The Last Cut (11 page)

Ah, Owen, pleased to see you. Very pleased.’

Owen forced a way through the throng.

‘What’s the trouble?’

McPhee pointed down to the foot of the cone.

‘This!’

The earth had been scraped away in what looked like the start of a small burrow, the sort of thing a rabbit might have made, if, of course, there had been any rabbits.

‘I don’t see the problem.’

‘What made it?’

‘A dog?’

‘What for?’

‘Well, Christ, I don’t know. A bone?’

‘Or several. They think another woman’s been buried here.’

‘It’s just a dog!’

‘They think it’s smelt it.’

‘Well, is that bloody likely?’

‘They think so. The first one was taken out, they say, so another one has been put there.’

‘It’s the Jews,’ said someone in the crowd.

‘We’re going to have to dig,’ said McPhee. ‘To show them.’ Owen nodded.

‘Right.’ He raised his voice. ‘The Bimbashi and I are sure there is no one buried under here. But just to show you, and set your minds at rest, we are going to dig. Now, are any of you good at—?’

A man shouldered forward.

‘Effendi, I am an expert!’

Owen recognized one of the Muslim gravediggers.

‘Just the man! Any more like you?’

Several fellahin eagerly came forward.

‘Spades?’

The constables cleared some space, linked arms and then leaned back against the crowd. The crowd supported them happily, craning over their shoulders to get a better look.

The gravedigger seized the first spade and began work enthusiastically.

Allah, what strength!’ said the crowd appreciatively.

The gravedigger, preening, redoubled his efforts.

‘What need is there for more when we have men who can work like this?’ asked Owen rhetorically.

‘What need for Jews?’ said the gravedigger over his shoulder.

‘Is that the place where the other was found?’ asked Mahmoud, who had pushed his way through to join Owen.

‘The very place!’ chorused the crowd.

‘I thought it was round the other side,’ said one of the constables doubtfully.

Mahmoud turned to him.

‘You were here?’

‘Yes, Effendi. I was at the station when they reported it. I came with the Mamur.’

‘And you think it was round the other side?’

‘I’m pretty sure, Effendi. And it wasn’t really under the mound. It was more beside it.’

‘Whereabouts?’

The constable extended an arm and pointed.

‘Under their feet?’

The crowd on that side moved back in consternation.

‘Yes, Effendi.’

Abdul, I don’t like standing here!’ said an alarmed voice. ‘Suppose the ground opens?’

‘Well, then, you’d bloody fall in!’ said the constable.

‘But then if there’s another body there—’

‘It’d be over here,’ said Owen, annoyed. ‘This damned dog is not a gold-miner.’

‘Just watch it!’ said McPhee. ‘We don’t want the whole cone coming down!’

‘Not on us, we don’t!’ said the constables, pressing back harder against the crowd, which had now grown to fill the whole bed. At the sides, men were climbing on to each others’ backs in order to see better. Above them, the bank of the Canal was lined yards-deep with people.

The gravedigger’s spade struck something hard.

‘Bone!’ shouted the crowd.

The gravedigger plunged his hand in before Mahmoud could stop him.

‘Stone!’ he said disgustedly, producing it.

Disillusioned, he stood aside to let the others take over. ‘Guide them!’ said Owen. ‘We don’t want the cone falling in.’

‘It takes an expert,’ said the gravedigger modestly.

‘If the body was found beside the cone,’ Mahmoud asked the constable, ‘why were they digging there?’

‘It’s the way they dig,’ said the constable. ‘They dig around it and pile the earth on top.’

‘How was the body lying?’

‘I didn’t look too closely,’ said the constable. ‘It was all bulged up. Like a camel’s belly.’

‘Why was it swollen? Had it been lying in water?’

‘There had been water. Because they’re always digging out the bed at this place, the bed is deeper here than elsewhere and the water lies longer.’

‘So she could have been thrown into water?’

‘Yes, Effendi.’

‘Not buried at all?’

The crowd had been hearing this.

‘Not buried at all?’

‘Just thrown there,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It could have been anywhere.’

‘Just like the Jews!’ said the gravedigger. ‘Couldn’t even make a good job of it!’

‘It wasn’t the Jews,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It was some bad man.’ The crowd was clearly disappointed. The diggers who had also heard, began to lose heart.

