“Tourists are quite safe provided they don't do anything stupidly reckless,” Captain Owen, the Mamur Zapt, Head of Cairo's Political CID under British Rule, assures the press. But what of Monsieur Moulin, kidnapped while taking tea on the terrace at Shepheard's Hotel? How has Mr. Colthorpe Hartley also disappeared? No one actually saw either victim vanish. Are these ordinary crimes? Are they intended as deliberately symbolic blows at the British? Or are they just a means of discouraging tourism? Owen had better unravel it quickly or else. And where better to start than with the donkey-vous beneath the terrace, home of Cairo's humble but enterprising youths who hire out their donkeys for photographs and rides.
