‘Very well. I’ll write to you.’
He was all dressed up for the Mulid in his best clothes — the crimson cloak and the red shoes of soft morocco leather; in his bosom he had a clean white handkerchief. It was his evening off I remembered. Pombal and I had saved up a sum of money to give him as a parting present. He took the cheque between finger and thumb, inclining his head with gratitude. But self-interest could not buoy him up against the pain of parting from us. So he repeated ‘I come to you in London’ to console himself; shaking hands with himself as he said the words.
‘Very well’ I said for the third time, though I could hardly see one-eyed Hamid in London. ‘I will write. Tonight I shall visit the Mulid of El Scob.’
‘Very good.’ I shook him by the shoulders and the familiarity made him bow his head. A tear trickled out of his blind eye and off the end of his nose.
‘Good-bye ya Hamid’ I said, and walked down the stairs, leaving him standing quietly at the top, as if waiting for some signal from outer space. Then suddenly he rushed after me, catching me at the front door, in order to thrust into my hand, as a parting present, his cherished picture of Melissa and myself walking down Rue Fuad on some forgotten afternoon.
* * * * *
IX
The whole quarter lay drowsing in the umbrageous violet of approaching nightfall. A sky of palpitating velours which was cut into by the stark flare of a thousand electric light bulbs. It lay over Tatwig Street, that night, like a velvet rind. Only the lighted tips of the minarets rose above it on their slender invisible stalks — appeared hanging suspended in the sky; trembling slightly with the haze as if about to expand their hoods like cobras. Drifting idly down those remembered streets once more I drank in (forever: keepsakes of the Arab town) the smell of crushed chrysanthemums, ordure, scents, strawberries, human sweat and roasting pigeons. The procession had not arrived as yet. It would form somewhere beyond the harlots’ quarter, among the tombs, and wind its slow way to the shrine, geared to a dancing measure; calling on the way at each of the mosques to offer up a verse or two of the Book in honour of El Scob. But the secular side of the festival was in full swing. In the dark alleys people had brought their dinner tables into the street, candle-lit and decked with roses. So sitting they could catch the chipped headtones of the girl singers who were already standing on the wooden platforms outside the cafes, piercing the heavy night with their quartertones. The streets were beflagged, and the great framed pictures of the circumcision doctors rippled on high among the cressets and standards. In a darkened yard I saw them pouring the hot sugar, red and white, into the little wooden moulds from which would emerge the whole bestiary of Egypt — the ducks, horsemen, rabbits, and goats. The great sugar figurines too of the Delta folklore — Yuna and Aziz the lovers interlocked, interpenetrated — and the bearded heroes like Abu Zeid, armed and mounted among his brigands. They were splendidly obscene — surely the stupidest word in our language? — and brilliantly coloured before being dressed in their garments of paper, tinsel, and spangled gold, and set up on display among the Sugar Booths for the children to gape at and buy. In every little square now the coloured marquees had been run up, each with its familiar sign. The Gamblers were already busy — Abu Firan, the Father of Rats, was shouting cheerfully for customers. The great board stood before him on trestles, each of the twelve houses marked with a number and a name. In the centre stood the live white rat which had been painted with green stripes. You placed your money on the number of a house, and won, if the rat entered it. In another box the same game was in play, but with a pigeon this time; when all the bets were laid a handful of grain was tossed into the centre and the pigeon, in eating it, entered one of the numbered stalls.
I bought myself a couple of sugar figurines and sat down outside a cafe to watch the passing show with its brilliant pristine colour. These little ‘arusas’ or brides I would have liked to keep, but I knew that they would crumble or be eaten by ants. They were the little cousins of the santons de Provence or the bonhommes de paind’epices of the French country fair: of our own now extinct gilt gingerbread men. I ordered a spoon of mastika to eat with the cool fizzing sherbet. From where I sat at an angle between two narrow streets I could see the harlots painting themselves at an upper window before coming down to set up their garish booths among the conjurers and tricksters; Showal the dwarf was teasing them from his booth at ground level and causing screams of laughter at his well-aimed arrows. He had a high tinny little voice and the most engaging of acrobatic tricks despite his stunted size. He talked continuously even when standing on his head, and punctuated the point of his patter with a double somersault. His face was grotesquely farded and his lips painted in a clown’s grin. At the other corner under a hide curtain sat Faraj the fortune-teller with his instruments of divination — ink, sand, and a curious hairy ball like a bull’s testicles only covered in dark hair. A radiantly beautiful prostitute squatted before him. He had filled her palm with ink and was urging her to scry.
