The Last Cut

by Michael Pearce

  Chapter Five

  McPhee stuck his head in at the door.

  ‘I’m worried, Owen.’

  ‘You are? About what, particularly?’

  ‘The licentiousness.’

  Owen put his pencil down.

  ‘I don’t know that we can do a lot about that, can we?’ he said cautiously.

  McPhee came further into the room.

  ‘I do feel that we ought to make some effort to, well, contain it.’

  ‘I’m not sure—’

  ‘You see, Owen, there will be mothers there. And children. Not to mention the Kadi.’

  ‘Ah, you’re talking about the Cut?’

  ‘I am sure it must make him uncomfortable.’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s been opening it for centuries, hasn’t he? I would have thought he was pretty used to it by now.’

  ‘And then there’s the Diplomatic Corps.’

  ‘Licentiousness? That’s hardly likely to trouble them!’

  ‘And think of the Consul-General’s wife!’

  ‘She’s not involved, surely?’

  ‘No, no. But she will see it. That’s the point. It’s pretty unavoidable. I do feel people ought to be protected against immodesty, Owen.’

  ‘Well, I… You don’t think she could just stay away? If it bothered her?’

  ‘But, Owen, she goes every year!’

  ‘Well, then… Surely, that means—?’

  ‘Owen!’ said McPhee severely. ‘She goes out of a sense of duty!’

  ‘I’m sure, I’m sure. Only—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t see what I can do about it.’

  ‘Couldn’t you ban some of the more outrageous forms of behaviour?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I really wouldn’t like to specify,’ said McPhee, cheeks growing pink.

  ‘That makes it difficult.’

  ‘I just feel,’ said McPhee earnestly, ‘that something ought to be done. Before it is Too Late.’

  ***

  ‘McPhee thinks I ought to ban immodest behaviour,’ said Owen, as he and the Consul-General’s Aide were leaning on the bar of the Sporting Club that lunchtime.

  ‘Certainly. I’ll speak to the Diplomatic Corps about it.’

  ‘No, no. He means in general.’

  ‘Isn’t that the Kadi’s business? Religion, morals and all that?’

  ‘But he’s going to be opening the ceremony!’

  ‘Well, then, doesn’t that suggest that he thinks it all right? I mean, his view of what constitutes immodesty might be different from that of a Scottish Presbyterian.’

  ***

  ‘I think I shall go to the Cut this year,’ announced Zeinab.

  ‘McPhee is worried about the immodesty of the proceedings.’

  ‘Then I shall certainly be going,’ said Zeinab.

  ***

  Yussef, Owen’s orderly, put the mug down and waited.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Effendi, the whole office will be going.’

  ‘Going? Where?’

  ‘To the Cut.’

  ‘All right, you can go.’

  ‘Thank you, Effendi. It is not for me I ask, but for my wife.’

  ‘You are taking her? Well, that’s very nice.’

  ‘Yes, Effendi. She believes it will make her fertile, you see.’

  ‘Really?’

  A thought struck Owen.

  ‘Just a minute. I thought she was fertile? Haven’t I been giving you days off—? Let me see, how many of them? Five, six, seven—’

  ‘But that’s it, Effendi! It works, you see!’

  ***

  All Cairo seemed to be quickening at the prospect of the festivities. More and more bunting was appearing in the streets around the canal. Along the river bank, boats were breaking out in flags. Enclosures for spectators, carpeted (on the enclosing fences, not the ground) were rising at both ends of the dam. Anxious overseers came twice a day to inspect the earthworks.

  ‘Fifteen and a half digits!’ cried the crier.

  Gardeners were perpetually watering the maize on top of the ‘Bride of the Nile’ and patting the cone into shape. The other Maiden, found beneath its base, seemed, fortunately, to have been forgotten.

  ***

  There had been a telephone call for him in his absence.

  ‘From a woman,’ said Nikos.