‘How about someone else having a go?’ said one over his shoulder. No one seemed very willing.

Even the Muslim gravedigger was beginning to doubt. ‘How long are we going to go on doing this, then?’ he grumbled.

‘Until we have set people’s minds at rest,’ said Owen sternly.

The gravedigger heaved out a few more half-hearted spadefuls.

‘I think their minds are pretty well at rest now,’ he said. ‘No,’ said Owen, ‘we must go on until all are satisfied. All night if necessary.’

All night?’ said the gravedigger. ‘Look—’

‘Unless,’ said Owen, looking around, ‘those knowledgable—?’ The front ranks of the crowd, who had been standing there longest, decided that they were knowledgable enough and began to drift away.

‘No woman,’ said one of them as he left. ‘That’s a bit of a disappointment.’

‘Well, you can’t strike lucky all the time,’ said his neighbour.

‘We didn’t even strike lucky that first time,’ said the man, ‘if what that Effendi said was true.’

‘No,’ agreed the neighbour despondently.

Owen, hearing, was very satisfied.

Mahmoud turned to him.

‘I must go now,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to get back to the Gamaliya. There’s someone I want to see.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘The father. It was someone known to her, remember.’

There was still a small knot of people around McPhee. As he was passing, Owen heard one of them say:

‘Well, then, if it wasn’t a woman, what was it?’

‘It wasn’t anything,’ said McPhee reassuringly. ‘Just some animal.’

‘Why would an animal want to dig holes in the “Bride”?’

‘I don’t know. It was probably just a dog.’

‘It didn’t look like a dog to me. They don’t dig burrows. What do you think, AJhmed?’

‘It looked more like the thing a lizard would dig.’

‘Too big. Except—’

The thought struck them both at the same time.

A lizard man!’

<5’tXSk£)

Owen took an arabeah up to the Ismailiya, where he was meeting Zeinab for lunch. Not in an Arab restaurant—they looked askance at women, even Pashas’ daughters—but in a French one. Zeinab liked to eat French as well as dress French. She even normally spoke French, and she and Owen drifted in and out of French and English as the occasion arose. The culture of the Egyptian upper class was heavily French and there was as great a gap between it and that of the ordinary Egyptian as there was between the massive dams the British were erecting and, well, the Lizard Man.

Zeinab, however, was anti-French today. She had some intellectual periodicals under her arm, French, but different from the ones she usually took. She tapped one of them significantly.

‘Napoleon was against women,’ she said darkly. ‘I’ve been reading.’

‘Well, yes, but you’ve got to make allowances for the time.’ Zeinab took no notice.

‘It’s in the Code Napoléon,’ she said.

Which was still the basis of the Egyptian legal code. When the Khedive Ismail had wanted to reform and modernize the Egyptian legal system he had simply adopted the Code wholesale.

‘I don’t think you can blame him entirely,’ objected Owen. ‘Islamic law—’

Zeinab brooded.

‘Islamic law is men’s law,’ she said. ‘The trouble is, when you turn to the alternative, what do you find? Men’s law.’

‘Law is the same for everyone,’ said Owen. ‘If you commit a murder, you get hanged for it. Never mind whether you’re a man or a woman.’

‘Yes, but some things affect women more than they do men.’

‘Have you been talking to Labiba Latifa?’ demanded Owen. ‘Circumcision, for instance,’ said Zeinab.

‘That’s social practice, not law. Why don’t you talk to Mahmoud?’

‘I will,’ said Zeinab.

Owen had not intended to go back to the Gamaliya that day but when he returned to his office, he found Georgiades waiting for him. He had found out, he thought, the person whom Babikr had gone to see.

‘He’s a fiki,’ he said. ‘Several of the workmen go and see him. He used to live at their village but when he got old, he moved up here to be with his son. They still remember him in the village, and when the men come up here for the Inundation, they always take him something.’

‘A fiki?’ said Owen. ‘Then he might know of the oath, even if it wasn’t to him.’

A fiki was a professional reader, or singer, of the Koran and as a person of (some) learning and (some) holiness was the sort of person you might go to if you wanted a witness of authority when you were swearing an oath.

