He doesn’t let him out of his sight, and, when he goes anywhere, he learns about his comings and goings from his colleagues. He would sit quietly among them, then would ask casually in a tone that he now knows how to manipulate completely, ‘Has anyone seen Said al-Juhayni?’

One of them would say, ‘He has been out since this morning.’

Another might say, "Said is a regular at a coffee-house near Qalawun Mosque.’

And Amr would say, ‘Said is a good man,’ and fall silent.

A few days ago Amr went out on the street. He recalled faraway days in which he held on to his mother’s galabiyya as they went out to the fields to dig up some sweet potatoes. His nose hasn’t forgotten the smell of the mist nor the smell of baking bread at noon. He remembered the reeds, the glowing fire of the oven, running with the boys when the Muhtasib’s agent came and the heart-gripping fear in the eyes of the women behind the small windows. At the Nahhasin market he smelt the smoke of the ovens adjacent to the Qalawun bath where the fava-bean pots were cooking.

‘Good morning.’

Hamza ibn al-Eid al-Saghir raises his hand. ‘Welcome! Welcome!’

For the last three weeks he has been stopping at Hamza’s place every day, drinking a cinnamon milk drink and paying a whole dirham instead of a half-dirham. One day he didn’t show up. The following day Hamza expressed concern and hoped that nothing bad had happened to him, then prayed God to give him a long, protected life. Amr comes here at specific times. By keeping tabs on Said, he has found out when he usually goes to the coffee-house.

The Head Spy of Cairo had said, ‘Said’s frequenting Hamza’s coffee-house is a new development, which only you have reported. Also his spending time smoking tobacco cured in molasses is a new sign. What made him choose this café in particular? These are matters that have to be cleared up. In the beginning there were suspicions that he might be using the shop as a place for suspicious meetings, but close surveillance has proved that he spent the whole time alone, speaking to nobody but Hamza ibn al-Eid al-Saghir. The words exchanged between the two of them were also thought to be suspicious, but it turned out that they never went beyond ordering fenugreek or greetings and words of welcome – all words that a customer and café owner might ordinarily exchange and nothing more, even though they were a little too friendly. Also, the way he ordered fenugreek was not suspicious; he never accompanied his order with any surreptitious gestures or secret codes. Maybe his words contained very profound meanings that eluded even a sharp and smart observer. What is puzzling is what he thinks about during the hour or two that he spends at the café.’

On another occasion the Head Spy said, ‘You must stay close to Said al-Juhanyi.’ Amr knows him; he sleeps in the same riwaq not far from him and is familiar with his temperament, his moments of joy, dejection and the accompanying signs and the grimaces of his face. Hence, it would be possible for Amr, if he had a chance to observe him closely, to follow the twitches of his face, the tremors in his eyes and the movements of his hands. Maybe they will find out something. They had to be careful, though. Amr had to sit in a place where Said couldn’t see him. Amr wondered how that could be done when the café was so small. At that point the Head Spy spread out a wide sheet of paper on which was a sketch of the café, its utensils and built-in benches. He pointed to a gap in the wall close to the charcoal-burner and the fenugreek and salep.

‘Here you will sit. Said doesn’t come in but stays outside. You can monitor his movements without his seeing you. But your sitting here should not come about all of a sudden. As of today, go to Hamza ibn al-Eid al-Sahir; treat him in a friendly way, be liberal with him. The fenugreek there is half a dirham, pay him a whole dirham. Do you like fenugreek? Oh, I forgot that you loved cinnamon milk. It is the same price, anyway. You will get all your expense money at the beginning of every week. As of today, you will go to the café for fifteen days after the sunset prayers or any time after the evening prayers. You may sit anywhere you like; Said doesn’t go at those times. On the sixteenth day, go early to the café and ask Hamza ibn al-Eid al-Saghir to let you sit here at this gap. Stay put and don’t move. Pretend to be sad with no desire to speak. Said will come and will sit here. See? From where you are sitting, you will see him quite well, whereas he will not be able to see you. Do you understand?’

Amr marvelled at the precise details and at how the shop had been reduced to such a size as fitted on the paper. The Head Spy said, ‘Go, with God’s blessings. Listen, do you need money?’

Amr shook his head. ‘Your kindness has been too much already!’ His hand remained in the hand of the Head Spy.

‘How’s your mother?’

It was as if a bitter pill dissolved in his mouth. He has had no news of her. When the Shaykh of the Chapel of the Blind came back, he rushed to him, because he knew that she would send him something from the village: some bread or some aged cheese to resume that which time and distance had interrupted. Amr will never forget the man’s voice as he said, ‘I couldn’t find a trace of her. They said in the village that she hadn’t died.’ For some time she had been talking about a voice coming to her in her sleep, warning her that she did not have long to live and that she had to see Amr, her son. And in order not to interrupt his studies, she told her friend Sikina al-Duda, who made clay pots, the very woman whose hands had received Amr at his birth on a clover-stack and cut his umbilical cord, ‘Duda, I am going to Cairo to see the love of my heart.’

