Iris and Ruby (26 page)

‘What is this place?’ she murmured.

Ash shrugged, carelessness only partly masking an evident anxiety.

‘Cities of the Dead.’ He grinned, flicking an eyebrow at her. Ruby looked at a broken wall of pink-tinged plaster that was printed all over with child-sized dark-blue hand prints, a charm to ward off the djinns.

All the little houses were tombs. But the whole place was busy with the living, too. There was an old man in a blue
galabiyeh
and a white headcloth, minding the sheep. A little boy sat on a step, stirring the dust with a stick, and his mother looked out of the doorway behind him and tipped a bowl of dirty water into the gutter. There was a tap on the wall beside her and she refilled the bowl and went inside again.

‘A place to live,’ Ash added.

Ruby kept quiet, waiting and half guessing why he had brought her here.

‘My family. You can meet them. Not Nafouz, of course, he is with the taxi.’

He wheeled the bike and they walked down an uneven street of tomb houses. The departing sun left an ash-grey light filtering through the feathery acacia leaves.

They reached an ochre-painted building with a single stone step, none of it very old-looking. Ash led the way and she followed, ducking her head beneath the lintel. Inside there was light from a single electric bulb, a table with an oilcloth, a very old woman sitting with a child in her lap. Ruby stared,
trying to make sense of what seemed so unlikely. In the middle of the small space was a raised stone covered with incised inscriptions. It was unmistakably a tomb, and above and around it lived Ash’s family.

The old woman and the half-dressed child both held out their hands to Ash.

‘
Misa’ al-khairat’ (evening of many good things)
. The woman beamed and the child scrambled off its grandmother’s lap and ran to him. Ash swung it up by the hands and kissed its brown cheeks.

‘
Habib, habib.
’

Then everyone’s eyes slid towards Ruby.

Ash said her name and added, my friend. Ruby carefully skirted the tomb, and went to stand in front of Ash’s grandmother. Her head was wrapped in a dark cloth, her skin was seamed with wrinkles and as brown as a walnut.

‘
Ahlan w-sahlan,
’ she said, with her bird-eyes on Ruby.

‘
Ahlan biki,
’ Ruby muttered, as Ash had taught her. She was rewarded with a string of Arabic exclamations and a wide smile. Ash’s grandmother folded Ruby’s hands between her own two. It was all right, Ruby thought. She couldn’t look quite as disconcerted as she felt. Holding the child in one arm, Ash was hunting among the jars and packets that stood on a shelf. Like Jas, she thought, or Ed – searching for something to eat as soon as he came home. This
was
a home, but the grave drew her eyes. She wanted to stare at it, but thought it would be better to pretend it wasn’t there.

A woman came in with a thin blue plastic carrier bag in either hand. There were shops too, then, in the Cities of the Dead.

‘
Ummi,
’ Ash said. He went to her and kissed her, and unwound the handles of the plastic bags from her fingers. He dumped the shopping on top of the grave.

Ash’s mother was small and thin, with the same dark eyes
as her sons. Ash introduced Ruby and they went through the same greeting, but
Umm
Nafouz (Ruby knew she must call her by the name of her oldest child, Ash had told her that too) was busier and less cordial than the grandmother had been. She turned away quite quickly and began to take bags of flour and tinned food out of the shopping bags. Ash scolded her and moved her to one side, so that he could do it. The child ran between them, laughing and exclaiming.

No one was looking at her now, so Ruby gazed at the room’s centrepiece. It had plain stone walls and a slab on top with all the lettering. How many people were buried within, and how long ago? The dead were too close. She looked quickly away again.

Ash’s mother was laying out pans and food, preparing to make a meal. There was a gas bottle with two ring burners beside the table, a radio and cassette player on a shelf, and a curtained doorway at the back of the room that must lead to where the family slept.

There was warmth in this place that more logically should have felt cold and gloomy. The child wriggled between her legs and Ash’s, and put its hands over its eyes, then lowered them just far enough to be able to peep over the fingertips. She was inviting Ruby to play the game.

Ruby hid her own eyes briefly then exposed them again. ‘Boo,’ she said and the child laughed. Ruby was quite surprised by this. Usually little kids disliked her.

