The Mule on the Minaret Read online

  ‘I don’t see how it’s going to help you.’

  ‘Don’t you? I do. Everyman had his Achilles’ Heel. I don’t mean a weak spot; but a vulnerable side. Indulge his hobby and you’ve got him. We always think of sex, and drink and drugs as the way to get a man into our power; but there are other things. Snobbery, for instance. Most people think snobbery means wanting to meet peers, but there are a lot of people who don’t care for titles but will go miles to meet a film-star or a footballer. Find out what a man wants, show him that you can give it him and then exert the pressure. Music—now, let me think.

  ‘Has he any musical ambitions? Are there records that he can’t get in wartime or that he can’t afford; is there some special record player? We must find out what he needs. Then we can give it him and then we’ve got him. Now, next time that you see Aziz, what you’ve got to do is this.’

  He stood up. He began to stride backwards and forwards, up and down the room. He had a lean, lithe stride like a caged animal’s.

  * * *

  A week later Reid again called on the Amin Maruns. This time Aziz was out; only the aunt was there, which was as he had hoped. He had timed his call so that her husband should be absent. Over the inevitable coffee he told her how much he had enjoyed his talk the other evening with her nephew. ‘He is a very stimulating young man,’ he said.

  ‘I am glad you find him so. To us he is a problem.’

  ‘But aren’t all intelligent young men precisely that? You know what Maeterlinck said, “If a man is not a socialist at twenty he has no heart; if he is a socialist at forty he has no brains.” ’

  ‘My nephew is not a socialist.’

  ‘I didn’t say he was. I used the phrase loosely. I meant that every young man is against the existing order; he is in revolt against what his elders stand for. You’ll remember, I’m sure, what Byron said: “I have simplified my politics into a detestation of all existing governments.” ’

  ‘Byron’s own end was most unfortunate.’

  ‘To the Greeks he is a hero.’

  ‘He is not to the Turks.’

  Reid side-tracked that.

  ‘As a professor,’ he said, ‘I am in constant touch with the young, and since I am no longer young I’m able to take a long view. I can see how this student and the other has turned out. I have not found that on the whole the exemplary student has turned out best.’

  ‘That is little consolation to the parents or relatives of students who are not exemplary, at the time when they are proving headstrong.’

  ‘I would not have described Aziz as headstrong.’

  ‘Nor would I. He would be easier if he were.’

  ‘Is he thinking of making music a career?’

  ‘How could he? What kind of an income could he earn through music?’

  ‘Has his family no money?’

  ‘A little; enough; if he were prepared to accept the kind of position to which he is by birth entitled, if he were to become a soldier or, as we would all prefer, a civil servant, he would be able to obtain a bride who would bring to the marriage a dowry that would ensure their comfort. But music is another matter. What parents would wish to see their daughter married to a musician?’

  ‘Does he play the piano or the violin?’

  ‘He plays the piano, but only as several hundred others play it; and even if he played it well, really well, how could my sister tolerate her son as a pianist, a public performer in a restaurant or café? Oh no, no, no! In Europe it may be different. A pianist may have a social status, but not here in Turkey, in the Levant.’

  ‘Has he any ambitions as a composer?’

  ‘I don’t think he has. He has no ambitions whatever as far as we can see. That is what worries my sister and myself. He has this passion for music. He wants to spend all his spare time listening to it; and he wants to spend all his spare time with young people who share this passion. Do you know what time he gets back at night? One, two, three in the morning. How can he expect to come fresh to his studies six hours later?’

  So that was how he spent his nights. How far wide of the mark they had been in picturing him drinking, wenching or taking hashish.

  ‘I hope you don’t think I’m being impertinent,’ Reid said. ‘I’ve no right to be asking you all these personal questions, but I was very struck with your nephew. I’m used, you see, to dealing with young men. I know their complexes: how self-conscious they are, how reserved, how on the defensive; yet suddenly so expansive. They so want to give, to pour out everything; yet they are afraid of being laughed at. They won’t expose themselves to ridicule. Yet they are hungry for friendship and affection. The first time I met Aziz he didn’t say a word, but the other evening when I found him alone, when we were listening to music, he was so warm, so outgiving. He has such an attractive smile.’

