The Last Cut

by Michael Pearce

  Mahmoud had asked Ali Khedri that.

  ‘What business is it of yours?’ Ali Khedri had said truculently.

  Mahmoud had told him.

  Grudgingly Ali Khedri had told him that he had finished his water-carrying rounds early that day and gone to help Omar Fayoum’s driver to unharness the horse. They had stayed for a while, chatting.

  ‘How long?’ asked Mahmoud.

  ‘How do I know?’

  About a couple of hours, he had finally acknowledged.

  ‘Who was there?’

  Omar Fayoum, the cart driver, Ahmed Uthman and one or two others.

  When had he left?

  When it began to get dark; which would have put it at just about the time that Leila was setting out for the souk.

  ‘Did you leave with anyone?’

  Ahmed Uthman; but then they had parted, Ahmed to his house, Ali Khedri to his.

  ‘Ahmed Uthman confirms that,’ said Mahmoud. ‘But what of course we don’t know is what happened after they separated.’

  According to Ali Khedri, he had stayed at home. He had made himself some supper. He had not gone out. No one had called; until that silly bitch Fatima had burst in with all her shouting.

  ‘I’ve had people out checking if anyone saw him that night,’ said Mahmoud. ‘So far without success.’

  ‘Why are you asking me these questions?’ Ali Khedri had shouted in the end.

  ‘You attacked one,’ Mahmoud had said. ‘Might you not have attacked another?’

  ‘My own daughter?’

  ‘From the way you have spoken of her,’ said Mahmoud, ‘yes.’

  ‘It’s not me you want to be talking to,’ Ali Khedri had shouted. ‘It’s that boy!’

  Chapter Eleven

  It was the last time—or so everyone present hoped—that they would have to meet, the last occasion, as McPhee, with a sense of history, pointed out, on which there would actually be a meeting of the Cut Committee.

  ‘When will they start filling in the canal?’ asked the Kadi.

  ‘Oh, not for some months yet,’ said the Minister. ‘We’re still not quite sure of the money.’

  ‘Surely some has been set aside?’ said Paul.

  ‘Yes, but there’s talk of raiding it. To pay for the new Manufiya Regulator, you know.’

  ‘Is there any chance of the whole thing being put off?’ asked the Kadi. ‘At least for another year? That would be very popular.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said the Minister. ‘The contracts have been let.’

  They had reviewed the arrangements for the day. It would start early. During the night the workmen would have been busy cutting away the dam until only the thickness of a foot was left. At sunrise the Kadi’s barge would appear and the Kadi would read a proclamation.

  ‘The usual turgid stuff, I’m afraid,’ said the Kadi.

  Then a boat would be pushed through the remaining earth wall.

  ‘Not mine, I hope?’ said the Kadi anxiously.

  ‘No, a small one,’ said McPhee, ‘with an officer inside it.’

  ‘Stout fellow!’ murmured the Kadi, relieved.

  ‘Then the water will pour through and demolish “The Bride”.’

  ‘That will be all right, will it? I mean, it will be demolished?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘We wouldn’t want anything to go wrong. The Bride’s been a bit unfortunate this year.’

  ‘Look,’ said McPhee, ‘they’ve been doing this for nearly two thousand years.’

  ‘Just making sure.’

  ‘What about the gold?’ said McPhee.

  ‘Gold?’

  ‘They used to distribute purses of gold among the crowd.’

  ‘Well, they’re not going to this time!’ said Paul. ‘The treasury would have a fit.’

  ‘What about policing?’ asked Garvin.

  ‘All ready, sir,’ said McPhee. ‘I’ve got extra men out this time. In view of—well, you know.’

  ‘What about that?’ asked Paul. ‘Where have we got to over who is going to do the actual Cut?’

  ‘Still dangling. The Jews are still making up their minds about whether they’re prepared to do it but for no extra money. And the Muslim gravediggers are still hoping they’ll say no.’

  ‘Well, they’ll have to make up their minds tomorrow evening.’

  ‘That’s when we can expect trouble,’ said Owen.

  ‘We’ll be ready for them,’ promised McPhee, grim-faced, however.

