The Bride Box (8 page)

‘She was less dark. She took after her mother, too, but more after me.'

‘She was lighter in colour?'

‘The mother was light but there was darkness in her. Her blood was mixed.'

‘She was the beautiful one,' said his second wife, from the hall.

‘And therefore most likely to make a good marriage?' asked Owen.

‘That was what I thought. And hoped.'

‘But looks are not all,' said his current wife. ‘She had the devil in her.'

‘She was older,' said Owen, ‘and there was always going to be trouble between you two.'

‘That is so,' the woman agreed. ‘Nevertheless, I would not have dealt with her harshly if she had not been so difficult.'

‘We were afraid that Leila would grow up like her,' said Mustapha. ‘So we thought it best to get rid of them both. The others are more amenable.'

‘Being younger,' his wife explained. ‘I would not have you think that I am always a bad mother. I would have brought them up to be dutiful.'

‘A man must have a peaceful home,' said Mustapha. ‘He cannot do with discord in the family.'

‘Always trouble,' said his wife. ‘Always. There was always trouble with that girl.'

‘Soraya?' said Owen.

‘Soraya, yes. So it was a blessing when she was noticed.'

‘By the slave trader?'

‘No, no, not by the slaver. She was noticed first, and then Abdulla was asked to see what he could do.'

‘Who was this person who first noticed her?'

‘I do not know.'

‘You do not know?'

‘I know only that Abdulla came on his behalf.'

‘Without telling you the man's name?' said Owen incredulously.

‘He said it didn't matter.'

‘So you knew it was not a question of marriage?'

‘Be careful, Mustapha!' counselled the wife, from beside the wall.

‘I hoped it
would
become a question of marriage,' said Mustapha, turning to her. ‘She is a beautiful girl. Was it not likely that someone should ask after her?'

‘Asking after her is one thing,' said Owen. ‘This is another.'

‘It could have led to a proposal. That is what I hoped.'

‘You hoped, even though you knew it was a slaver who asked?' said Owen sceptically.

‘I hoped, yes!' said Mustapha defensively. ‘There is nothing wrong with hoping, is there, and was it not likely that when the asker had seen her more closely, he would wish it to be? That is what I reasoned. And so I bade her take her bride box with her.'

T
hey set off early, when the sun was poking up above the horizon, huge and blood-red, like an enormous orange. It shot up with what seemed to Mahmoud, who was not one for sunrises, incredible speed. The redness on the sand disappeared and was replaced by a soothing grey, which soon become less soothing – indeed, so bright and glaring that it hurt the eyes. The morning, which had been pleasantly cool, warmed up. The heat began to press down on his shoulders. Soon after, the first drops of sweat started to fall on the patient neck of the donkey, and at about the same time he began to discover new muscles in his thighs and new sources of pain.

After a while, he realized that the sand had given way to cultivated fields of durra. The green was more soothing on the eye. But then the durra grew taller and he was soon riding through great banks of it, which trapped the heat and attracted the insects. They came in swarms and lay black on the neck of the donkey, on the thighs of his trousers and on his arms. He had to keep brushing them from his face. It was sheer misery. As he had known it would be!

He told himself it was only for a short time, that he would arrest the men and then get back to Cairo. And never, never leave Cairo again! Much less return to Upper Egypt.

The clerk urged his donkey up alongside Mahmoud.

‘Effendi, they will kill me!'

‘No, they won't.

‘They will see my face and know me.'

‘Cover your face, then.'

‘They will still know me,' said the clerk despondently.

‘I will find a way that you can see and not be seen.'

Happier, but not happy, the clerk fell back.

Ahead of him, through the sand, he saw a large white house.

He stopped and told the clerk to stay out of sight. Then he went on. There was a bell-rope by the door. He pulled. After some minutes a man came to the door.

‘The Pasha? He's not here.'

‘Very well, then. Take me to the one in charge.'

The servant slipped away and sometime later another man appeared. He looked at Mahmoud suspiciously and disdainfully.