Duda said, ‘Cairo is far, and you’ve never been to it.’

But she insisted and told every man and every woman in the village. She even stopped the children on the street and told them about her son, Amr, how she had to go to him and how she wished they’d grow up to be like him. Duda gave her some provisions and one day Duda got up and Amr’s mother was nowhere to be found. They looked all over, in the sweet-potato and watermelon patches, but they couldn’t find a trace of her. After a little while, no one remembered her any longer. Nobody had needed her; it was she who always needed people. The Shaykh of the Chapel of the Blind was amazed and said, ‘I though she had come here to you.’

Amr’s eyes were blurred; he saw his mother on a deserted dusty road, connecting two villages. He saw her crossing many irrigation canals and ditches and going through palm-tree groves. Night fell and she had not eaten anything to warm her stomach; she asked people who were coming and those who were going how to get to Cairo. Sometimes Amr is certain that she is close, that perhaps he will meet her suddenly. Will he know her? Perhaps time and the trip have changed her. Perhaps her eyesight is so poor now she wouldn’t be able to see him. For three years, he hasn’t heard her voice, hasn’t seen her twitching eyelids. He himself has changed. At times he harshly blames himself for being away from her for three years. How could he do that? It is no use. A wound has firmly planted itself into his guts, his heart. But what would happen if she passed in front of him in the street while he was watching Said? Would he rush out, blowing his cover, to embrace her? Said would then figure out what is happening; the head Spy would know that the whole plan had been undermined. Amr is not alone in the café. He knows that full well. There is another eye watching him, perhaps Hamza ibn al-Eid al-Saghir. Maybe someone else. There is only one person who is not a suspect: Said al-Juhayni himself. Who knows? Maybe he was being put through a harrowing test as a prelude to promoting him up the spies’ ladder. The Head was very visibly touched. He said that that was a condition worse than death and that he would tell the deputies throughout the land to look for her: she must be found. At his meeting with the Head Spy he saw an unmistakable, noticeable change in the way he talked to him and treated him. His tone now is more gentle; he is showing excessive interest in his personal affairs and is not threatening him as usual. That’s better. Amr feels closer to him after the meeting.

Amr was now sitting, cramped, in the gap. He learned from the Head not to get bored or tired with the passage of time; he may be forced by circumstances to peek through the lattice-work of a mashrabiyya for a whole day, awaiting the arrival of a specific person who may never come. He shouldn’t allow boredom to find its way to him. There is a dampness in the gap, and in the heart there is a yearning for an old woman whose whereabouts are unknown to him. He doesn’t know what land she is in or in what land she is going to die. But that yearning has to make way; he is working now, earning his living. Hamza left him alone as he had requested.

Three Quranic schoolteachers came. One of them was making a loud noise drinking his salep, which annoyed Amr. The oldest of the teachers mourned the passing of the good old days when the boys themselves sought to memorise and recite the Quran. But times have changed: a ten-year old sits in front of you as if he were sitting on burning coals. No sooner is class over than he bolts away.

One of them said, ‘Mischief is rampant! God help us!’

A third man said, ‘These are the signs of the Hour of Resurrection.’

Amr wondered to himself what he meant by the ‘signs of the Hour’. He should prick up his ears. It is true he is here for Said, but he should listen to what is happening; maybe he will get a valuable conversation. Maybe he can get by accident that which he cannot by design and planning.

The oldest man said, ‘Yes, by God. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me about a mule giving birth.’

The third man, the shortest of them, said, ‘I take refuge in God, Master. If a mule got pregnant and gave birth, that would be a sign that the world has come to the end of time!’

The one with the gruff voice said, ‘And how do you know it is not coming to the end?’

Amr listened. Nice conversation, but there must be a point to it. What code are these old men using? He should prick up hears ears to the full. When he met the Head Spy for the first time, he had told him, ‘An able spy is two ears and two eyes; he hears and he sees; he memorises and conveys what he sees and hears even while asleep.’

‘Well, we thought we had seen everything! But now, look at these wondrous innovations! Now a man cannot go from his house to the mosque without this piece of leather. Isn’t it amazing?’

The short one said, ‘This is unheard of!’

If only Amr knew which Quranic school they ran! He is going to ask Hamza about them in the evening or tomorrow so as not to arouse his suspicions and so that he may prove that he is following correct spying procedures, if it turns out that Hamza is the one watching him. Amr noticed that two merchants had arrived.

The first one, with grey hair, asked, ‘I wonder whether the Sultan has taken off his light turban and put on his big one?’

‘If that were true, it would mean that he has recovered from his illness, but there has been no drum beating the good news.’

Amr wondered what quarter they were from.

On the other side, the eldest shaykh was saying, ‘One of the signs of the Hour is the appearance of the Antichrist.’

The grey-haired merchant said, ‘I am sure he put on the big turban and met Emir Tuman Bey.’

