The Mingrelian Conspiracy (6 page)

Oh, no!’ said the café owner.

‘But yes!’ said Owen brightly, looking around for a place to sit and finally choosing one right next to where the owner was sprawled against a table, bandaged legs stretching over a chair in front of him. ‘I like your coffee!’

‘Mekhmet!’

A small, frightened-looking man scuttled in.

‘Mekhmet, some coffee for our guest!’

‘Right, Sidi Mustapha!’ said the man, touching his brow. ‘At once!’

He made for the door.

‘And put some poison in it!’ shouted the owner.

The little man stopped in the doorway, confused.

‘Go on, you fool! It’s only a joke.’

He clapped his hands impatiently.

The little man’s eyes rolled, panic-stricken.

‘Oh, my God!’ said the owner. ‘Get on with it, you fool. Get some coffee!’

A woman stuck her head out of a door at the back. ‘Don’t shout at him!’ she said indignantly. ‘He’s a poor, afflicted creature! He’s doing his best!’

‘He’s not doing anything at all!’ shouted the café owner. ‘He’s just standing there!’

‘You’ve confused him! Come on, Mekhmet, love,’ she said kindly. ‘Take no notice of him!’

The owner groaned and put a fist to his head.

‘It’s impossible!’ he said. ‘The man’s a halfwit. Tell him anything and he gets confused. You can’t run a café business like that! I’m only employing him because he’s her sister-in-law’s cousin.’

The woman emerged from the back with some coffee for Owen.

‘You’re only employing him because he’s cheap!’ she said tartly. ‘You thought you could get something for nothing.’

‘I was wrong, then, wasn’t I? I haven’t even got something!’

‘You’re a hard-hearted man,’ she said. ‘If you turn your face from God’s poor, He will turn his face from you!’

‘You get back inside, woman!’ shouted Mustapha indignantly. ‘Showing yourself off in public to all the men!’

‘If you’re going to shout at Mekhmet when he brings the coffee, and you’re going to shout at me, who’s going to bring it, I’d like to know? You just tell me that!’

She stalked off. The café owner mopped his brow.

‘Just look at that!’ he said. ‘Women are all the same. Difficult! She wouldn’t have married me if it hadn’t been for the dowry. Now she expects me to provide for everybody! Anyone who’s simple or lame or blind she invites in. Turn my face from God’s poor? I’m going to
be
one of God’s poor if she carries on the way she’s going.’

‘The fact is, you need a man about the place,’ said Owen. Mustapha looked at him.

‘You on that again?’

‘It’s the answer to your prayers.’

Mustapha was silent for some time.

‘Is he smart?’ he said at last.

‘He’s big,’ said Owen.

The café owner chuckled.

‘Like that, is it? Well, it’s not altogether a bad thing. Get somebody smart and the next thing you know, they’ve got something going on the side. Big and willing, that’s all you want. At least, that’s what the farmers used to say back in the village when I was a boy. And—he’s not going to cost anything?’

‘Even less than Mekhmet,’ said Owen.

The Grand Duke’s visit had been announced the day before and the newspapers were full of it. The tone was broadly welcoming. Even the Nationalist papers—and most of the papers were Nationalist—took a positive view of the visit as a mark of international recognition.

There were, of course, as always in Cairo, exceptions. For the most part these were confined to the Balkan communities and Owen realized now for the first time how many of these there were in the city. He had been hazily aware, for example, of the Montenegrins parading in their big boots outside the chief hotels for the benefit of tourists, but had not realized until now that they formed a substantial community. He had vaguely registered that Serbs were always fighting Croats and Bosnians Herzegovinians, but since in Egypt at any rate they were prudently not fighting Muslims he had taken this as merely the expression of an over-exuberant national spirit and left it to the ordinary police. Lots of them though there were, there had not been enough for him to register them as a significant political presence. Up till now.

Each community, it soon transpired, was holding a public meeting to protest against Duke Nicholas’s visit. Indeed, some of them were cooperating in holding joint meetings so things must be really serious. Since the meetings were all obligingly announced in the press, Owen assumed at first that he had little to worry about.

‘It’s not public meetings that lead to assassinations,’ he said to Paul, when the Consul-General registered alarm at the vehemence of some of the meetings, ‘but private ones.’

‘What a decent British thing to say!’ said Paul. ‘I only hope that you are right.’

