The Men Behind by Michael Pearce

whispered confidingly. Owen was not altogether pleased at being so famous. But Cairo, at that time a small city, was like a village.
    A dancer came over and sat in the chair opposite him. “Hello, dear,” she said.
    “No thanks.”
    “Oh, don’t be like that.”
    “I’m the one who’s got to stay sober.”
    “Yes,” said the girl, “you’ll need to. Your friend won’t.” Roper had been drinking three or possibly four to Owen’s one. Owen was counting on him lapsing into insensibility before long. That was the only prospect he could see of the evening ending.
    “Where are you from, love?” inquired the girl.
    “Caerphilly.”
    “Oh.” The girl was plainly disappointed. “I thought for a moment you came from near me.”
    “Tyneside?”
    “Durham.”
    “The accents can be a bit similar.”
    The plump girl brought Roper back.
    “That was all right,” he said to Owen.
    “A last drink.”
    “Hell, no, man. Haven’t started.”
    The dancing began again. This time the second girl was on stage. She was less expert than the plump girl but by this time, no doubt, distinctions were escaping Roper. The café as a whole, mostly Arab, favored plumpness and the applause was muted. Disappointed, the girl came towards Roper. The two went off together.
    Owen was fed up. He was one of those people who wake very early in the morning and had been up since five. Conversely, he always fell asleep early in the evening. Or would if he could.
    He felt a light touch on his arm. It was a gypsy girl.
    “I saw you at the Citadel,” she said.
    “What are you doing over here?”
    “Business is better.”
    Owen felt his pockets. The girl laughed.
    “You’re safe,” she said. However, as she kept her hand on his arm he took the precaution of transferring his wallet to the button-down pocket of his shirt.
    The girl laughed again.
    “That wouldn’t stop me,” she said. “Why don’t you just give me some?”
    “Would you content yourself with that?”
    “Yes.”
    Owen gave her some money.
    “Thank you.” She looked around. “They’re all busy,” she said. “I’ll stay here and talk to you for a moment.”
    The gypsies worked in gangs. Unusually in this Muslim country they used both men and women. The women distracted attention while the men slipped around. Of course, the women were quite capable of picking a pocket themselves.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Soraya. Would you like to come with me?”
    Owen shook his head regretfully.
    “It would be nice,” he said. The Ghawazi girls were noted for their accomplishments. They were without exception strikingly pretty, with thin aquiline faces, long black hair and dark lustrous eyes. They did not wear veils. And what aroused Arab men almost beyond endurance was a general sauciness, a boldness which was almost totally at odds with the self-subjection normally required of Muslim women.
    “I’m with someone,” he explained.
    “Yes,” said the girl. “I saw him. He did not like the dancing at the Citadel.”
    “He is a stranger here. He does not know.”
    “You are not like him.”
    “I hope not.”
    He tried out a few words of Egyptian Romany on her. She looked at him in surprise.
    “You speak our tongue?”
    “A little.”
    The language spoken by the Egyptian gypsy was not pure Romany. Much of it consisted of Arabic so distorted as to be unintelligible to the native Egyptian. Some of the words, however, were of Persian or Hindustani origin, and this interested Owen, who had served in India before coming to Egypt.
    He told her this.
    “I am a Halabi,” she said, meaning that she was one of the gypsies who claimed Aleppo in Syria as their place of origin.
    “Have you been there?”
    “No.”
    Roper returned, weaving his way unsteadily through the tables.
    “Hello!” he said. “Who have you got here?”
    “Her name is Soraya.”
    “How about coming upstairs with me?” he said.
    Soraya considered.
    “I would prefer to go with you,” she said to