‘The Pasha is not at home.'

‘No? That is a pity, for there are questions I have to put to him.'

‘You will have to put them in Cairo, then.'

Mahmoud was irked. This was no way to receive a stranger. And most unusual.

‘Perhaps you can help me.'

‘I don't think so.'

Mahmoud, tired after his long ride, boiled over. ‘This is the Parquet. I come on the Khedive's business. Summon all the servants!'

The man hesitated. ‘The Pasha …'

‘I am here in the Pasha's interest. I have spoken with the Pasha.'

‘They are in the fields …'

‘Fetch them from the fields, then.'

‘It will take some time.'

‘I will wait. But I do not propose to wait long. If they are not here shortly I will put you in the caracol.'

The man flinched. ‘They will be here,' he said.

‘In the yard. I want them in the yard.'

‘In the yard,' repeated the man.

He did not offer to take Mahmoud into the house and Mahmoud was annoyed about this, too. It was rank discourtesy.

After some time a man came and took his donkey. Mahmoud followed him round the side of the house into a large yard where there was a drinking trough. The donkey bent to it greedily.

Another servant, an older man, came out of the house bringing a jug of lemonade.

‘It is a hot day, Effendi,' he said. ‘Take some refreshment.'

‘Thank you,' said Mahmoud. ‘I had begun to think that manners had been forgotten in the south.'

‘Don't bother about him,' the man said, jerking his head after his departed superior. ‘He's always like that. Is it true you wish to speak to the men?'

Mahmoud nodded.

‘They won't be sorry if it means that they can finish earlier. What was it that you wished to see them about?'

Mahmoud considered; then, thinking there was nothing to be lost, said: ‘It concerns a bride box.'

‘A bride box!'

‘One that was put on the train.'

‘Effendi, I think you must be mistaken. There are no bride boxes here. Nor are there likely to be.' He stopped short, as if he had been about to say something he shouldn't. ‘There are no young girls here of the right age,' he said. But that was not, Mahmoud was sure, what he had been going to say. ‘Why a bride box, Effendi?' he asked.

‘One that was put on the train. And sent to the Pasha.'

‘Ah. Now I understand. But, Effendi, you are still mistaken. No bride box has been sent from here. I would have known if there had been.'

‘The men who put it on the train said they were from here.'

The servant shook his head. ‘Effendi, I still find that hard to understand. Men do not come and go from here just as they wish. It means a day out of the fields and Ismail would not let that happen.'

‘Ismail is the man in charge?'

‘You have seen what he is like.'

‘Nevertheless, that is what the men said. They even gave the Pasha's name, Ali Maher.'

‘Ali Maher is certainly the Pasha here. But why, Effendi, would he be sending a box to himself? In Cairo?'

‘That is what I am trying to find out.'

‘Perhaps he intends to get married again? And his eye has alighted on some girl? But if that is so, I do not know of it. And surely I would …'

‘There are questions to be asked,' said Mahmoud.

‘Evidently,' said the servant, still shaking his head.

Men began to assemble in the yard. Mahmoud went for a walk around the outhouses. There were quite a few of them. The estate was obviously a large one.

In one of the buildings stood some carts, used for bringing in the durra. One had a half-awning which covered most of the cart. It would do.

He went back round the house to where he had left the clerk. He found him sitting in the shade beneath a bush.

‘Come with me,' he said and then, choosing his moment when there was no one to see, led him round to the cart with the half-awning and told him to get inside. Part of the awning was rolled back and the clerk could hide under it.

Mahmoud went back into the yard. ‘Are the men all here?' he asked.

Ismail nodded sourly.

‘Right, I will speak to them.'

He looked at the men. There were about twenty of them, all in short galabeyas, showing their arms and legs burnt black by the sun. ‘I need something to stand on.'

He beckoned to two of the men and then went into the outhouse. ‘This one will do,' he said.

The men took the cart with the half-awning and the clerk round into the yard.

Mahmoud climbed up on to the cart. ‘Which of you has been to the station at Denderah in the past fortnight?'