It was dark outside. She looked quickly at her watch.

‘It’s half past five. I told Iris six o’clock, remember?’

Ash said, ‘You are right. I will take you home.’

Ruby put her hands together and bowed to Ash’s mother and grandmother. ‘
Masa’ il-kheer,
’ she said. Ash nodded as if he were her schoolteacher.

‘
Masa’ in-nur
,’ the two women replied. The grandmother lifted her hand in a blessing.

The child wrapped its arms round Ash’s leg and shouted a protest at him. He bent down and whispered something, then took a sweet out of his pocket and popped it into its mouth.

‘
Yalla
. Let’s go.’

The shepherd and his sheep had gone. Ash wheeled the bike and Ruby walked beside him, unsure what to say. There were lights in many windows of the little houses, people walking by with bags of shopping like
Umm
Nafouz’s, and in a beam of light from a doorway a couple of children intently playing a game with a handful of stones. Other tombs had barred doors, windows protected by metal screens. They were dark, guarding their secrets. Crooked alleyways led away in all directions. Ruby remembered how vast the burial areas had looked from up at the Citadel. You could get lost in here, among the dead houses, and never be found again.

He said, ‘You are quiet.’

‘Yes.’

‘You think it is a strange thing.’

‘It’s only strange … to me. That doesn’t mean it
is
strange.’

‘It is my family tomb. When we were young we came here once every week to visit, to have picnic among our dead, to celebrate the
moulid
. It is not a place of fear for us, but of memory and respect. Then after my father died …’ Ash shrugged. ‘It is a home to live in. And the dead and not-yet dead, we are company all together. Why not? The dead do not harm us, only the alive.’

A much bigger structure loomed ahead of them, a dome and finial outlined against the navy-blue sky.

‘See in here,’ Ash breathed. He took her by the wrist and they glided through heavy doors into a cold, close atmosphere. It was quiet enough in here, Ruby thought, to hear the dust settle. A shiver began beneath her hairline and ran the length of her spine. Ash clicked his cigarette lighter and a fragile nimbus of light spread around them. There were
more tombs here, but these were built in tier upon tier up to an invisible ceiling, carved and decorated over every inch with patterns and lettering and painted in red ochre and cerulean blue. Here and there, in the flicker of the lighter, was a glint of gold.

‘Mamluk tombs,’ Ash said. He traced the line of a stone wreath. ‘The stone carver, once he finished … kkkk.’ He mimed a chop at the wrist of the hand holding the lighter. ‘This work done, finish, no more carving for other masters.’

Their eyes travelled upwards, over the wealth of pattern. High above was a flattened arch picked out in flaking gold.

The flame died and left them standing hip to hip in the blackness. Ash’s hands cupped Ruby’s face and his lips brushed her cheek as he whispered to her, ‘You were polite to my family. Like a good Egyptian girl. My mother will not be so unhappy.’

They stood close together. Ash was warm and he tasted of cigarettes and spearmint chewing gum. Light spilled inside Ruby, a brightness so easy and careless that she wanted to laugh. It was partly to do with wanting Ash and his narrow, brown body, of course it was, and she was surprised by how much she did want him, but it was also the opposite of the negative balance that had troubled her in the mosque of Mohammed Ali. There was a positive here, glimpsed in the tomb house of Ash’s family and in the way that life continued among the remains of other lives. It was very strong in Ash himself.

‘Was this what you meant, when I asked you if you believed in God and you said
it is what I must do
?’

Ruby’s hand travelled through an unseen arc, to take in the Mamluk tombs and the Dead Cities and the people who had to live there.

To believe would be an explanation, a system, and a lifeline. Otherwise there was only dust.

‘God is good. He takes care of each of us.’

‘I wish I believed that.’

Ash laughed. ‘Infidel.’

Ruby pressed her head against his shoulder, ran her hands down the curve of his back to the hollow above his hip bones. He was beautiful.

‘Sit down here. We will smoke one cigarette and then I take you back to your grandmother’s house.’

He guided her to a ledge that ran around the base of the nearest tomb. The lighter clicked again.

