Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet

‘And others.’

A forage mule made its way soporifically towards them. Its load was so huge as almost to span the narrow street. Owen wondered if they would have to move, but at the last moment the mule was twitched aside and the load, bowing almost to the ground, grazed the table.

They were meeting at Mahmoud’s request. Later that morning he had rung Owen proposing a coffee before lunch.

Mahmoud waited until the mule had passed on down the street and then said: ‘I have been checking on the gun.’

‘Find anything?’

‘Part of a consignment missing last March from the barracks at Kantara. They suspected a sergeant but nothing was ever proved. All they could get him for was negligence – he was in charge of the store. He’s done six months and is due out about now.’

‘Probably sold them,’ said Owen.

Mahmoud nodded. ‘That’s what they thought.’

‘No lead?’

‘He wouldn’t talk.’

‘He won’t talk now,’ said Owen, ‘especially if he’s due out.’

‘If he was told he’d be all right?’

‘Out of the goodness of his heart? No chance.’

‘If he thought he was just shopping an Egyptian—’ suggested Mahmoud tentatively.

His eyes met Owen’s.

He could be right, Owen was forced to admit. In the obscure code of the ordinary Tommy, shopping a mere Egyptian might not count.

‘Just worth trying.’

‘I was wondering—’ began Mahmoud, and then hesitated.

Owen knew what he was thinking. It would have to be an Englishman and would probably need to be army rather than civilian.

‘Would you like me to have a go?’

‘It might be best,’ said Mahmoud.

Owen lunched at the Gezira and then, unusually, went back to his office. Late in the afternoon, when the sun’s fierce heat had softened, he went again into the Place Bab el Khalk.

He was in a light linen suit and wore a tarboosh, the pot-like hat of the Egyptian, on his head. With his dark Celtic colouring and the years of sunburn he looked a Levantine of some sort. He carried an Arabic newspaper.

He chose a tea-stall on the eastern side of the Place and perched himself on a stool. The tea-seller brought him a glass of Russian tea.

From where he sat he could see along the Sharia Taht er Rebaa to where the massive battlemented walls of the Mosque el Mouayad rose on the left. One or two little bunches of black-gowned figures were already beginning to spill out on to the Sharia. From somewhere behind the Mosque came a confined noise which, as he listened, began to settle down into a rhythmic chanting.

‘Wa-ta-ni. Wa-ta-ni. Wa-ta-ni.’

The tea-seller came out from the other side of the counter and looked uneasily down the street.

‘There will be trouble,’ he said.

On the pavement behind him a barber was shaving a plump, sleepy-looking Greek. The barber put his razor in the bowl beside the chair and came out on to the street also.

‘Yes,’ he said, peering towards the Mosque, ‘there will be trouble.’

The Greek opened one eye. ‘What trouble?’

‘Students,’ said the barber, wiping the soapsuds off his hands on to his gown.

‘Again?’ said the Greek. ‘What is it this time?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the barber. ‘What is it this time?’ he called to a bean-seller at an adjoining stall.

The bean-seller was serving some hungry-looking students with bowls of ful madammas, red fava beans cooked in oil and garlic.

‘What is it this time?’ he asked them.

‘We don’t know,’ said the students. ‘It is the students of el Azhar, not us.’

‘They are going to Abdin Square,’ volunteered one of the students, ‘to demonstrate against the Khedive.’

‘Much good that will do,’ said the bean-seller. ‘They will just get their heads busted.’

‘Someone has to,’ said the student.

‘But not you,’ said the bean-seller firmly.

‘You sound like my father,’ said the student.

‘Your father and I,’ said the bean-seller, ‘are men of experience. Learn from us.’

‘Anyway, I cannot go with them today,’ said the student. ‘I have my exams tomorrow.’

‘Have not the el Azhar students exams also?’ called the Greek.

The students shook their heads.

‘They’re not like us,’ they said.

Owen guessed them to be engineering students. Engineering, like other modern subjects, was studied at the Governmental Higher Schools. At el Azhar, the great Islamic university of Cairo, the students studied only the Koran.

The students finished their bowls and left. The bean-seller began clearing away his stall. At the far end of the Taht er Rebaa a crowd was coming into view.

‘You carry on shaving,’ the Greek ordered. ‘I don’t want you running away before you’ve finished.’