The Last Cut

Chapter 8

One of the sights of Cairo was the water-carts. Every morning and sometimes at other points during the day they would go through the streets dampening down the dust. There was a tank at the back of the cart from which the water would spray out in little fountains. Urchins would dart in and out under the jets and after the cart had passed there would be a brief moment when the air was full of the seaside smell of water on hot sand. Cairenes loved that moment. They would come out into the doorways and sniff the air like dogs.

There was a water-cart ahead of Owen now. But it was not spraying the streets. It was standing at a corner and a group of water-carriers were filling their bags from the tank.

‘They won’t want to do that next week,’ Owen said to the driver as he passed. ‘Not when there’s water in the canal. What will you do then?’

‘Old man Fayoum will just move it further into the Gamaliya,’ said one of the water-carriers.

‘Ah, it belongs to Omar Fayoum?’

‘It certainly does. And they say he’s going to get another like it soon.’

‘He must be doing well, then.’

‘Never done better, he says. The last few months especially. Though I don’t know how that could be. It’s the same water, isn’t it? And it takes the same time to carry.’

‘Ah, but does it?’ said the man next to him, stooping to pick up his skins.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Owen.

‘Well, they do say he’s found another place where he can get it.’

‘That’s a lot of nonsense!’ said someone standing on the other side of the cart. Owen couldn’t see him clearly but thought it might be Ahmed Uthman, the husband of the woman who had taken Leila in.

‘It’s all got to come from the river, hasn’t it?’ said a man beside him. Owen could see him. It was Leila’s father.

‘Well, that’s more than we know,’ said the water-carrier who had first spoken.

‘You don’t know very much, then!’ retorted Ahmed Uthman.

‘What’s the trouble?’ said the driver of the cart. ‘Don’t you like our water?’

‘I like the water. It’s the price I don’t like.’

‘Well, you don’t have to pay it, then, do you?’ said the driver. ‘Tell him, Ahmed!’

‘Why don’t you just bugger off?’ said Ahmed Uthman, coming round the side of the cart.

‘Yes,’ said Leila’s father, joining him. ‘Why don’t you?’

‘Here, what’s going on?’

‘You don’t like the water? You don’t have to have it, then!’

‘Well, I won’t! Not if it’s like that!’

‘We won’t need to, will we? Not after the Cut!’ said his friend, supporting him.

‘We don’t like your water, either,’ said Leila’s father. ‘Wherever it comes from. We don’t want to see it in the Gamaliya!’

‘I take my water where I like!’

‘Oh, do you? Well, in that case-’

He moved forward threateningly.

Suddenly, he saw Owen.

Ahmed, it’s him!’ he said.

‘Him!’

Ahmed Uthman recovered first.

‘Get out of here!’ he shouted to the driver. ‘Quick!’

The driver seized his whip. Ahmed Uthman and Leila’s father threw their bags into the cart and leaped up after them. The cart shot away.

‘You watch out!’ shouted Leila’s father to the two water-car-riers as they lurched away.

‘We’ll be looking out for you!’ called Ahmed Uthman.

The two water-carriers stood there for a moment, dazed. ‘What’s all this about?’

‘I don’t know. Why do they have to be like that?’

Ahmed Uthman’s always like that. But what’s got into Ali Khedri?’

‘It’s his daughter, I suppose.’

‘He never cared two milliemes about his daughter! All he cared about was getting a job in that cart!’

‘Well, that’s gone, hasn’t it? Omar Fayoum won’t be interested in him now. Now that he’s not going to marry the girl.’

‘She’s well out of it, that’s what I say. Or would be if she wasn’t dead.’

‘She may well be. Do you know what Marriam said to me? She said, I’d rather be dead than marry that dirty old bastard!’

‘Ah, well, it’s one thing saying that-’

The two men shouldered their skins and walked away. Owen hesitated for a moment and then ran after them. ‘Your pardon, friends,’ he said. ‘I fear that I may have brought that on you!’

‘No pardon needed,’ they said courteously. ‘We brought it on ourselves. Though quite why-’

‘They did not like it when you spoke of where Omar Fayoum gets his water from.’

‘Up to some fiddle, I expect!’

‘Where does he get it from?’