  ‘Ah, but he has, hasn’t he?’ Madame Amin’s own face brightened suddenly, lit by a smile reminiscent of her nephew. It took fifteen years off her. He could picture her fascination as a young girl before indolence, boredom, middle-age and over-eating had coarsened her. He thought of Thomas Hardy’s poem, ‘Wives in the Sere.’ A half minute, and the smile, the look of youthfulness, had vanished. She was once more an ageing, discontented woman. ‘I wish he would meet some nice young woman who would make him see some sense,’ she said.

  Reid smiled. There it went again, that invincible belief of the middle-aged that youth should be put in chains, harnessed to conformity, the wide wings clipped. English rebels used to complain that the Public School system stifled individuality, turning out everyone according to a pattern, that of the embryo Empire builder. But wasn’t it the female of the species who demanded uniformity, turning men into husbands and providers? And they were right nine times in ten; that was what most men needed—to be like other men. There were some men, however, who were born to break the pattern. Perhaps Aziz was one of them.

  Farrar was delighted with Reid’s report. He paced backwards and forwards in the room of the flat in the Rue Jeanne d’Arc.

  ‘I get it. I think I get it. The boy makes sense. He knows his aunt is right. He can’t make a living out of music. He probably doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to professionalize his hobby. But music is the one thing he cares for. Without music his life would not be worth living. That’s what he said. Now, Prof., it’s up to you. You must find the angle from which we can attack. Find out what he needs. There must be something we can give him that no one else can. We’ve got to find what it is. There must be something.’

  A few days later Reid received an invitation from Amin Marun to a Tabooli party. He was delighted at the prospect. ‘Unless you have had Tabooli in a Beiruti house, you cannot understand the Lebanon,’ he had been told.

  Tabooli was more than a Lebanese speciality; it was a Lebanese ritual. It was served at a quarter to six with arak. A large dish contained what looked like a mixed green salad. It was composed of wheat, pounded up with vegetables, it was eaten with the fingers, scooped up with lettuce leaves. It had a fresh cool taste, with an after-flavour of onions. With it were served balls of kibbé—a minced meat mixed with corn. The meal was taken slowly, one sip of arak to one mouthful of Tabooli. A glass of arak was expected to last half an hour. Eventually the Tabooli and the arak were cleared away and tea was served with biscuits and very sweet sticky cakes that had an almond flavour. Later on, Cherry Heering was offered. The party was scheduled to break up at nine o’clock, so that the guests could dine or not dine afterwards as they chose.

  Amin Marun had invited a dozen guests. At the start Aziz contributed nothing to the conversation. He sat silent, sulky, inattentive, exactly as he had at that first meeting. Reid waited till the room filled up and he had an opportunity to change his chair and sit by Aziz on a sofa.

  ‘Do you find more opportunities here for hearing music than you had in Turkey?’ he inquired.

  ‘Many more. That’s what makes it so exasperating.’

  ‘Makes what exasperating?’

 
; ‘The fact that I can’t get my hands on all there is.’

  ‘I don’t follow that.’

  ‘In Turkey we are cut off from Europe. There are currency difficulties. We cannot buy all we want from Germany and communication with England is very difficult. I had to make the best of what there was. But here I should not be cut off from England, and the best records are being made in England now. But I cannot bring Turkish currency across the frontier, and my aunt does not realize how much they matter to me. I did not worry in Turkey because they were out of reach. But here they should not be. They are available to others. I sometimes feel I shall go mad, because I cannot hear the music that I need. You cannot memorize music, as you can a poem. You have to go on hearing it.’

  His face was white, his eyes were blazing.

  ‘He talked,’ Reid was to tell Farrar later, ‘like a drug addict deprived of his drug.’

