He Shall Thunder in the Sky - Elizabeth Peters [100]
“Use this.” Nefret unwound the scarf from her neck and handed it to her brother.
Seshat accepted the indignity without objection after Ramses had explained the situation to her. The other diners, who were watching us with the admiring interest our presence always provokes, looked on openmouthed.
Mr. Bassam began heaping food, including a dish of spiced chicken, on the table. Seshat was not really omnivorous, but her tastes were more eclectic than those of many cats; she licked the seasoned coating off the chicken before devouring it, with more daintiness than certain of the other patrons displayed, and joined us in our dessert of melon and sherbet.
By the time we finished, darkness was complete. Across the way the gateway of the Khan was hidden in the shadows, but there were lights beyond it, from the innumerable little shops and stalls. The shoppers and sightseers passing in and out of the entrance included a number of people in European dress and a few in uniform.
“Nothing yet,” I whispered to Emerson, while Ramses and Nefret argued amiably over how much melon Seshat should be allowed to eat. “It isn’t that far away. We would hear a disturbance, wouldn’t we?”
“Probably. Possibly. Cursed if I know.” Emerson’s curt and contradictory remarks told me he was as uneasy as I had become. Sitting on the sidelines is not something Emerson much enjoys. “Let’s go over there.”
“Go where?” Nefret asked.
“To the Khan,” I replied, with my customary quickness. “I suggested we stroll a bit before returning home. Have we all finished?”
At one time the gates of the Khan were closed before the evening prayer. An increasing number of merchants were now “infidels”—Greeks or Levantines or Egyptian Christians—and the more mercantile-minded of the Moslem Cairenes had seen the advantage of longer hours, especially when the city was bursting with soldiers who wanted exotic gifts and mementos. (Some of them spent their pay in quite another quarter of the city and took home mementos that were not so harmless. But that is not a subject into which I care to enter.)
The Khan el Khalili is not a single suk, but a sprawling collection of ramshackle shops and ruinous gateways and buildings. The old khans, the storehouses of the merchant princes of medieval Cairo, were architectural treasures, or would have been if they had been properly maintained. A few had been restored; most had not; mercantile establishments occupied the lower floors and huddled close to the flaking walls; but one might catch occasional glimpses of delicately arched windows and tiled doorframes behind the shops.
The smells were no less remarkable. Charcoal fires, donkey and camel dung, unwashed human bodies, spices and perfumes, baking bread and broiling meat blended into an indescribable whole. One may list the individual components, but that gives the reader no sense of the composite aroma. It was much more enjoyable than one might assume, in fact, and no worse than the sort of thing one encounters in many old European towns. There were times, when the fresh breeze blew across the Kentish meadows carrying the scent of roses and honeysuckle, when I would gladly have exchanged it for a whiff of old Cairo.
As we wandered along the winding lanes, past the tiny cubicles in which silks and slippers, copper vessels and silver ornaments were displayed, I knew that Russell had not yet made his move. The whole place would have been buzzing with gossip had the police descended on a shop anywhere in the Khan. Many of them were closing, the shutters drawn down and the lamps extinguished, for the hour was growing late and the buyers were leaving to return to hotels and barracks. My anxiety could no longer be contained, and I pushed ahead of the others, setting a straight course for Aslimi’s establishment. Had Russell been unable to make the necessary arrangements? Had he failed me? Curse it, I thought, I ought not have trusted him. I ought to have handled the matter myself—with a little assistance from Emerson.
Then it occurred to me that Russell might be waiting