The Men Behind by Michael Pearce Page B

newspaper.
    “Nothing’s wrong with it,” said one of the other students hurriedly. “It’s just not our kind of place.”
    The customer disappeared again behind his newspaper. There were several other newspaper-readers in the café, among them Owen. In his light, Cairo-made suit, dark glasses and
tarboosh
, there was little to distinguish him from the Levantines at the other tables. There were a lot of them. The café, though near the Law School, was on a boulevardlike main street and its cosmopolitan clientele included businessmen, civil servants, journalists and teachers, as well, of course, as plenty of people who it seemed had absolutely nothing to do.
    Quite a few people spent most of the day in the café. They came first thing in the morning, picked up a newspaper and ensconced themselves in their favorite seat. At some point in the morning coffee and perhaps a roll would appear before them and just before lunch the coffee would be supplemented by aniseed.
    The café would empty at lunchtime and begin to fill up again once siesta was over. In the evening it was so crowded that its tables spilled out into the road. It had a vigorous life of its own and the students were invaders.
    “I kept thinking about those boys,” said the fat Greek, “the poor boys who were killed. How their parents must have felt! They had families, presumably?”
    The students weren’t sure.
    “They kept themselves very much to themselves.”
    “They must have had families, though,” said one of them.
    “They came from the country, didn’t they?”
    “I don’t know. I never really spoke to them.”
    “They weren’t law students, you see,” one of the students explained.
    “They weren’t?”
    “No. They were at the School of Engineering.”
    “What were they doing over here?”
    “We get around a lot. They had a friend, I expect.”
    “If they had, he hasn’t come forward.”
    “Perhaps he’s under the rubble. They’re still looking, aren’t they?”
    “I thought they’d finished,” said the Greek.
    “You’d have expected them to have finished.”
    “They’re not really trying. Shocking, isn’t it? They don’t really care.”
    “When are they being buried?”
    “It’s not known yet. The British haven’t released the bodies.”
    “When they do we ought to see that it doesn’t go unnoticed.”
    “We ought to have a procession.”
    “Yes!”
    The students blazed up.
    “That’s what we’ll do! We will go to the British and show them the bodies and say: ‘These are the corpses of the men you have murdered.’”
    “Yes!”
    “Yes!”
    Newspapers rustled.
    “What is it now?” asked someone wearily.
    “We are going to have a procession.”
    “Another one? Don’t you ever do any work?”
    “What is work?” said one of the students. “This is our work.”
    “Don’t you ever have any exams?”
    “They’re not for a bit yet.”
    “They ought to have them more often,” said another newspaper-reader.
    The scarred student sprang to his feet.
    “This is what we’re fighting against!” he declared, with a dramatic sweep of his arm. “You are what holds us back!”
    “I’m not holding you back,” a newspaper-reader objected. “I’m all for study.”
    “We all are,” someone else said. “It’s just that we’d like you to do it a bit more.”
    “You don’t care about Egypt, do you?” said the scarred student in a fury.
    Someone lowered a newspaper.
    “Egypt? What do you know about Egypt? You’re a Sudani by the look of you.”
    “I come from Haifa,” said the student with dignity.
    “There you are! That’s the Sudan. It’s a bit hot down there. Perhaps it’s affected your head.”
    Friends pulled the student down. Other friends sprang up in his place.
    “Haifa belongs to Egypt,” they shouted.
    “He’s as good an Egyptian as you are!”
    “Better! At least he tries to do something about what is wrong!”
    “You just accept it! Slave!”
    “You are all slaves! Slaves to