A Cold Touch of Ice

This evening, though, he was putting such difficulties behind him. An Egyptian colleague had invited him round for coffee. Owen was pleased, because although he had known Mahmoud for nearly four years now, this was the first time he had actually been invited into his house.

The reason for this was partly, he knew, that Mahmoud didn’t really have a home of his own. Although he was now in his thirties, he still lived with his mother. Mahmoud’s father, a lawyer like himself, had died young and Mahmoud had taken over responsibility for the family. Being the man he was, he had probably taken it too seriously, as he tended to do with his work at the Ministry of Justice. Owen doubted if he ever got home much before midnight. He seemed to have very little life apart from his work.

Mahmoud was, in any case, as Owen had learned over the years, an intensely private individual. Owen was certainly his closest, perhaps his only, friend, but in some respects he felt he had never got to know him. He was delighted now that one of Mahmoud’s defensive walls seemed at last to be coming down.

The house was a tall, thin, three-storey building just off the Sharia-el-Nahhasin. Across its roof, surprisingly near, he could see the minarets of the Barquk and, yes, that other one was probably the Qu’alun. The street was towards the edge of the old city, balanced precariously between the new Europeanized quarters to the west and the bazaars to the east.

There was a servant but Mahmoud himself came impatiently to the door and led Owen upstairs to the living room on the first floor. It was a large, sparely furnished room with box windows at both ends, one looking down into an inner courtyard, the other out on to the street. There were fine, rather faded, rugs on the floor and one on the wall, and three low divans, arranged round a brazier, on which a pot of coffee was warming. On the little table next to it were three cups.

‘The third is for my father-in-law,’ said Mahmoud.

‘What?’ said Owen, stunned. This was the first he had ever heard about Mahmoud being married.

‘My father-in-law to be,’ Mahmoud amended.

He seemed a little embarrassed.

‘You are getting married?’

Mahmoud nodded.

Owen had never expected this. He had always taken Mahmoud to be one of nature’s celibates. In all the time Owen had known him, he had never shown the slightest sexual interest in any woman they had met.

Owen pulled himself together.

‘Congratulations! Well, this is a surprise!’

‘It is to me, too,’ Mahmoud admitted. ‘But my mother felt the time had come.’

‘I see. Yes.’ Owen couldn’t think what to say. ‘Have you known each other for long?’ he ventured tentatively.

‘About a week. Of course, our families have known each other for much longer.’

‘I see.’

‘She lives locally so I must have seen her about in the street. But I can’t say I ever noticed her.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t.’

Not in a veil, and covered from head to foot in black.

‘But I must have seen her going to school.’

‘Going to school?’

‘She’s just finished at the Sanieh.’

How old could she be? Fifteen? The Sanieh, though, was something. It was probably the best girls’ school in Cairo.

‘I said she had to be educated.’

‘Quite right. Companionship, and all that.’

‘She seemed very sensible.’

‘Oh, good. You have – you have met her, then?’

‘Oh, yes. Once. After my mother had made the contract. She seems very suitable.’

‘Oh, good.’

‘You’ll like her father. I know him quite well.’

‘Well, that’s important, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. As a matter of fact, that’s partly why I invited you. I wanted him to meet family. I know that, strictly speaking, you’re not family, but … Well, the fact is, we don’t actually have many male relatives …’

‘Glad to do what I can –’

It was no business of his. Mahmoud was old enough to arrange his own life; or, rather, to decide to let others arrange it for him. And if that was the custom of the country –

All the same, he felt bothered. In a way it was his business. Mahmoud was a friend of his and he didn’t want him to get hurt. As a matter of fact, he didn’t want her to get hurt, either, a mere schoolgirl. But what could he do about it? And who was he to interfere, anyway? Jesus, he couldn’t even sort out his own life, the way things were between him and Zeinab –

When the prospective father-in-law arrived, he felt a little better. Ibrahim Buktari was plainly such a nice man. He was short and wiry, with close-cropped grey hair and an open, intelligent face. They embraced warmly in the Arab fashion.

‘You have something in common,’ said Mahmoud, pouring out the coffee.

‘Oh, yes?’

‘You were both soldiers.’

Ibrahim Buktari’s face lit up.

‘You were?’

‘Well,’ said Owen, ‘briefly.’

‘I was with Al-Lurd,’ said Ibrahim, ‘in the Sudan.’

‘With Kitchener?’

‘That was before he was a lord,’ said Mahmoud.

‘And now he returns to Egypt!’ said Ibrahim. He shrugged. ‘Well, at least we have as Consul-General a man who knows something about Egypt.’

‘He knows it only as it was twelve years ago,’ said Mahmoud.

That was something that all the Egyptian newspapers had said when the appointment was announced. Especially the. Nationalist ones. When Kitchener had been here before, Egyptian nationalism had been in its infancy. But a lot of things had changed since then and among them was that there was now a Nationalist movement which touched almost all parts of the population, especially the young professionals. Like Mahmoud.