The Men Behind by Michael Pearce

yet had time to look into their families. If they were from the country it was unlikely that they were the children of the professional families whose offspring filled most of the Higher Schools. Very few professionals were prepared to work for long in country districts.
    More probably they were here by virtue of the patronage of some local Pasha, exercised as the consequence of some operation of the intricate network of favor and obligation that bound Egyptian society together.
    Someone would miss them, though. Some uncomprehending family in Upper Egypt would have learned by now and would be grieving.
    “What sort of café was Ali’s?” asked Owen.
    “It was all right. Nothing special. It was handy for the law students, that was all.”
    “What about Ali himself?”
    “He was all right too. He didn’t mind students. Some people don’t like them, you know. You go into a café sometimes and you know at once that they don’t want you there.”
    “But Ali wasn’t like that?”
    “No. He wasn’t bothered. He would leave you alone. You had to pay your bill, of course, he made sure of that. But nobody minds that.”
    “How did he handle quarrels?”
    “Quarrels? I don’t think there were any, not while I was there, anyway. Arguments, of course, there were always lots of those, and they sometimes became heated. But coming to blows, is that what you mean? It didn’t usually come to that. Ali would have stopped it, I suppose.”
    “You ask yourself about that sort of thing,” said Owen. “I just wondered if those two boys could have quarreled with anybody?”
    “Them? They’re not the sort. Much too quiet. Anyway, if they had, that doesn’t mean anyone would want to throw a bomb at them!”
    “Of course it might not have been them. I mean, not them particularly. The bomb was left so it could have been anybody.”
    Deesa shook his head. “That is what I cannot understand. How anyone could do a thing like that!”
    “I suppose,” said Owen tentatively, “it couldn’t have been anything to do with the Societies, could it?”
    Deesa stared at him. “Societies?” he said. “Why should it be anything to do with the Societies?”
    “A bomb is aimed at a group,” said Owen, “or at any rate anyone who throws or plants a bomb knows it’s likely to hit more than one or two. I just wondered if one Society could be trying to hit another.”
    “I don’t know,” said Deesa. “I wouldn’t know anything like that.”
    “Was the café used by Societies?”
    “Not as far as I am aware. I dare say some of the people in it belong to Societies, but that’s not something that anyone’s going to tell you.”
    “They didn’t talk about it?”
    “About Societies? No.”
    “Indirectly?”
    “There was a lot of talk about politics. There always is. But about Societies, no.”
    “There were no obvious groups in the café?”
    “There were groups of friends. You could say I was in a group. But none of us in a Society.”
    “Well, if you didn’t get the feel that it was a Society café, it probably wasn’t one.”
    “There aren’t many Societies,” said Deesa, half accusingly. “Not as many as you might think.”
    Owen laughed. “I know,” he said. “It’s just that the ones there are do things like this.”
    He steered the conversation onto safer ground, asking Deesa about his medical studies and telling him about his recent encounter with Ali. Deesa said that he would make sure Ali had actually gone to the hospital.
    “It sounds as if he ought to see a proper doctor,” he said, “not one like me.”
    “You’re all right,” said Owen, “or you will be when you’re qualified. Still, I’m not sure that Ali’s troubles are purely medical. He’s still suffering from shock. But other things are hitting him as well. He’s still trying to make sense of the whole business.”
    “Can anyone make sense of it?” asked Deesa. “Who could do an awful thing like that?”

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Chapter Five
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