Iris and Ruby (11 page)

‘Will she be all right?’

‘
Inshallah,
’ Mamdooh murmured, flicking his eyes towards the ceiling.

‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

‘Nothing, Miss.’

Ruby glanced around the kitchen. The walls were painted
a shiny, old-fashioned cream colour and the cupboards had perforated metal doors. There was a table covered with an oilcloth, an old-fashioned metal draining board at the side of the chipped enamel sink. There was a smell of paraffin and boiled laundry.

‘All right.’ She sighed. She knew something about sudden death but she had no idea about illness; it had never played any part in her life.

Iris wasn’t going to die right now, was she? What would happen to her, Ruby, if she did?

There was no answer to this. She would just have to wait for the doctor to come.

She wandered out into the courtyard and sat for a few minutes on the stool next to Iris’s empty chair, watching the way that sunlight turned the trickling water into a rivulet of diamonds. Soon she realised that she was very hungry indeed, and decided that it would be simpler to go out and buy herself something to eat rather than trying to negotiate Mamdooh and the kitchen. She checked that she had money in her trouser pocket and let herself out of the front door.

As soon as she started walking the heat enveloped her, and sweat prickled at the nape of her neck and in the hollow of her back. She kept to the shady side of the alleyway. There was an exhausted dog panting in a patch of deeper shade beside a flight of stone steps. He lifted his head as she passed and showed his pink tongue, and Ruby unthinkingly stooped to pet him. The dog cringed, lifting his legs at the same time to reveal a mass of sores on his belly. Flies rose in a buzzing black squadron.

Ruby shuddered and snatched her hand away.

She marched onwards, following the route to the busy street that Mamdooh had taken the day before. She had noticed plenty of little bakery and coffee shops in the bazaar, she would buy some breakfast there.

The underpass led her to the edge of the maze. She hesitated, looking back over her shoulder as if someone might be tailing her, then hurried into the nearest alley where coffee was one of the stronger elements in the thick tangle of smells. But the narrow shops and piled barrows here were all crammed with plastic toys and knick-knacks. Dolls’ pink faces leered at her and dented boxes containing teasets and miniature cars were piled in teetering pyramids. Two men had a tray of toy dogs that yapped and turned somersaults and emitted tinny barking noises. As Ruby tried to squeeze past, two of the toys fell off the tray and landed on their backs with their plastic feet still pawing the air. A trio of small boys bobbed in front of her, shouting hello and holding up fistfuls of biros. ‘Very good, nice pens,’ they insisted, jumping in front of her when she tried to dodge them. The crowd was dense, choking the alley in both directions. The stallholders began calling out and holding up their goods for her attention.

A man blocked her path. ‘This way. Just looking, very cheap.’ When she tried to edge past him he caught her elbow and she had to shake him off. He yelled after her, ‘Just looking, why not?’

She felt like shouting back that she didn’t want a plastic teaset, that was why not, but the effort seemed too great. Music pulsing from a tier of plastic and gilt transistor radios was so loud it was like walking into a solid wall. She pushed past the people immediately in front and a wave of protests washed after her. She turned hastily right and then just as quickly left, at random, trying to get away from the toy vendors and the people she had just trampled.

In this area of the market the stallholders and shopkeepers were selling clothes and shoes. Barrows were stacked high with Adidas nylon tracksuits and white trainers, and the walls were festooned with racks of shiny blouses and pairs of huge
pink knickers and bras with bucket-sized cups. There were more women shoppers now, all with their heads and throats swathed in grey or white scarves, all with long-sleeved tops and skirts that hid their legs. The tourists she had noticed yesterday were conspicuously absent. Ruby was sure that everyone was staring at her. She felt increasingly grotesque. Her hair obscenely sprouted and frizzed in the damp heat and her arms and breasts seemed to swell and bulge out of her tight T-shirt and her sweaty trousers bit into her waist and hips. She was too tall. Her skin was too pale and she was clammy with heat and rising panic.

She was also very thirsty but there was nothing as far as the eye could see except mounds of shirts and shoes, and bolts of synthetic fabric that made her drip with sweat just to look at them. She pushed forward, telling herself that somewhere not too far away there would be someone selling bottles of water. The shouts of the vendors and chipped quarter-tones of loud fuzzy music banged in her head.

