Michael Pearce - The Last Cut

‘If what I have heard is true,’ said the Kadi, ‘I think I would be down there keeping an eye on things myself!’

At almost any hour of the day near the Bab-el-Foutouh, because of its position next to the Muslim cemetery, you would see a funeral procession coming down the street. First, you would hear the death chant and then into view would come a little procession headed by religious banners and closed by a horned coffin covered with a pall of brocade, borne high on the shoulders of the mourners, who surrounded it and took their turn in the work of merit. Sometimes there would be a bread camel carrying loaves for distribution to the poor and sometimes students of El Azhar carrying a Koran upon a cushion, or fikees reciting.

When such a procession passed, the onlookers would first stand aside respectfully and then press forward behind it in sympathetic support.

This time the procession was a small one and generating interest rather than excitement. Owen stepped in beside a vegetable stall to let it pass.

‘It won’t be like this when our Leila comes along,’ said one of the women shopping at the stall.

‘No. She’ll get more attention in her death than she ever did in her life,’ said another woman beside her.

‘It’s bad, though. She was a pretty little thing. And to think of her wasting herself on that old skinflint, Omar Fayoum!’

‘Ah, well, it didn’t come to that, did it?’

‘Perhaps it would have been better if it had!’

‘She was unlucky, that girl. Her mother ought to have seen to it before.’

‘She wasn’t there, though, was she? There wasn’t any family, either. There was just that mean old man and all he cared about was her bringing him his meals on time.’

‘Yes, but you’d have thought someone would have said. One of the neighbours, perhaps.’

‘They didn’t know. Not till they came to remove the hair.’

‘You’d have expected, though, that someone would have taken an interest in her when the mother died. With her being so very young. I mean, what happened when she started having her monthlies?’

‘She had to work it out for herself, I suppose. She wouldn’t have had any help from that old man, that’s for sure. Those water-carriers are a hard lot. Though they do say that when her father threw her out, Fatima took her in.’

‘Well, that was something. To think of that poor girl without even a roof over her head! In that condition, too!’

‘My old man says that Ali Khedri ought to be sewn up in one of his own water-skins and sent for a sail down the river!’

‘So he should! His own daughter! Mind you, she was wrong, too. Carrying on with that boy. When she was going to marry Omar Fayoum.’

‘Who wouldn’t carry on, if they were going to marry Omar Fayoum!’

Both women laughed, then tut-tutted to themselves reprovingly.

‘We shouldn’t talk like this, should we? Not about the dead.’

They completed their purchases.

‘I wondered where she’d got to. When I didn’t see her, I thought she might have gone back to her village.’

‘That’s where she should have stayed. Why did they have to leave? Water-carrying is no life for a man.’

‘She’d have been better off down there, that’s for certain. There’d have been women there who’d have known what to do. I’ve got no time for that old man but really you can’t blame him. This is women’s business. If she’d stayed down there all this might never have happened.’

‘Yes.’ They paid and began to move away. ‘Mind you-’ the woman hesitated. ‘They say it wasn’t that, you know. Not in the end.’

‘What was it, then?’

The woman put her mouth close to her companion’s ear. ‘They say it was the Jews.’

‘The Jews? What would they want with her?’

‘What would any man want with a woman? Besides-’ Owen did not quite catch what she said but he saw the other woman stare.

‘The Cut? Oh, that’s awful-!’

They moved finally away.

Owen found a cafe in the Bab-el-Foutouh. Save for one thing, you could have gone past it without knowing it was one, since all it amounted to was an open door going down into darkness.

Along the front, though, was an old stone bench, at one end of which some men were sitting.

He sat down at the other end and mopped his face. At this season in Cairo the slightest movement made you pour with sweat.

A water-carrier was passing on the other side of the street. One of the men hailed him.

‘It’ll be a bit easier next week, Abdul, when there’s water in the canal!’

‘It’ll be a bit easier for everyone else too,’ said the water-carrier. ‘They’ll be able to get it for themselves.’

He came across to them.

‘From your point of view, then, I suppose it’s a good thing they’re going to fill it in?’

‘Until the pipes get here,’ said the water-carrier.

‘Pipes? What pipes?’

‘They have these pipes which send water all over the city.’

‘Well, I’m damned.’

‘Or will do. They’re doing it quarter by quarter. This one, thank God, is going to be one of the last.’

‘But it won’t be like the canal, though, will it? I mean, with the canal, all you’ve got to do is dip your pot in. You can’t dip into a pipe, now, can you?’

‘They’ll have spouts.’

‘But then it will all pour away, won’t it?’

‘No, there’ll be taps. You’ll be able to turn it on and off.’

‘Yes, but still-I just don’t see pipes getting anywhere. It’ll cost them money to put pipes in. Who’s going to pay?’

‘You are. They’ll charge you for the water.’

‘Charge for the water!’

‘Yes. And a bit more than I do!’

‘God preserve us!’

Owen beckoned the water-carrier over. He gave Owen a little brass cup, undid the top of his skin, bent suddenly forward and shot the water over his shoulder in a glittering jet, straight into the cup.

Owen thanked him and gave him a couple of milliemes.

‘No hurry,’ said the water-carrier, and stood patiently by while Owen drank.

‘Straight from the river?’ He took a sip. ‘Ah, it won’t taste like this when it comes from the canal!’

‘It never tastes the same,’ agreed the water-carrier.

‘It will this time,’ said one of the men. ‘The Jews are going to freshen it up!’

‘With a Muslim girl,’ said the water-carrier.

The Muslim cemetery was not walled, although occasional piles of stones indicated its limits, but part of the open desert. The wind blew sand among the tombs, to such an extent that some of the older ones were nearly covered. Only the tops of the tarkeebahs, the stone or brick blocks above the vaults, were visible.

The rich were buried in brick tombs with arched vaults, high enough for the persons inside to sit up comfortably when visited by the two examining angels, Nakir and Neheer. The entrance was at the foot, below ground, so that after the body had been put inside, the earth could be filled in and the entrance concealed. It was not just the Pharaohs who had to bother about robbers.

The gravediggers had just finished constructing the small porch in front of the door of a new tomb, roofed to prevent the earth falling in. Owen joined them in admiring their handiwork.

‘It’s not bad, you see,’ they said, inviting him to inspect. ‘The stones fit quite well, considering.’

‘Except there,’ said one of the men, pointing to a corner.

‘That stone was a pig!’

‘It doesn’t lie flat enough.’

‘Why don’t you go and get another, then, Hamid, if you’re not happy?’

‘Because that would make me even less happy.’ He looked round. ‘It’s hard work today. I could do with a drink. Where’s that idle sod of a water-carrier?’