  Farrar exulted. ‘Now we’ve got him where we want him. Listen. This is how we’ll play it. Not through Abdul Hamid. Aziz has met him and distrusts him; or he should. At any rate, they can’t be friends. We’ll use a friend of his, Fadhil, whom you haven’t met. The Koumayans entertain a lot. They know Aziz. They can invite him to a party; then, on the day that he’s coming I’ll arrange to have Fadhil asked.’

  ‘The Koumayans aren’t in our show, are they?’

  ‘Of course they aren’t. They’d be horrified if they knew what I was about. I’ve told them I’m in propaganda; and of course, in a way, I am. My having been at the Mission was a help in that regard. They are very pro-Allies. I can ask them to meet people here of whom they wouldn’t have acknowledged the existence three years ago. On occasions I can persuade them to invite a friend of mine.’

  ‘Do they get anything out of this?’

  ‘Nothing on the surface, except the self-satisfaction of making a contribution to the cause. We all like to think we’re doing something of use in wartime. Though of course there are little things that I can do for them: permits, for instance; and there are some articles that are in very short supply here. When I go into Cairo I don’t return empty-handed. And finally, my dear Prof., incredible though it may seem to you, Annabelle Koumayan thinks this decadent piece of masculinity a dish.’

  Next morning Reid paid a visit to the Mission. He liked to maintain his connection with it. He also had an opportunity of reading English newspapers, seeing the latest news reports and reading the daily bulletin that was issued by the Mission’s Propaganda Section. The news could not be worse. Japanese forces were sweeping south. Singapore had fallen. Java was next upon the list. In the Western Desert Rommel was again in the ascendant, and on the Eastern Front the Russians were in retreat. Reid had not now the slightest doubt of the eventual outcome of the war. With the United States in the field the Axis could not win. But how long would it last? Every battle, every defeat seemed to add another year to its duration: the enemy had to be forced back over so vast a territory.

  On his return he paused in Diana’s office. ‘A message for you from the boss,’ she said. ‘That party at the Koumayans’ has been fixed for Tuesday. Six o’clock; and all the interested characters will be there.’

  ‘Doesn’t it seem very trivial that we should be arranging a party for interested characters when the whole of our Eastern Empire is threatened?’

  She smiled. ‘Five years ago, did the fact that there were two million unemployed barely subsisting under the means test, prevent your enjoyment of a chateau-bottled claret?’

  It was the first time that Reid had been to the Koumayan house. It lay on the high main road that led to the Place des Martyres. It was constructed of ochre brick; a high wall shut it round; a high ironwork gate opened on to an ornamental garden. The house was arranged in the old Turkish manner; a large central hall with small rooms opening off it. The walls of the main hall were hung with carpets and gilt-framed portraits.

  When Reid arrived there were some thirty other guests. He recognized very few of them. There were only one or two British officers; those were captains. Farrar was on his guard against having rank pulled on him. There were, however, three French colonels. The remainder were French civilians or Lebanese. Tea and cakes and sandwiches were being served at a large ornately silvered table. A small corner table provided ice, soda and Scotch whisky. The attendance round this table was continuous. Reid supposed that Farrar was responsible for its steady sustenance. Little Scotch can have been available since the fall of France.

  He looked for the Amin Maruns. Aziz was standing in a corner. His aunt and uncle were seated together on a sofa. They were not talking to each other. Marriage was curious that way, he thought. Husbands and wives went out to parties, felt they must protect each other; sat together; consumed nourishment, then went home and discussed a party they had not in fact attended. They might just as well go out to a café and watch the world drift past. They would see more variety that way.

  Nigel was ubiquitous; gracious, dominant, peripatetic, acting as a host, though he was not a host, effecting introductions, moving from one group to another; he certainly looked as though he were a public relations officer.

  To his surprise Reid noticed Diana across the room. He moved across to her. ‘So you are allowed to this kind of party,’ he remarked.

  ‘It wouldn’t do, would it, for me to avoid all his parties. People would start asking questions. We have to appear in public sometimes as business acquaintances.’

  ‘I suppose that I shall one day see the point of these elaborate precautions.’

  ‘Don’t try. Use your common sense. It’s refreshing to have one man in the office who relies on that.’