  ‘Actually, I’ve got a suggestion,’ said Owen.

  ‘So long as it doesn’t cost money,’ said the Minister.

  ‘Well, it needn’t cost any extra money. It’s more a question of cost displacement.’

  ‘My God!’ said Paul. ‘He’s talking like an accountant! And I thought he was a friend of mine!’

  ‘It was your saying that they might raid the money to pay for the regulator that gave me the idea,’ said Owen, turning to the Minister.

  ‘Look,’ said the Minister, ‘one raid is enough!’

  ‘No, no. That wasn’t the idea. The thing is, the Canal is going to have to be filled in. And they’re going to have to pay people to do that. Well, why shouldn’t we promise that work to the Jews and the gravediggers? On condition that they don’t cause trouble tomorrow? The work will have to be done by someone, won’t it?’

  ‘I quite like this idea,’ said Paul.

  ‘It would get us off the hook,’ said Garvin.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be merely postponing trouble?’ asked the Kadi. ‘I mean, they’re still going to find it difficult to work together.’

  ‘They wouldn’t need to work together,’ said Owen. ‘The Jews could start at one end, the Muslim gravediggers from the other.’

  ‘I think this is a brilliant idea!’ cried the Kadi. ‘We could make it a race!’

  ‘First to get there gets a bonus, you mean?’ asked the Minister.

  ‘I was thinking of honour and personal satisfaction,’ said the Kadi reprovingly.

  ‘I was thinking that if they got to the middle at different times, they need never actually meet,’ said Owen. ‘And then there would be no trouble.’

  ‘You know,’ said Paul, ‘this suggestion has considerable merit.’

  ‘It is a suggestion,’ said the Kadi, admiring, ‘worthy of the Mamur Zapt.’

  ‘Right, then,’ said Paul briskly. ‘That settled? Anything else?’

  ‘Well, there’s the Lizard Man,’ said the Kadi.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Minister. ‘There’s the Lizard Man.’

  ‘Lizard Man?’ said Paul.

  ‘Active around “The Bride of the Nile”, apparently.’

  ‘I’ve got a guard on,’ said McPhee.

  ‘Against the Lizard Man?’ said Paul.

  ‘I hope there’s going to be no diversion of resources away from the dams,’ said the Minister. ‘Guards are needed there, too, you know.’

  ‘I thought the chap was in prison?’

  ‘No, no. Against the Lizard Man.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Paul, pulling himself together; ‘we’ve got guards everywhere against the Lizard Man?’

  ‘At the Cut, certainly.’

  ‘Exactly why—would you tell me exactly why—it has been found necessary to have guards against—against a—a Lizard Man?’

  ‘There have been rumours that he’s taking an interest in the Cut this year.’

  ‘It’s not the Cut I’m bothered about,’ said the Minister. ‘It’s the dams. We’ve got a lot of money tied up there, you know. If another went—’

  ‘I think the Cut is the more immediate danger,’ said the Kadi.

  ‘What makes you think a threat is posed to—to either the Cut or the dams by—by—by a Lizard Man?’

 
; ‘There have been incidents,’ said the Kadi.

  ‘Have there?’ Paul was looking at Owen.

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘He’s blown one up,’ said the Minister. ‘He could blow up another.’

  ‘But I thought—?’

  ‘I doubt if the incidents themselves amount to anything,’ said Owen. ‘The point is, though, that the public thinks they do.’

  ‘I see. And you hope that when it sees a guard, it will feel reassured?’

  ‘I hope so. Actually,’ said Owen, ‘it’s a bit more complicated than that. As I say, I don’t think the incidents themselves amount to anything, but it’s what, in a way, they express that is important.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘Anti-Government feeling,’ said the Kadi.

  ‘Anti-British feeling,’ the Minister corrected him hurriedly.

  ‘You think the Lizard Man is a Nationalist?’ asked Paul.

  ‘Well, no,’ admitted the Minister. ‘It’s just that there’s a lot of popular unrest at the moment over the ending of the Cut and they blame—’

  ‘There’s a lot of feeling, too, about the dams,’ said the Kadi.