He lived in a small back street in the Gamaliya not far from the mosque. The son, slightly startled, showed them in.

‘It is,’ Owen explained, ‘to do with a man known to you, who used to listen to you in your village.’

The fiki nodded.

‘The men come to you, I know, each year when they are up here for the Inundation, bringing greetings from the village.’ The fiki nodded again.

‘Was Babikr among them?’

‘Babikr!’ said the fiki.

‘You know?’

‘I know.’

‘Was he among those who came to you?’

The fiki thought for a moment.

‘Yes.’

‘I wondered if he had talked of an oath?’

The fiki thought again.

‘I do not think so.’

‘It might have been one he had taken in the village. Do you recall such an oath?’

‘He took various oaths. All do.’

‘Do you remember the substance of the oaths?’

‘To do with wedding settlements. There was an ox once, I think. These were the usual foolish disputes.’

‘Do you recall them?’

‘They are not worth recalling.’

‘Yet Babikr, I think, was not a man to take them lightly.’

‘He was not,’ agreed the fiki. He warmed slightly. ‘He was ever true to his word.’

‘And would have kept to it,’ said Owen, ‘even if what he had committed himself to was not wise.’

‘Very probably.’ The fiki sat thinking for a moment. ‘Why do you ask these things?’ he said suddenly.

‘I think he committed himself to something that was not wise and then found he could not go back on it.’

‘You think the attack on the dam was not wise?’

‘Well, no,’ said Owen, startled. ‘It was an attack on all. It was a blow at the common good.’

‘I, on the contrary, think it was wise,’ said the fiki. ‘For what these new dams have brought us is not good but harm.’

‘But, surely—’

‘Harm!’ repeated the fiki emphatically. ‘They have brought us ill-being, not well-being. When I was young everyone in the village was strong and well. They needed to be, perhaps, because the Pashas bore down hard in those days. But they were not sick. Now they are sick from birth. The children grow up with red eyes. The men are listless in the fields. Is that good? Is that as it should be? That is what the dams have brought us. And you say that Babikr was not wise!’

‘The dams have brought abundance,’ said Owen.

‘But at a price,’ said the fiki.

‘It is not the abundance that is wrong,’ said Owen, ‘but how it is used.’

The fiki shrugged.

‘Certainly it never gets to us.’

‘It is not the dams that are bad but the people.’

‘You don’t see the people,’ said the fiki, ‘but you see the dams.’

And so you would strike at them?’

‘They have destroyed a balance. In the old days there was one crop a year and the people were healthy. Now there are three and the people are sick. I would restore the balance.’

Owen was silent.

‘Newness!’ said the fiki. ‘It is always newness! Why do we need these new dams? Were not the old good enough? Was not there water in the fields then as there is now? It is the same everywhere. They tell us this is the last year they are going to make the Cut. They are going to fill the canal in, people say, and put a tram-way on top of it. To what end? The canal brought water to the city, to us here in the Gamaliya. And now they are going to fill it in. You cannot drink tram-ways.’

‘There will still be water, indeed, better water. They are building pipes—’

‘Pipes!’ said the old man contemptuously. ‘Where once there was the canal itself, which all could see! It is not the Cut that they should be ending but all these new dams!’

‘All do not think as you do,’ said Owen quietly.

He got to his feet.

‘I had hoped that you would help me to ease Babikr’s load,’ he said, ‘for I do not think that his alone was the hand that broke the dam.’

The fiki looked troubled.

‘I would help Babikr if I could,’ he said. ‘But I do not know to whom he swore the oath.’

As Owen was going out of the door he turned back to the old man.

‘Did Babikr bring you flowers?’ he asked.

‘Flowers?’ said the fiki incredulously, looking at Owen as if he had gone out of his mind.

As Owen was crossing the Place Bab-el-Khalk, a Parquet bearer came running up to him.

‘Effendi! A message. For you. Urgent!’

It was from Mahmoud. It said:

‘Ali Khedri arrested by local police. Involved in fracas.

Now at Gamaliya police station. Shall wait there for you!

‘I don’t want to see him!’ shouted Ali Khedri. ‘I don’t ever want to see him. Why does he come to see me?’

‘He came to offer you the hand of friendship,’ said Owen reprovingly.

