Osman looked at him thoughtfully.
Where, Owen asked himself, could he find out if another Zzarr was being held in the immediate future? It was not something he could discover through his usual intelligence sources. Why was that, he wondered? He suddenly realized that all his sources were to do with men. The Islamic world was severely bifurcated between a public world and a private world. The public world was occupied only by men. This was the world he knew and his agents were concerned with. It was a world rather like that of the army, in which all the players were men and all the initiatives were masculine.
Women belonged to the other world, the private world. They existed behind walls, behind closed doors. When they emerged into the public world, they carried the walls with them in the form of their black, shapeless garments and heavy veils. The Zzarr was part of that private world. Worse-from his point of view-it was part of a subdivision of that world, a subdivision from which men were excluded. There was another world within the private world which belonged to women only.
It would be no good asking his agents. They were all men. Nor could he ask the orderlies. The Zzarr was something women kept from their husbands. They might have a vague idea, but it would be at the level of rumour and gossip. He could not even go to Sheikh Musa. The religious authorities took care to keep their distance from such things. They were obliged to tolerate but could not recognize.
He remembered, a few months before, witnessing one such women’s ceremony. It had taken place in a mosque, now abandoned but to which women still came for their own special purposes. The purpose of this particular ceremony had been to establish whether a child would grow up dumb. Mothers came and held their babies to a special part of the wall. If they cried-and they usually did, their mothers made damned sure of that-prospects were favourable.
The religious authorities knew very well that such practices went on. They did not condone them but knew they could not stamp them out. They were part of an incredibly resilient female underworld.
About which Owen knew virtually nothing. That was all right, people were entitled to their secrets and he wasn’t one to go prying into them like McPhee. Mamur Zapt he might be, but he had a decent British sense of reticence.
On the other hand, he wanted to get in touch with the person who ran the Zzarr; the witch, or whatever she was. Witch! Owen winced. That would look good in the newspapers: Mamur Zapt out hunting for witches! He could write the editorials himself.
Yes, the fact was, he had a gap in the information system. His informants were all men. He needed to have some women.
But how could he find them? Women were kept well away from him, why, he could not think, and the only one he knew at all well was Zeinab. He could ask her, but she was not exactly a person he could employ as an agent. It wasn’t just that she would be certain to take a line of her own, never mind what the instructions were. The problem was that she was a member of Cairo’s social elite and had far more in common with sophisticated Parisiennes than with her sisters in the suk.
He could ask Georgiades’s Rosa, even though she was still only about fifteen. She was as sharp as a knife, an implement which she had made clear she was ready to use should her husband step out of line. Georgiades had been a changed man since his marriage. The trouble with Rosa, though, was that she was Greek. There was certainly a very strong Greek female culture. Unfortunately, it was not the same as the traditional one of the suks.
There was a nice girl he had recently met. In fact, she was the one he’d gone to the abandoned mosque to meet. The problem was that she was too nice. She was much too kind and gentle.
That could not be said of another of Owen’s acquaintances. That gipsy girl was just the sort of person he needed. Unfortunately, she had left town in a hurry a few weeks before, just ahead of the police.
No, it wouldn’t do. He would have to recruit women by the ordinary means. Nikos handled all that side. Nikos? Women? That wasn’t going to work. He would have to put aside the issue of recruiting women for the moment.
But what about the Zzarr? He mentioned it tentatively to Zeinab.
“I’ve no time for that superstitious stuff,” she said dismissively. “Women are never going to get anywhere while they go on believing that sort of rubbish.”
“Gareth,” said his friend, Paul, the ADC, “does the name Philipides mean anything to you?”
They were at a reception at the Abdin Palace. Owen, splendidly uniformed, had just mounted the grand staircase lined by the Khedival royal guard, even more splendidly uniformed and carrying lances. Owen did not greatly care for such occasions-for one thing, they served only soft drinks-but he was here at the express invitation of His Royal Highness the Khedive and one did not disregard such invitations. The British were punctilious in observing the forms of Khedival rule. Substance was another matter.
The Khedive, too, was punctilious over observance of the forms. They were all he had left.
“I think he does it just to provoke,” said Paul. “This evening, for instance: why so splendid an occasion just to mark the arrival of the Turkish ambassador?”
“Past relationships, I suppose,” said Owen. The Khedive had once been a vassal of the Sublime Porte and Egypt was still, in the view of Constantinople, part of the Ottoman Empire. “Past,” asked Paul, “or future?”
“No chance,” said Owen. “We wouldn’t let him.”
“Quite so,” said Paul. “But he does love to raise the spectre.”
He had taken Owen by the arm and led him behind some potted palm trees; and it was then that he asked about I’hilipides, and whether any of it made sense.
Owen nodded.
“Good. Because it didn’t to me.”
“And now it does?”
“I have been brushing up on past history. At the C-G’s request,” Paul said with emphasis.
“Why is that?”
“He thinks it’s going to come up again.”
“The corruption business?”
“The Garvin business.”
“On what grounds?”
“Miscarriage of justice. They were convicted only on Garvin’s word.”
“There was a police officer-”
“One of Garvin’s subordinates. Coerced, so they claim.”
“Who are ‘they’?”
“We don’t know. All we know is that the Parquet wants formally to reopen the whole affair.”
“Philipides is out,” said Owen.
“Yes. Early. I don’t know if that’s cause or result. Possibly it’s just the pretext. Anyway, someone’s using it to have a go at Garvin. And what we are beginning to think is that it’s not so much Garvin they want to have a go at, it’s us.”
“Garvin just a pretext, too.”
“Exactly. So, old chap, the Consul-General would like you to take a look.”
“Have you tipped off Garvin?”
“He’ll soon find out. But we can’t ask him to handle this. He’s a material witness. Besides-”
“Yes?”
“This really is political. It really is.”
Paul caught someone’s eye and went across to shake hands. “ Cher ministre,” Owen heard him begin. Then he, too, began to do his duty, circulating less among politicians and diplomats-that was Paul’s patch-than among senior civil servants and Pashas. They were all, of course, Egyptian, but the language spoken was not Egyptian Arabic. Nor, significantly, was it English. It was French. The Egyptian elite’s cultural allegiance was to France. It went to France for its education, its reading, its clothes and its vacations. It spoke French more naturally than it spoke Arabic.
When he was with Zeinab they habitually spoke French. Zeinab’s father was here now on the other side of the room with a circle of his cronies. He extended a hand to greet Owen as he arrived.
“My dear boy,” he said. “So nice to see you! You know everyone, don’t you?”
They were all Pashas; like him, hereditary rulers of vast estates. Nowadays they were deeply into cotton and international finance (borrowing, mostly). They looked outward to Europe, where they spent most of their time, adjusting to the loss of power which had come with British rule. They supplied most of the Khedive’s cabinet but their capacity for action, or, indeed, inaction, was severely constrained now by the presence of British Advisers at the top of each Ministry. Nevertheless, Governmental posts were much sought after, not least by Nuri, Zeinab’s father, and his cronies. They belonged, however, to a previous generation; a fact to which they were by no means reconciled.