‘He doesn’t always go to the river for it, that’s for certain. What do you think, Selim?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes into the es-Zakir and gets it out of the pond.’

The other man laughed.

‘He’d have to have something worked out with the gardeners.’

‘I wouldn’t put that past him.’

He looked at Owen.

‘You’re not supposed to take it out of the ponds,’ he explained. ‘Nor any other place where there’s stagnant water. Not these days. They say it’s not clean enough. Not for drinking. Though what Omar Fayoum is supposed to do and what he does are two different things.’

Owen was, as it happens, on his way to the Gamaliya. He wanted to make another attempt at a peaceful resolution of the dispute between the Muslim gravediggers and the Jews. The adjourned meeting had not resumed; but Paul and Owen, happening to meet up with McPhee in the bar of the Sporting Club, had agreed to try something out on the two sides.

McPhee was going to tell the Jews sternly that they could do the Cut, as it was their turn, but for no extra money. If the fact that it was the Sabbath ruled it out for them, then the Muslims would do it.

Owen, meanwhile, was going to talk to the Muslims, equally sternly, and tell them that it had been decided to return to the traditional arrangements for the Cut, that the Jews would do the cutting as it was their turn, but for no extra pay, and that if they didn’t like it, then the task would be offered to the Muslims. If there was any difficulty from them then British soldiers would do it.

The theory was that the prospect of the Jews declining would keep the Muslims happy, while the agonizing that the Jews would have to do over their decision would keep them, if not exactly happy, then at least preoccupied. With any luck both sides would dangle until the very last moment, until, in fact, it was too late for either of them to cause much trouble.

Thus the theory; not quite, at once, as simple in practice.

‘Suppose they don’t refuse?’ the Muslim gravediggers objected. ‘Suppose the buggers agree to do it after all?’

‘Well, then, they have to do it. It’s their turn.’

‘I don’t agree with this turn business,’ said one of the gravediggers. ‘Why have they got to have a turn at all?’

‘Because it’s always been like that’-normally a clinching argument in Cairo-‘and because it’s too late to change now.’

‘We can do it as well as they can!’

‘I’m sure you can. That is why we do it in turn. One year it’s you, the next year it’s them. This year it’s them.’

‘Yes, but this is the last year. We’re going to lose out.’

‘You don’t lose out. This is when it happens to stop.’

‘Yes, but if it stopped next year, then they’d be the ones to lose out!’

‘No one’s losing out. You’ve-’ a sudden moment of inspiration-‘you’ve both done it an equal number of times!’

They looked at each other, thunder-struck.

‘That so?’

‘Absolutely!’

No one was in a position to contradict. They subsided, grumbling.

But then returned.

‘Yes, but it wouldn’t have stopped if it hadn’t been for them, would it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Putting that girl there. That made it all wrong.’

‘That’s got nothing to do with it. Nor have the Jews, either. It was the Government that decided to end the Cut. For very good reasons, too. That land is a health hazard.’

Help arrived from an unexpected quarter.

‘I don’t think putting the girl there would have made it wrong, Mustapha,’ said one of the gravediggers diffidently. ‘It would have made it sweet, surely?’

‘Well, it would have if it had been one of their girls. But it was one of ours. I mean, you can’t have that, can you?’

‘The girl has got nothing to do with it!’ said Owen with emphasis. ‘Her death has got nothing whatsoever to do with the Cut. And she was not killed by the Jews!’

‘Who was she killed by, then?’ asked one of the men.

‘We don’t quite know that yet,’ Owen had to admit. ‘But we do know that she was not killed by the Jews.’

‘If we could be sure of that,’ said one of the more thoughtful gravediggers.

On his way back to the Ezbekiya, where he was meeting Zeinab, Owen cut across the Quartier Rosetti, and in doing so crossed the line of the Khalig Canal. To his surprise, down among the rubbish he saw Mahmoud.

‘Hello,’ he called. ‘What’s all this?’

Mahmoud looked up, saw him, and, with a certain amount of relief, climbed out and came towards him.

‘I’m retracing the line that must have been taken with her body,’ he said. ‘It’s a hell of a long way. She couldn’t have run there, as I had thought.’