  This was remarkable. The telephone system in Cairo was still in its infancy and mostly confined to Government offices and businesses, in neither of which did women figure largely; indeed, at all.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure!’ snapped Nikos testily.

  The reason for the testiness was apparent when he revealed whom the call was from: Labiba Latifa. Nikos was not used to women; still less was he used to female steamrollers.

  Owen rang her back.

  ‘Ah, the Mamur Zapt! So pleased!’ she said. ‘I understand you’re taking an interest in this poor girl?’

  ‘No,’ said Owen hastily. ‘No. Absolutely not!’

  ‘That’s strange,’ she said. ‘I understood that you were.’ She hesitated. ‘But surely,’ she said, ‘you were with Mahmoud el Zaki when—?’

  ‘Coincidentally. Yes, coincidentally.’

  ‘A fortunate coincidence, though. For if it were known that the Mamur Zapt was taking an interest—’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Not formally, that is. I am afraid that as Government officers we have to keep to our remits. And mine is the political.’

  ‘But this is political.’

  ‘Not in my sense of the word. Which is rather strictly defined.’

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Labiba, ‘that there is a danger of the case falling between stools. Stools which are over-strictly defined. I suspect that Mr el Zaki feels much as you do.’

  ‘That is the problem,’ said Owen, ‘when you talk to Government officers. Perhaps you should really be talking to politicians?’

  ‘I always find it difficult to bring things home to them. Whereas when a Parquet lawyer is assigned a case, it is hard for him to deny that it is something to do with him.’

  ‘I am sure that Mr el Zaki will do everything he can. Unfortunately, I, myself—’

  ‘I understand that you were involved because of the connection with the Cut?’

  ‘I don’t think there is any connection. There was a risk at one time of one being wrongly made because of where the body was found but I think that risk has now diminished.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Labiba, ‘that is what I am ringing about.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I think the risk has grown again.’

  ‘Of course, there will always be ill-informed people who talk—’

  ‘Not entirely ill-informed; the girl’s father.’

  ***

  He asked Mahmoud if he could go with him. It was Mahmoud’s case; but if there was any possibility of those stupid—and potentially troublesome—rumours about the Maiden reviving he meant to get in there and kill it off quick.

  The man lived out beyond the bazaars, on the very edge of the old Arab city, just where it gave on to the Muslim graveyard and the desert. The streets in this part of the city were full of crumbling and decaying houses, many of them still beautiful. Beyond them, though, were houses which were not beautiful, little squat blocks, single-storey and single-room, made of cheap sun-baked bricks which the rain, sometimes hard in Cairo in winter, was already dissolving. The walls had shrunk and the roofs sagged, so that some of the buildings were now only half the height they had been, and you had to crouch to go in and crouch while you were inside. Many of them were shared, as in the countryside, with animals. But these were the richer houses.

  Out here on the very
rim of the city, all semblance of street plan had been lost. There were gaps everywhere and great stretches of rubble, which the sand, drifting in from the desert, was slowly covering. They stopped uncertainly.

  Some men were digging in the graveyard. Mahmoud asked them if they knew the house of Ali Khedri. One of the men nodded and then, glad of the excuse, put down his spade and came out to accompany them.

  ‘The house of the water-carrier,’ he said, pointing.

  It was one of the poorer houses. The walls had caved in so badly that the doorway had almost disappeared. You had to drop on to hands and knees to go in.

  Inside, everything was filthy. There were some rags in a corner, some water-skins thrown down carelessly, and over by the rear door some pots and pans. They did the cooking outside, presumably.

  ‘It needs a woman’s hand,’ said the water-carrier defensively.

  He was a short stocky man dressed not in the usual galabeeyah but just in woollen drawers. His skin had been burnt black by years of working in the fields and then walking in the streets. His eyes were reddish and inflamed, the usual ophthalmia of the fellah in the Delta.

  ‘We lived better than this once,’ he said. ‘I wanted to give it her again.’

  ‘Through marriage to Omar Fayoum?’