‘I spit in his hand! He kills my wife, he kills my daughter, he takes my land! And then he talks of friendship!’

‘Come, this is wild talk,’ said Owen. ‘If he has done you injury, he wished to make amends.’

‘What amends can there be after what he has done?’

‘All that is in the past.’

‘You have seen my house. You know how I live. Is that in the past?’

All is not the fault of the past.’

‘I tried to put the past behind me and then he sent his son!’

‘What are you saying?’

‘He sent his boy.’

‘Suleiman?’

‘Is that his name? I know the Devil has many names but did not know that was one!’

‘This is wild talk. What has the boy done?’

‘He took my daughter. Was it not enough to take my land? Did he have to take my daughter too?’

‘If the land was taken, it is nothing to do with the boy.’ And the boy is nothing to do with the father?’

‘Not in this. The father did not know. He was afraid to tell his father. As Leila was afraid to tell you.’

‘You expect me to believe that? That the Devil does not know his works?’

‘This talk of the Devil is foolish. The boy’s love was innocent. He did but look upon her.’

‘And she looked back. Is that innocent, too?’

‘She did but look.’

‘And smile. Is that innocent also?’

‘With a pure heart, yes. And hers was pure.’

And talk. That, too, is innocent?’

‘It was but talk. They meant nothing by it.’

‘He meant something by it.’

‘No more than any young boy does.’

‘He knew who she was. And you still say he meant nothing by it?’

‘He recognized a playmate from his childhood. That was all.’

And he wanted to play with her again!’

‘His heart was as innocent as hers. They were both as children.’

‘He knew who she was and she knew who he was and you call that innocent?’

‘They wished to put the past behind them. As you should, too.’

‘You think he wished to put the past behind him?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Then why did he seek her out?’

‘He did not seek her out. He saw her by chance.’

‘In the whole of this big city, where no man knows another and there are a million faces, he found her by chance?’

‘I think it more likely than that he should seek her out.’

‘You do not know him,’ said Ali Khedri with conviction. ‘Nor his father.’

When Mahmoud had arrived at the water-carrier’s house he had found it empty and the whole quarter in uproar. Shortly

before, the police had removed Ali Khedri to the local caracol, a consequence less of his attack on Suleiman’s father—the police took a relaxed view of street brawls—than of his inability to calm down. In the end, the police, exasperated, had been obliged to clip him over the head with a baton; but then, as they had explained to Mahmoud, they could not leave him lying there, ‘lest his adversary return and stab him,’ and so had taken him to the police station.

Indifferent to finer points of justice, they had taken Suleimans father as well, and had been on the point of thrusting him into the cell with Ali Khedri when Mahmoud, fortunately, had arrived.

He and Owen exchanged glances. They had interrogated many times together and did not need to speak. Mahmoud took over.

‘Why should he seek her out?’ he asked.

‘To destroy me.’

‘You make too much of this,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It was chance that brought them together.’

‘Was it chance that brought him to the Gamaliya:’ demanded Ali Khedri. ‘Was it by chance that he was always creeping around? Spying on me, so that I could never go out of my door without him watching?’

‘He came but to gaze on your daughter. He was but a lovesick calf.’

‘Oh, was that it?’ said Ali Khedri, affecting surprise. ‘Was that all it was? And I thought he was seeking a way to destroy me!’

‘This is sick fancy!’ said Mahmoud.

‘Well, would that not have been enough?’ whispered Ali Khedri, more to himself than to Mahmoud. ‘Without the other?’

‘What other?’

Ali Khedri took no notice.

‘Would that not have been enough to end my hope?’

‘Hope?’

‘Of escape,’ said Ali Khedri. ‘Of life. Of not ending life like a dog.’

‘Through marrying your daughter to Omar Fayoum?’

‘It was there,’ whispered Ali Khedri. ‘There in my hand. And she took it from me.’

‘She did not take it from you,’ said Mahmoud. ‘You took it from yourself.’

‘She betrayed me.’

‘She did not betray you. She sent the boy away.’

Ali Khedri made a gesture of dismissal.

‘It was too late,’ he said. ‘By then the whole world knew. Omar Fayoum knew.’