‘It’s a long way to carry that sort of weight,’ said Owen, looking up the length of the Canal. ‘Not to mention the risk of being seen.’

‘That’s why he would have gone along the Canal,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It was dark, too.’

‘He’d have had to have known what he was doing to walk along the Canal in the dark.’

The bed was choked with rubbish.

‘That is what I am finding,’ said Mahmoud drily.

Owen offered to walk with him. He wasn’t meeting Zeinab till seven o’clock.

Their way led at first past the backs of some old Mameluke mansions with entrances on the Sharia Es-Sureni. Seeing them from the rear like this was a revelation because while from the front they looked solid and austere, from the back they were a riot of sixteenth century fantasy. Beautiful staircases dropped down to the canal, where, presumably, there would once have been boats, while above them rose meshrebiya oriels and pergola’ed terraces, feathery with palms and green with creepers.

They were once the most prized of houses and this the most prized of aspects. He thought of Venice but it was a Venice of the desert, where water was treasured and the stuff of paradise; almost literally so, for paradise was the old Arabic word for garden, a vision of shade and green and fertility among the heat and sand, oasis in the desert.

Now, though, the houses were decaying and crumbling, the staircases slippery with slime. The heavy, box-like windows overhanging the water let mosquitoes in through their fretwork and the stench alone was enough to drive their occupants into the rooms at the front of the houses.

Below the staircases, along the side of the canal, heavy, metal, distinctly unmedieval pipes ran for part of the way, themselves often covered by fallen masonry or rotten vegetation.

They were picking their way along the bed of the canal, past falls of rubble, slides of earth and sand, drifts of kitchen leavings and the occasional carcass, when they suddenly saw someone ahead of them. He turned to greet them as they came up. It was young Suleiman.

‘You see,’ he said, ‘here I am again.’

‘What is it this time?’

‘The same. I’m checking the pipes.’ He made a gesture of despair. ‘In so far as I can check them under all this stuff.’

‘Don’t you have instruments?’

‘We do. They show there’s a big water loss in this part of the system. We want to get it sorted out before we bring the new pipes in.’

‘You know the canal well?’

‘This part of it.’ He sniffed. ‘Too well.’

He was looking all the time at Mahmoud, seemed, in fact, almost to be avoiding looking directly at Owen. Owen thought this strange, since Mahmoud was the one who was pressing hardest. Something seemed to be bothering him with respect to Owen. Was it Zeinab? Had he seen them outside the Committee

Room in the National Assembly? Had it offended his prudishness? Or his feelings about Arab and Englishman? Whatever it was, it made it difficult for Owen to have a fatherly talk with him.

‘What do you think about it?’ Suleiman said suddenly to Mahmoud. ‘This business of female circumcision?’

‘Well, I-’ said Mahmoud, taken aback.

‘Labiba thinks you might be sympathetic to our cause.’

‘I am sympathetic,’ said Mahmoud, after a moment’s thought. ‘But it has to be a separate thing from my work.’

‘You’re a member of the Nationalist Party, aren’t you? Labiba says the younger members are beginning to understand that circumcision is bad. She says it will take time, but if the key younger ones are convinced, then a Nationalist Government of the future will take action.’

‘There will be a lot of things on which they will have to take action,’ said Mahmoud, neutrally but not unsympathetically.

He and Owen continued on their way. It was, as Mahmoud had said, a long way. And difficult to negotiate, even in daylight. Even more so in the dark. You would, indeed, have to know the canal well.

Owen was expecting Mahmoud to refer to this again. Instead, he said:

‘Why carry her this far? He must have had some reason. You know,’ he said, ‘I am beginning to change my mind. I am almost beginning to think there could be some connection with the Cut, after all.’

When they emerged from the canal, just by the temporary earth dam which divided the canal from the river, and where the Cut was to be made, Owen found the scene very different from when he had last visited it. Everywhere, brightly-coloured pavilions had sprung up, many of them walled round by little carpeted fences to form enclosures within which patrons could sit. Sellers of sweets, pastries, peanuts and sugar cane were marking off their pitches. Boats hung with bunting were already crowding about the entrance to the canal on the river side of the dam. And there were people everywhere, some of them workmen, many of them vendors, most of them simply onlookers getting in the way.

