Free East of Suez by Howard Engel

be blasphemous enough. Raffles had no way of reforming the practices of local penology. And that was a century before the great flood. God alone knows what they’re like now.”
    “Royt! I reckon they’re the worst in Asia. Horrible, beastly latrines for cells.”
    “I’ll bet there’s a death penalty?”
    “Quite wrong, dear boy. Felons never see the guillotine. There isn’t one. We are dealing with a very subtle lot. The condemned perish in prison. The inquest reports usually say the prisoner died trying to escape.”
    Once the money had been sorted, and O’Mahannay had put me to a test about buying an oke of pistachio nuts and an ell of fine cotton, that got us away from currency and on to weights and measures, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. “What’s an ell and how many of them go to make one oke ?”
    “A little under a quarter-kilo. What am I saying? One’s weight, the other’s length. They are leftover measures by some forgotten Cypriot who passed this way in the 1880s. Until he came, there were six or seven competing systems at work in the bazaars. You’re lucky, Mr Cooperman, that we’ve simplified things for you. The upscale places use metric, naturally.”
    “I’ve been reading the guidebook, so I can understand some of that confusion. The French seem to have left a lasting legacy in Takot. All those Ex-street names and the croissants with my breakfast.”
    “Yes, the French were critical,” the priest observed. “They showed the locals what a real nation was like, then, like so many colonial powers, failed to get out of the way to let the locals have a turn at running things. Still, the French influence around here is strong.”
    “I guess with the Buddhists up north and the Muslims across the border down south, there hasn’t been much room for local initiatives.”
    “You can say that again, Vicar,” Savitt said with enthusiasm. “The locals have been walking a tightrope between rival countries right from the beginning.”
    “But why would the neighbors make a fuss?”
    “Precious natural resources,” O’Mahannay said. “They’ve got just about everything the market wants except oil: diamonds, gold, tungsten, emeralds. You name it. The country has been protected down the years by the fact that it is a buffer between natural enemies and competitors. Miranam has been like the steers the bullfight managers use to calm the bulls on their way into the plaza de toros . The steers get ripped open more often than not for their trouble. Nobody wants to be a steer, Mr Cooperman.” He paused and looked up at a bird that was making a racket under the awning. “Do you need any more help with the local money? Should we go through it once again? Remember that the French franc was the basis …”
    This budding monologue was stopped by the ringing of a telephone. Several patrons at nearby tables groped for their cellphones, as though they had been attacked by a swarm of stinging insects. Billy Savitt was the winner. He reeled in the instrument from the depths of his pockets. “Billy Savitt here. Yes. Yes! He’s sitting right here. Yes, like he’d never gone off.” He cupped a hand over the phone and whispered to Father O’Mahannay: “It’s Thomas ! He didn’t know you were back.”
    “Then he had more to drink last night than I did!” He pulled out from his cassock a bent postcard and gave it to Billy, who read it, smiled, and passed it on to me.
    “From Thomas,” Billy whispered, grinning at having Thomas on the line and in his hand at the same time.
    It came from Bergerac and had a picture of the Tobacco Museum, no doubt a leading magnet for tourists. I didn’t read the message on the back.
    The priest took the phone from Billy and moved away from the table, out of earshot. I caught only a loud, friendly greeting and a reference to being back in his old haunts. Meanwhile, Billy quizzed me about the history and size of the Jewish community in Grantham, Ontario, a subject