They were all known to Owen, except one.
“Demerdash Pasha,” introduced Nuri, with a wave of his band.
The Pasha bowed distantly.
“Captain Owen. The dear boy has a tendresse for Zeinab,” he explained.
“How is Zeinab these days?” asked one of the other Pashas.
“The Mamur Zapt,” he heard another one amplifying for the benefit of the newcomer.
Owen saw the impact.
“Mamur Zapt?”
A little later he found an opportunity to speak to Owen.
“I knew your predecessor,” he said.
“A friend?”
“We worked together. A true servant of the Khedive.”
“As I aspire to be,” said Owen.
The Pasha looked puzzled.
“How can that be?” he said.
One of the other Pashas linked arms with him affectionately.
“Demerdash Pasha has been away for a long time,” he said with a smile.
“And where have you been spending your time, Pasha?” asked Owen.
“Constantinople,” the man said shortly.
“Demerdash Pasha is a great friend of the Turks,” said one of the other Pashas.
Demerdash turned on him.
“I am not a great friend of the Turks,” he said sharply. “I was there because the Khedive asked me to be there.”
“You are a friend of Egypt, mon cher,” said Nuri.
“Yes,” said Demerdash, “a friend of Egypt. But of Egypt as she was and not as she is.”
“Oh la la,” said Nuri, and led him away.
“Just the same as he used to be,” said one of the other Pashas, watching them go. “He doesn’t give an inch.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” said another Pasha.
“That remains to be seen,” said the first Pasha.
The group broke up with Nuri’s departure and Owen continued his circulation. Some time later, however, he found himself standing next to Nuri and Demerdash at the buffet table. They were talking to someone who had, apparently, just returned from the Sudan.
“And how were things down in the Bahr-el-Ghazal?” asked Demerdash.
The other man shrugged. “Hot,” he said.
“What about women?”
“All right.”
“That was where the best slaves came from,” said Demerdash. “Beautiful black ones.”
“None of that these days. They’ve got rid of slaves.”
Demerdash made a gesture of dismissal.
“Does it make any difference?”
“You’ve got to be careful.”
“The British!” said Demerdash scornfully.
“All the same-”
“Don’t tell me you spent that time there without sampling at least a few little negresses.”
“What’s that?” said Nuri.
Demerdash turned to him.
“ Il me dit qu’il a passe six ans au Sudan sans une seule petite negresse!”
“Impossible!” said Nuri.
The table bowed under the weight of food. There were gigantic Nile perch with lemons stuffed in their jaws, pheasants cooked but then with their feathers replaced so that they looked as if they had just wandered off an autumnal English field, ducklings shaped out of foie gras, huge ox heads from which the tongues, cooked, lolled imbecilely.
Paul regarded these latter with disfavour.
“Exactly like a Parliamentary delegation,” he said sourly.
The reception finished about eleven. The night was still young by Cairo standards and many of the guests went off to revel less stiffly in more congenial places. Owen decided to walk home. The other side of rising with the light was that he declined with the light, and midnight always found him totally stupid.
Besides, the night was the best time for walking in Cairo. The city was at its coolest then. Shadow veiled the strident and the angular and cooperated with the moon to emphasize the soft shapes and arches. The lower level of the city disappeared and you suddenly became aware of the magical beauty of the upper parts of the houses, with their balconies and minarets, the fantastic woodwork of the overhanging, box-like meshrebiya windows, and the grotesque corbels which carried the first floor out over the street. Higher still and the moon revealed more clearly than in the day the delicacy of the domes and minarets of the mosques and the slender towers of the fountain houses. Everything was silvery. The moon seemed even to strike silver out of the fine, tight-packed grains of sand of the streets.
As Owen set out, an arabeah drew up alongside him. He waved it away but it stopped just in front of him determinedly.
“Hello!” said a soft female voice, which somehow seemed familiar. Suddenly he remembered.
“You again!” It was the girl he had found in his bed. “What do you want?”
“I want you to be nice to me. And I want to be nice to you.”
“Sorry,” said Owen. “I’m well supplied, thanks.”
“It’s not like that,” she said.
“What is it like?”
“Why don’t you come home with me and find out?”
“Sorry.” He shook his head. “Someone is expecting me.”
“Zeinab’s not the only girl in the world. And, anyway, she’s not expecting you. She’s at Samira’s.”
Owen stopped, astonished. How did a girl like this know about Samira, the Princess Samira? And how did she know about Zeinab, for that matter?
“You know Samira?”
“As well as I know you. Surprisingly well.”
Owen considered the matter. He was intrigued.
But then, he was intended to be intrigued.
“No, thank you,” he said, and walked on.
Later, he was sorry. Plums, after all, do not grow on every tree.
Owen went down to the Gamaliya next day to see that things were all right. He found the shop open and the Copt busy behind the counter. The shelves, though, were half empty.
“A lot missing?” asked Owen, indicating the shelves with his hand.
“No, no. I’ve just not put them up. I have to take them down at night, you see, now that the shutters have been broken. It’s not worth it. The women know what they want and can always ask for it. I keep the stuff inside now.”
An idea came to Owen.
“Do you talk to the women?”
“Of course.”
“And sometimes, perhaps, you overhear things?”
“Perhaps,” said the Copt, slightly bewildered.
“Did you know about the Zzarr?”
He caught the look before the Copt’s face became studiously blank.
“Zzarr? I don’t think so.”
Owen smiled.
“ I think so,” he said.
The Copt shook his head.
“The reason I am asking,” said Owen, “is that I think the Zzarr could have something to do with the attack on your shop.”
The shopkeeper looked surprised.
“How could it?”
“Just believe me, that I think it could. Now, what I’m trying to do is stop it happening again. So I need to know.”
“I know there was a Zzarr,” said the shopkeeper. “That’s about all I know. Honestly!”
“Where was it?”
“It was in the house over there.”
“Show me.”
The Copt called into the house and a woman appeared. She was dressed in black like the other women in the street and veiled like them. The Copt told her to look after things while he was gone. He said he wouldn’t be long.
“Normally she doesn’t mind,” he said to Owen. “It’s just that now-”
The house was only about a couple of hundred yards away. Owen knocked on the door. No one responded.
“I think it’s empty,” said the Copt.