There was a great mass of people down in the bed of the canal pressing in round the foot of the giant earth cone. Over their heads Owen could see McPhee, large, pink, determined, and around him a ring of constables. He looked up and saw Owen.

Ah, Owen, pleased to see you. Very pleased.’

Owen forced a way through the throng.

‘What’s the trouble?’

McPhee pointed down to the foot of the cone.

‘This!’

The earth had been scraped away in what looked like the start of a small burrow, the sort of thing a rabbit might have made, if, of course, there had been any rabbits.

‘I don’t see the problem.’

‘What made it?’

‘A dog?’

‘What for?’

‘Well, Christ, I don’t know. A bone?’

‘Or several. They think another woman’s been buried here.’

‘It’s just a dog!’

‘They think it’s smelt it.’

‘Well, is that bloody likely?’

‘They think so. The first one was taken out, they say, so another one has been put there.’

‘It’s the Jews,’ said someone in the crowd.

‘We’re going to have to dig,’ said McPhee. ‘To show them.’ Owen nodded.

‘Right.’ He raised his voice. ‘The Bimbashi and I are sure there is no one buried under here. But just to show you, and set your minds at rest, we are going to dig. Now, are any of you good at-?’

A man shouldered forward.

‘Effendi, I am an expert!’

Owen recognized one of the Muslim gravediggers.

‘Just the man! Any more like you?’

Several fellahin eagerly came forward.

‘Spades?’

The constables cleared some space, linked arms and then leaned back against the crowd. The crowd supported them happily, craning over their shoulders to get a better look.

The gravedigger seized the first spade and began work enthusiastically.

Allah, what strength!’ said the crowd appreciatively.

The gravedigger, preening, redoubled his efforts.

‘What need is there for more when we have men who can work like this?’ asked Owen rhetorically.

‘What need for Jews?’ said the gravedigger over his shoulder.

‘Is that the place where the other was found?’ asked Mahmoud, who had pushed his way through to join Owen.

‘The very place!’ chorused the crowd.

‘I thought it was round the other side,’ said one of the constables doubtfully.

Mahmoud turned to him.

‘You were here?’

‘Yes, Effendi. I was at the station when they reported it. I came with the Mamur.’

‘And you think it was round the other side?’

‘I’m pretty sure, Effendi. And it wasn’t really under the mound. It was more beside it.’

‘Whereabouts?’

The constable extended an arm and pointed.

‘Under their feet?’

The crowd on that side moved back in consternation.

‘Yes, Effendi.’

Abdul, I don’t like standing here!’ said an alarmed voice. ‘Suppose the ground opens?’

‘Well, then, you’d bloody fall in!’ said the constable.

‘But then if there’s another body there-’

‘It’d be over here,’ said Owen, annoyed. ‘This damned dog is not a gold-miner.’

‘Just watch it!’ said McPhee. ‘We don’t want the whole cone coming down!’

‘Not on us, we don’t!’ said the constables, pressing back harder against the crowd, which had now grown to fill the whole bed. At the sides, men were climbing on to each others’ backs in order to see better. Above them, the bank of the Canal was lined yards-deep with people.

The gravedigger’s spade struck something hard.

‘Bone!’ shouted the crowd.

The gravedigger plunged his hand in before Mahmoud could stop him.

‘Stone!’ he said disgustedly, producing it.

Disillusioned, he stood aside to let the others take over. ‘Guide them!’ said Owen. ‘We don’t want the cone falling in.’

‘It takes an expert,’ said the gravedigger modestly.

‘If the body was found beside the cone,’ Mahmoud asked the constable, ‘why were they digging there?’

‘It’s the way they dig,’ said the constable. ‘They dig around it and pile the earth on top.’

‘How was the body lying?’

‘I didn’t look too closely,’ said the constable. ‘It was all bulged up. Like a camel’s belly.’

‘Why was it swollen? Had it been lying in water?’

‘There had been water. Because they’re always digging out the bed at this place, the bed is deeper here than elsewhere and the water lies longer.’

‘So she could have been thrown into water?’

‘Yes, Effendi.’

‘Not buried at all?’

The crowd had been hearing this.

‘Not buried at all?’

‘Just thrown there,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It could have been anywhere.’

