The Last Cut

by Michael Pearce

  He followed the donkey up into the Gardens. There were fewer people there than on his previous visits; or perhaps it was that, with the sun now almost directly overhead, they had retreated into the shade.

  Over towards the regulator, Ferguson was ominously busy with white tape and a measuring rod. He waved to Owen as he went past.

  The workmen, as Owen had hoped, were having lunch. He squatted down beside them at the tray.

  ‘You here again?’

  ‘Babikr asked me to send you greetings.’

  The men received them in silence. Although Owen had embroidered a little when he was talking to Babikr, he had probably reflected their feelings.

  ‘He asked me to tell you he had sworn an oath.’

  The men looked up.

  ‘An oath, was it?’

  It did not excuse, but did explain.

  ‘Yes. He said he was beholden.’

  ‘Ah!’

  They went back to their eating.

  ‘I think better of him,’ said Owen, ‘but still I am worried.’

  He knew they were listening.

  ‘Why is that?’ one of them said.

  ‘Well, what sort of oath is it that dare not declare itself?’

  ‘A bad oath,’ someone said.

  ‘That is exactly what I thought. And then I thought: where does a bad oath stop?’

  ‘It’s stopped so far as Babikr is concerned,’ said someone.

  ‘For the moment. But where does the man who exacted the oath want it to stop? Why cannot he come forward and tell us the extent of the oath?’

  ‘If it was a bad oath, perhaps he is afraid,’ volunteered someone.

  ‘That is what leaves me afraid,’ said Owen. ‘And so I ask: to whom has he sworn the oath? Is there one of you who could tell me?’

  They shook their heads. That did not surprise Owen. Nor did it trouble him. No one would wish to do it openly, but they might well come later in private, whether as an individual or after the group had consulted among itself. As they had done before.

  ‘You see,’ he said, ‘if it has not stopped, further harm could befall. To Babikr. To us all.’

  ***

  ‘Yes,’ said Georgiades, ‘but you’ve never given me flowers.’

  ‘You don’t look like a flower person to me,’ said the gardener, inspecting him critically.

  ‘I’ve got a wife, haven’t I?’

  The two had become great buddies. They were sitting on the edge of a gadwal drinking the gardener’s tea, which, with Eastern hospitality, he had also offered to Owen.

  ‘Perhaps I will give you flowers,’ said the gardener, relenting.

  ‘You gave some to Babikr,’ Georgiades pointed out.

  ‘Not to Babikr; for Babikr. For him to give to another.’

  ‘Ah, there’s a woman in it, is there? And not his wife. For his wife stays in the village.’ Georgiades shook his head sorrowfully. ‘That a man like you should encourage vice!’

  ‘I did not encourage vice,’ said the gardener, stung. ‘I merely gave him some flowers. For which he paid me ten milliemes.’

  ‘Without knowing who they were going to? They might have been going to the Lizard Man for all you know!’

  ‘They were not going to the Lizard Man!’

  ‘Are you sure? I wouldn’t rule it out. Babikr was a friend of the Lizard Man, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He had other friends as well.’

  ‘Up here in the city?’

  ‘Look,’ said the gardener, ‘I know who the flowers were for and it wasn’t the Lizard Man!’

  ‘Whisper it to me,’ challenged Georgiades, ‘and I’ll believe you.’

  The gardener opened his mouth.

  Then closed it again.

  Firmly.

  ‘If I tell you,’ he said, ‘the Lizard Man might hear me!’

  Chapter Eight

  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-carriers 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 c
ared 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.’