The second shaykh said, ‘By God, I feel a if the Antichrist is among us already.’

Amr’s heart is beating faster; this is serious stuff!

The young merchant said, ‘I don’t believe for a moment that the Sultan has put on the big turban. Otherwise, where are the good tidings? Where is the good news?’

The grey-haired shaykh remarked, ‘The only thing missing is for the sun to rise from the West!’

The young merchant said, ‘Anyway, that’s not impossible…maybe.’

A thin dark man with a small blue turban, a Christian, entered. Hamza ibn al-Eid al-Saghir had told Amr a lot about him. He doesn’t speak much. Waiting for him to speak is like waiting for rain in Ba’una. He comes here four times: once after sunrise as soon as the shop opens; before noon; in the mid-afternoon and just before closing time. Oh…the shaykhs are laughing. Did he miss anything?

The grey-beard says, ‘God will make me live long enough to take pleasure in the calamities of my era!’

They laugh. He must remember this sentence well.

The young merchant says, ‘We bought the ardeb for a dinar and a half and now we have to…’

They had changed the subject. The Christian, each time he went to Hamza’s place, drank a cup of anise without sugar and smoked two narghiles. He didn’t use the tobacco provided by the café. He carried a cracked leather pouch filled with good, golden tobacco, which had a unique aroma. Hamza didn’t know where he got it. He used exactly the same amount every time. He would ask Hamza to set up the narghile, arrange the charcoals and followed him closely with his eyes; then he would begin to smoke, exhaling the smoke from his nose as if he were in pain, moving his head right and left, complaining in silence to the narghile, telling it about a terrible injustice visited upon him. Towards the end of the narghile he would look at it, arrange the coals, press them, place his hand round them, bend over to blow on them, with a mute supplication that the tobacco might not die out.

The short shaykh says, ‘Yes, by God! Yes, by God!’

The grey-beard says, ‘But I didn’t believe him. He swore by all that is sacred, but I didn’t believe him.

Hamza told Amr what he knew about him. He lives in the poultry quarter, near Khan al-Khalili, no wife or children. Once Hamza saw him crying, shedding tears that flowed freely from his eyes, without sobbing. Amr wondered where he got the tobacco and what made him so depressed? It was as if he was talking to men who were invisible to all eyes except his own. Oh! Said is sitting in front of the café: a sudden arrival that he hadn’t noticed. He is not going to mention that he saw him all of a sudden. That would be to his disadvantage. He sat on the bench. Amr is trying to be calm and to slow down his heartbeats. It is a long way indeed before he attains perfection: to be able to see whatever there is to be seen, yet with his feeling unchanged, unmoved. That is a very sophisticated level, which only very able spies can reach. If only there were a way by which a person could get to what was going on in another person’s mind! Then spies would know the significance of a tremor of the eye, what thoughts produced a quick twitch of the nose. Amr sat back, so that his back was pressed against the walls of the café.

People of Egypt. We enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong. That which was hidden is no more: six months ago Zayni Barakat ibn Musa, Markets Inspector and Governor of Cairo, took Emir Mamai al-Saghir in custody. After he made him talk, he seized his property. It turned out that he had 90,000 dinars. That is 20,000 more than the Sultan had assessed. All the monies were handed over to the public treasury.

People of Egypt! Zayni Barakat ibn Musa, Markets Inspector and Governor of Cairo, has levied an impost on the houses of sin and ordered that admittance to said houses be denied to those under twenty, to preserve morality and the shari’a law. People of Egypt! After two days Zayni will travel to Damietta and Daqahliyya to inspect conditions, keep the bedouins out and establish law and order there. In his absence Abd al-Azim al-Sayrafi, Treasurer and Financial Officer of the Inspectorate, shall be the acting Muhtasib. Everything will remain the same: violators shall be punished.

People of Egypt: Zayni Barakat ibn Musa, Markets Inspector and Governor of Cairo, has pledged to our lord the Sultan to hold Emir Baktamur al-Saqi, Prince of Ten, and to extract the monies of the Muslims from him. Zayni estimates these monies to be 50,000 dinars, net, not counting hidden assets.


Urgent

To: Head Spy of Cairo

On Monday morning when the people went out to celebrate Shamm al-Nasim and mark the advent of spring with fun and merry-making, I saw Said al-Juhayni. I immediately took cover. He was not alone; rather he was accompanied by two women, one of whom was advanced in years. I followed them closely from Bab al-Khalq to the Bulaq gardens. There they were joined by a shaykh wearing a turban; name: Rihan al-Bayruni. I know that Said visits his house frequently.

Said seemed, I am absolutely certain and have no doubts whatsoever, to be madly, deliriously, head over heels in love with Shaykh Bayruni’s daughter. I have learned from my colleagues at al-Azhar that he frequently repeated the name ‘Samah’ during his sleep. Samah is the Shaykh’s daughter. They spent the whole day at the Bulaq gardens. Said was alone with her twice and they spoke to each other. I shall follow up developments.

Amr