‘The boy wished to come to you. Fie wanted to ask you for her hand. He would have given you more than Omar Fayoum.’ The water-carrier smiled bitterly.

‘You think so?’ he said.

‘He would have persuaded his father. His father loves him.’

‘Loves him?’ said Ali Khedri, almost as if he were encountering the words for the first time.

‘His father came to you,’ Mahmoud reminded him, ‘seeking to make amends.’

Ali Khedri stared at him for a moment and then, very deliberately, leaned to one side and spat.

‘That is what I think of his amends,’ he said.

He had not injured Suleiman’s father seriously. The neighbours, alarmed by the shouts, had come running and prised Ali Khedri’s hands from his throat. Mahmoud asked him if he wished to press charges.

‘What would be the point?’ he said.

(5’tsss’t£)

Owen and Mahmoud made a tour of the Gamaliya. The quarter was quiet now. In front of Ali Khedri’s house, however, there was still a small knot of people. Mahmoud went across to them.

‘Return to your houses!’ he said. ‘There has been enough bad work for one night.’

‘What of Ali Khedri?’ someone asked.

‘He stays in the caracol for the night.’

‘It was not his fault. Why did that man have to come pestering?’

‘He came to offer the hand of friendship.’

One of the men spat derisively into the darkness. Owen thought it was Fatima’s husband. He could see now that the group consisted largely of water-carriers.

‘If he means friendship, why is that boy always creeping around?’ said one of them.

‘He is but a love-sick calf. His heart had gone to Leila.’

‘Leila is dead now,’ said someone, ‘and he still creeps around.’

‘Tell him to keep out of the Gamaliya!’ called someone from the back of the group. Again Owen thought it was Fatima’s husband.

‘Let there be no trouble!’ said Mahmoud sternly. ‘Or others will find themselves joining Ali Khedri in the caracol!’

The group dispersed. Two of them crossed to Owen’s side of the road. They had not seen him before. One of the men was Fatima’s husband. He looked at Owen with hate in his face. And you, too!’ he said.

‘Effendi,’ said Yussef, Owen’s orderly, diffidently as he came into his office the next morning, ‘I think you may need this.’

He put a small embroidered pouch on Owen’s desk.

‘What is it?’

‘It is a magic charm. My wife has sewn it and inside there is a holy stone that the Sheikh has blessed.’

‘Well, thank her very much—thank
you
very much, but— exactly why do I need it now?’

‘If it was just the Jews, that would be nothing. They are cunning and devious, it is true, but then, you are cunning and devious also. But when you are up against this—?’

‘One moment,’ said Owen; ‘What am I up against?’

Yussef laid his forefinger alongside his nose.

‘Let us not speak the word. But, Effendi, I am with you. We are all with you. I said to my wife: “Now he is really up against it!” And she said: “Let us pray for him.” And then she thought of the magic amulet. “Let us do what we can,” she said; for we all want the Cut to be saved. Her especially, for, as I have said, she depends on it to have her babies.’

‘That is very kind of you, Yussef. But I don’t quite follow… Exactly what—?’

‘The regulator was one thing. Bad enough—believe me, Effendi, I know what water means, my family comes from the Delta—but who would have thought it would have gone for the Cut? I said, it must be out of its mind! But the Sheikh said, no, it was not out of its mind, it was just very angry. That’s because there’s a lot wrong with the world, and especially with the dams. We’ve taken things a bit too far, it’s all got out of hand, and that’s what it’s doing, just reminding us. Well, I can understand that with the regulator, but why go for the Cut? It wouldn’t have hurt it, would it, just to have held off for another week.’

‘Just a minute, Yussef, who or what is “it”? Who, or what, is going for the Cut?’

‘Why, Effendi, you saw for yourself. It was having a go at The Bride. The Lizard Man!’

The newspapers, too, were giving the Lizard Man a new lease of life. They were full of him. The unfortunate Babikr was quite forgotten as the link was made with the attempt on the Manu-fiya Regulator. One or two of the papers mentioned him as a junior accomplice or surrogate for the Lizard Man but most of the papers lost sight of him entirely, treating the incident as an unsolved mystery. Or, rather, as a mystery where one knew exactly who had perpetuated the crime but just, somehow, wasn’t able to lay hands on him.

