“I would forget the entire subject of law and courts, if I were you,” Trenchard said dryly. “Egyptian jurisdiction over foreigners belongs to a whole series of courts, one for each consulate, and the circumlocutory machinations of any of them, let alone all, would confound even Theseus, trailing a thread behind him.” He spread his elegant hands wide. “In effect the British run Egypt, but we do it discreetly. There are hundreds of us, and we all answer to the consul-general, Lord Cromer, who is usually referred to simply as ’the lord.’ And I presume you know what they say about him?”
“I have no idea,” Pitt confessed.
Trenchard raised his eyebrows very slightly, a smile on his lips. “‘It is no good having right on your side if Lord Cromer is against you,’” he quoted. “Better, I think, in this situation, if he never hears of you.”
“I shall certainly work to that end,” Pitt promised. “But I need to know about this woman, who she was before she came to England, and if she is really as impulsive and…”
“Stupid,” Trenchard filled in for him, his eyes wide. “Yes, I can see the necessity. We’ll start among the Copts. I’ll give you a map and mark the most likely areas. I would assume that she comes from a family with a certain amount of money, since she obviously speaks English and has the means to travel.”
“Thank you.” Pitt stood up, finding himself stiff and making an effort to stifle a yawn. It was still extraordinarily warm, his clothes were sticking to his skin, and he was far more tired than he had expected. “Where do I catch the tram for San Stefano?”
“You have piasters?”
“Yes… thank you.”
Trenchard rose to his feet also. “Then if you turn right and walk about a hundred yards you will find the stop on your left, immediately across the street. But I would suggest at this time of evening, while you are unfamiliar with the city, that you take a horse carriage. It should not be more than eight or nine piasters, and worth it when you have a case to carry. Good luck, Pitt.” He held out his hand. “If I can be of assistance, please call me. If I know anything that might help I shall send a note to you at San Stefano.”
Pitt shook his hand, thanked him again, and accepted his advice to take a carriage.
The journey was not long but the heat had not abated in the crowded streets, and once again Pitt was thoroughly bitten by mosquitoes. By the time he arrived at the hotel he was exhausted, and itching everywhere.
However, the hotel was indeed excellent and offered him a room at twenty-five piasters a night, as Trenchard had said. He was offered excellent and abundant food, but he accepted only fresh bread and fruit, and when he had eaten it he went up to his room. As soon as the door was closed he took off his shoes, walked over to the window and stared out at a brilliant black sky dotted with stars. He could smell the heat and the salt wind blowing in off the sea. He breathed in deeply and let it go in a long, aching sigh. The city was beautiful, uplifting, exciting, and so very far from home. He could hear the sound of the sea, occasional laughter, and a constant background noise like that of crickets in summer grass. It reminded him of childhood summers in the country, but he was too tired to enjoy it. He wished more than he could control and be master of that Charlotte were here, so he could say to her “Look,” or bid her listen to the faraway voices speaking an utterly different language, or share with her the alien, spicy odors of the night.
He turned back to the unfamiliar room, took his clothes off and washed the dust from himself, then opened the soft drapes of the mosquito nets around the bed. He climbed in, carefully closing them again, and went to sleep almost immediately. He woke once in the darkness and for several moments could not think where he was. He missed the movement of the ship. He was oddly dizzy without it. Then realization flooded back to him, and he turned over and sank into oblivion again until late morning.
HE USED THE FIRST TWO DAYS to learn all he could of the city. He began by purchasing suitable clothes for temperatures in the seventies at night and the eighties during the day. He made use of the excellent public transport system of trams, all newly painted, and trains, British built and oddly familiar even in the dazzling sunlight, against which he felt he was permanently squinting. Sometimes he walked the streets listening to the voices, watching the faces, noting the extraordinary mixture of languages and races. As well as Egyptians there were Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Levantines, Arabs, occasionally French, and everywhere English. He saw soldiers in tropical uniform, expatriates seeming much at ease, as if this was now home to them, the heat, the noise, the market haggling, the blistering brightness of everything. There were pale-faced tourists, tired and excited, determined to see everything. He overheard them chattering about moving on to Cairo, and then taking one of many steamers going up the Nile to Karnak and beyond.
One elderly vicar, his white mustache gleaming against his mahogany skin, spoke enthusiastically about his recent trip. He described sitting at breakfast staring across the timeless Nile as if it had been eternity itself, his Egyptian Gazette open in front of him, his Dundee marmalade on his fresh toast, and the burial pyramids of the pharaohs on the skyline across the sands.
“Perfectly splendid!” he said in a voice that might have been ringing across a gentleman’s club in London.
It reminded Pitt sharply of the urgency of his mission, and forced him to begin asking for the Coptic family of Zakhari. Absorbing the millennia of the pharaohs; the centuries of Greece and Rome; the romance of Cleopatra; the coming of the Arabs, the Turks and Mamelukes; the conquest of Napoleon and then Nelson; would all have to wait. It was now the British who ruled, whatever the caliph in Istanbul pretended, and it was the ships of the world that sailed through the Suez Canal to India and the East beyond. It was to English cotton mills in the smoke and darkening winter of Manchester, Burnley, Salford and Blackburn that the harvest of Egypt was sold. And it was from the factories of England that the finished goods were brought back, through Suez and beyond.
There was poverty in these hot streets with the dung and the flies. There was hunger and disease. He saw beggars sitting in the partial shade of sunbaked walls, moving with the shadows, asking for alms, for the love of God. Sometimes their bodies seemed whole, some even at a glance were crippled or pitted with sores, others were blind or maimed. Some faces were scarred by the pox, or disfigured with leprosy, and he found it hard not to look away.
A few times he was spat at, and once he was caught on the elbow by a stone hurled from behind, though when he turned there was no one there.
But there was poverty in England as well, cold and wet, gutters running over, and the diseases of a different climate, the hacking coughs of tuberculosis, and there, as here, the agony of cholera and typhoid. He could not weigh one against the other.
He went back to the main suburb where the Christian Copts lived. Sitting in a small restaurant over a cup of coffee so thick and sweet he could not drink it, he began to ask questions. He used the excuse (which was the truth) that Ayesha was in trouble in London and he was seeking her family, or any friend or relative who might be able to help her. At the very least they should know of her predicament.
It took him nearly two more days before he learned anything beyond rumor and surmise. Finally he agreed to meet with a man whose sister had been a friend of Ayesha’s, and by arrangement, Pitt had ordered dinner at the Casino San Stefano.
Pitt was waiting at the table when an Egyptian man of about thirty-five stopped at the entrance of the dining room. The man was dressed in the traditional robes of the country, but the cloth was rich and the colors those of the warm earth. He gazed about for a moment or two, and then, apparently identifying Pitt among the other European guests, he made his way between the tables and bowed, introducing himself formally. “Good evening, Effendi. My name is Makarios Yacoub, and you are Mr. Pitt, I think, yes?”