his slippers, tapping them automatically on the ground to dislodge any scorpion that might have crept in. Then he slipped them on and made for the shower. The water came from a tank in the roof and was still warm from the previous day’s sun. He was just reaching out happily for the soap when he heard the slither behind him and froze. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the tail disappearing into the wall.
‘Jesus!’ he said, and dispensed with the shower for that morning.
The snake catcher came that afternoon. He was a gnarled, weather-beaten little man with snake bites all over his hands and carrying a leather bag and a cane.
‘Another one?’ he said. ‘It’s the hot weather that’s bringing them out.’
‘I didn’t see what sort it was,’ said Owen, ‘I just caught a glimpse of the tail.’
He took the snake catcher to the showerhouse and pointed out the hole. The snake catcher sniffed at it and said: ‘Yes, that’s the way he came, but he doesn’t live there.’
He went round to the back of the showerhouse and showed Owen the hole where the snake had got out. A slight, almost imperceptible track led into the undergrowth.
‘Not been doing much gardening, have you?’ said the snake catcher. ‘He’s all right in there.’
He followed the trail in carefully.
‘There he is!’ he said suddenly. ‘See him? Down by that root.’
It would be just the head and eyes that were visible. Owen couldn’t see anything.
The snake catcher stood and thought a bit. He was working out where the tail was.
After a while he put down the leather bag beside Owen and circled round behind the snake. This was the tricky part, he had told Owen on a previous occasion. The next bit was more obviously dramatic but this bit was tricky because the tail would often be coiled around roots or undergrowth and it was not always easy to tear it loose.
Owen liked to watch a craftsman at work. He took up a position where he could see.
The snake catcher began to move cautiously into the undergrowth, peering intently before him. He came to a stop and just stood there for a while, looking.
Suddenly, he pounced. The snake came up with his hand, wriggling and twisting. He threw it out into the open. It tried at once to squirm away but he cut off its escape by beating with his cane. The snake came to ground in the middle of the clearing.
The snake catcher crept forward and then suddenly brought the cane down hard on the snake’s neck, pressing it in to the ground. Then, holding the cane down with his left hand, he reached out with his right hand and seized the snake with thumb and forefinger, forcing the jaws open. He dropped the cane and held out the skirts of his galabeah so that the snake could strike at them. He let it strike several times. Yellow beads of venom appeared on the cloth. When he was satisfied that all the poison had been drawn, he opened his bag and dropped the cobra inside. Snake catchers hardly ever killed their snakes.
‘What will you do with it?’
‘Dispose of it through the trade. Some shops want them. Charmers. Some people buy them for pets.’
‘You’d need to know what you’re doing.’
‘Most people don’t,’ he said. ‘That’s why there’s always a demand for new ones. They die easy.’
‘It’s not the other way round? The owners that die?’
‘We take the fangs out first. That makes them safe. The poison flows along the fang, you see. The trouble is, they use the teeth for killing their food. Once they’re gone, they don’t last very long.’
‘What about milking?’ asked Owen, displaying his newfound knowledge.
‘It’s all right if you know what you’re doing. There is a sac behind the fangs where the poison is. You let it strike – that’s what I was doing – until the sac is drained dry. Then you’re all right for about a fortnight.’
‘If you had a lot of snakes,’ said Owen, thinking about the cistern where they had found McPhee, ‘you’d have to know each one.’
‘Well, you would know each one, wouldn’t you, if it was your job.’
They walked back to the house.
‘Do you know a snake catcher over in Gamaliya?’
‘There are several. Which one?’
‘He’s on the Place of Tombs side.’
‘Abu?’
‘That’s the one. He’s got a daughter.’
The snake catcher smiled.
‘He’s got a right one there!’ he said.
‘She seems to know a lot about it.’
‘Oh, she knows a lot about it, all right. She wants to be one of us. Take on from him after he’s gone, like. But it won’t do. She’s a girl, isn’t she? We’re a special sect, you know. The Rifa’i. You’ve got to be one of us before you’re allowed to do it. It’s very strict. Got to be, hasn’t it? And we don’t have women. It would confuse the snakes. Anyway, it’s not a woman’s job.’
‘How come she knows so much about it?’
‘Watched her dad. He let her see too much, in my opinion. He wanted a boy, you see, and then when one didn’t come he got in the habit of treating her as one.’
‘Well, she seems a lively girl.’
‘Yes, but who’d want a daughter like that? What a business when it came to marrying her off! You might have to pay her husband extra.’
When Owen arrived at her appartement, Zeinab wasn’t there. She arrived half an hour later.
‘Well, what do you expect?’ she said. ‘If you think I’m going to be waiting for you half naked in bed every time you drop in, you’d better think again.’
Zeinab had, unfortunately, not forgotten the business about the girl. It had been a mistake telling her. For some obscure reason she blamed him.
‘And, incidentally, what happened to that diamond?’
Owen fished in his pocket and took it out. Zeinab inspected it critically.
‘Cheap!’ she pronounced. ‘They’ve certainly got you worked out, haven’t they?’
Owen put the stone back in his pocket.
‘Is that a good idea?’ asked Zeinab. ‘Going around with it in your pocket?’
‘It’s all right,’ Owen assured her. ‘It’s safer there than in the Bab-el-Khalk.’
Zeinab began to feel motherly feelings.
‘Yes, I’m sure, darling. But is it a good idea all the same? Oughtn’t you to give it to someone? If you keep it, you see,’ she said, pronouncing the words very slowly, as to an idiot, ‘they may say you’ve deliberately kept it.’
‘I’m keeping it as evidence.’
‘Yes, but –’ said Zeinab, motherliness struggling against exasperation.
‘I’ve booked it in,’ Owen assured her.
‘Did you book the girl in, too, while you were at it?’ asked Zeinab tartly.
Owen overtook McPhee just as he was going up the first steps of the Bab-el-Khalk. He put an arm round him solicitously.
‘How are you feeling, old chap?’
‘Better now, thanks.’
‘You still look a bit groggy.’
‘I’m shaking it off. It was a big dose, I suppose,’ McPhee admitted.