  ‘Well,’ said Paul, beginning to gather up his papers, ‘I don’t know that there’s a lot this Committee can do about either of those. As for the Lizard Man,’—he took care not to meet Owen’s eye—‘that, I feel, is the sort of thing that is best left to the Mamur Zapt.’

  ***

  When Owen got back to the Bab-el-Khalk he found his orderly, Yussef, fussing around in his office, changing, among other things, the water in the earthenware pitcher which, as in all Cairo offices, stood in the latticed window. The theory was that the breeze would cool it but that, of course, worked only when there was a breeze. Today there wasn’t and the water was on the hot side of lukewarm. It had, moreover, a fly in it, which Yussef dispatched, with the water, out of the window. Then he refilled the pitcher from the big brass-beaked jug that he was carrying.

  ‘It’s the best, Effendi,’ he said reassuringly to Owen. ‘Straight from the river.’

  ‘Oh, good.’ Owen took a sip.

  He put the glass down.

  ‘Straight from the river, you say?’

  He had only just begun to think about such things.

  ‘It’s all right, Effendi,’ said Yussef anxiously. ‘It’s not green.’

  ‘Green’ water was the first of the year’s ‘new’ water, the beginnings of the new flood, so-called because of the greenish tinge given it by either the vegetable matter of the Sudd or the algae of the Sobat (opinion was divided). Opinion was divided again over the properties of the ‘green’ water. Did it induce love-sickness? Or did it merely cause diarrhoea?

  Green or not, the water was the only water in town, or, at least, in the Bab-el-Khalk and Owen had been happily drinking it for the past two or three years. Now, however, he sipped it meditatively.

  ‘Effendi,’ said Yussef, eager, possibly, to divert him, ‘there is a man to see you.’

  ‘There is?’ Owen put the glass down. ‘How long has he been waiting?’ he demanded.

  Yussef waved the question aside.

  ‘He is but a fellah, Effendi,’ said Yussef dismissively. Yussef had been but a fellah too but now that he had risen to the dizzy heights of orderly he was inclined to look down upon his country cousins.

  ‘Show him in!’

  Suleiman’s father came diffidently into the room.

  ‘Effendi—’

  ‘Mr Hannam!’

  And to show Yussef what ought to be what, Owen ordered coffee.

  ‘Effendi, I apologize for disturbing you when you must be so busy but Labiba Latifa told me—’

  ‘Labiba Latifa? You’ve met her?’

  ‘Yes, and she told me that you were concerned about—Effendi, I have tried to persuade him, I have even used a father’s authority, although that doesn’t seem to go far these days—’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘My son. You asked Labiba—’

  ‘Yes, indeed. I advised her to use her influence to get the boy out of the Gamaliya for a time. And you have been adding your efforts?’

  ‘Well, yes, Effendi. But without success. He will not listen to me. He will not listen to his father! He says he is on the brink of finding out something that his chiefs will be very pleased about and that will make his career. He asks me if I do not wish well for him, if that is not what I want, him to do well, to make a success of his career? And, Effendi, I do, that is what I sent him up here for. Water is our life-blood, I told him, but it comes in different forms. In the fields it is sweat, in the city it is money. Effendi, I have laboured in the fields and done well enough, but that is not what I want for my boy. And now he says: “Father, I have done what you ask and now, just when I am getting somewhere, you bid me to leave!” “You can do as well elsewhere,” I said. But he said: “No, father. We get but one chance in our life—you have told me that yourself—and for me this is it!” So what shall I do, Effendi? What shall I say to him? I come to you!’

  ‘Has he said what he is on the brink of finding out?’

  ‘No, Effendi. It is to do with his work.’

  ‘I think I know what it is. It is important but it is nothing compared with his life.’

  ‘You think it may come to that?’ said Suleiman’s father, troubled.

  ‘I hope not. Nevertheless, he has enemies in the Gamaliya. As you have.’

  ‘He is too young to have enemies. Such enemies!’

  ‘I think so, too. And therefore I think he would be better out of the Gamaliya.’

