“Those who were involved at the time may not have liked it,” said Mahmoud. “But they’re all gone, surely?”
“No one likes it,” said Abdul Bakri dispiritedly. “When you’ve done it once, whoever’s your boss after that thinks you’re going to do it again.”
“It will only worry them if they’ve got something to hide.”
“We’ve all got something to hide,” said Abdul Bakri. “Everyone bends the rules at some time.”
Mahmoud, who never bent the rules, was shocked into silence for a moment.
“It’s your mates, too,” Abdul Bakri went on. “They don’t like it.”
“They’re the ones who benefited!”
“Well, I don’t know about that.”
“They didn’t like having to pay for promotion, surely?”
“Well, at least you knew where you were. Forty pounds would get you an inspectorship. All you had to do was to save up. Cost you a bit, of course, but then you wouldn’t want everybody becoming an inspector. The point is, if you could find the money, you were all right. There was none of this funny business of people deciding how good you are. You see, that sort of thing makes it really chancey. You might have served in the force for twenty years and then someone comes along and says: ‘No, you can’t be an inspector because you’re too lazy’ or not clever enough. Now, I don’t call that fair at all. Whereas if all you had to do was find the money, it couldn’t go wrong, could it?”
“I see,” said Mahmoud. “And you’re still a sub-inspector.”
“That’s right,” said Abdul Bakri, aggrieved. “Spoiled my chance of promotion, that’s what he did, Garvin effendi!”
“You could have said nothing,” Mahmoud pointed out.
“Fat chance of that!” said Abdul Bakri. “He had me in his office and he said: ‘Forty pounds, Abdul Bakri? What’s that for?’ Well, I tried to put him off, but he said: ‘It wouldn’t be, by any chance, to purchase an inspectorship, would it?’ Well, after that…‘I know all about it,’ he said. ‘So you’d better just tell me.’ There wasn’t much I could do, was there? He had me.”
“Did he remind you of your rights?”
“Rights?” said Abdul Bakri incredulously. “Look, let me tell you, a sub-inspector’s got no rights. Not in the police force, he hasn’t.”
“Attempted bribery is an offence,” said Mahmoud severely.
“Don’t I know it! That’s just what Garvin effendi said. He said, ‘It’s prison for you, my lad, if you don’t do what I say.’ I said, ‘What about the money?’ He said, ‘You’ve had that.’ Well, I mean, forty pounds is a lot of money, it was all I had. It wasn’t really mine, either. I mean, it was Leila’s jewellery and she hadn’t been too pleased in the first place. If it had gone for good, well, she’d have killed me. Prison, I didn’t mind; well, at least you’ve got food and a roof over your head, haven’t you, but to have Leila forever on my back- ‘Well, all right, effendi,’ I said, ‘I’ll do what you want!’ ”
“And what did Garvin effendi want?”
“He said, ‘Who have you been dealing with? Have you been talking to Philipides direct?’ And I said, No, it had all been done through Philipides’s orderly, Hassan. So he said: ‘Right then, you tell Hassan that you’re a bit worried about going on with it because you’ve heard that Garvin effendi knows all about it.’ ‘Effendi,’ I said, ‘have you got it right? The first thing Hassan will do will be to tell Philipides.’ ‘That’s right!’ said Garvin effendi, and gave that little smile of his. Anyway, I did what he told me and Hassan went as white as a sheet and rushed off. The next day, he was back with the forty pounds, well, thirty-nine pounds, in fact, and said, ‘Here you are, we don’t want to know any more about it.’ ”
“Thirty-nine pounds?”
“That bastard, Hassan, was taking his cut. Got his fingers burnt that time, though, I can tell you. Garvin effendi said, ‘You go to Hassan and tell him you want all the money or else there’ll be trouble. And tell him he’s got to bring it to you at the police station tomorrow morning.’ Well, I did, and Hassan didn’t like it, but he brought the money. But what he didn’t know was that Garvin effendi had got two men in the next room listening in. So, he had him cold,” said Abdul Bakri, “and after that the thing just rolled.”
“Are we going to talk to Hassan?” asked Owen, as they walked back.
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because he disappeared.”
“Fearing the worst?”
“Or because of intimidation.”
“Yes,” said Owen, “I gather there was a lot of that going on.”
“On both sides,” said Mahmoud, “judging by Abdul Bakri’s account.”
“Well, I had to say something. So I said something came over me at the full moon. I thought my husband was a pig and wanted to engage in unnatural practices with me. ‘What sort of practices?’ she said.”
“I don’t think we need go into this,” said Selim uneasily.
His wife, however, enjoying the opportunity, thought otherwise; and did with relish.
“And then I said I thought he was an ox,” she said happily. “Not from the point of view of getting on with his work uncomplainingly but because of his stupidity-”
“Look, Aisha,” Selim began.
“I complained how often my husband beat me. Because of the times when I was possessed, that is. And then I asked her if she knew of an Aalima who could cast out the spirit from me. ‘It sounds as if your husband is the one who needs to see her,’ she said. ‘No, no,’ I said, ‘my husband is kind and patient and thoughtful and generous, hard-working and considerate-”’
“Aisha, if you don’t-!”
Over the heavy veil the big eyes looked at Owen demurely.
“ ‘I am the one possessed’, I said. ‘That I could ever think of him otherwise!’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ve got a cousin in the Gamaliya and she knows an Aalima’, so we went to the cousin and she said she would speak to the Aalima. And the Aalima agreed to see me. ‘What is your trouble?’ she asked. And I said, ‘Every full moon I think my husband is a pig.’ ‘A pig?’ she said. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘a pig.’ ”
“Aisha-”
“ ‘Why is that?’ she asked. ‘Because he wishes to engage in unnatural practices with me. Or, at least, that’s what I imagine. When I’m possessed.’ ”
“Aisha-”
“ ‘What sort of unnatural practices-?’ ”
“All right, all right,” Owen broke in. “We’ve got that bit.”
“You wait till you get home!” said Selim.
“None of that!” said Owen. “Or you don’t get paid.”
“Yes, but, effendi-”
“Did the Aalima agree?”
“Well, she said she’d just held a Zzarr and ordinarily she wouldn’t have another one for several months. However, it had raised a lot of interest in the neighbourhood and since it had been held, quite a few women had come forward, so that she thought that perhaps she’d better hold another one as otherwise it wouldn’t be fair-”
“Did she give you a date?”
“Next week sometime. She’ll let me know. I’ll need time to prepare, you see.”
“Prepare?”
“I have to purify myself. No sex beforehand and none for a month afterwards-”
“A month!” said Selim, aghast.
“At least. You’ll just have to ask Leila.”
“It’s the wrong time of the month for her.”
“Oh dear,” said Aisha.
The city drooped in the heat. From about mid-morning the streets were deserted. Even the Ataba-el-Khadra, the square where most of Cairo’s tram routes terminated, and which was normally bustling with people, seemed empty. The drivers of the trams clanged their bells half-heartedly, and departed half empty. No one wished to travel if they could avoid it.
The tourist season was at an end now and outside the big hotels the ranks were full of arabeahs. Their drivers dozed in the shade beneath their vehicles and did not even bother to look for custom. The donkey boys below the hotel terraces played endless games with sticks and white stones. Their donkeys slept on their feet. Even in sleep their tails twitched continuously against the flies.
During the season, the street in front of the main European hotels was crowded with hawkers selling everything from souvenirs of the tombs to dirty postcards. Now all the hawkers had gone, as had the tumblers, and acrobats, the musicians and the people with performing monkeys. Only a solitary, blind snake charmer remained. Hearing Owen approach, he began to play on his flute. The snake rose slowly from its basket.