However, he took the precaution of posting observers at all the meetings, whereupon he found that
all
the meetings were plotting the Grand Duke’s assassination. He was much perturbed and started following developments very closely; until he found that the exuberance of spirit that he had detected earlier worked against agreement on specific proposals. He continued to follow developments but sat back and relaxed until one morning Nikos brought him news of yet another protest meeting scheduled for the following evening in Old Cairo.

‘Babylon?’ said Owen, surprised. ‘I didn’t think there were any of them there. I thought it was only Copts and Greeks.’

‘And a few others,’ said Nikos, who was himself a Copt and viewed all other races as interlopers.

Babylon, as Old Cairo was confusingly known, was situated about three miles south of the modern city. It was built on the site of the old Roman fortress, very little of which now remained. The scanty ruins of the walls had been largely incorporated into the Coptic Ders. A peculiarity of the area was that many of the Coptic and Greek churches had been built within walled enclosures known as Ders. These usually contained shops and schools and houses as well as churches so that they took on the character of fortified precincts.

It was in one of these Ders, or precincts, that the meeting was to be held. Like most public meetings in Cairo it was held in the open air, in a small square at the heart of the enclosure. When Owen arrived, the square was already comfortably filled. Most people were in ordinary Arab dress, tending towards the black and grey of the Copt rather than the blue and white or striped of the ordinary Egyptian fellahin. Owen was surprised. The Copts had survived for centuries by keeping their heads down. What now was bringing them out in protest? Surely not a Russian Grand Duke?

As he continued to look, however, he saw that most of them were not actually Copts, but he could not make out what they were. Some of them wore crosses, so they were Christians, but their features were not those of Copts. Copts’ faces were round; these were aquiline. Some of them wore boots, too, the high-heeled boots of the Montenegrins; and some were in breeches. He wondered who they could be.

At one end of the square was a raised platform for the speakers and now the speakers were coming out. They filed across the stage and sat down on the chairs provided. Behind them a huge banner was suddenly unfolded. It said, in great fiery letters: ‘Death to the Grand Duke!’ Which was not very promising.

A man stood up and began to address the meeting, in Arabic. He said that the meeting had been called in order to allow people to express their views on the subject of the forthcoming visit of the Grand Duke and decide what action, if any, should be taken. He then began to call on the speakers.

One after another they came forward and spoke of what the Russians had done. If half of what they said was true, thought Owen, they had every reason to feel bitter. God, it was terrible! Each one recited a litany of atrocities.

It took him quite a while to work out where each speaker was from. Armenia, yes, that was fairly clear, and Georgia— there seemed a lot of Georgians about, judging by the applause. Azerbaijan, well, yes, just about; but Dagestan? Dagestan! And Abkhaz? Where the hell was Abkhaz? What the hell was Abkhaz, come to that!

And now someone else was coming forward, someone who seemed vaguely familiar—God, it was Sorgos!

He stood for a moment looking down at the crowd. He had discarded his stick and looked years younger. A torch nearby lit up the sharp face and the thin bony hands clutching the edges of the rostrum. He seemed like some great eagle standing there. He now raised one of the hands.

‘The task,’ he said, ‘is not to complain about what has been done to us; but to avenge it!’

The whole front of the crowd jumped to its feet and began applauding vigorously. For several minutes Sorgos was unable to speak. Then he raised his hand again. The noise died away.

‘I had a house once,’ he said. ‘I had a family, I had a village. And I prayed that the Russians would not come and visit it. But one day they did. And then I had a different prayer. It was that they would come again. Only this time I would be waiting. And I would know what to do!’

He paused for a moment, breathing heavily. His audience was silent, gripped.

‘And now my prayer has been answered,’ he said quietly. ‘The Russian is coming; and I know what to do.’

The strength seemed suddenly to leave his body. He turned away from the rostrum. Friends rushed forward to help him back to his seat.

But meanwhile the crowd had erupted. Everyone was on their feet shouting and waving. There was pandemonium. The front of the crowd surged forwards. Others pushed in behind them. And now, looking round, Owen saw that the square was packed and everywhere, in the torchlight, faces were contorted and crying. Over to one side some men were trying to climb on to the platform and beside them a man in boots had scrambled up some scaffolding and was half turned towards the crowd, shaking his fist and screaming.

And then Owen lost sight of the platform altogether as the crowd around him eddied forward and took him with them and he had to concentrate on keeping his footing.

The man who had opened the meeting was standing up at the rostrum and pleading with the crowd to keep order. Others on the platform had got out of their seats and come forward to the edge from where they were trying to shout to their supporters. There were stewards, but they were helpless as the crowd swirled to and fro about them.

