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First published in 1989 by Collins
Copyright © Michael Pearce 1989
Michael Pearce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination
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Source ISBN: 9780008259457
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2017 ISBN: 9780007485024
Version: 2017-09-05
Contents
‘Keeps up the high standard set by his first… Elegantly and wittily narrated, with a good plot, colourful characters and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Egypt of Cromer’s time.’
The Times Literary Supplement
Pearce is a natural novelist, masterly at evoking the jostling crowds, aromas and political religious cross-currents of Cairo under British rule… A vanished world comes alive in Pearce’s deft, humorous, elegant prose.’
Sunday Times
The Mamur Zapt would have treated it all as a joke if Nikos, his Official Clerk, had not been so insistent.
‘Get out there quick,’ he had said.
He had even volunteered to guide Owen to the Coptic Place of the Dead. Since Nikos was normally reluctant to take a single step outside his office, Owen had been impressed. Even so, if Georgiades had been around he might have sent him. Georgiades, however, was out on an errand of his own, or possibly still in bed. In any case, Nikos made it clear that he would not have approved.
‘This is something for the Mamur Zapt,’ he said.
The Mamur Zapt was the Head of Cairo’s Political CID. Responsible in theory directly to Egypt’s ruler, the Khedive, he answered in practice only to the British Consul-General, the man who, since Britain had charge of Egypt’s purse strings, effectively controlled Egypt. The Consul-General, however, had taken pains not to define the Mamur Zapt’s role too closely, observing that the less he knew of the Mamur Zapt’s activities the more effective he was likely to be.
There were certain ground rules, however, and one of them was that the Mamur Zapt did not concern himself with routine police matters. Which he considered this to be.
‘Police?’ said Nikos, as if he could hardly believe his ears. ‘What good would they be?’
Owen had to admit there was something in this. The Cairo police force was recruited from country districts and consisted for the most part therefore of simple fellahin, or peasants, illiterate, underpaid and, when they got to the city, usually quite lost. Their duties tended to be restricted largely to the regulation of traffic, which, since the latter consisted chiefly of donkeys and camels, was in Nikos’s view entirely appropriate. All real criminal investigation was left to the Parquet, the French-style Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice.
‘The Parquet, then?’ suggested Owen hopefully.
‘The Mamur Zapt,’ said Nikos definitely, and put on his tarboosh and walked out of the door.
Owen put on his tarboosh, too. Although he was still, strictly speaking, an army officer and merely on secondment, he considered himself now to be a civilian and preferred to dress in mufti. A tarboosh, the pot-like hat with a tassel which was the normal headgear of the educated Egyptian, was far less conspicuous than a sun helmet, especially of the heavy military sort. It was also cooler.
Not that that mattered too much this early in the morning. Later, when the sun was high in the sky and