They discussed the hot spell and wondered when it would end; and little by little the conversation turned to the point of his visit.
“I have done what you wished,” said the Aalima at last. “I have asked my women what happened in the courtyard that night.”
“And?”
The Aalima frowned.
“It is bad,” she said. “I wish I had never agreed. Either to their suggestion that I let him see or to his own insistence. It was bad. And bad comes to bad.”
“It was bad to drug him, certainly.”
“What followed was worse. Men came into the courtyard.”
“Is not that forbidden?”
“They said they had my word. My women knew that I had made some agreement and thought that this was part of it. That is what I meant when I said that bad leads to bad.”
“They used you for their own ends.”
“That is always the way,” said the Aalima, “with men.”
Owen said nothing.
“It spoiled it,” said the Aalima. “It destroyed the sanctity of the Zzarr. I should not have agreed. Now I shall have to do it again.”
“You have, of course, done it again, and I hope my presence did not spoil it that time.”
“We shall have to see. All I know is that what I did the first time was not successful.”
“The spirits remained after?”
The Aalima inclined her head.
“Not surprisingly,” she said.
“What did your women see?”
“Men came into the courtyard. They took the Bimbashi on his chair and carried him out.”
“Did they know the men?”
The Aalima shook her head.
“Would they know them again?”
“It was dark.”
“They carried him out of the courtyard. Did your women see where they carried him to?”
The Aalima hesitated.
“This is the worst part,” she said. “They carried him back into the outer courtyard.” She looked at Owen. “So that everyone could see.”
“I do not understand.”
“They showed him to those who were there. They raised him on his chair.”
Still Owen did not understand.
“There were people in the courtyard?”
“Many.”
“And McPhee was…displayed?”
“Yes. They said: ‘See how the Zzarr has been violated! And see who has done it!’ ”
“No one has told me this.”
“I did not know it either,” said the Aalima, “until I asked.”
Sheikh Musa sighed.
“Well, of course!” he said. “That was exactly the problem. After that there could be no denying it. Everyone had seen. I did my best. I tried to play it down. ‘Zzarr?’ I said. ‘What Zzarr? The church does not know any such thing.’ Which was all very well, except that everyone else did. To deny that there had been a Bimbashi as well would have been too much. It would have been like performing a sort of inverse miracle.” Owen found himself warming to the Sheikh.
“I very much regret any difficulty or embarrassment this has caused you,” he said.
The Sheikh shrugged and spread his hands.
“I don’t suppose he intended it,” he said.
“The very last thing he would have wished would have been to cause offence.”
“Maybe,” said the Sheikh; “but he was there, wasn’t he?”
“He was brought there by a trick.”
“Why would anyone wish to do that?” asked Sheikh Musa. “I could understand if it had been a mosque. There are always those who wish to fan the flames of religious division. But a Zzarr? Why a Zzarr?”
“Because they knew McPhee would come to it. If it had been a mosque or anything to do with orthodox religious practice he wouldn’t have touched it. He has great, genuine respect for such matters and knows too much about them to be inveigled into doing something that would offend. But a Zzarr, well, a Zzarr would be different. For him it is the past, from the days before there was Islam or even Christianity. That kind of thing fascinates him.”
“If they knew that about him,” said Sheikh Musa, “then they must have known him well.”
He had gone to the Sheikh hoping that he could have put him into touch with people who had been present in the outer courtyard that night and who had seen the whole thing. After considerable hesitation-the Sheikh, like Owen, still had hopes that the whole thing would die away and be quietly forgotten, and had no wish to do anything which might resurrect sleeping embers-he had reluctantly agreed to let Owen meet two suitable members of his flock. They had certainly been present; unfortunately, they had been chosen for their trustworthiness and discretion rather than for their ability to convey their impressions of what they had seen, and he got little out of them.
Yes, the Bimbashi had been brought out into the outer courtyard and lifted up on a chair so that he could be clearly seen by all who were present. “In the torchlight,” one of them added. “Drunk,” said the other.
“Not drunk,” said Owen, “drugged.”
The two remained unconvinced.
“In a thing like this,” said the Sheikh afterwards, “people believe what is said at the time.”
Owen asked about the men. They came from outside the Gamaliya. The two were quite sure of this. Most Cairenes, probably wisely, were sure of this sort of fact whenever it fell to their lot to witness a crime. Owen did not insist.
But what had happened to McPhee at the end, after he had been shown to the assembled population? He had been taken away, the men said vaguely. Who by? The same men? Probably. Couldn’t they remember anything about it? Nothing at all. How many men had there been, Owen asked desperately? Four. Or rather two. Plus one who had led them. Three, then? The men conferred. You might say that; yes, you might say that. What was this other one like? A lowly man, they said with scorn. Lowly? Definitely. A fellah? Worse than that. But was not that strange, a mere fellah, and a leader?
Ah, well, he hadn’t exactly been their leader, at least, not like that, more one who had shown them the way. He had known the way, then, himself? Seemed to. And the others had not? Definitely not. They were from outside the Gamaliya. And the other one? The one who had led? Couldn’t see, it was dark, etc., etc.
So he had come from the Gamaliya. In fact, he must have known the Gamaliya well to have been able to guide the men into a backyard and then to the cistern into which they had dropped McPhee.
That wasn’t the sort of place you hit on by accident as you were fleeing. McPhee must have been dropped there deliberately, as a kind of cruel joke. Which suggested that the man, the lowly one who had guided them, had known it was there.
Owen decided to go and see Jalila.
The yard was busy now. Semi-finished screens for the large, box-like windows which were a feature of old Cairo were propped up everywhere with men bent over them applying the final touches. Elsewhere, men were working on earlier stages. In one corner they were doing the preliminary sawing, holding the wood in their toes; in another they were turning the pegs with little pigmy-like bows. All the work was being done on the ground, none on benches.
Owen greeted the men politely and asked for Jalila. You did not usually ask for women by name-in fact, you did not usually ask for women at all-but snake-catchers’ daughters were different. One of the men went to the back of the yard and called up to a window at the top of some wooden stairs. A moment later, Jalila appeared.
“There’s an Effendi here who wishes to speak with you, Jalila.”
“Oh, it’s you,” said Jalila, pleased, and came down the stairs.
“Posh friends our Jalila’s got!” one of the workmen said to another.
“He’s probably been showing her a snake. Or something,” said the other.
As Jalila went past the cistern she put her arm down into it and scooped out a snake; which she promptly threw in the direction of the speakers.