The fig tree murder, p.16
The Fig Tree Murder, page 16
Daniel and Isa threw themselves upon one another.
Owen wrestled them apart.
‘Get him away!’ he said to Salah over his shoulder.
Salah hustled Daniel off. Owen caught Sheikh Isa by the folds of his galabeah and heaved him out of earshot of the rival supports. ‘Now you listen to me—’
‘Now you listen to me,’ he said to the assembled company a few minutes later. ‘I have agreed with Sheikh Isa that until the courts have spoken, the Tree cannot be sold.’
Daniel opened his mouth.
‘And have told him that if the Copt takes any action in the meantime I shall confiscate the property on behalf of the Khedive.’
‘I don’t think, actually, that you can—’ began Salah uncomfortably.
Owen silenced him with a baleful look.
‘And I myself will speak with those who would buy the Tree. It may be that they will change their mind. One thing is certain, though: and that is that if I have any more trouble from any of you—’
Copts and Sons listened to the tirade admiringly. Owen made it long to give them time to calm down; and made it funny to restore their good humour. At the end, they stood for a moment or two uncertainly and then sat down.
Daniel came up to Owen and plucked him by the sleeve.
‘Effendi—’
‘And you,’ said Owen, ‘go home.’
‘Go home?’ said Daniel astonished.
‘That’s right. Get on your donkey and go.’
Daniel hesitated, shrugged, then went down among the balsam trees and collected his donkey. They watched him climb on to its back and set off in the direction of Tel-el-Hasan.
‘It’s all right for him,’ said one of the Sons to one of the Copts. ‘You’ve got to stay here.’
‘You know,’ said the Copt, ‘I think that every night when he gets on his donkey and sets off for his comfortable bed.’
‘Comfortable wife, too, I wouldn’t be surprised,’ said the Son of Islam. He looked across at Sheikh Isa. ‘It’s all right for him, too. He just gets on his donkey and off he goes. We’ve got to stay here. And we’ve got wives, too!’
Camaraderie restored, the two sat down happily to grumble together.
‘I will send up chickens for tonight,’ said Owen. ‘Or at least, Heliopolis will.’
He looked at Salah.
‘Definitely!’ promised Salah.
Owen had words for Salah, too.
‘If the Syndicate goes behind my back just once again—’
‘I was going to tell you,’ said Salah hurriedly.
‘What are they after? Trying to buy the Tree? It’s nowhere near the line of the railway.’
‘Malik wants to use the land for training gallops,’ said a voice behind him.
He had forgotten about Amina.
‘You were terrific,’ she said.
‘Thanks. What’s it got to do with him?’
‘The committee has hopes of a training stable. It would have to be on this side because they’re building on the other ones. He’s got an interest of his own, too. He has some land over here which he thinks could be part of it.’
‘Just a minute, it’s the Syndicate that’s buying the land, isn’t it? Not the committee.’
‘The Syndicate’s buying the land for the committee.’
Salah cut in quickly, with an annoyed look at his daughter.
‘The Syndicate is developing the site. It builds the facilities and then lets them to clients like the Racing Committee.’
‘Which keeps asking for more and more.’
‘Amina!’ said Salah angrily. ‘It is time you went. Ride on!’
Amina gave Owen a smile as she went.
‘Remember,’ she said, ‘I ride over this way every morning.’
‘On your way, girl!’ shouted Salah furiously. ‘Sometimes I wonder,’ he said to Owen, ‘if I’ve brought her up in quite the right way!’
‘Immodesty upon immodesty!’ cried Sheikh Isa, who had only just seen Amina. ‘Abomination upon abomination! A woman! On a horse!’
***
‘My fortune is made!’ called the barber as Owen passed. ‘Come and rejoice at my wealth!’
Owen dropped into the little circle around the chair.
‘How is your fortune made?’
‘The Belgians wish to buy my land.’
‘You haven’t got any land,’ one of the circle objected.
‘My cousin has.’
‘It’s only an allotment. Which he shares with Musa.’
‘Land is land. And it’s right in the way of what Malik wants for his gallops. I shall hold out! Whatever he offers me, I shall spurn. “You offer me that?” I shall say, “I disdain your puny offer. You’ll have to offer serious money if you want to get anywhere with me!”’
‘But it’s not your land!’
‘It’s my cousin’s land. And my cousin is but a fool, a simple man. He has no head for this kind of thing. I shall negotiate for him.’
‘Against the Pasha? He’ll have your balls off!’
‘Anyway,’ said another of the circle, ‘I thought you didn’t agree with selling off the Tree to foreigners?’
‘The Tree? What is the Tree? It is mere superstition. Sell it off, I say. Pocket the money. The money is real; the Tree is but vapour.’
‘This is a different tune from what you were singing yesterday.’
‘I sing with the times. I am,’ said the barber with dignity, ‘on the side of Progress.’
‘Now you are, but—’
‘You’ll never make any money out of this!’
‘Malik’s the one who’ll make the money.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ said someone else. ‘Zaghlul owns some of the land, too, and he’s not going to sell. He doesn’t like Malik.’
‘He’ll sell if the money’s right.’
‘No, he won’t. Just to spite Malik.’
