The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt Read Online Free PDF Page A

face.
    ‘
Une jolie laide
,’ he said at last, not wishing to discourage Nuri but feeling obliged to be truthful. Ugly-pretty.
    ‘
Ah! C’est piquant, ça
!’ said Nuri, intrigued. Like all upper-class Egyptians, he habitually spoke French.
    ‘
Elle est formidable
,’ Owen warned him.
    Nuri brushed the warning aside. So long as the other parts of the equation were all right, the more
formidable
the better, so far as he was concerned. He liked a challenge.
    Owen felt a little worried. Nuri’s interests centred fairly narrowly on politics and sex and he was inclined to associate women exclusively with the latter. Owen felt that Nuri needed more briefing.
    However, at this moment the servant came in to announce Miss Skinner’s arrival.
    ‘
Chère Madame
!’ said Nuri, rising to kiss her hand.
    ‘Mr Pasha!’ said Miss Skinner, surprised but not discomfited.
    ‘Call me Nuri,’ said Zeinab’s father, retaining her hand and leading her over to the divan.
    Owen was glad that Paul was there. He had a feeling that things might be about to go wrong.
    Fortunately, Zeinab appeared at this point, dressed as for a visit in discreet black, which owed, however, more to the fashion house than to Islamic tradition.
    ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ she said. ‘I’ve been at Samira’s. Her favourite niece was being circumcised and it went on for ages—’
    ‘Circumcised?’ Miss Skinner’s voice rose to a squeak. ‘
Female
circumcision?’
    ‘Barbaric,’ said Nuri. ‘Reduces the pleasure enormously.’
    ‘Miss Nuri, there are one or two things I would like to discuss—’
    Paul somehow succeeded in detaching Miss Skinner from Nuri and leading her over to sit beside Zeinab, whose entrance, Owen thought, had not been entirely uncontrived.
    He returned and sat down beside the disappointed Nuri.
    ‘What an opportunity!’ he said. ‘The very man to tell us all the Khedive’s secrets!’
    ‘Alas, my friend,’ said Nuri sadly, ‘I am no longer one of his intimates.’
    ‘Say not so! Why, only last week I was talking to Idris Bey and he said—’
    ‘Did he?’ said Nuri eagerly. ‘Did he now?’
    At the other end of the room Miss Skinner was deep in conversation with Zeinab. Owen shuddered to think what she might be hearing. Zeinab’s knowledge of the life led by ‘ordinary’ Egyptians was sketchy but her imagination vivid.
    Paul, meanwhile, had slid smoothly on to current politics and was now, thank goodness, giving Nuri the political background to Miss Skinner’s visit.
    ‘Antiquities? I’m sure I have some. Or can lay my hands on some if Miss Skinner wishes to buy—’
    ‘No, no. It’s the actual excavation she’s interested in. But also the export of such treasures from Egypt.’
    ‘An excellent thing. What good can they do here? Some clumsy peasant is sure to break them. Much better to sell them. If only,’ said Nuri wistfully, ‘I had an unopened pyramid or two on my estates!’
    ‘Miss Skinner’s position is, I think, a little different. She wishes to stop the export of antiquities from Egypt.’
    ‘Stop!’ cried Nuri, aghast. ‘But why should she want to do that?’
    ‘She feels, I believe, that Egypt’s remarkable heritage should be preserved.’
    ‘Oh quite,’ said Nuri. ‘Absolutely.’
    He seemed, however, a little cast down.
    ‘But, tell me, my friend,’ he began again tentatively, ‘exactly what business is it of hers? These treasures do after all belong to us.’
    ‘I think she feels,
mon cher
Pasha, that they belong to the world.’
    ‘Belong to the world?’ said Nuri, stunned.
    ‘In the sense that they are part of the heritage of us all.’
    ‘Well, yes,’ said Nuri. ‘In that sense. As long as it’s in that sense. Though I still don’t see—’
    There was a little silence. At the other end of the room Miss Skinner and Zeinab chattered happily away.
    Nuri sniffed.
    ‘In any case,’ he said, ‘heritage! Pooh! That is all in the past. We must look to the future. I