In a way it was fortunate both that the square was small and that the crowd was now so tightly packed as to make it hard to fall. Owen was trying to fight his way forward to the platform but everyone else was trying to do the same. He was afraid that at any moment someone would go down and then within seconds it would be frightful. He levered himself up on someone’s shoulder and began to shout commands; one or two faces turned towards him but in the uproar most of his words were lost.

And then suddenly, by chance, probably, the tumult died down and the chairman was able to make himself heard. He was a doctor or something and had some presence or at least experience of chairing meetings. Gradually he cajoled the meeting back to order.

‘Calm, friends, calm!’ he cried. ‘Let us resume the meeting! There is work to be done!’

From over to one side, the side where the men had climbed on to the platform, he received sudden support.

‘Order! Order! There is work to be done!’ bellowed a loud voice.

‘Let’s get on with it!’ shouted someone near him.

The swirls steadied and the noise dropped.

‘I call on Mr. Karamajoric!’ cried the chairman, and Mr. Karamajoric came forward. The mood of the meeting had changed, however, and no one wanted to listen any more to another litany of grievances. The chairman, realizing this, intervened swiftly and sent Mr. Karamajoric back to his place.

‘Before I close the meeting,’ he shouted, ‘let us agree on what is to be done next. I propose a committee to—’

‘A committee?’ shouted a voice over on the right. ‘What do we need a committee for?’

‘There are too many of us. If a few of us could work something out—’

‘What is there to work out? We know what to do, don’t we?’

‘A petition—’

But his words were drowned.

‘Death to the Grand Duke!’ came the cry.

‘A good meeting, wasn’t it?’ said Sorgos, embracing Owen warmly.

‘If someone had died it wouldn’t have been a good meeting!’

Sorgos’s face clouded over momentarily.

‘No one was hurt, were they? The crowd did seem to get a bit out of hand. But that’s good, isn’t it? You want people to have a bit of life in them. You don’t want them to be dull under oppression. You want them to rise up, to rise up—’

‘It’s all very well rising up over in the Caucasus but this is someone else’s country and you can’t expect them to let you rise up here.’

‘You rise up against oppression,’ said Sorgos, ‘whether it’s there or here. And you rise up against the Russians anywhere you get the chance.’

‘The Khedive would see you as a guest. He has very generously allowed you to live here and when he invites other guests he expects you to treat them with the same generosity.’

‘You wouldn’t treat the Russians with generosity,’ said Sorgos; ‘not if they’d been to your village in Wales!’

‘Those battles are for the Caucasus. We’ve got enough trouble of our own here without your adding to it.’

‘Trouble? What kind of trouble? I have lived here for thirty years and I have not seen any trouble. Not as it is in the Caucasus, anyway. That’s
real
trouble! Egypt is a peaceful country. Except when your soldiers go out and wreck a café. Just exuberance, of course,’ he added conciliatorily.

‘Trouble between Muslim and Christian,’ said Owen sternly. ‘That’s what I’m worried about.’

‘No problem,’ Sorgos assured him. ‘This is strictly between Christian and Christian.’

‘Yes. But it wouldn’t stay that way. Not in Cairo.’

‘They would take our side? Well, that is understandable. They are men of spirit. Fine men! I know them. We fought side by side against the Russians.’

‘Wait a minute; where is this?’

‘Back home in the Caucasus. The Muslims were our allies. Against the Russians. I won’t pretend we always saw eye to eye. There were differences between us. I mean, we had been fighting each other for several centuries. The Muslims were our natural enemy, you might say. But then the Russians came along and they were even more our natural enemy, so we sank our differences and fought side by side. Fine men! And women, too. To tell you the truth’—Sorgos drew Owen to him and whispered in his ear—‘I think Katarina has got a bit of Muslim blood in her. It was always claimed that her grandmother’s father had taken a girl from one of the tribes. A raid, you know. There were plenty in those days. And I think it was sometimes done for the sake of the women—’ Owen piloted him gently out of the square. The old man was still buoyant with excitement and Owen knew that his words were getting nowhere. He would have to talk with him again tomorrow. And with the others. The old man was in many respects the key, however. He seemed to have a bit of a following and they couldn’t all be Mingrelians, either, if what Katarina had said was true, that there were only sixty families left. Perhaps the fact that he was an elder was something to do with it. He was looked to generally for leadership. Or, perhaps, of course, he was being used.