  ‘I begin to wish I had never sent him up here. Terrible things happen in the city. First that girl. Then this!’

  ‘Good things happen also, and they can happen to him. But I think it would be well if he were out of the Gamaliya for a time. He stands on the brink, you say? How near is that? Is it a matter of days? Or weeks?’

  ‘I do not know. Days, I think.’

  ‘If it were a day or two, and if he watched his step, all could yet be well.’

  ‘I will tell him that,’ said Suleiman’s father, relieved.

  ‘But let it not drag on!’ Owen warned.

  ‘I will tell him that, too. And insist that a father’s authority shall not be set aside!’

  Yussef brought coffee. Over its aromas, Suleiman’s father calmed down.

  ‘What things happen in the city, Effendi!’ he sighed. ‘What things happen in the city!’

  ‘Things happen in the country, too,’ said Owen, ‘and one thing that especially interests me is what happened once, years ago, between Ali Khedri and yourself.’

  Suleiman’s father was silent for a while, a long while. Owen sipped his coffee and waited. He knew better than to hurry the old man. In Egypt, where all present things had roots in the past, such conversations took a long time.

  ‘It was a dispute over water,’ said Suleiman’s father at last. ‘In the villages most disputes are. We ploughed adjoining fields. Between our fields there was an old canal, not much used because now there was a new and better one which went past the end of my field but not past his. I allowed him to build a gadwal across my land and take off water from the new canal. The old canal was on my land and one day I decided to fill it in. Ali Khedri objected.

  “You cannot do that,” he said.

  “Look,” I said, “we have the new canal and I have allowed you water. The old canal stands idle, and it is on my land. I will plant it with cotton.”

  ‘But Ali Khedri said: “The canal is not yours but the village’s.”’

  ‘I said: “It is on my land.”’

  ‘Well, we went to the sheikh and to the omda and then to the Inspector and they said that I was in the right. So I filled it in and planted cotton. And Ali Khedri was very angry and one night he came
and beat the cotton down. And I said: “If that is what you do, then I will beat you down!” And I tore out his gadwal.’

  ‘So then he was without water?’

  ‘He had to carry it. Well, it is hard to carry enough if you have fields, and his crops dwindled and my crops throve. I would have let him build his gadwal again if he had said a soft word, but he did not. So I hardened my heart against him.’

  ‘Did not the neighbours bring you together?’

  ‘They tried but he would not listen to them. “I would rather carry,” he said, “than accept from him, even though I go poor.” Well, he went poor and in the end he had to leave, and now I own his fields, and many others.’

  He looked at Owen.

  ‘These things are not good, I know, but life in the fields is hard. Although not as hard as life in the city if you are a water-carrier.’

  ***

  In this heat you needed to take fluid frequently and some time later Owen found himself pouring out another glass of water. As he raised it to his lips his conversation with Yussef came back into his mind. He put the glass down again.

  ‘Yussef,’ he said, ‘where does this water come from?’

  ‘The river, Effendi. Right from the middle. It’s the best.’

  ‘But how did it get here? Here, to the Bab-el-Khalk?’

  Yussef shifted his turban to the back of his head and scratched.

  ‘How did it get here? In a water-cart, I suppose.’

  ***

  ‘Water-cart?’ said the man from the Water Board indignantly. ‘No it doesn’t! You’re one of the buildings on the pipes!’

  ‘I’ve never seen them.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you? They’re underground. Look, there are two sorts of pipes and they bring two sorts of water.’

  ‘From the river?’

  ‘From our pumping station on the river. One sort of water is filtered and that’s for drinking. That’s the stuff, I hope, that Yussef gives you. The other sort is unfiltered—it comes straight out of the river—and that is for irrigation. It’s the sort of stuff you see in the parks and gardens on watering days. We turn the cocks on and flood the place. And then it all seeps down into the ground and comes back again, into the river. Water-carts? Look, water-carts are a health hazard, about as big a danger to health as that bloody old canal they’re about to fill in. It’s all right when they’re carrying water to damp down the dust in the streets but what some of the buggers do is sell water from the cart for drinking. And that’s not the worst of it!’