abd el-Rahim,’ said the barber, flourishing his scissors. ‘I’m talking about us!’

‘Watch it!’ said the man in the chair, flinching as the blades flashed past his ear.

The barber ignored him and turned to address the assembly.

‘Don’t you see? We’re the ones who are going to lose out. They’ll take the kuttub away. Well, you’ll say, I don’t mind that; my children are grown up. But then, what about the hospital? What about the Place for Old People? You will mind that one day!’

‘What about the mosque?’ muttered someone.

‘You can always go to another one,’ said someone else.

‘Yes, but that’s my point,’ said the barber. ‘You can always go to another one. Your children can go to another kuttub, you can drag your aching bones to another hospital or your old bones to another Place for Old People, but they’ll be somewhere else!’

‘Are you going to cut my hair or not?’ asked the man in the chair.

The barber turned back to him hurriedly.

‘What will become of the neighbourhood,’ he asked over his shoulder, ‘if they take all our amenities away?’

‘It’s going downhill anyway,’ said someone. ‘It’s been going downhill ever since those Sudanis moved in.’

‘It will go downhill a lot faster if there isn’t a kuttub and a hospital,’ said the barber, declining to be diverted. The Sudanis were customers of his.

‘The Shawquats have always had that kuttub,’ said someone ruminatively.

‘And done very well out of it,’ said someone else sceptically.

‘Yes, but it’s terrible to take it away just when they need it, now that the old man’s died.’

‘They’ve still got a piastre or two, I’ll bet. I shan’t be shedding any tears for them.’

‘It still doesn’t seem right. They’ve always had it.’

The barber swung round excitedly.

‘We’ve always had it. The waqfs were set up to benefit us. And now they’re being taken away. All right, the Shawquats have done well out of it, and so has Sayid ben Ali Abd’al Shawad; but we’re the ones who are going to lose!’

‘He’s cut me!’ shouted the man in the chair.

‘It’s nothing! Just a scratch!’

‘I’m bleeding!’

‘He moved! Didn’t he move?’ the barber appealed to the crowd.

‘I didn’t move! I haven’t moved at all!’

‘My God, he’s dead!’ said a caustic voice from the back of the crowd.

Owen eased himself out of the circle. With his dark Welsh colouring and in a tarboosh he looked like any other Levantine effendi: a clerk, perhaps, in the Ministry of Agriculture.

‘It’s a bit of the Camels, old boy,’ said Barclay, of Public Works, that evening at the club.

‘Camels?’ said Owen, bewildered. So far as he had been aware, they had been talking about the destructiveness of road development in an urban environment.

‘Well, Camel at least. Have you heard of the Camel of Destruction? No? It’s a figure from legend, a sort of Apocalyptic Beast. At the beginning of the world, or soon thereafter, it ran amok and threatened to destroy everything. And if you’ve ever seen a camel going wild among a lot of tents you’ll know that that means everything, but everything!’

‘We’ve got past the tent stage now, Barclay,’ said someone superciliously.

‘Yes, but we haven’t done away with the Camel of Destruction,’ said Barclay. ‘Oh no, my goodness we haven’t. Just look around you! Beautiful buildings being pulled down, monsters being put up.’

‘I’d assumed that was all your doing, Barclay,’ said the supercilious one. ‘You’re responsible for planning, aren’t you?’

‘I may be responsible,’ said Barclay, ‘but there’s nothing I can do about it.’

‘In Cairo,’ said someone else, ‘money is the only thing that talks.’

‘Well, of course, it’s a complete racket,’ said Barclay.

‘They have to submit plans but then if we turn them down, they can proceed all the same. There’s nothing we can do.’

‘Don’t you have to give planning permission?’

‘No. Take the Hotel Vista, for instance. You’ve seen that big block on the corner of the Sharia El Mustaquat? They sent us the plans. Anyone with half an eye could see they wouldn’t do. The foundations were unstable, the retaining walls – well! We condemned it on grounds of public safety. The next thing we heard, it was going straight ahead.’

There was a general shaking of heads.