‘Anyway,’ said someone who had not yet spoken, ‘what does Malik want a gallop for? He goes on enough gallops with Jalila!’
They all laughed.
‘Not any more, he doesn’t,’ said the barber. ‘She won’t have anything to do with him now. Not since Ibrahim died.’
‘Why not?’ asked Owen.
‘She used to like Ibrahim. Of course, she had to go with Malik if he asked her, because he was the Pasha. But she preferred Ibrahim. Anyway, one day when he called, there was Ibrahim. “Bugger off!” he says to Ibrahim. Well, you know Ibrahim. Head too hot, tongue too quick. “It’s not for me to bugger off,” he says. “Times have changed. You don’t own me now. And it won’t be long before you and your lot’ll be swept away.” “Oh, is that so?” says Malik. “We’ll see about that!” And then, do you know, that stupid woman has to butt in. “Take yourself off!” she says to Malik. “He’s right. You don’t own him now and you don’t own me either.” So off Malik has to go, with his tail between his legs.’
‘She oughtn’t to have said that!’ said someone. ‘Not to the Pasha!’
‘Well, she’s sticking to it. He’s been over to see her several times and each time she says, “Not you, Malik.”’
‘She was always too outspoken,’ said someone uneasily.
***
Owen went to see Jalila.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘this is a surprise!’
Her brother was obviously not there, for she did not invite him in.
‘I’m still looking for the man who killed Ibrahim.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know you are.’ There was a pause and then she said: ‘You’ve got him, haven’t you?’
‘Have I?’
She did not reply.
‘What did you come to see me for?’
‘Ibrahim and Malik quarrelled. Since then you have refused to see Malik. Why?’
‘What’s the Pasha’s son to me?’ she said. ‘Ibrahim was right. Their day has gone.’
‘Is that all?’
‘What else could there be?’
‘Did Malik come to see you on the night that Ibrahim was killed?’
She looked at him in surprise.
‘No.’
‘Sure?’
She suddenly understood.
‘If Malik had been anywhere around,’ she said bitterly, ‘I would have told you.’
***
He had felt he had to explore it. But really he could not see it. A quarrel over a woman, affronted pride, revenge taken, yes; but Malik? Somehow Owen could not see him in the part. Ali, now, Leila’s ferocious brother, that was a different matter: a rough, tough customer, used, probably, to such work through his association with the racecourse gang, quick, as Owen had seen for himself, to reach for a gun in an argument, more than ready to resent an affront—Owen could certainly see him doing it.
And that, clearly, was what the village thought. Even Jalila herself, probably. Malik? He didn’t come into it—except that he obviously loomed much larger in the life of the village than Owen had supposed.
Besides, one always came back to it—if Malik had been involved, what could one make of the body’s being placed on the line? It was directly contrary to Malik’s interests. What he wanted was to get the line completed as quickly as possible. No, revenge might have had some part to play in Ibrahim’s death, but it wouldn’t have been Malik’s desire for revenge—if desire for revenge he had; more likely, he viewed the whole thing as simply beneath him—but someone else’s. There seemed to be plenty of desire for revenge washing around the village, not least on the part of Ali. And that, Owen was convinced, was far more likely.
***
Coming out of Sheikh Isa’s house he saw Zaghlul. Unexpectedly, the old man crossed the street and came up to him.
‘This is a bad business,’ he said.
‘There are many bad businesses, especially just now. Which one is troubling you?’
Instead of replying, Zaghlul nodded his head.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there are many bad businesses just now. But they all come from one thing. Two years ago everything here was like that.’ He pointed out across the fields shimmering in the sun to the more distant shimmer of the desert. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘it is like that.’
He gestured towards the houses.
‘Everywhere they build. The city creeps out into the desert. The railway—’
He spat into the dust.
‘They squeeze us out,’ he said. ‘At first we say: “The desert is big enough for both of us,” and let them come. But the desert is not big enough for both of us. They want more and yet more. They squeeze us out.
‘At first I said: “The times are changing and I must change with them.” I saw the railway coming out to Heliopolis and saw them building the big stores. And I said to myself: “Zaghlul, you must learn new tricks.” So I bought some land out in the desert, away from Heliopolis, and I stocked it with ostriches. And I thought, “Here I will be safe,” for it is away from Heliopolis and among the palaces of the Khedives and the Pashas and they will not let them build there. But always they want more. Now they are building these gallops.’
‘Not yet,’ said Owen. ‘And, anyway, does it matter? The gallops will be land, not houses. And they are still two miles from your farm.’
‘But what if they want more gallops?’ Zaghlul shook his head. ‘Ostriches and horses don’t get along with each other. They smell each other and and are frightened.’
‘Zaghlul,’ said Owen, remembering suddenly, ‘are other animals besides horses frightened by ostriches? Goats, for instance?’
‘Goats?’ said Zaghlul, startled. ‘I do not know. I have not thought about it.’
‘I have heard that it is so. But if it were so, the bird would have to pass close, would it not?’
‘It is the smell. They would have to be able to smell it.’
‘But then, if it passed close, in the night, let us say, they would be disturbed and restless?’
‘I would expect so.’
