Free The Men Behind by Michael Pearce

rocking.
    “Ali,” said Owen. “I shall ask you only one more thing. Then you are to go to the English hakim and he will make you better. That morning, when it happened, there were two inside. But had there been others? Had others come and gone that morning?”
    “My head aches.”
    “Try,” said Owen. “Try to remember, Ali.”
    Ali put his head on his hands again and frowned with concentration. Some inner pain made him wince and close his eyes.
    “I am trying,” he said. “I am trying to remember.”
    “Good. That morning. Before. Were there others?”
    Ali bowed his head in concentration.
    “Yes,” he said suddenly. “There were others.”
    “Many? Do you remember them?”
    “Not many.”
    Ali’s head came up. “I do not remember them,” he whispered. “I was working.”
    “But you saw them?”
    “I cannot remember.”
    “Can you remember one of them? One I could ask about the others?”
    Ali frowned with concentration. Suddenly he burst into tears.
     
    Owen managed to find a small boy who knew the way. The boy took him down a dark alleyway which opened out into a small courtyard completely enclosed by crumbling blocks of flats. There was a pump in the middle of the courtyard round which small children were playing. A strong smell of fried onions came from one of the houses.
    A man in a galabeah and skullcap came out of the house. It was the sharp-faced workman who had organized things at the scene of the bombing. He greeted Owen politely and led him inside. In an inner room a woman was busy cooking.
    There were no chairs but the man produced a worn leather cushion for Owen to sit on. He himself sat on the bare floor.
    The floor was clean, which was not always the case in the houses of the poor. But then, as poor went, perhaps this man was not so very poor. The flat seemed to have at least two rooms and the furnishings, though sparse, were of good quality and well looked after.
    A woman came in from the other room and placed little dishes of olives beside them. She wore her veil over her face but only over half her face. Intelligent, interested eyes regarded Owen curiously. She observed the proper forms but there was an independence about her which went with that of her husband.
    The husband’s name was Ibrahim and he was a mechanic; one of a new breed of workman which was growing up in the city. He worked at the transport depot repairing trams. It was a skilled job and he received good wages.
    “I know you, of course,” he said to Owen. “I saw you the other day. You are the Mamur Zapt.”
    Owen bowed his head in acknowledgment.
    “And I know you,” he said. “It was easy to find your house. Everyone knows Ibrahim and speaks well of him.”
    Deliberately he spoke loudly enough for the wife to hear in the other room.
    Ibrahim now inclined his head.
    “We have been here a long time,” he said.
    “I would like to ask you some questions. But first I wish to thank you for all you did that day.”
    “It was nothing. Who would not have wished to help? I was there first, that was all.”
    “Not all. Not all, by any means. But tell me, how was it you came to be there first?”
    “I was passing when it happened. I had just come into the square when I was struck by a puff of wind. It was like a blow in the face. I stopped in surprise and then there was a great roar and the house began to crumble. Ali was standing in the doorway and he was thrown forward. He was on hands and knees in the street and great stones were bounding all over the square. I saw a man struck, a water-carrier, I think, but then there was dust everywhere, it was like a haboob, and I couldn’t see anything. When the dust cleared there was just the great pile of rubble where the café had been and I ran forward in case people lay buried.”
    “That was brave of you and quick. For the rubble would have been unstable and when such things happen one is stunned for a time.”
    “Well,” said Ibrahim modestly. “I don’t know