Mamur Zapt 17 The Bride Box by Michael Pearce

Author:Michael Pearce [Pearce, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: det_history
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

Mahmoud’s daughter, Maryam, went to school. This was uncommon even among his colleagues at the Parquet. Having themselves got where they were by education, they were all in favour of it for their own young. For their sons, that was. Even among the relatively liberal Parquet lawyers, valuing of education and ambition for their offspring did not extend as far as educating their daughters, too.

Or in any case, only a bit. When their daughters grew old enough for their fathers to notice their existence and to start planning for their marriages a few of them were sent to special European-style finishing schools so that they might not be totally boring to their husbands when they got married, who were also likely to be bright Parquet lawyers.

Mahmoud, however, thought differently. Only the best was going to be good enough for his children, male or female, and he meant to see that right from the start they received an education along progressive Western lines. There were in Cairo one or two kindergartens chiefly for the children of well-to-do Europeans. It was to one of these that he decided to send Maryam.

When he learned what it was going to cost him he almost changed his mind. Young Parquet lawyers, no matter how bright, were not highly paid. Aisha, however, his strong-willed and equally liberal wife, who was just becoming aware of some of the arguments about the ‘New Woman’ that were currently occurring in France, did not agree. Equality of the sexes had to begin very early — indeed, from birth — and her adored Maryam was certainly going to receive as good an education as any brother.

Mahmoud, logical to the last, had to admit the force of this point of view: so Maryam went, hand in hand with her mother, to the kindergarten every morning.

And where she went, could not Leila go too? Or so Zeinab thought. Aisha was not sure about this. Leila was an adorable child, but was she as capable of benefiting from advanced education in the way that her own perfect daughter certainly would be able to?

And then there was the question of cost. Owen was barely richer than Mahmoud and Leila, damn it, was not even their daughter. Zeinab hadn’t the faintest idea about money except that she knew Owen hadn’t got any; so she applied, as she usually did, to her father. Nuri Pasha didn’t know much about money either — he left all that sort of thing to his steward — but he did know that he had less than he thought he did. However, he was interested in the latest French fashions when it came to ideas. He had brought up Zeinab very much au courant with them and had made no difference between her and his son, a decision much assisted by the fact that he couldn’t help noticing that Zeinab was about twice as bright as her brother.

So he saw no reason why Leila shouldn’t be educated, and the fact that she was the next best thing to a slave’s daughter was no problem to him.

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