‘But, you know, it is not a free ride. God does not do that. I work hard and go to school, English, and I hope I will learn computers. I told you this, learning is important. Nafouz and I, we must look after our mother and brothers and sisters and we will live in a better place. But for now …’ His shoulder twitched against hers. ‘ … For now, we can enjoy too sometimes. Why not?’

Ruby laughed. She still felt the lightness inside her. ‘Yeah.’

Ash was vital, springing with energy. He wasn’t bored or disgusted with everything, as she quite often felt in London, and he was different from Jas. Jas used to lie on his bed for days at a time, smoking weed and listening to music.

‘So now you have made a tour, eh? Citadel, Mamluk tomb, my family.’

‘Yeah.’ The shock of the tomb houses still reverberated. She needed some time to absorb what she had seen.

‘Ruby, it is not possible for everyone to live in a house the same as your grandmother.’

‘I know that,’ Ruby said.

‘Now. It is time. I take you back.’

‘Will we go out again soon?’

‘Of course we will.’

They rode back to Iris’s door. When she looked up at the high wall, with not a light showing anywhere, Ruby thought
of Iris sitting alone inside with only the two old people to look after her. Ash’s grandmother seemed the luckier, with her children and grandchildren around her and the dead too, everyone together.

Why was Iris cut off from her own daughter, and Lesley from her mother?

She would ask, Ruby decided. She would find out.

She scrambled off the bike and kissed Ash goodnight.

‘
Ma’ as salama,
’ she said.
Go in safety
.

‘Good,’ he crowed. ‘Soon you speak Arabic as well as me.’

CHAPTER NINE

The child has been to the cemeteries. As we are drinking our tea together she tells me about it and I can see that the experience has shocked her.

‘People live right on top of the graves. In the little tomb houses. There are sinks and electric lights and kids’ toys, just like anywhere else.’

Ruby’s appearance is changing. This morning her face is bare of the black paint and most of the studs and metal-work, and without this angry disguise she is becoming more familiar, as if history is seeping under her skin and bringing family contours to the surface. I can see something of my mother in the set of her mouth, and I notice for the first time that she has Lesley’s hazel eyes. She still tries to be hard-boiled, but I am beginning to see more of the underlying innocence. She is even swearing less than she did when she first came.

I tell her, ‘The cemeteries are poor areas, but they are quite respectable. There are schools, sewerage, clinics. Further on towards Muqqatam are real slums. Don’t go there, please.’

‘Ash said the one they live in is his family tomb.’

‘That’s right, it would be.’

‘But …’ She shivers a little. ‘All the dead people.’

‘Are you afraid of the dead? Of death?’

Of course she is; she is young.

‘No. Well, not of ghosts or … djinns. But I wouldn’t like to sleep the night in a cemetery.’ Her face changes, a shiver passing over it like wind across still water. ‘I don’t want to die.’

‘Someone close to you has, haven’t they?’

I was expecting to hear about a family dog, or perhaps even a school friend in a car accident. Her answer surprises me.

Ruby tells the story quickly, without embellishment, but her mechanical delivery hardly disguises the depths of horror. The last image of the crumpled boy with his head in a pool of dark blood will stay with me, too. I am filled with concern for her.

‘Ruby, who knows about this?’

‘I told Ash. But then I felt bad, like I was using Jas’s death to get sympathy or attention or something.’

‘No one else? Not your mother or father?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why didn’t I tell them that Jas was on one then fell off a balcony and died?’

‘That would be the normal expectation, I suppose. You witness a tragedy, the violent death of a young man who is a close friend. Your mother would comfort you, wouldn’t she? She would want to do that.’

Ruby looks me straight in the eye.

‘You didn’t.’

She is very sharp, and I deserve that stinging observation.

‘No.’

‘The thing is, Lesley and Andrew didn’t really know about Jas. He wasn’t the kind of person they would go for. Don’t
get me wrong, there wasn’t anything bad about him. He was kind, never wanted to do anything to hurt people, and he was funny, but he wasn’t plugged in to things most people care about, like money and jobs. I suppose some people might have thought he was a bit messed up. Lesley would have done.’

Ruby sighs. ‘She’s my mother and all that, and you know how that works.’

Her expressive hands sketch in the air, miming a smooth ball and then suddenly turning into claws, raking the layer of space trapped between them.