The Last Cut (5 page)

It was only when they began to think about the wedding— and there were plenty of women in the street who were ready to help him think about the wedding—that the problem was spotted.

It arose when they began to think about the wedding night itself and were making arrangements for the dépilation.

‘Old Fayoum’s not going to like that,’ they said. ‘He’ll think there’s something wrong.’

So they went to see Leila’s father.

‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘There’s still plenty of time. Just get on with it.’

It was here, though, that opinions had begun to diverge, for some of the women hadn’t liked it.

‘She’s too old,’ they said. ‘Since it’s got to this stage, it’s best left as it is.’

But Leila’s father had been adamant.

‘Now it had got so far, he didn’t want anything to go wrong. He was counting on that job on the cart, you see.’

A number of the women who had been approached had been unwilling to do it. Um Fattouha herself had refused.

‘I might have done it better than that old bitch,’ she said, ‘but even if it had gone right, there would still have been problems, wouldn’t there? At her age it would have taken time to heal. Just think of the wedding night if she wasn’t ready!’

In the end, though, someone had been found and the operation performed.

‘Well, it went wrong from the start. There was that much blood! Or so I hear.’

Leila had never recovered. She had lingered on for a few days and then died.

‘And that old bastard was too mean even to bury her properly!’ said Um Fattouha indignantly. ‘He just threw her into the Canal like a bit of old rubbish!’

(5Wk9

The swollen river lay uneasily within its banks. Even in the last day or two it had risen noticeably. Now as you walked along the embankment the water was lapping at your feet. The launch came right in to the bank. Owen hardly needed to step down. Along the banks the women were doing their washing, their silver anklets flashing in the sun. Further along, the buffaloes were lying in the water like hippopotami. The great stretch of the barrage rose up ahead of them.

Ferguson was waiting at the landing stage.

‘Aye,’ he said, ‘it’s full. And when it’s full, it’s never still. It’s straining, you see, straining to break out. And when it presses, it finds all the weak spots.’

They walked through the Gardens to the engineers’ office, built out of the same sun-baked clay as the houses of the workmen further down the canal. In the early days they had built it of wood but then had found that wood was much hotter than clay, particularly when the walls were thick and the windows small.

Macrae was sitting at a table bent over a drawing. Overhead a fan was whirring. He looked up and pushed the drawing away.

‘So you’ve come,’ he said.

‘I came as soon as I got your message,’ said Owen.

‘Aye,’ said Macrae. He seemed unenthusiastic; even cast down.

‘We’d better have some coffee,’ he said. ‘This is a bad one.’

He went to the door and called. A boy, who had clearly been waiting, promptly appeared with a tray. He set it down on the table with a beam of white teeth.

Neither Ferguson nor Macrae were beaming.

‘Well,’ said Macrae abruptly, ‘you were right. It was one of our own.’

Ferguson shook his head.

‘We told you we’d put it to them about the tools. “Someone must have had tools,” we said. “And if anyone brought a tool kit in with them one day, the chances are that one of you would have seen it. Now, we’re all in this together—it’s like the village back at home—and if you saw it, you must tell us. Otherwise it could happen again!” Well, that’s what we said, and then we left them with it. They like to talk these things over, you see, among themselves. One of them would never come to us on his own. They’re all part of the group, and it’s what the group decides. We just left it to them and, well, this morning they came back to us.’

‘With a name?’

‘Aye. Babikr.’

‘I’d never have thought it of him!’ said Ferguson.

‘It just shows how you can be deceived in people,’ said Macrae.

‘Aye.’

They drank their coffee dispiritedly.

‘He’s always been quiet!’

‘I thought he just liked to get on with it.’

‘Well, he
does
like to get on with it. We’ve never had any complaints, have we?’

Ferguson shook his head.

‘Babikr!’ he said bitterly.

‘They gave you his name?’ said Owen.

‘Aye.’

‘Does he know? That they’ve given his name?’

‘Must do.’

‘Then he’ll be off unless we—Where is he?’

‘They’ll be down by the regulator.’

The men were taking their morning break. They were sitting up on the bank, unusually quiet.

There was no need to ask about Babikr. He was sitting apart from the others, his knees drawn up to his chin, arms round them, head bowed.

Owen went up to him.

‘Babikr,’ he said, you must come with me.’

‘You know why I have taken you?’

‘Yes, Effendi.’

‘You broke into the store?’

‘Yes, Effendi.’

‘And took the dynamite?’

‘Yes, Effendi.’

‘And what did you do with it?’

‘I put it beside the gate. In the culvert.’

And detonated it?’

Babikr nodded his head wordlessly.

‘Why, Babikr?’

Babikr shook his head.

‘Was it because of something Macrae Effendi had done to

you?’

‘No, no, Effendi—’

‘Or Ferguson Effendi?’

‘No, Effendi,’ said Babikr, distressed.

‘Someone else, perhaps? Here at the barrage?’

The man shook his head.

‘Or in the Department?’

Again the shake.

‘Why then, Babikr?’

He waited a while and then repeated the question. The man did not reply.

‘No one does a thing like this without reason,’ said Owen. ‘What was your reason?’

Babikr just tightened his lips.

‘Perhaps something bad had been done to you?’

Babikr shook his head firmly.

‘No, Effendi. It was not that.’

‘Then what was it?’

‘The Effendis have always been good to me.’

‘Someone else?’

‘No one else.’

Owen sat back bewildered.

‘Is it that you are angry against the Khedive?’

‘The Khedive?’

It was almost as if the man had never heard of him.

