The House of the Coptic Woman by Ashraf El-Ashmawi

Author:Ashraf El-Ashmawi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press

15

I submitted a formal letter excusing myself from election supervision duty. I pleaded that lumbar pain prevented me from sitting for long hours staring at the ballot box. I returned to work the following day and subpoenaed the director of the Agricultural Cooperative Society together with the village property registration ledgers. I had plenty of cases that warranted this subpoena, but I was looking for something unrelated to them.

Around noon, the ACS director was ushered into my office. He lay the ledgers open on my desk, all the same dark olive green and with a big “A” on the cover. He stepped back and stood with his hands folded in front of him. I ignored him.

The “A,” I knew, stood for agricultural property holdings. Mohammed Ali, the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt in the nineteenth century, had assigned that letter when he created the property register system two centuries earlier. This designation was kept for all the ledgers that had accumulated since.

I ran my finger down the columns, page after page, looking for certain lot numbers and their current owners. After a while, the ACS director cleared his throat, disrupting my concentration.

“If you could tell me what you’re looking for, sir, I could find it for you in seconds,” he said.

“You’re missing a ledger,” I replied without looking up.

“It went missing two years ago. We conducted a thorough inventory, but couldn’t find it. We’ve been trying to square the missing properties with their current owners, but without the chains of title.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, then picked up his ID card, which Girgis had placed on my desk before ushering the director in. His full name was Atef Nathan, a Coptic name. That meant that any question I asked would first have to pass through Ramses’s filter before I received an answer the next day. I pressed the buzzer with a deliberate show of annoyance. Sergeant Ibrahim entered with his customary salute and click of his heels.

“Sir!” he barked.

“Take this man outside and have him wait in the corridor. And don’t let him out of your sight.”

That would keep Atef sweating for a while, I thought. The ACS director, stunned by my gruff treatment, surrendered to the sergeant. Keen to impress me, Ibrahim gave his charge a shove in the back to usher him out.

Returning to the ledgers, I soon detected a pattern. All the houses that burned down or whose owners had died during the past few years were bought up by members of the Bishoi clan. They also bought the small plots of agricultural land around the houses through the church. These plots were then sold to unknown Muslims from other villages both near and far, only to be resold to Copts soon after, with the result that the land ended up in the hands of the Bishois again.

I was looking at long and circuitous trails of fake sales and purchases. Of course, every single one of the intermediaries —Copts and Muslims alike—would swear the transaction was legitimate and that they paid or received payment in full.

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