  ‘Well, why not? I know they said he was too old for her. That’s not the point, I said. It’s not how old you are, it’s how rich you are. And you don’t usually get rich until you get old. It takes time. That’s my experience, anyway. There are advantages, too. All you’ve got to do is hang on and one day he’ll be gone. And then you’ll have it all. That’s what I said. That’s what I said to her, too. Oh, I know he’s not young and handsome. I know he’s a hard old bastard. But that’s not it. The point is, he’s got a piastre or two. He’s got one cart, he’s talking of getting another. That’s real, that is. It’s not just a pair of nice brown eyes.’

  He spat on the floor.

  ‘Brown eyes!’ he said contemptuously. ‘They’re not real.’

  Ants were already gathering around the spit. There must be something in it, thought Owen. Sugar? Tobacco? Hashish?

  There was another stain just beside it. From it a moving column stretched across the floor and up the wall. Not ants, not cockroaches, either; some other sort of bug.

  ‘It needs a woman’s hand. I’ve never said she wasn’t good about the house.’

  ‘And yet you were going to marry her off?’

  ‘She was getting on. It would soon have been too late. I hung on as long as I could. And then old Omar comes along. “It’s now or never,” he said. “In another year she’ll be over the hill.” Mind you, I think he’d had his eye on her for some time. He was just waiting for the price to drop. “You don’t want them young and skittish,” I said. “Not in a wife, anyway. You want them hard-working and strong.” “I like them a bit skittish,” he said, with a grin. But he was ready to take her, all the same.’

  ‘But first he wanted her circumcised?’

  ‘No, no. He didn’t know anything about that. He took it for granted that she was. I took it for granted that she was. Her mother ought to have seen to that. Back at the village. It was only when they were putting the sugar paste on that they found out. Then they came to me fast. She’s not right, they said. Well, then, you’d better make her right, I said. And it was then we got into all this stuff about her being too old and him being too old.’

  ‘But you went ahead with it?’

  ‘Well, it would have been off, otherwise, wouldn’t it? Omar Fayoum is not going to want anything that’s not a hundred per cent, is he?’

  And now Owen’s ankles were itching. There were almost certainly fleas. They were all three squatting on the floor. There was nowhere else to sit.

  ‘So it was done?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then it went wrong?’

  ‘That old bitch! I don’t reckon she knew what she was doing when she did it. And I paid her good money, too! Not all, luckily. Some before, some after. When it came to after, I went to her and said: “You old bitch, you’ve done it wrong. I don’t mind paying good money for a good job, but this isn’t a good job, is it?” So I docked her some. Well, then she set up a great crying and shouting. It wasn’t her fault, she said. She said it was because the girl was too old. But she didn’t say that before, when we were making the deal! “You’ve cost me money,” I said. “Now she’s fit for nothing. She might not even be fit for old Omar when the time comes.”’

  ‘She was very sick?’

  ‘Couldn’t lift a finger. Just lay there. “This won’t do,” I said after a while. “You’ve got to pull yourself together, my girl.”’

  ‘You didn’t call a hakim?’

  ‘Hakims are for rich people. When you’re poor, you’ve got to get better by yourself.’

  ‘All the same—’

  ‘Besides,’ said Ali Khedri, ‘by that time it was too late.’

  ‘Too late? Why?’

  ‘Because I’d thrown her out.’

  ***

  ‘Thrown her out?’ said Mahmoud incredulously.

  ‘Yes. I didn’t have much choice, did I? Not when I found out.’

  ‘Found out? What did you find out?’

  ‘About her and this boy. To think that all the time I’d been arranging things with Omar Fayoum, she’d been carrying on with that little bastard! “I love him,” she said. “Love?” I said. “What’s that? How much is that worth? How much does that fetch in the market, then? And how much do spoiled goods fetch? You tell me that! You’ve brought shame and dishonour upon me,” I said.

