How would they like that, then? You tell me. The whole country depends on water, the water depends on the dams, the dams depend on the sluices and the sluices depend on yes, youre right: this man Becker!
I take it hes German.
Of course hes German! Or something. What the hells that got to do with it? He does his job, like everyone else. Only much better, thats the point.
Yes, I know, but theres a war on, and theres this policy of intern
Sod the war! The whole system will collapse, I tell you. Look, Owen, youve got to do something, make an exception
You cant? Its nothing to do with you? Then who the hell is it to do with? Dont tell me. I know. Its London, is it? I might have guessed. Well, look, you can bloody tell London
Yes, I know, but theyll listen to you more than they will to me. Im just a stupid engineer, just someone who makes everything work. Youve got the gift of the gab, their gab
They wont? All right, talk to someone here, then. How about Kitchener? Hes not entirely without sense, have a go at him
Hes not here? Hes in London, too? I might have bloody known it! Look, there must be someone you can talk to about this man of mine
All right, all right, I know theres a policy of internment, and its got to be general, I can see that. But surely it can be applied sensibly? Surely people can be reasonable, surely you
Why should you be an exception, Owen?!
He decided, nevertheless, that he ought to do something. Calls like this were coming in all the time. He took his helmet and went across to the Consulate to have a word with his friend, Paul. Paul had been one of Kitcheners ADCs and was now the Oriental Secretary.
He found him in Kitcheners office; sitting indeed, in Kitcheners chair.
At last! said Paul, with a dramatic sweep of his hand. They held me back, but now Ive made it!
Youre not really in charge?
Cunningham is nominally. Cunningham was the Financial Adviser. But, as always, the reality of power is different.
He wriggled in his seat.
Just trying it out for size, he said. I find it a little small for me.
All right, if youre really in charge, theres something you can do. Its this damned internment policy.
Laid down by Whitehall, murmured Paul. Cant touch it.
What I want is power of discretion. That wouldnt solve everything, but it might help.
Discretion is normally understood, said Paul. Youve got to leave some latitude to the man on the spot. However
He thought about it.
However, Id be a bit careful about it, if I were you. Have you read the newspapers lately? The English ones? Theyre full of spy scares. Theres all sorts of panic at home and some of it is spilling over here.
Yes, but
And then theres another thing: theyre making changes. Theyre bringing some new people out here. One of them is something to do with security.
Thats my job.
Sure. I expect hell be working to you. But, Gareth, hell have contacts back at home and he, too he waved his hand again might be wanting to try other peoples seats. I daresay hell be no problem, but you see what I mean when I say that you ought to be a bit careful just at the moment.
Dont use too much discretion is that what youre saying?
That, and also that you ought to get some kind of formal approval, in writing, of your powers.
You can give me that, cant you?
Yes. But I think it would be better if it came from Cunningham.
OK, Ill try and have a word with him.
The bar at the Sporting Club was much less crowded than it usually was at lunch-time. This was because so many people were on holiday. Owen had been hoping to find Cunningham, but he wasnt there. However, he did find someone he knew from the Ministry of the Interior, a man named McKitterick.
Guns? McKitterick said, leaning his arm easily on the bar. Well, yes, and not before time. Look what the ghaffirs had to make do with up till now.
Yes, but these are service rifles. You dont want to put them in the hands of untrained men.
They wont be untrained. Weve got a big training programme going.
Yes, Ive heard about that. But its the wrong sort of training. Its military training.
Isnt that what they need?
Ghaffirs? Village watchmen? Mostly they shoot crows.
But sometimes they have to shoot brigands, and when they do, theyve got to have a weapon decent enough to put up a show with.
Very rarely, only in some parts of Egypt, do you have to fight brigands. And when you do, you dont want ghaffirs doing it. You want police or soldiers. Its a confusion of functions, from an administrative point of view. A ghaffirs function is much more limited.