  ‘It’s a relief that security doesn’t limit us to a business acquaintanceship.’

  ‘That was my one fear when I fixed your coming to us. It was in fact my one condition. I said to the controller, “The Prof, may have to leave his flat, but he’s not going to stop seeing me.” ’

  ‘You actually said that?’

  ‘Of course I did.’ Her look was frank. There was a twinkle in her eyes. He had the sensation of something underneath his heart going round and over. He turned away. He looked across the room, searching again for Aziz. He found him at length seated talking to a youngish man who was wearing European clothes. He might have been a Frenchman by his appearance. He wondered if that was Fadhil. Diana had followed his glance. ‘It seems to be going all right,’ she said.

  He noticed at the end of the evening that the Amin Maruns left alone. He took another look for Aziz, but did not see him. He looked in vain, also, for the young Frenchman. He presumed that they had slipped away together. I’d give a lot to be invisible, he thought.

  Next day he asked Farrar about Fadhil. ‘He looks as though he might be a Frenchman. Is he?’

  ‘I fancy he is, but he won’t admit it. If he did they’d conscript him for the army.’

  ‘What does he say he is?’

  ‘Egyptian; that could be anything. I don’t know too much about him. In point of fact I don’t want to know too much. Abdul Hamid swears he can be trusted. That’s enough for me. He has been here several years. Since the beginning of the war he has had a teaching job at the University; a wartime job because they are short of staff. He has no real qualifications, but it isn’t difficult to teach elementary English.’

  ‘Is he married?’

  ‘I don’t think so; not so as you’d notice it, as they used to say.’

  ‘What about his parents?’

  ‘All his relatives are in Egypt.’

  ‘For a man as security-minded as you, you take a great deal on trust as far as this gentleman is concerned.’

  ‘I trust Abdul Hamid. That is sufficient. He has a hold on Fadhil. Fadhil wouldn’t dare double-cross him. Abdul Hamid is a very tough operator.’

  ‘I wish I knew what had happened between those two.’

  ‘We’ll know soon enough.’

  * * *

  They learnt five days later. Aziz and Fadhil had made friends quic
kly. In fact, they had recognized each other, through their association at the University, though they had never met.

  ‘I’ve noticed you,’ Fadhil had said.

  ‘I’m surprised at that. There are so many students.’

  ‘Perhaps, but there was something different about you. You looked as though you didn’t quite belong there.’

  ‘Is that unusual at the A.U.B.? We’re a very miscellaneous collection; a dozen different nationalities.’

  ‘Yes, but there’s a common multiple. They are all desperately anxious to graduate with honours. You do not seem very anxious.’

  ‘Is that a recommendation?’

  ‘Normally it wouldn’t be; but you didn’t look an idle person. I felt that you had other interests. I wondered what they were. What are you studying?’

  Aziz told him; for a minute or two they exchanged notes on the professors who took his classes; then the talk became personal. Very soon Fadhil edged the conversation so that it was Aziz himself who brought up the question of music.

  ‘I have some new records in my flat,’ said Fadhil. ‘I wonder if you’d like to come back and hear them?’

  Fadhil had a small two-room apartment near the University. It was in a recently built house. It was on the fourth floor. It was barely furnished, with a settee and two armchairs, but the shelves were filled with books, and though the floor was covered with cheap threadbare matting, a good carpet was hung over the settee. The room was heated by an open charcoal brazier. It was chilly. ‘We’d better keep our coats on,’ Fadhil said. On the table there was a high pile of records.

  ‘I wonder if you’ve heard this, I got it at Christmas. When I was in Cairo.’ He had brought back six new records. He played them over. There was an entranced expression upon Aziz’s face.

  ‘If only I could get records like that,’ he said.

  ‘You can, if I can.’

  ‘I never go to Cairo.’

  ‘I do. I can get them for you.’

  ‘I couldn’t afford them. It is a question of currency. My parents can’t send money out of Turkey. They don’t even pay my expenses with my aunt. My aunt has no money except what my uncle gives her. I’m dependent on him. He only gives me a bare minimum.’