‘Just like the Jews!’ said the gravedigger. ‘Couldn’t even make a good job of it!’

‘It wasn’t the Jews,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It was some bad man.’ The crowd was clearly disappointed. The diggers who had also heard, began to lose heart.

‘How about someone else having a go?’ said one over his shoulder. No one seemed very willing.

Even the Muslim gravedigger was beginning to doubt. ‘How long are we going to go on doing this, then?’ he grumbled.

‘Until we have set people’s minds at rest,’ said Owen sternly.

The gravedigger heaved out a few more half-hearted spadefuls.

‘I think their minds are pretty well at rest now,’ he said. ‘No,’ said Owen, ‘we must go on until all are satisfied. All night if necessary.’

All night?’ said the gravedigger. ‘Look-’

‘Unless,’ said Owen, looking around, ‘those knowledgable-?’ The front ranks of the crowd, who had been standing there longest, decided that they were knowledgable enough and began to drift away.

‘No woman,’ said one of them as he left. ‘That’s a bit of a disappointment.’

‘Well, you can’t strike lucky all the time,’ said his neighbour.

‘We didn’t even strike lucky that first time,’ said the man, ‘if what that Effendi said was true.’

‘No,’ agreed the neighbour despondently.

Owen, hearing, was very satisfied.

Mahmoud turned to him.

‘I must go now,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get back to the Gamaliya. There’s someone I want to see.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘The father. It was someone known to her, remember.’

There was still a small knot of people around McPhee. As he was passing, Owen heard one of them say:

‘Well, then, if it wasn’t a woman, what was it?’

‘It wasn’t anything,’ said McPhee reassuringly. ‘Just some animal.’

‘Why would an animal want to dig holes in the “Bride”?’

‘I don’t know. It was probably just a dog.’

‘It didn’t look like a dog to me. They don’t dig burrows. What do you think, AJhmed?’

‘It looked more like the thing a lizard would dig.’

‘Too big. Except-’

The thought struck them both at the same time.

A lizard man!’

Owen took an arabeah up to the Ismailiya, where he was meeting Zeinab for lunch. Not in an Arab restaurant-they looked askance at women, even Pashas’ daughters-but in a French one. Zeinab liked to eat French as well as dress French. She even normally spoke French, and she and Owen drifted in and out of French and English as the occasion arose. The culture of the Egyptian upper class was heavily French and there was as great a gap between it and that of the ordinary Egyptian as there was between the massive dams the British were erecting and, well, the Lizard Man.

Zeinab, however, was anti-French today. She had some intellectual periodicals under her arm, French, but different from the ones she usually took. She tapped one of them significantly.

‘Napoleon was against women,’ she said darkly. ‘I’ve been reading.’

‘Well, yes, but you’ve got to make allowances for the time.’ Zeinab took no notice.

‘It’s in the Code Napoleon,’ she said.

Which was still the basis of the Egyptian legal code. When the Khedive Ismail had wanted to reform and modernize the Egyptian legal system he had simply adopted the Code wholesale.

‘I don’t think you can blame him entirely,’ objected Owen. ‘Islamic law-’

Zeinab brooded.

‘Islamic law is men’s law,’ she said. ‘The trouble is, when you turn to the alternative, what do you find? Men’s law.’

‘Law is the same for everyone,’ said Owen. ‘If you commit a murder, you get hanged for it. Never mind whether you’re a man or a woman.’

‘Yes, but some things affect women more than they do men.’

‘Have you been talking to Labiba Latifa?’ demanded Owen. ‘Circumcision, for instance,’ said Zeinab.

‘That’s social practice, not law. Why don’t you talk to Mahmoud?’

‘I will,’ said Zeinab.

Owen had not intended to go back to the Gamaliya that day but when he returned to his office, he found Georgiades waiting for him. He had found out, he thought, the person whom Babikr had gone to see.

‘He’s a fiki,’ he said. ‘Several of the workmen go and see him. He used to live at their village but when he got old, he moved up here to be with his son. They still remember him in the village, and when the men come up here for the Inundation, they always take him something.’

‘A fiki?’ said Owen. ‘Then he might know of the oath, even if it wasn’t to him.’

