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Treatment
Production Schedule & Attachments
with Ali who persuades him to return to the village to teach him cricket. Impressed by Oates’ interest in the local scene, Violet softens towards him.
At a set-piece ball in the British Consulate, British and Egyptian attitudes are contrasted and illustrated. Two Egyptian lawyers, one of whom, Suleiman, is later to have a pivotal part in the trial of the Denshwai villagers, arrive and are shocked at the presence of alcohol and the décolleté dresses of the European women as they dance. The lawyers leave. Blunt seeks redress for his imprisoned servants and Cromer leans on the British President of the Appeal Court to release them. The Khedive and his party arrive and conversation between him and Cromer reveals that both parties know where the reality of |
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power resides. Oates, an inadequate dancer, is sent to the dance floor by Boyle to rescue Violet from the unwelcome attention of Captain Harman, one of the officers involved in the hunting of Blunt’s land. Oates and Violet find their way to the garden of the Consulate. They embrace and kiss.
But the rapprochement doesn’t last for long. Lord Cromer decrees that the army should march from Cairo to Alexandria to “show the flag” and, on the way, a group of officers makes a diversion to Denshwai to shoot the villagers’ domestic pigeons, where in mysterious circumstances the village threshing floor bursts into flames. Oates, there to honour his commitment to teach Ali cricket, has to rescue the officers from an angry mob. One of the officers dies of sunstroke and the British garrison is called out because it is suspected that he has been killed by the villagers. To the horror of Oates, Ali, who has been looking after the officer and giving him water, is killed by British soldiers when he
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