The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet by Michael Pearce Page A

could have been no
more than fourteen or fifteen.
    The procession was now strung out across the
Place, the bulk of it in the open space in the middle and the head approaching
the street which led up to Abdin Square.
    An open car suddenly shot out of a street at
right angles to the procession, cut across in front of it and stopped. In it
was McPhee.
    He stood up and waited for the marchers to
halt. The four armed policemen in the car with him leaned over the side of the
car and trained their rifles on the front row of the demonstrators.
    The procession hesitated, wavered and then
came to a stop. Those behind bumped into those in front, spread round the sides
and formed a semi-circle around the car.
    McPhee began to speak.
    The crowd listened in silence for a brief
moment and then started muttering. One or two shouts were heard, and then more,
and the chanting started up again. The crowd began to press forward at the
edges.
    Owen saw the first missiles and heard the
warning shots.
    Then, to the right, came the sound of a
bugle and Owen looked up, with the crowd, to see a troop of mounted policemen
advancing at the trot.
    This was the pride of the Cairo Police: all
ex-Egyptian Army cavalry men all with long police service, experienced, tough
and disciplined, mounted on best quality Syrian Arab stallions expertly trained
for riot work.
    They advanced in three rows, spaced out to
give the men swinging room.
    Each man had a long pick-axe handle tied to
his right wrist by a leather thong.
    At an order the handles were raised.
    And then the troop was among the crowd.
Handles rose and fell. The crowd opened up, and there were horses in the gaps,
forcing them open still further. They split the crowd into fragments, and round
each fragment the horses wheeled and circled, and the sticks rose and fell.
    Whenever a group formed, the horses were on
to them.
    Students fell to the ground and either
scrabbled away from the horses’ hooves or lay motionless. All over the Place
were little crumpled heaps.
    And now there were very few groups, just
people fleeing singly, and no matter how fast they fled, the horses always
outpaced them.
    All this while, McPhee had stayed in the
car, watching. Now he signalled with his hand, and out of the street behind him
emerged a mass of policemen on foot.
    They spread out into a long, single line and
began to work systematically across the Place.
    Anyone who was standing they clubbed. Behind
them, in an area of the Place which steadily became larger, there was no one
standing at all, just people sitting, dazed, holding their heads, or black
gowns stretched out.
    The last groups broke and fled, harried by
the horses.
    “Very expertly done,” said the Greek.
    A student darted in among the stalls and
tables close by them, a rider in hot pursuit. The student threw himself on the
ground behind a stack of chairs. The horse halted and the policeman leaned over
and hit the student once or twice with his stick. Then he rode away.
    The student got to his feet, panting and
sobbing. He looked back across the Place and saw the line of foot policemen
approaching. In a second he had shot off again.
    He reminded Owen of a hare on the run, the
same heaving sides, panicked eyes, even, with his turban gone and his shaven
head, the hare’s laid-back ears.
    Another student rushed along behind the row
of deserted street-stalls. He brushed right past Owen and then doubled back up
an alleyway.
    “That one!” snapped Owen. “Follow him! Find
out where he goes!”
    Georgiades,
the Greek, who was one of Owen’s best agents, was gone in a flash.
    The
student was Nuri Pasha’s secretary and son, the difficult Ahmed.
    The
tea-seller put the urn back on his stall with a thump. Without asking, he drew
a glass of tea and handed it to Owen.
    “Watching,”
he said, “is thirsty work.”
    The
only students on the square now were walking in ones and twos, sometimes
supporting a third. Around the edges of the square, though, the foot