The Men Behind by Michael Pearce

Nuri, Ali Osman did not at once dismiss it.
    “You think so?” he asked.
    “If the Khedive can spare you.”
    “Alas,” said Ali Osman gloomily, “the Khedive seems able to spare me only too easily.”
     
    Owen caught sight of Fairclough across the bar. There was a crowd of people in between them and Owen wasn’t sure that Fairclough had noticed him. However, a little while later Fairclough touched him on the shoulder.
    “Owe you one for stepping in the other day. That silly beggar would have gone on forever. What’ll you have?” As Fairclough bore his glass away for a refill, Owen wondered whether a drink constituted a present. A drink was acceptable, wasn’t it? Why not Ali Osman’s beautiful lamp? Try as he might, he couldn’t persuade himself. Ali Osman’s lamp was not like that.
    He sighed.
    “Terribly sorry, old man,” said Fairclough, appearing beside him. “It’s taken bloody ages. They had to go to the storeroom to fetch some more and that meant getting the key from the Effendi and all that sort of thing.”
    “That’s OK.”
    He raised his glass.
    “Cheers,” said Fairclough, drinking deep.
    He put the glass down.
    “Been thinking,” he said. “Wondering why they picked on me. But maybe it wasn’t like that. Maybe it was a question not of picking
on
me but of picking
out
. Different thing. You see, if it’s not a matter of what a chap’s done but just of him being British, anyone British would do. But there’s still the question of why pick this one and not that one.”
    “A matter of luck, I would say.”
    “Yes, but there must be something that makes them notice you. I mean among all the others. Now, I don’t flatter myself I’m a particularly noticeable chap—”
    “Oh, I wouldn’t say that!”
    “—but there must be something. So I’ve been asking myself what it was.”
    “And have you found the answer?”
    “Yes,” said Fairclough triumphantly. “The salt business.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Salt—you know, the stuff you put on your dinner.”
    “That’s what I thought you said. But—?”
    “I had a big role, you see. Well, maybe not that big. I had to go down and look at the stuff. Make sure the figures tallied. But I thought that’s when they might have seen me. Otherwise I’m just in an office. I mean, no one sees me.”
    “Let’s get this straight,” said Owen. “You had to go somewhere—”
    “Hamada,” said Fairclough, “in Minya Province. That’s where it was.”
    “Hamada. To see some salt. Now why exactly,” said Owen cautiously, “was that?”
    “Contraband. It’s all the stuff they confiscated during the time of the Salt Monopoly. I had to value it.”
    “I thought the Monopoly had ended?”
    “It has. It was abolished in 1904. But there’s still all the stuff they confiscated when it was in operation. It’s a hell of a place round there, I can tell you. You see, there’s all these naturally occurring salt deposits which the Bedawin have been using for hundreds of years. When the Government gave the salt trade away as a monopoly to some foreign company the Bedawin couldn’t understand it at all and carried on as they always had done.”
    “Christ, yes!”
    Owen was beginning to remember. Before 1904 salt other than the company’s was considered contraband and possession of it was an offense. The prisons of Upper Egypt were full of poor fellahin and Arabs whose only crime was the possession of salt. It was, of course, precisely that which had led Cromer to abolish the Monopoly.
    “It’s a hell of a place,” said Fairclough, “around Hamada. The Thieves’ Road passes right by. There’s cattle-rustling from the south, camel-rustling from the north, and bloody brigands in the sugar cane.”
    “Not to mention salt smugglers,” said Owen. “All the same, wasn’t that all in the past? The salt smuggling, I mean? Now that the Monopoly’s gone, they can surely do what they like? Why should they have anything against you,