Yes, we know about confusion of functions, thank you, said the other man, nettled. And we know about ghaffirs, too. Look, weve gone into this very thoroughly, more thoroughly, I suspect, than you have, and the conclusion weve come to is that there is a need to do something about the ghaffirs. Both in terms of training and in terms of weaponry. One of our inspectors looked into this in great detail and came up with a really first-class report.
Which suggested turning ghaffirs into a sort of internal army?
If thats the way you want to put it, yes.
Answerable to whom?
The Ministry, of course.
The ghaffir used to be answerable to his own village.
And still will be. But theres a need for wider coordination. Look, youve just come back from Minya, havent you? What chance has a single ghaffir there got against a pack of brigands?
You use the police. Or the Army.
I think, Owen, that the Armys got other things on its mind just at the moment. And the whole point of this is to take some of the load off the police. I really dont see what it is that youve got against reforming an antiquated, inefficient, and frankly useless service.
Its just that I dont like the idea of a well-armed, militarily trained force of fifty thousand men operating independently in the country at a time when its at war.
McKitterick stared at him incredulously.
God, Owen, whats got into you? Operating independently? Its not operating independently, its operating under us. Do you think the Ministrys going to launch some kind of coup? You must be crazy! Arent you taking a perfectly sensible reform a little over-seriously? Perhaps youve been working too hard. Why dont you just stay out of the sun for a day or two?
When he got back to his office he found that Nikos had pushed to one side the lists he had been working on and put in a conspicuously central position on his desk the memorandum from Finance that he had been trying for several weeks to ignore.
We first wrote to you some seven weeks ago requesting an explanation of how your apparent disbursements under Headings J, P, Q and Y of your Departmental Expenditure Statement are to be reconciled with the figures you give in Section 5 (c) ii and 8 (g) iv, not to mention Financial Regulations (see Sections 4 (d) i, 6 (b) v and 7). Despite requested requests
Didnt these blokes know there was a war on? Hadnt they realized that people might have something better to do than answer their potty memoranda? And how could anyone be expected to answer a memorandum that might have been written in Pharaonic hieroglyphics for all the sense he could make of it?
He pushed the memorandum indignantly aside.
Theres been a man phoning from the Ministry of Finance, said Nikos, watching from the doorway. He says hell try again.
On reflection, Owen thought he wouldnt speak to Cunningham about discretionary powers. Not just at the moment.
He had recently moved into a new apartment in the Midan Kasr-en-Nil. Zeinab had moved in with him, which was a considerable act for a woman in Egypt at that time. It was a considerable step forward in their relationship, too, and Zeinab had doubts about it. Every time he came home he half expected to find her not there.
She wasnt there now. However, her things were still scattered about the flat so he decided that it wasnt permanent. He poured himself a whisky soda, took a shower and then went out on to the balcony, from where he could see right across the Midan to the Nile on the other side. He was watching the amazing sunset when Zeinab arrived.
She took off her veil and kissed him. Then she helped herself to a drink and came out on to the balcony.
Something terribles happened, she said.
Oh, yes?
Theyve taken Alphonse.
Alphonse? He knew the names of most of Zeinabs friends but couldnt remember an Alphonse. He didnt sound like an Egyptian. Perhaps he was a new artist friend?
Id made my appointment as usual, but when I arrived he wasnt there. Gerard said they had come and taken him that morning. I blame you.
Me? said Owen, astonished.
Youre arresting them, arent you?
Is he German?
No, hes a perfectly normal Levantine. However, he became a German because someone was chasing him for a debt. Or was it a woman who wanted to marry him? Breach of promise yes, I think it was breach of promise. But hes not really a German at all and I dont think you should have arrested him.
Hes down on a list, I expect.
Cant you take him off it?
Well
Nikos could do it. Nikos is good with lists.
Look, its not any old list, its a list for a purpose, and its purpose is the identification of German nationals so that they can be interned.