Little scenes from the street life. A mad wild witch of a woman who suddenly burst into the street, foaming at the lips and uttering curses so terrible that silence fell and everyone’s blood froze. Her eyes blazed like a bear’s under the white matted hair. Being mad she was in some sort holy, and no-one dared to face the terrible imprecations she uttered which, if turned on him, might spell ill luck. Suddenly a grubby child darted from the crowd and tugged her sleeve. At once calmed she took his hand and turned away into an alley. The festival closed over the memory of her like a skin.
I was sitting here, drunk on the spectacle, when the voice of Scobie himself suddenly sounded at my elbow. ‘Now, old man’ it said thoughtfully. ‘If you have Tendencies you got to have Scope. That’s why I’m in the Middle East if you want to know….’
‘God, you gave me a start’ I said, turning round. It was Nimrod the policeman who had been one of the old man’s superiors in the police force. He chuckled and sat down beside me, removing his tarbush to mop his forehead. ‘Did you think he’d come to life?’ he enquired.
‘I certainly did.’
‘I know my Scobie, you see.’
Nimrod laid his flywhisk before him and with a clap of his hands commanded a coffee. Then giving me a sly wink he went on in the veritable voice of the saint. ‘The thing about Budgie was just that. In Horsham there’s no Scope. Otherwise I would have joined him years ago in the earth-closet trade. The man’s a mechanical genius, I don’t mind admitting. And not having any income except what the old mud-slinger — as he laughingly calls it — brings him in, he’s stymied. He’s in baulk. Did I ever tell you about the Bijou Earth Closet? No? Funny I thought I did. Well, it was a superb contrivance, the fruit of long experiment. Budgie is an FRZS you know. He got it by home study. That shows you what a brain the man has. Well it was a sort of lever with a trigger. The seat of the closet was on a kind of spring. As you sat down it went down, but when you got up it sprang up of its own accord and threw a spadeful of earth into the bin. Budgie says he got the idea from watching his dog clear up after himself with his paws. But how he adapted it I just can’t fathom. It’s sheer genius. You have a magazine at the back which you fill with earth or sand. Then when you get up the spring goes bang and presto! He’s making about two thousand a year out of it, I don’t mind admitting. Of course it takes time to build up a trade, but the overheads are low. He has just one man working for him to build the box part, and he buys the springs — gets them made to specification in Hammersmith. And they’re very prettily painted too, with astrology all round the rim. It looks queer, I admit. In fact it looks arcane. But it’s a wonderful contrivance the little Bijou. Once there was a crisis while I was home on leave for a month. I called in to see Budgie. He was almost in tears. The chap who helped, Tom the carpenter, used to drink a bit and must have misplaced the sprockets on one series of Bijous. Anyway complaints started to pour in. Budgie said that his closets had gone mad all over Sussex and were throwing earth about in a weird and unwholesome way. Customers were furious. Well, there was nothing for it but to visit all his parishioners on a motor-bike and adjust the sprockets. I had so little time that I didn’t want to miss his company — so he took me along with him. It was quite an adventure I don’t mind telling you. Some of them were quite mad with Budgie. One woman said the sprocket was so strong her closet threw mud the length of the drawing-room. We had a time quietening her down. I helped by lending a soothing influence I don’t mind admitting, while Budgie tinkered with the springs. I told stories to take their minds off the unhappy business. But finally it got straightened out. And now it’s a profitable industry with members everywhere.’
Nimrod sipped his coffee reflectively and cocked a quizzical eye in my direction, proud of his mimicry. ‘And now’ he said, throwing up his hands, ‘El Scob….’
A crowd of painted girls passed down the street, brilliant as tropical parrots and almost as loud in their chattering and laughing. ‘Now that Abu Zeid’ said Nimrod ‘has taken the Mulid under his patronage it’s likely to grow
