eyes, though, were now raised and she was looking at Owen directly.
‘You see, when men are brought to such a desperate pass, when they are in a state so desperate that they can contemplate a thing like this, it is often because they feel themselves quite alone. Did Osman Fingari feel himself so alone, I ask myself.’
The girl’s eyes filled with tears.
‘Was there no one he could turn to? No one in the whole wide world?’
‘Why do you ask these things,’ the girl suddenly burst out. ‘What business is it of yours? What do you care about my brother?’
‘Aisha!’ cried Mr Istaq, scandalized. ‘Be quiet, girl! You have said enough, more than enough!’
Things were worse even than he had feared. The girl had no idea how to behave.
‘You do not address your elders like that!’
The girl dissolved in a flood of tears.
Both men were at a loss.
‘Now, now!’ said Mr Istaq, chiding but at bottom kind-hearted. He had overdone it. The girl wasn’t used to being corrected. ‘It’s all right! I think we had better stop,’ he said to Owen.
‘Of course!’ Owen could have kicked himself. ‘I am sorry, Miss Fingari. I have no wish to distress you. I have to ask these things. You see, sometimes it is something inside a person that makes them do a thing like this and sometimes it is something outside–’
‘I think we had better stop,’ said Mr Istaq.
Owen, dissatisfied with himself, stopped for a coffee round the corner. He was sitting at a table sipping it when a small boy touched him on the arm. Automatically he felt in his pocket.
‘No, no, effendi!’ protested the small boy. ‘Not that! At least, not just that. Perhaps afterwards – when you have heard my message.’
‘You have a message for me?’
‘Yes, effendi, though I must say, I’m a bit surprised at it, because she’s not been that way before.’
‘Just a minute,’ said Owen. ‘Who sent you?’
‘Aisha.’
‘Miss Fingari?’
‘That’s right. Only we call her Aisha.’
‘What’s the message?’
The little boy reflected. ‘I ought to bargain with you–’
‘Twenty milliemes?’
‘Say, twenty-five.’
‘Twenty-five it is.’
‘Right, then. She wants to see you. Not with her uncle.’
‘Does she say where?’
‘She does. But, effendi, she does not know much about this sort of thing and I do not think that what she proposes is a good idea. She says she will go to the souk and you can meet her on the way. But, effendi, that is not the way to do it.’
‘What is the way to do it?’
‘For that, effendi, I would need the full half piastre.’
‘A fee which fits your talents. For a suitable place no doubt I could find such a sum, exorbitant though it be.’
‘In this world one has to strike hard bargains,’ said the small boy sententiously.
‘Yes, indeed. What do you suggest?’
‘There is a ruined house nearby–’
‘Is it decent enough for Miss Fingari?’
Places like that were used as lavatories.
‘No, but there is a doorway where you would not be seen. It is not very comfortable for your purpose–’
‘My purpose is only conversation.’
‘Well, of course, it’s early days yet–’
The boy led him to the spot. It was a place where two or three tenement buildings had crumbled down together. This was not unusual in Cairo. Houses were often made of sun-dried mud brick and in the rains sometimes dissolved.
The boy picked a way through the rubble, squeezed through a gap between two crumbling walls and brought Owen to an archway set deep below ground level in what remained of the side of a building. It had, perhaps, once led into a cellar.
‘Wait there!’ he said.
A few moments later, Aisha’s veiled form appeared in the gap and stood before the archway uncertainly.
‘Miss Fingari–’
‘I shouldn’t have come here like this. Ali is horrible. Go away, Ali! Mind you go right away! It’s not what you think.’
She came forward determinedly and stepped into the archway.
‘I shouldn’t be doing this. But I had to see you.’
‘It is about Osman?’
‘Yes.’
Under the archway it was dark. Instinctively, she retreated deeper into the shadow. He could not see her eyes but he could tell from the position of her body that she was looking up at him.
‘You hurt me,’ she said, a little shakily, ‘when you said he felt alone.’
‘I don’t know that. It was just–’
‘It was true. Oh, it was true. It must have been true. I tried! But–’
‘You must not blame yourself, Miss Fingari. It is not always possible to break through.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I should have tried harder. I became impatient. When he came home–’ She broke off.
‘When he came home–?’
‘Sometimes he had been drinking. Oh, it’s not such a great fault, I see that now; but it was so different, so – so unexpected. He had always been – he had always behaved properly–’
‘He was a strict Moslem?’
‘Not strict, but – but he did what he should. Until–’
‘Recently?’
‘Yes.’
‘You saw a change in him?’
‘Yes.’
‘What sort of change, Miss Fingari?’
‘He became – not disorderly, but not so ordered. He would come home late. He never used to do that. Now he did it often. He wouldn’t say where he had been–’
‘You asked him?’
‘Yes. We were close. We had been close. He would talk to me when he wouldn’t – He didn’t always feel he could – talk to my parents.’
‘What did he talk about, Miss Fingari?’
‘Oh, nothing much. This goes back a long time. To when he was at school. If something had gone wrong during the day, if someone had been unkind to him, he would run home and pour it all out to me. I was his big sister and – and I remained so even after he started work.’
‘He still talked to you?’
‘Yes. Perhaps even more so. Our parents were growing older. They did not always understand the sort of things he was doing at work–’
‘But you did?’
‘No!’ She laughed. ‘How could I? A woman? Shut up in the house all day. All I knew was the family and the souk. But I had friends, other girls, and they talked about their brothers and I – I learned something, I suppose. Anyway, he felt he could talk to me.’