The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [400]
‘Merciful is God’ said the old man with sublime resignation. So we set off down the white curving Esplanade with its fluttering awnings, the quiet sea spreading away to the right of us to a blank horizon. In the past we had so often come this way to visit the old pirate in his shabby rooms in Tatwig Street.
‘Clea, where the devil are we going?’
‘Wait and see.’
I could see him so clearly, the old man. I wondered for a moment if his shabby ghost still wandered about those dismal rooms, whistling to the green parrot and reciting: ‘ Taisez-vous,
petit babouin. ’ I felt Clea’s arm squeeze mine as we sheered off left and entered the smoking ant-heap of the Arab town, the streets choked with smoke from the burning refuse-heaps, or richly spiced with cooking meat and whiffs of baking bread from the bakeries.
‘Why on earth are you taking me to Scobie’s rooms?’ I said again as we started to clip-clop down the length of the familiar street. Her eyes shone with a mischievous delight as putting her lips to my ear she whispered: ‘Patience. You shall see.’
It was the same house all right. We entered the tall gloomy archway as we had so often in the past. In the deepening dusk it looked like some old faded-daguerreotype, the little courtyard, and I could see that it had been much enlarged. Several supporting walls of neighbouring tenements had been razed or had fallen down and increased its mean size by about two hundred square feet. It was just a shattered and pock-marked no-man’s-land of red earth littered with refuse. In one corner stood a small shrine which I did not remember having remarked before. It was surrounded by a huge ugly modern grille of steel. It boasted a small white dome and a withered tree, both very much the worse for wear. I recog-nized in it one of the many maquams with which Egypt is studded, spots made sacred by the death of a hermit or holy man and where the faithful repair to pray or solicit his help by leaving ex-votos.
This little shrine looked as so many do, utterly shabby and forlorn, as if its existence had been overlooked and forgotten for centuries. I stood looking around me, and heard Clea’s clear voice call:
‘Ya Abdul!’ There was a note in it which suggested suppressed amusement but I could not for the life of me tell why. A man ad-vanced towards us through the shadows peering. ‘He is almost blind. I doubt if he’ll recognize you.’
‘But who is it?’ I said, almost with exasperation at all this mystery. ‘Scobie’s Abdul’ she whispered briefly and turned away to say: ‘Abdul, have you the key of the Maquam of El Scob?’
He greeted her in recognition making elaborate passes over his breast, and produced a clutch of tall keys saying in a deep voice:
‘At once O lady’ rattling the keys together as all guardians of shrines must do to scare the djinns which hang about the entrances to holy places.
‘Abdul!’ I exclaimed with amazement in a whisper. ‘But he was a youth.’ It was quite impossible to identify him with this crooked and hunched anatomy with its stooping centenarian’s gait and cracked voice. ‘Come’ said Clea hurriedly, ‘explanations later. Just come and look at the shrine.’ Still bemused I followed in the guardian’s footsteps. After a very thorough rattling and banging to scare the djinns he unlocked the rusty portals and led the way inside. It was suffocatingly hot in that little airless tomb. A single wick somewhere in a recess had been lighted and gave a wan and trembling yellow light. In the centre lay what I presumed must be the tomb of the saint. It was covered with a green cloth with an elaborate design in gold. This Abdul reverently removed for my inspection, revealing an object under it which was so surprising that I uttered an involuntary exclamation. It was a galvanized iron bath-tub on one leg of which was engraved in high relief the words: ‘ “The Dinky Tub” Crabbe’s. Luton.’ It had been filled with