A fiki was a professional reader, or singer, of the Koran and as a person of (some) learning and (some) holiness was the sort of person you might go to if you wanted a witness of authority when you were swearing an oath.

He lived in a small back street in the Gamaliya not far from the mosque. The son, slightly startled, showed them in.

‘It is,’ Owen explained, ‘to do with a man known to you, who used to listen to you in your village.’

The fiki nodded.

‘The men come to you, I know, each year when they are up here for the Inundation, bringing greetings from the village.’ The fiki nodded again.

‘Was Babikr among them?’

‘Babikr!’ said the fiki.

‘You know?’

‘I know.’

‘Was he among those who came to you?’

The fiki thought for a moment.

‘Yes.’

‘I wondered if he had talked of an oath?’

The fiki thought again.

‘I do not think so.’

‘It might have been one he had taken in the village. Do you recall such an oath?’

‘He took various oaths. All do.’

‘Do you remember the substance of the oaths?’

‘To do with wedding settlements. There was an ox once, I think. These were the usual foolish disputes.’

‘Do you recall them?’

‘They are not worth recalling.’

‘Yet Babikr, I think, was not a man to take them lightly.’

‘He was not,’ agreed the fiki. He warmed slightly. ‘He was ever true to his word.’

‘And would have kept to it,’ said Owen, ‘even if what he had committed himself to was not wise.’

‘Very probably.’ The fiki sat thinking for a moment. ‘Why do you ask these things?’ he said suddenly.

‘I think he committed himself to something that was not wise and then found he could not go back on it.’

‘You think the attack on the dam was not wise?’

‘Well, no,’ said Owen, startled. ‘It was an attack on all. It was a blow at the common good.’

‘I, on the contrary, think it was wise,’ said the fiki. ‘For what these new dams have brought us is not good but harm.’

‘But, surely-’

‘Harm!’ repeated the fiki emphatically. ‘They have brought us ill-being, not well-being. When I was young everyone in the village was strong and well. They needed to be, perhaps, because the Pashas bore down hard in those days. But they were not sick. Now they are sick from birth. The children grow up with red eyes. The men are listless in the fields. Is that good? Is that as it should be? That is what the dams have brought us. And you say that Babikr was not wise!’

‘The dams have brought abundance,’ said Owen.

‘But at a price,’ said the fiki.

‘It is not the abundance that is wrong,’ said Owen, ‘but how it is used.’

The fiki shrugged.

‘Certainly it never gets to us.’

‘It is not the dams that are bad but the people.’

‘You don’t see the people,’ said the fiki, ‘but you see the dams.’

And so you would strike at them?’

‘They have destroyed a balance. In the old days there was one crop a year and the people were healthy. Now there are three and the people are sick. I would restore the balance.’

Owen was silent.

‘Newness!’ said the fiki. ‘It is always newness! Why do we need these new dams? Were not the old good enough? Was not there water in the fields then as there is now? It is the same everywhere. They tell us this is the last year they are going to make the Cut. They are going to fill the canal in, people say, and put a tram-way on top of it. To what end? The canal brought water to the city, to us here in the Gamaliya. And now they are going to fill it in. You cannot drink tram-ways.’

‘There will still be water, indeed, better water. They are building pipes-’

‘Pipes!’ said the old man contemptuously. ‘Where once there was the canal itself, which all could see! It is not the Cut that they should be ending but all these new dams!’

‘All do not think as you do,’ said Owen quietly.

He got to his feet.

‘I had hoped that you would help me to ease Babikr’s load,’ he said, ‘for I do not think that his alone was the hand that broke the dam.’

The fiki looked troubled.

‘I would help Babikr if I could,’ he said. ‘But I do not know to whom he swore the oath.’

As Owen was going out of the door he turned back to the old man.

‘Did Babikr bring you flowers?’ he asked.

‘Flowers?’ said the fiki incredulously, looking at Owen as if he had gone out of his mind.

As Owen was crossing the Place Bab-el-Khalk, a Parquet bearer came running up to him.

‘Effendi! A message. For you. Urgent!’

It was from Mahmoud. It said:

‘Ali Khedri arrested by local police. Involved in fracas.

Now at Gamaliya police station. Shall wait there for you!