They looked at him blankly.

Mahmoud sighed and made them file past him. ‘Can you see them?' he whispered to the clerk.

‘Effendi, I can see them,' the clerk whispered back. ‘But the men who came to the station are not amongst them!'

‘Look once more!'

He made the men file past again, but with the same result. ‘Effendi, I do not see them,' said the clerk worriedly. ‘I really don't!'

‘Are all the men here?' Mahmoud asked Ismail.

‘They are all here, Effendi.'

Mahmoud got down from the cart and walked over to the men. ‘Are you all here?' he asked. ‘No one is missing?'

The men looked at each other. ‘No one is missing, Effendi. We are all here.'

Mahmoud was nonplussed. He had counted on the clerk being able to identify them. He made them file past once more but again drew a blank. He knew he would have to let them go.

He saw Ismail looking at him with an air of triumph, and made one last attempt. ‘None of you has been to Denderah recently?'

They looked at him blankly.

‘It concerns a bride box,' he said.

There was a flicker of interest.

‘A bride box which was taken to the station in Denderah and put on the train.'

He was losing them. Bride boxes were within their experience; trains, however …

‘And sent to the Pasha,' he tried desperately.

That was interesting. It was even funny. A bride box! For the Pasha!

But it didn't register particularly with the men as it should have.

‘They can go now?' asked Ismail, almost insolently.

Mahmoud made one last try. ‘Have any of you a bride box in your house?'

One or two nodded.

‘And still have? None have been sent away lately?'

They shook their heads.

‘Effendi,' said Ismail, ‘there is another consideration. To take a bride box to the station at Denderah would require a cart. A cart could come only from here and no cart could be moved without my permission. My permission has not been given. Nor has it been sought. You are asking at the wrong place; asking the wrong people.'

Mahmoud had to let them go. He got four of them to take the cart he had borrowed back to the outhouse. The men went away and shortly afterwards he saw the clerk, standing beside the barn, much relieved. He left the yard behind some women returning to the kitchen who had been interested in the spectacle and could hear them talking.

‘Bride box!' one of them sighed. ‘I had a bride box once. Ah, those were the days!'

‘Mine was green and orange,' said another woman wistfully. ‘And blue for the sky.'

‘Mine had birds.'

‘And mine had fish.'

‘I had a bird
catching
a fish!'

‘Beautiful!'

‘Ah, those were the days.'

The party broke up.

‘Are you coming in?'

‘No, I've got to get back to the other house.'

‘Other house?' Mahmoud, overhearing, asked them.

They turned to look at him.

‘Yes, the other house.'

‘What house is this?'

‘It is where the Pasha's wife lives now that she does not live with him.'

‘Another house? Does she have servants?'

‘Of course.'

‘Servants of her own? They would not have been with the others?'

‘You asked only for men on the estate.'

‘Why was I not told?' said Mahmoud furiously.

He knew, really. This was Ismail's revenge.

‘There is this one, which the Pasha uses when he is here. The other is for his wife.'

‘And the son.'

‘There is a son?'

‘In a manner of speaking.'

There was a ripple of amusement.

‘
She
's the master there!' someone said.

Behind the temple were the mountains, pink and as if floating in the air, with satiny sand drifts heaped in the rifts in the rock and lines of soft blue shadow in the more remote crevices. Where the mountain fell back a long vista of desert was revealed.

As Owen approached, by a raised fragmented causeway which linked the temple with some paint down by the river, he found himself in a kind of derelict area, with low half-opened mounds, broken bits of sculptural capitals and mutilated statues buried in tall clumps of rank grass: but also little damaged buildings which might once have been workshops and a vast number of semi-subterranean tanks with black tarry patches inside them which showed that once they had contained nitre.

Egypt is the land of nitre. The Nile mud is impregnated with it. It lies in talc-like flakes upon the rocks, upon the fallen statues. The nitre has been worked for centuries. It is washed and crystallized in the tanks and made workable. In the days of the Ottomans it began to be used for gunpowder.