‘Or the British, perhaps? Come, man, you may say it.’ Owen smiled. ‘There are plenty who are.’

Babikr shook his head.

‘You are not—?’ Owen wondered how to put it. With a more educated man he might have said ‘a Nationalist’. Or if uneducated, in Cairo he might have asked whether he was a member of one of the ‘clubs’. Or even of one of the gangs. But this man was a simple fellah, up, for a while, from the country.

‘You are not, perhaps, a follower of Mustapha Kamil?’

Mustapha Kamil had been for a time the charismatic leader of the Nationalist movement. He was now dead but many national-istically-minded Egyptians still identified with him. At least they would have heard of him. Babikr, however, clearly had not.

‘But why did you do it, Babikr? Surely you can say?’

Babikr, however, could, or would, not. In the end, Owen shrugged and let it rest. The man had confessed. That was all that was needed.

It would be helpful, though, to have some corroborative evidence. He asked the man about breaking into the stores. On this he was quite prepared to talk. Yes, he had come in one night and cut the hole. He described it so circumstantially as to put it beyond doubt that he had done it. Vague, as all fellahin, about dates, he was not able to specify the day. It had not been the same day as he had blown up the regulator. It would have been too much for one day.

He had hidden the dynamite for a night or two in a disused gadwal before taking it to the regulator and using it.

And his tool-kit?

Here Babikr needed no encouragement to talk. It had been stolen.

Stolen?

Yes, that very night. In the Gardens. While he was taking the dynamite to its hiding-place. It had been too much to carry both it and the tool-kit so he had hidden the tool-kit temporarily, intending to come back for it. When he had done so, he had been unable to find it. He had come back again the following morning, thinking he had just made a mistake about the place, and had looked for it thoroughly. In the end he had been forced to realize that somebody had taken it.

‘While I was there, Effendi, in the Gardens. In the Gardens! I tell you, Effendi, there are thieves everywhere!’

There were, indeed, and Owen had a pretty good idea of one of them. He sent for the ghaffir.

The ghaffir denied it vehemently.

‘Would I do a thing like that, Effendi?’

‘Almost certainly.’

The ghaffir still denied it. Owen had his house searched. A small saw was found which Babikr identified as his. He asked after the rest of the tools. After some prevarication the ghaffir admitted he had sold them. Owen sent men to recover them.

The ghaffir changed tack.

He had done it, he said, only to punish the intruder.

‘You can leave punishment to me,’ said Owen, and detailed the consequences that would follow if he had any more trouble from the ghaffir.

‘So,’ said Owen, you were watching all the time?’

Not all the time, said the ghaffir. The workman had already started when he got there. As he was coming through the trees, quietly, he had heard suspicious noises.

‘Then, Effendi, I crept. I feared there might be many, and I, but one. So I went forward with circumspection. And, lo, there was a man crouched at the back of the hut.’

‘Crouched? Not lying down? I thought he had made a burrow?’

‘No, no, that was the Lizard Man. He came later.’

‘Did you see him?’

‘No, no, Effendi. That would have been very unwise.’

‘But you did see a man crouching?’

‘Yes, Effendi. And I lay there and watched him. And after a while he stopped working and crawled through into the store to see that all was well for the Lizard Man. Then he came out and gathered his tools and took them and hid them in a gadwal. And then he went off into the trees.’

‘Carrying something?’

‘I could not see, Effendi. The night was dark. And I thought, I shall play a trick on him. To punish him. Yes, that’s right. To punish him. So I stole forward and found the tools and took them away with me. Ho, ho, I thought, that will teach you a lesson!’

‘Fair is fair,’ said Owen, ‘and if you take mine, I take yours. Is that it?’

The ghaffir looked at him, surprised.

‘Well, yes, Effendi. That was it, more or less.’

‘And you did not think to seize the man?’

‘Well, no, Effendi. He was bigger than I.’

‘Were you not armed?’

‘Ah, yes, Effendi. But so might he be.’

‘Nor did you think of reporting it the next morning?’

‘By then, Effendi, it was surely water under the bridge.’ And, besides, you had the tools?’

‘Well—’

And thought, no doubt, that was punishment enough?’ ’Exactly so, Effendi,’ agreed the ghaffir, relieved.

Owen had one last question.

‘You know the workmen; and you saw the man. Which of them was it?’

After some hum-ing and haw-ing, the ghaffir identified Babikr.

‘Well, that clinches it,’ said Macrae.

‘Aye,’ said Ferguson despondently.

‘Ye’d never have thought it.’

‘One of ours!’

‘I still can’t understand it. Why would he do a thing like that?’

‘You think you know them,’ said Ferguson, shaking his head.

‘Well, you do know them,’ said Owen. ‘You reckoned that if you put it to them, they’d come out with it. And you were right.’

Aye. There is that.’

‘Still, one of ours—!’

‘What I cant understand,’ said Macrae, ‘is how he could bring himself to do it. You’ve met our men,’ he appealed to Owen, ‘you can see what sort of men they are. Now, would they do a thing like that?’

‘Well—’

‘No more would he. At least, that’s what I would have said.’

‘Someone must have got at him,’ said Ferguson.

‘Aye. That’s what I’m thinking. And do you know what more I’m thinking? I’m thinking that it’s not over yet. If they can turn one good man, they can turn another. They might try it again. I shan’t feel happy till I know what’s behind this.’ He looked at Owen. ‘I hope you weren’t thinking of stopping?’

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!’

ffm£)

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 womans 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 hardworking 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.’

6’tss’t£>

‘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?’