But hes not a German, as I keep telling you. He just became a German, and he certainly wouldnt have done that if hed known you were going to arrest him. I told him at the time that it wasnt a good idea. He ought to have become a Panamanian or something, and then no one would really know what he was.
Panamanian wouldnt do. Panama doesnt have consular privileges.
Under international treaties imposed on Egypt many foreigners had so-called consular rights. Among them was the right to be tried not by an Egyptian court but by a court set up by the consul concerned, usually in another country and at a time far distant; which made possession of foreign nationality in some cases highly attractive.
If you can get him out, said Zeinab persuasively, Ill see he becomes something else.
Nationality was a loose concept in Egypt. It could be acquired simply by recourse to a local consul, plus, of course, the payment of an appropriate sum; and brothel-keepers and the owners of gambling dens tended to change nationality with astonishing frequency.
Egyptians were cavalier about nationality partly because there was so much of it about. Egypt was one of the most cosmopolitan countries in the world. One eighth of the population of Cairo was foreign born and the proportion was even higher in Alexandria. Greeks, Italians, French, Albanians, Montenegrins and Levantines of all sorts jostled shoulders in the narrow Cairo streets. The Khedive himself was Turkish. And then there were the British, of course.
The British kept themselves very much to themselves. They worked alongside the Egyptians, but outside the office they seldom met. A few people Owen, himself, for instance had Egyptian friends, and the people at the Consulate, Paul especially, mixed socially with upper-rank Egyptians. But to a very considerable extent the two nationalities kept apart.
If this was true of the men, and true, too, of the women for that matter, it was especially true of relationships between men and women.
An Englishman could be in the country for years and not meet an Egyptian woman. He would rarely meet an Italian, Greek or Levantine woman either, since all round the Mediterranean men kept a peculiarly jealous eye on their womenfolk; but in the case of Egyptian women it was even worse. They were perhaps no longer confined to the harem as in the past (only the rich could afford harems these days), but instead were relegated to some dark back room, from which they only emerged heavily veiled and dressed in a long, dark, shapeless gown that revealed nothing of the woman underneath.
They were never seen in public. If they went out, say, to do the shopping, they would be accompanied by a servant who would zealously defend them against any exchange with a man. If, rarely, they went to some public place such as a theatre, they would sit on separate, screened benches. If their husband received guests at home they would stay out of sight.
Young men of any kind, not just British, had a hard time of it and possibly would not have survived had it not been for the obliging ladies in the streets off the Ezbekiya Gardens.
In the case of the British, extra help came annually in the form of the fishing fleet, as it was known, the arrival of dozens of young women from England for the start of the Cairo season. One effect of this, though, was to reinforce the existing social division between the British and the Egyptians, which was almost complete; and Owen never ceased to give thanks that very early in his time in Egypt he had had the good fortune to meet Zeinab.
It had come about through a case involving her father, Nuri. Nuri was a Pasha and, like most of the old Egyptian ruling class, French-speaking and heavily Francophile in culture. Partly in reflection of this, and partly, it must be admitted, from his own idiosyncrasy, he had allowed his daughter a degree of latitude quite unusual in Egyptian circles. He saw no objection to his daughter meeting Owen; and, once met, things had developed from there.
Zeinab had established her independence to such an extent that quite early on she had acquired a flat of her own, where she lived, she assured her father, very much à la française. Nuri, impressed, had acquiesced; not, perhaps, quite comprehending that even in Paris at this time for young women to live on their own was not entirely comme il faut. In this unusual setting it had been possible for the relationship between Zeinab and Owen to develop; and over time it had developed very strongly.
Lately, however, they had begun to notice just how much time. They were both now over thirty and were becoming aware that many of their friends, even those as young as themselves, were getting married. They wondered whether they should do so too.
Here, though, they came up against that division between Egyptian and British, a division that was not just social but brought with it all the extra baggage that went with nationality: race, religion, customs, expectations and assumptions. And this was especially true when one of the nations concerned was an occupied country and the other the country that was occupying it.