And here he was popping up again, with vaguely heroic accretions, a sort of Robin Hood perpetually thumbing his nose at the law! And, like Robin Hood, in some strange way a representative of the poor. Owen realized, as he read, that the figure was capturing popular doubt about the new dams, not so much resentment at them as worry and suspicion, the feeling that, as the fiki had said, a balance had been disturbed.

The belief that the Lizard Man had now attacked the Cut had, though, divided as well as aroused public opinion. While there were doubts about the dams, there were none about the Cut; and so with many people the attack‘ on the Cut was transformed into something positive. It did not mean, they held, that the Lizard Man was against the Cut. On the contrary, he was for it. This was just his way of registering his displeasure at the proposal to end it.

Whichever view one took, though, Owen noted with satisfaction, it had the effect of displacing the Jews from the scene. He was half minded to go down to the Muslim gravediggers and tell them that since the Lizard Man was taking a hand, they had better stay out of it!

But there was something else about the newspapers’ responses that Owen found puzzling. Most of the press was strongly Nationalist, which meant that it was normally committed to a progressivist, ‘modern’ line. While it did not dare to turn up its nose at something as popular as the Cut, it usually tried to keep its distance from anything that smacked so strongly of backward-looking superstition. But here it was plunging heavily into popular feeling, embracing the Lizard Man for all it was worth!

What was even stranger was that it was using the situation to make a sharply critical attack on something it usually supported, the new dams and the new extensions of the irrigation system. Why were the Nationalists changing tack?

(5m3

Owen went down to the Cut to see that all was well. McPhee had had the same thought and when Owen arrived was busy posting constables on top of the temporary dam and round the base of the earth cone.

‘It’s probably overdoing it,’ he said, ‘but—’

‘Are you going to leave them there overnight?’

‘They’re not very happy at the prospect,’ McPhee admitted. ‘This stupid nonsense about the Lizard Man—’

McPhee was discriminating over the ritual and myth that he accepted.

Owen recognized a constable he had worked with.

‘Why don’t you ask Selim?’

Selim beamed when he saw Owen looking at him and waved a hand.

Owen went over to him.

‘Selim, I’d like you to take charge of a few men—’

‘Certainly, Effendi. These thickheads! I know how to handle them. A good kick up the backside—’

‘We want to post a guard overnight and I’d like you to be in charge of it.’

‘Overnight? Here?’

Selim swallowed.

‘Of course, Effendi,’ he said bravely.

He returned to the line, however, perturbed and thinking. Some time later he accosted Owen.

‘Effendi, about that guard duty—’

‘Yes?’

‘I would do it. In fact, I am desperate to do it. Unfortunately, there is a terrible family circumstance that pre—’

‘Oh, come, Selim; there wasn’t one ten minutes ago.’

‘It’s my grandmother, Effendi. She comes from the south, you see. Well, she can’t help that. Someone has to. Only—’

‘What the hell’s that got to do with it?’

‘But, Effendi, I was telling you! She comes from the south, you see. Down in Dinka land. Where there’s nothing but reeds and not a woman in sight. Except my grandmother, of course. Well, it’s very primitive down there. It’s not the place where you’d want to be, believe me, Effendi. Nor me, either.’

‘Selim—’

‘It’s very primitive down there, as I was saying. And each clan has got its totem. Would you believe it, Effendi? The backward

buggers! Well, my grandmother’s totem is—you’ll never believe this, Effendi—a lizard! So I’m afraid that rather rules me out.’ ’I don’t see why.’

‘Well, Effendi, it makes it doubly hard for me. I’d see him off, otherwise. What’s a mere Lizard Man to a man like me? Pooh! But, you see, with it being my grandmother’s totem, I’d have to beat him twice. And that, with a Lizard Man, is a bit much!’

‘Well, it would be, Selim, if that were, in fact, your grandmother’s totem. Only I think you may have been misinformed. You see, I know the Dinka totems; and the lizard is not among them. So you’d only have to beat him once. For a man like you.

‘Effendi,’ said Selim, cast down, ‘even a man like me could have problems with a Lizard Man!’

‘I know,’ said Owen, relenting, ‘and therefore I will help you. It so happens that I have a magic amulet here, which, for the sake of our friendship, I am prepared to lend you.’