She was gasping for breath as she stumbled out into a square that looked familiar. It was familiar – it was where Mamdooh had come yesterday, to meet his friends. There was the same coarse, dusty foliage and a pair of sun umbrellas rooted in pitted concrete cubes.

A group of men was gathered at an empty tin table. They weren’t eating or drinking – that was because of Ramadan, Ruby knew that now. But they weren’t talking either. They just sat in a horseshoe, looking out into the hot white light. Looking at her.

She walked forward, thinking she could ask for help because they had seen her with Mamdooh. But none of the faces betrayed even a flicker of recognition. She hesitated, not sure now whether these really were Mamdooh’s friends. Maybe it wasn’t even the same square. She detoured a few steps to the murky door of the café, intent on buying some
water, but when she peered inside she saw only men’s faces turning blankly towards her. A waiter wearing an apron looked on, absolutely unwelcoming.

Ruby turned tail, even though her throat was now painfully dry. She paced back into the sunlight in the middle of the square and turned full circle, trying to work out which of a half-dozen alley mouths to make for. She had no idea.

Her glance passed across someone leaning against a wall a few yards away, then jerked back again.

Here was a face she recognised. Where and when had she seen it before?

Yesterday, that was it. It was Nafouz’s younger, handsomer brother.

He was slouching, one knee bent with the foot pressed against the wall behind him. He was also openly watching her.

Ruby marched up to him.

‘I’m fucking glad to see you,’ she said, trying to hide just how relieved she actually was. ‘I’m completely, totally bloody lost.’

He looked slightly shocked at her language, but also pleased and – surprisingly – rather shy.

‘I think you are lost,’ he agreed, his nice smile showing his good teeth.

‘Are you
following
me?’

‘Why would I do that?’

He was still smiling so that she didn’t know whether it was a straight question or a mocking one.

‘How the fuck should I know?’

‘You swear very much for an English girl, Ruby.’

‘D’you have a problem with it?’

‘It is not problem for me, no.’

‘Right. Look, now you’re here, can we go somewhere and buy a drink? I’m really thirsty.’

He pushed himself away from the wall. ‘Of course. Please come with me this way.’

They made their way together down a thin passageway with the old walls on either side leaning inwards so they seemed almost to touch at the top.

Ruby said, ‘Um, I’m really sorry. I’ve forgotten your name.’

‘It is Ashraf. You can call me Ash.’

‘OK, then, Ash. Where are we going?’

‘To a place the tourists like.’ His smile flashed at her over his shoulder. He was definitely mocking her now, but she was too thirsty to bother with a response. They walked in silence for a few minutes. The gathering threat had subsided, Ruby noticed. Either she had been overreacting, or she had become less conspicuous because she had an escort.

After a few more corners of the maze she was about to protest, but then they came to an entire lane that was filled with rickety chairs and tables, spilling out of the open doors of a café. Waiters with trays held at shoulder height threaded between the tables, plonking down cups and bottles and bills. Ash had been right about the tourists, because almost all of the people crammed into the alley were Westerners with cameras and bags of bazaar purchases. Mucus-faced urchins and Egyptian women with dark faces and glittering eyes worked the tables, trying to sell purses and lighters and packets of tissues. Ash took Ruby’s hand and towed her through the crowd to a just-vacated table, well-placed on the threshold of the café itself. Peering into the gloom inside, Ruby saw the glint of huge, fogged mirrors covering the walls.

A waiter was already looming over them as she sank into a chair. She asked for a bottle of water and a cup of coffee and some yoghurt and then gestured to Ash.

He shook his head without speaking.

‘Sorry. Forgot,’ Ruby sighed.

When the water came she tore off the plastic top and downed half of it.

‘Why are you in Khan on your own?’

Ruby told him.

‘I am sorry for your grandmother’s illness,’ he said. ‘She will be well soon,
inshallah.
’

‘Yeah. I hope so.’

Once she had quenched her thirst and spooned up some yoghurt, Ruby sat back and looked around. Ash was watching the crowds, with his face in profile. He was very good-looking, with fine, almost feminine features and thick, long eyelashes. She reached out to the pack of Marlboro that showed in the pocket of his shirt.

