The Camel of Destruction Read Online Free PDF

ahead.’
    There was a general shaking of heads.
    ‘Mud for mortar. No wonder they come down as fast as they go up!’
    ‘And there are still plenty going up!’
    ‘Not as many as there were.’
    In the boom of recent years a frenzy of building had overtaken the city. Rows of houses were pulled down; great blocks were run up. And then, when they were only half way up, and neither up nor down, the money had run out. With the general tightening of credit, projects were abandoned all over Cairo, leaving the city looking like one huge derelict building site.
    ‘There are a few still going ahead,’ said Barclay. ‘One or two of the bigger projects where they’ve borrowed a lot of money and the banks are pressing them and unless they get something back quick they’re sunk.’
    ‘Anyone buying up land for the next round yet?’ asked Owen. ‘When it all starts up again?’
    ‘No need to do that,’ said Barclay. ‘There’s land a-plenty. Why do you ask?’
    ‘Just wondering,’ said Owen.
    Later in the evening he found himself standing next to Barclay at the bar.
    ‘Heard anything about any development in the Derb Aiah area?’ he asked.
    ‘No,’ said Barclay, ‘and I wouldn’t want to. It’s a nice old part—do you know it? Lots of nice old houses.
Rabas
, not Mameluke—it’s not rich enough for that. Really old, sixteenth-century, I would say, some of them. Some fine public buildings, too, only they’re very small and tucked away among the houses so it’s easy to miss them. A mediæval hospital, tiny, but, well, I’d say unique. Take you over there, if you like, and show you.’
    ‘I’d like that,’ said Owen. ‘Next week perhaps?’
    ‘Friday? Fine! It’d be a pleasure.’
    Passing Barclay’s table later in the evening, he caught Barclay looking up at him meditatively.
    ‘I say, old chap, you’ve got me worried. There isn’t anything going on in the Derb Aiah area, is there? I’d hate that part to be spoiled.’
    ‘I’m not sure.’
    ‘The only thing I can think of,’ said Barclay, ‘is that someone might be being very smart and thinking a long way ahead.’
    ‘What might they be thinking?’
    ‘They might be thinking about the new road there’s talk of on the east side of the city.’
    ‘What new road is this?’
    ‘It’s no more than a gleam in the eye, really. But it’s the Khedive’s eye.’
    ‘There are lots of gleams in his eye,’ said Owen dismissively.
    The Khedive’s ambition to emulate the great predecessors who had done so much to modernize Egypt was well known.
    ‘But the money always runs out. Yes, I know,’ said Barclay.
    ‘It’ll never happen,’ said Owen confidently.
    ‘Perhaps someone thinks that this time it will.’
    ‘Yes, but even if it does…I mean, that would be over on the east side of the city, or so you said. It wouldn’t affect the Derb Aiah.’
    ‘It might. That’s why I said it might be someone who was looking ahead. They might be thinking that the next road after that would be one thrown across the north of the city to join the Clot Bey. Right through the Derb Aiah.’
    ‘But that—that’s so speculative!’
    ‘That’s how speculators make their money. By speculating.’
    ‘It’s— It’s—’
    ‘It’s unlikely. Yes, I know. It’ll probably never happen. But you did ask.’
    ‘Yes, I did. And thanks for telling me. Though I don’t think, in fact—’
    ‘I hope I’m wrong. Let’s drink to me being wrong. I wouldn’t want to see the Derb Aiah turned into a building site.’
    ‘Cheers!’
    A thought struck him as he put down his glass.
    ‘That other road, the one on the east side of the city: what line would it take?’
    ‘It would drop south from the Bab el Futuh and come out in the Rumeleh, roughly at the Bab el Azab.’
    ‘But that would go straight through the Old City!’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘It would cause a riot!’
    Barclay looked into his beer.
    ‘Ah yes, I dare say. But that would be something for you, old boy,