‘Yes,’ said Owen, ‘I would expect so. Tell me, Zaghlul, do your birds often escape?’
‘That is what they say,’ said Zaghlul, ‘but it is a lie!’
‘There was one that escaped. I saw it.’
‘There would have been no problem if that fool Malik had not chased it and scared it. I would have caught it and it would have been back behind the fences before anyone knew anything about it!’
‘So they do escape?’
‘Occasionally. But—’
‘And you pursue them. Tell me, Zaghlul, did one escape on the night that Ibrahim was killed? And did you by any chance pursue it?’
Zaghlul’s face darkened.
‘You take the side of the city,’ he said angrily. ‘For you, my ostriches are always breaking out. No, one did not break out on the night that Ibrahim was killed. And no, I did not pursue it.’
He stumped furiously away and a little later Owen saw him riding off into the fields on his way back to his farm.
For a moment the village street was empty and then a group of women came along, chattering as they went to fetch water for the evening meal. They called out to Owen cheerfully as they passed. Everyone in the village knew him, he suddenly realized. He had been out here so often over the past two weeks that they almost took him for granted.
The first smells of the evening cooking drifted down the street. A particularly pungent whiff made him splutter. Someone must have just thrown a load of too-recently-dried cattle dung on to a fire.
Men were coming back from the fields with hoes and baskets and a donkey nodded past carrying a huge load of berseem. The doves in the palms around the well were beginning to take up their evening cooing, a low, fulfilled murmur which would go on until the sun dropped finally beneath the horizon.
Another of the sounds had changed, too. For a moment he did not realize what it was, and then he saw a man lifting the small boy down from the back of the ox that had driven the water-wheel.
The day’s work in the village was coming to an end. Men would be walking back from the irrigation channels, the ostrich farm, the railway or wherever they worked. Everyone would be going home. Daniel, the Copt, would—on a normal day—be untethering his donkey in the grove of balsam trees and preparing to set out on the journey back to Tel-el-Hasan.
Owen stopped.
Daniel, the Copt, would, on a normal day, be just starting out on the journey back to Tel-el-Hasan.
Chapter Twelve
The following morning Owen was at the Tree again; not as early as Daniel, the Copt, always eager to see that his property had not been stolen in the night, but early enough to share the first cup of tea of the day with the Tree’s unwilling guardians.
‘How much longer are we going to have to stay here?’ asked one of his policemen.
‘Not much longer, I think,’ said Owen.
He took his cup of tea and walked over to where Daniel was looking at the names on the Tree and fretting at the diminishing rate of new inscriptions.
‘If it goes on like this,’ said the Copt gloomily, ‘the Tree won’t be worth having.’
‘Have not the Belgians made you an offer?’
‘That money is still to come, meanwhile, this lot has to be paid,’ said Daniel, nodding sadly towards his Coptic henchmen.
‘It could go on for ten years,’ said Owen.
Daniel winced.
‘Tell me, Daniel: every morning you ride here across the desert from Tel-el-Hasan, and every evening you ride home again. It must be a lonely ride, for there cannot be many who make the journey. You would remember those you saw. That night that Ibrahim died—’
‘Would he had never died!’ said Daniel gloomily. ‘Since that day, the world has come to Matariya. If only it would go away again!’
‘You remember the night? Well then, tell me, as you rode home to Tel-el-Hasan that night, did you meet anyone on the way?’
‘I do not remember…’
‘Think. They would have been coming from Tel-el-Hasan. Might you not have wondered why they were making the journey so late in the day?’
‘That was not the riddle. He must have been taking her to meet her prospective husband’s family. He would eat with the men and she with the women and then they would go home again. No, that was not the riddle.’
‘What was the riddle, then?’
‘That they should stay so late. For the next morning as I rode I saw them on their way back.’
‘Ah! And their names?’
‘It was Ali and his sister. You know, that mad brother of Leila’s. Though who he was taking the girl to, I cannot think. For who, knowing what had happened to the husband of the one sister, would wish to take on the other sister and that mad family?’
‘Thank you, Daniel.’
Owen rose from his squat. They would have to make inquiries but he was pretty sure that no prospective husband’s family would be found. That was not what Ali and his sister had come over for. The old goatherd, as he had sat with his goats among the balsam trees by the well, had heard people talking by the Tree: a man and a woman. The sister had been there as bait. An assignation must have been made previously and Ibrahim, unable, it appeared, to resist any woman, and drawn to the sister anyway, had come to keep it.
But why had they taken so long? Some time must be allowed for them to take the body to the railway line and return; but then what had they been doing for the rest of the night? And why had they taken the body to the line anyway?
It kept coming back to that. And that, in fact, was where he, Owen, came in. For Ibrahim’s murder was not, strictly speaking, the Mamur Zapt’s concern but the Parquet’s. Owen was interested only in so far as it impinged on wider issues, the progress of the new railway, for instance, and its political and commercial implications.
He still could not fathom that bit out. Was there a connection between Ibrahim’s murder and the railway? Or were they quite separate, a matter of coincidence only, and Ibrahim’s death merely another revenge killing, one of the many that swelled Egypt’s crime lists?