‘Can I bum one of these?’

‘You are a woman. It is better not smoke in public.’

Ruby snorted, then clicked Ash’s lighter to the cigarette. After inhaling deeply she said, ‘So. No swearing or smoking. What am I allowed to do, according to you?’

Ash raised one eyebrow. ‘Maybe come for a ride with me?’

‘You’ve got a car?’ It was an entrancing idea. She was dying to see Cairo beyond this isthmus of ancient streets but after her experience in the bazaar she would have preferred not to try it alone.

Rather stiffly Ash said, ‘I have my moby. You can be pillion passenger.’

‘Moby? Oh, one of those bikes with engines. OK then.’ Ruby scraped the last of the yoghurt out of the jar.

‘You are still hungry I think.’

‘Yeah, I am, actually.’

Ash stopped the waiter and asked him for something. While they waited they smoked and watched the tourists come and go. Because she was with Ash and because Iris actually lived here, Ruby now felt superior to mere holiday-makers.

A plate was put down in front of her. There were two fried eggs and a basket of flat bread.

‘Perfect,’ she crowed, and Ash looked pleased.

While she devoured the food he told her that he worked at night as a telephonist in a big hospital. ‘Very good job,’ he said.

He was also trying to improve his English, and saving up to pay for a computer study course. Nafouz was helping him, but they had to give money to their mother and younger brothers and sisters. Their father had died more than two years ago.

‘May he rest with God,’ Ash added.

Ruby put her knife and fork down on a clean plate, and picked up the bill the waiter had brought. She frowned at the blurry blue numerals.

‘I would like to pay for you, but this place is not cheap,’ Ash said awkwardly.

‘Why should you pay for me?’

‘Because I am a man.’

‘I can pay for myself. For now, anyway,’ Ruby said. ‘And you haven’t eaten anything. Shall we go?’

They left the café and Ash led the way back to the underpass. It was surprisingly and disorientatingly close at hand.

Ash’s bike was locked to a grille in the wall at the end of the narrow street leading straight to Iris’s house and the big mosque.

‘What’s it doing parked right here? You
are
following me,’ Ruby accused. ‘Did you tail me all the way round that bloody bazaar?’

He only grinned and straddled the machine’s seat, sliding his hips forward to make room for Ruby on the pillion. ‘You are coming?’

‘I suppose so. Just for half an hour. Then you’ve got to bring me back to check how my grandmother is, right?’

She sat primly upright at first, but then the little machine shot forward and she had to grab Ash round the waist in order not to fall off the back. He sped into the traffic, weaving in and out of taxis and buses. Ruby ducked her face behind his shoulder, too afraid to look where they were going. The dusty sides of cars flashed past an inch from her thigh and clouds of gritty blue exhaust fumes made her eyes sting. When they stopped at traffic lights she put her feet on solid ground with a gulp of relief, but only a second later they would lurch forward again in a surge of metal and revving engines. Cairo appeared to be one solid mass of overheated chrome and steel.

‘You like?’ Ash howled at her over his shoulder.

‘I hate,’ she screamed back, but he only laughed.

They emerged into a vast square set about with tall buildings and with an inferno of endlessly revolving traffic trapped within it.

‘Midan Tahrir,’ Ash mouthed at her.

‘Is that so?’

He waved a reckless arm at a low pink block. ‘Egyptian Museum. Very famous, I take you soon.’

‘Can’t wait. Are we going to stop?’

‘Maybe.’

A moment later they shot out into slightly clearer air. Ruby saw branches and leaves against open sky as Ash swung the bike in a flashy circle and cut the engine to bring them coasting up against the kerb. Ruby sprang off, coughing and rubbing her eyes, and Ash locked the bike to a puny sapling rooted in the wide pavement. They were in a boulevard lined with trees. On the other side, beyond several lanes of traffic, was a low wall and then seemingly empty air.

‘Come,’ Ash commanded. He took her wrist and they darted into a gap between thundering buses.

Below and beyond the wall, there was water. It was a
wide, swirling, grey-brown river and on it sailed a dozen little boats with slanting masts and graceful sails like unfurled handkerchiefs. Ruby leaned far out over the wall, looking at the vista of bridges spanning the water, towers and distant trees.