The Mamur Zapt and the Camel of Destruction. Michael Pearce

his time?’

      The man capitulated.

      ‘Perhaps he wasn’t very busy,’ he admitted.

      ‘Are you all like that? Not very busy?’

      ‘We should be so lucky!’ said the man bitterly. ‘There are only twenty of us and we have to cover the whole country. They’ve got more in the Agricultural Society!’

      ‘Then how is it that Fingari wasn’t?’

      ‘Perhaps – he’s joined us only recently, perhaps he’s not had time to pick things up–’

      ‘How recently?’

      ‘Six months. Before that he was at Public Works.’

      ‘He came to you from Public Works?’

      ‘Yes. He was brought in specially. So that he could represent us on the Bank. To be fair, he had the background–’

      ‘Banking?’

      ‘Control of public expenditure.’

      ‘And none of you have that background?’

      ‘Not to the same extent. Public Works is large. We are – small.’

      ‘What did he do with the rest of his time? When he wasn’t working on the Bank?’

      ‘I don’t know. None of us know. He kept himself to himself.’

      ‘Did anyone work with him?’

      ‘No. His work was, as I have said, very specialized.’

      ‘So you wouldn’t know anything about these negotiations he’s been engaged in?’

      ‘Negotiations? I didn’t know he had been engaged in any. What sort of negotiations?’

      ‘I’m like you: don’t know anything about it.’

      ‘He’s certainly been going out a lot lately,’ said the man thoughtfully. ‘But we thought – you know, lunch and all that sort of thing–’

      ‘You don’t know any of the people he used to meet?’

      The man shook his head.

      ‘We didn’t really like to ask him. Thought they might be people he’d worked with when he was at Public Works.’

      ‘No names?’

      ‘They’d be in his desk diary. We’re supposed to record–’

      ‘It doesn’t seem to be here,’ said Owen, searching.

      ‘Isn’t it? It ought to be. Ya Abdul!’

      Abdul Latif appeared in the doorway.

      ‘Fingari effendi’s Green Book: have you seen it?’

      ‘It should be on the desk,’ said Abdul Latif, coming into the room.

      The Ministry of Agriculture was, as it happened, in the same building as the Ministry of Public Works, occupying part of a corridor on the top floor at the back, which indicated, in the subtle way of the Civil Service, its status as a parvenu.

      The building was in the Ministerial Quarter, the Kasr-el-Dubara, which was itself in the same state of incompleteness as the rest of Cairo. Half of it consisted of grubbed up gardens and abandoned foundations, a memento of the recent land-boom, in which the part on the river bank was to have been developed as a fashionable residential area.

      The other half of it had already been developed with imposing new Government buildings, set out in French-style ornamental parks with formal flowerbeds and cool promenades of trees.

      Owen had intended taking to the promenades but as he came round the corner of the building he saw in front of him the handsome, if rather stolid, edifice of the Ministry of Religious Endowments. Since he was in the neighbourhood …

      ‘I would like to check the details of a waqf I am interested in,’ he told the clerk at the Reception desk inside. ‘It’s in the Derb Aiah area.’

      The clerk, a Nikos in embryo, looked at Owen sniffily.

      ‘We do not classify them by areas,’ he said.

      ‘How do you classify them?’

      ‘By names.’

      ‘Shawquat.’

      ‘What sort of name is that?’

      ‘It’s the name of the beneficiary.’

      ‘Ah, we don’t classify by the names of beneficiaries. We classify by the name of the original endower.’

      ‘Mightn’t he be named Shawquat, too?’

      ‘He might; but then, again, he might not.’

      ‘Try under Shawquat,’ said Owen.

      The clerk took his time.

      ‘There are several Shawquats.’

      ‘Fine. I’ll look at them all.’

      ‘The files would be too heavy to bring.’

      ‘I’ll look at them where they are.’

      Reluctantly, the clerk took him into a back room, very large, occupying the whole of one floor of the vast building.

      ‘Thank you. How are they organized?’

      ‘In files.’

      Owen considered whether to pick the clerk up, shake him and drop him. But this was not one of the Ministries with an English Adviser, it was a Ministry which, in view of the nature of its business, history mixed with religion, the English thought it politic to leave alone. So he didn’t.

      ‘Arranged alphabetically by the initial letter of the name?’

      ‘Of course.’

      The clerk went off. As he disappeared behind the stacks Owen heard a voice say softly in Arabic:

      ‘Is that courteous?’

      ‘It is only a foreign effendi–’

      ‘Then that is worse. For in that case you are representing not just the Ministry but also our country: and what will the foreign effendi think of a country whose servants behave as you have just been doing?’

      ‘I said nothing–’

      I heard what you said. And now I will tell you what you will do. You will go round and you will collect all the files that the effendi needs and you will take them to him.’

      I–’ began the clerk, but then stopped abruptly.

      He began to bring Owen files at speed.

      Owen went round the stack to thank his benefactor. He found a young Egyptian, smartly dressed, not in the usual dark suit of the office effendi, but in a light, white, French-style cotton suit and a red tie exactly chosen to go with his red tarboosh.

      He was sitting at a table reading one of the files but looked up politely as Owen approached. His eyes opened wide in surprise and he jumped up.

      ‘Mon cher ami!’

      ‘Mahmoud!’

      ‘I didn’t realize–’

      They embraced warmly in the Arab fashion.

      ‘But why,’ demanded Mahmoud, disengaging himself, ‘did you put up with him?’

      ‘Well, I thought, this is a special Ministry–’

      ‘But why did you think that?’

      ‘The religious connection–’

      ‘But you mustn’t think that! It is just a Ministry like any other. You mustn’t expect less than you would from other Departments.