  ‘Oh, then she wept and said it had amounted to nothing and it had all come to an end anyway and that she would marry Omar Fayoum if I wished.

  ‘“Wished?” I said. “What’s that got to do with it? Do you think he’s going to have you now? Or anyone else is, for that matter? You’ve made your bed, my girl, and now you’ve got to lie on it. Only you’re not going to lie on it in my house. Not in the house that you’ve brought disgrace upon!”

  ‘Well, then she wept and clung to me and begged me to let her stay. She’d work, she said, and find some way of bringing in some money. “I know your sort of work,” I said, “and if you think I’m letting my daughter go out whoring, then you’d better think again, my girl. I may be poor but I’m not that poor. Out on the streets is where you belong and that’s where you’d better go!”’

  ***

  ‘So she went?’ said Mahmoud, tight-lipped and angry.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you made no attempt to find out what had happened to her?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to ask. I thought that maybe she and that boy—But I kept seeing him around, he was always creeping around, and someone told me he was forever asking about her, so I reckoned that couldn’t be it. Then I thought that maybe someone would tell me, but no one did. And then one day I heard about that woman at the Cut, you know, that woman they found buried under The Bride. Well, at first I thought nothing of it, but then—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, I know some of the gravediggers, you see. And one of them has a brother who works at the mortuary. And he told him that he reckoned the girl that was found was my Leila. How he could tell, I don’t know. From what the man said who’d found her. But it set me wondering. And what I asked myself was, how did she get there? There, of all places? Well, someone must have put her there, mustn’t they? And they must have done it for a purpose. And do you know what I reckon?’

  He looked at Owen and Mahmoud almost triumphantly.

  ‘It was the Jews.’

  ‘Jews!’

  ‘Yes. They go in for this sort of thing, don’t they? And then there’s the Cut.’

  ‘What has the Cut got to do with it?’ demanded Owen.

  ‘It’s the last one, isn’t it? That ma
kes it a bit special. Well, what I reckon is that they wanted to mark it out, this being the last one, and it being their turn. They take it in turns, you see, them and the gravediggers from the cemetery here. I don’t know that I hold with that, really, but it’s been like that for centuries, they say. Turn and turn about. Well, this time it was their turn and I reckon they wanted to mark it out, this being the last time.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Well, that they put her there. It was the old tradition, you see. Bury a virgin under The Bride. And I reckon they thought that would round it off nicely. They’re great ones for tradition, the Jews. It was probably them who thought of the idea in the first place. Only I don’t hold with that, not with putting a good Muslim girl under the cone. Now if it was a Jewish girl, that might be different—’

  ‘You think they found your daughter and buried her under The Bride of the Nile?’

  ‘Not found her.’

  ‘Not…?’

  ‘Killed her. The bastards.’

  ‘She died,’ said Mahmoud, ‘from the effects of poorly performed circumcision. And from neglect and ill treatment afterwards. If anyone killed her, it was you.’

  ***

  They walked back up the Suk-en-Nahassin past some of the most ancient and beautiful mosques in the world, past the Sultan-en-Nasir, the Sultan Kalaun and El-Hakim, past the fountain house of Abd-er-Rahman and the Sheikh’s house next to the Barkukiya. The past was all about you in Cairo, thought Owen. That was the trouble.

  By tacit mutual consent they dropped into a café just before they got to the Khan-el-Khalil. Both were feeling depressed.

  ‘What do I do?’ said Owen. ‘Put him inside until the Cut is over?’

  ‘The Cut is not the problem,’ said Mahmoud.

  ‘No,’ agreed Owen sadly.

  ***

  Back in the office he said to Nikos:

  ‘There’s an old man down by the Muslim graveyard. Ali Khedri. A water-carrier. He’s probably harmless but I don’t want him saying things that could cause trouble.’

  ‘You want him picked up?’

  ‘No. But I want someone down there keeping an eye on things. Until the Cut is over.’

  ‘Georgiades?’