'Effendi, Effendi, there is excitement!' panted the small boy. 'Over there in the Camel Market!'

The small boys had already done pretty well out of Owen that morning. They had found a body tucked beneath the carpeting of a fiki's booth and had pointed it out to him with relish. He had told them to find a policeman, at which they had been a little surprised, for they had been under the impression that he was a policeman. However, they had readily proceeded to the a policeman. However, they had readily proceeded to the obvious explanation that the Mamur Zapt was too grand a chap to be bothered with ordinary bodies and had run off to find one of the constables patrolling the Market.

Then they had found a dead baby lying among the fodder for the camels and had tried that out on him but with a similar lack of success.

And now there was this 'excitement,' whatever it was. There did indeed seem to be something going on over on the other side of the Market and he went across.

There was a ring of men, growing larger with every minute, and in the middle of the ring was a donkey and two men. One of the men was a Levantine, dressed in a dark suit and wearing a tarboosh, the little, pot-like red hat which was the Egyptian badge of office; the other an ordinary fellah in the usual blue gown. They seemed to be arguing.

Owen was annoyed, because if this was all it was then one of the Market constables ought to have been able to sort it out, and there were three of them in the crowd, just standing by and watching it. But then he saw that there were some soldiers nearby, not really part of the crowd but formed in a separate detachment, and wondered what the hell was going on.

'But I didn't bring him in to sell him!' cried the villager, almost weeping. 'I was going to take him to the barber, that's all!'

'That's right,' said the donkey-barber, standing in the front row of the crowd and recognisable by the clippers in his hand and the pile of clippings at his feet. 'He'd just got to me.'

'He's here, isn't he?' said the Levantine. 'And we need him.'

'But I need him too!' cried the villager. 'Brothers,' he appealed to the crowd, 'I need a donkey to work my land!'

'You don't need a donkey,' said one of the constables helpfully. 'You need a buffalo.'

'Yes, but I haven't got a buffalo. I can't afford one. So I use a donkey.'

'Sell the donkey and buy a buffalo,' said the Levantine, taking out a bundle of notes and waving them in front of the villager's nose. 'With this!'

The villager's eyes followed the notes hypnotically.

'How much is that?' he whispered.

'Fifty piastres. Fifty whole piastres! Buy a buffalo!'

The villager recoiled.

'It wouldn't buy a buffalo!'

'It wouldn't buy a donkey, either,' said one of the villagers behind him. 'Don't have anything to do with it, Ibrahim.'

'I won't!'

'I don't have to buy,' said the Levantine, nettled. 'I can just take.'

'I'd like to see you!'

'Just try it!' said one of the villagers.

The constables shifted uneasily. The soldiers, who were Egyptians, ostentatiously fingered their rifles.

There were some Australian soldiers among the crowd, newly disembarked and here in the Market sightseeing.

'Hey!' said one of them. 'You can't do that! Take the man's donkey. Just like that!'

'I have powers to commandeer,' said the Levantine smoothly. 'We need both. Camels for the Camel Corps, donkeys for the Transport Corps. We pay compensation. It's a fair price."

The Australians looked at each other.

'If it's for the Army ...'

'And a fair price....'

'It's not a fair price!' cried the villager. 'He was paying seventy five in the village!'

'And that's not a fair price, either,' said one of the villagers.

'A hundred would be about right.'

The Levantine shrugged.

'Seventy five is all I am empowered to offer,' he said, 'and that only for a really good animal. It's a fair price and the one I agreed with your omda,' he said to the villager.

'Seventy five plus the bribe you paid to the omda,' said one of the villagers bitterly.

The Levantine appeared not to hear him.

'All right,' he said to the obstinate donkey-owner. 'I'll make that fifty into seventy five. That's fair, isn't it?' he appealed to the crowd.

'No,' said the donkey-owner, 'I want to keep my donkey.'

'That,' warned the Levantine, 'or nothing.'

'I need my donkey.'

'Nothing, then.'

The Levantine made a sign with his hand and the Egyptian soldiers moved forward.

The crowd behind the villager surged. Some of the men were holding sticks, others, stones.

'Hey —' began one of the Australians.

The soldiers stopped. Villagers were one thing, Australians another.

Owen pushed his way through the crowd.

'Okay,' he said, 'that will do!'

The constables twitched to attention and stepped forward.

'You have no power to requisition animals on a private basis,' Owen said to the Levantine. 'It must be done through the village headman.'

'I —' began the Levantine.

'Take your donkey and go,' Owen said to the villager. 'Quickly!'

The man needed no urging. He seized the donkey, perched himself feet up on its back, and headed off.

The Levantine shrugged and turned away. Owen could see now that he had assembled quite a substantial herd over beyond the makeshift tents.

The Camel Market itself was almost empty, denuded of virtually all its stock. Only a couple of sucking mothers were left with their infants. One of them was no more than a day old, still a fluffy little white ball. Owen couldn't see how something so endearing could grow up into the ugly, morose, bloody-minded beast that it did. But, of course, he reflected, some might say that was true of human beings too.

The crowd was dispersing now, going back to the rows of figures squatting on the bare earth behind their heaps of corn, cucumbers, or onions, or crouched beneath ragged pieces of cloth stretched between sticks, selling kohl bottles, lurid cottons, copper pots, or the celluloid beads, scarlet to suggest the coral of Bedawin jewellery, favoured of the herdsmen.

Owen felt a touch on his arm. It was one of the Australians.

'We're looking for the Wagh el Birket,' he said.

I'll bet, thought Owen. The Wagh was one of the most notorious districts of Cairo.

'You're quite a bit out of your way,' he said. 'If I were you, I'd take an arabeah. Over there!'

There was a row of them, little, open-fronted, single-horse drawn carriages, the taxi of Cairo, fl y-blown, worn, and smelling strongly of horse urine. The six Australians somehow succeeded in piling into two of them.

'Ten piastres,' Owen called after them. 'Don't pay more!'

They would. The Australians had only started arriving in Egypt a month ago but they were already wildly popular because of their open-handedness. Not just, to be fair, their open-handedness. There was a general openness about them. They talked in natural, easy terms to the Egyptians, without any of the stiffness or distancing of the British. They were a breath of fresh air, Owen reflected.

He looked around him. The Market was quiet now. He walked across it for one last time and then headed for his office, leaving behind him the Levantine with his herds, the figures crouched behind their piles of vegetables or huddled beneath their...