The Last Cut

by Michael Pearce

  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 café 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?’

  ‘He’ll be along.’

  ‘Why don’t we go and wait for him, then?’

  The men went over to lie in the shade. Owen went with them.

  ‘You need a drink on a day like this,’ he said.

  ‘Too true; and out here in the desert there’s not much chance of getting one.’

  ‘You’d do better by the river.’

  ‘We don’t get much chance of working there. The graveyards are all this side of the city.’

  ‘You’re probably glad when it’s your turn to do the Cut, then.’

  ‘We certainly are!’

  ‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t do it every year,’ said one of the men. ‘Why do we have to share it with the Jews? What have they got to do with it?’

  ‘It’s always been like this,’ said another of the men. ‘One year it’s us, the next year it’s them.’

  ‘Yes. But why does it have to be like that, I’m asking? Why shouldn’t we do it every time?’

  ‘Because they’ve got their fingers in the pie and they’re not going to take them out.’

  ‘They’ll have to take them out after this. Because after that there’s going to be no pie!’

  ‘I don’t hold with that, either. Why do they have to fill the canal in? It’s doing all right as it is.’

  ‘Ah, yes. But that’s progress. That’s the modern world for you, Mohammed.’

  ‘Well, I could do without it. They’re taking everything away from us. Last year it was the Hoseini celebrations, this year it’s the canal. Next year we won’t even have the Cut!’

  ‘Yes, and it would have been our turn!’

  ‘I like the Cut,’ said one of the men.

  ‘Well, yes, so do I. There’s something good about seeing a rush of water. Especially when you’re used to working out here.’

  ‘Do you think that girl would have made any difference?’ asked someone speculatively.

  ‘The one the Jews put under the mound?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I reckon it might.’

  ‘Because I don’t see it. I mean, you’ve got all these bodies up here, haven’t you? Why don’t they make it all fertile? I mean, if a girl could do it, why can’t they?’

  ‘Because there isn’t any water. That’s just the point. Up here, see, it’s all dry and when the bodies get put away, they don’t rot. They just sort of mummify. Whereas down in the Canal, when that water comes in, it makes the body rot. Then it’s all fertile. I mean, that’s the point.’

  ‘So it’s a good thing?’

  ‘Well, it’s perhaps a good thing to put a girl there. But I don’t hold with it being a Muslim girl. Why can’t it be a Jewish girl? Or a Copt?’

  ‘The Jews picked her, didn’t they? And they wouldn’t have picked one of their own.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like it. They seem to be having everything their way. First, they get to do the cutting. Then they get paid extra for it! And then they pick a girl who’s not even theirs!’

  ‘It’s a sort of sacrifice, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, well, if it’s a sacrifice, that means you ought to be giving something up, doesn’t it? I mean, if we did it, we’d be giving up one of our girls, wouldn’t we? And we wouldn’t be too happy about that, because we’re advanced, like. But those Jews, they’re really crafty. They offer up the girl and say, “here’s the sacrifice, let’s have something back on account,” and all the tim
e they’re not offering up one of their own but one of ours!’

  ‘Yes, but God will see through that, won’t he?’

  ‘I reckon he already has. The body was found, wasn’t it? Well, I reckon that’s his way of saying: “No thanks, you crafty buggers, that won’t do for me!”’

  ‘Well, I do think he ought not to let them get away with it.’

  ‘Yes, but he needs a bit of help, doesn’t he?’

  ‘What do you mean, Abdul?’

  ‘Well, they’re going to turn up to do the Cut, aren’t they? In spite of everything they’ve done. And I think somebody ought to teach them a lesson!’

  ***

  Owen heard the clinking as he turned down a street away from the graveyard and, sure enough, there, coming down the road towards him was a water-carrier. The clinking came from two brass saucers which he was striking together like cymbals to give notice of his presence. Not all the water-carriers had saucers which were brass. Some had mere earthenware ones. Those a step or two up had cups.

  Seeing Owen looking at him, the man stopped in the shade. Owen accepted a saucerful, drinking directly from the saucer. Like so many before him. He had learned to stifle qualms.

  ‘The water is fresh,’ he said, with the obligatory compliment.

  ‘And heavy,’ said the water-carrier.

  It was a different man from either the one he had met outside the café or from Ali Khedri. Evidently there were a lot of water-carriers down here, although that was to be expected in so poor a quarter.

  ‘There are some who wait for you with eagerness,’ said Owen, pointing to the graveyard.

  ‘The diggers? Well, digging is thirsty work.’

  ‘And carrying. The river is far. Are you not eager for the Cut? The Canal is closer.’

  ‘I like the river,’ said the man. ‘It is not so far, not when you are used to it. And I like to walk into it with the bags, which you can’t do with the Canal.’

  ‘You are a true water-carrier,’ said Owen, complimenting him.

  ‘But one of the last. My son will not follow in my footsteps.’

  ‘Because of the pipes?’

  The man shrugged.

  ‘Because of everything. This is the last Cut. Next year there will be no canal. The world changes.’

  ‘But the river stays the same.’

  ‘They try to change that. Even in my lifetime I have seen new barrages at Aswan and Assiut and Asna.’

  ‘True.’

  Owen handed the saucer back.

  ‘Do you know the house of Fatima?’ he asked.

  ‘Ahmed Uthman’s wife?’

  ‘I know only that she is the wife of a water-carrier.’

  ‘That would be her.’

  The man gave him directions.

  ‘I know one other thing about her,’ said Owen. ‘She took in the daughter of Ali Khedri when he threw her out.’

  The man looked pained.

  ‘That was a bad business,’ he said.

  ‘It was well that someone took her in.’

  ‘Not well enough,’ said the man grimly.

  ‘How came it that she died when she was under their roof?’

  ‘The Jews took her.’

  ‘Ah? And how do they know it was them?’

  ‘Who else could it have been? With the Cut coming up. But what I know is this: they will not go unpunished.’

  ‘By God?’ said Owen. ‘Or by man?’

  ‘God, certainly. But sometimes he uses man.’

  ‘What man?’

  But the water-carrier could tell him nothing, probably knew nothing, specific. It was significant, though, that the assumption was widespread in that quarter. With the Cut coming up.

  ***

  ‘Well, I couldn’t leave her,’ said the woman, ‘not the way she was.’

  ‘It would have been better if you had,’ said her husband.

  Owen had caught them at the end of the siesta, when the man was just on the point of setting out again. The half-full water-skins lay by the door.

  The woman turned on her husband.

  ‘He might have changed his mind,’ she said.

  ‘He thought right the first time,’ muttered the man, then lapsed into surly silence.

  ‘It was only for a day or two,’ said the woman, ‘and she eats no more than a bird.’

  The house was, perhaps, not as poor as Ali Khedri’s, but poor enough. The number of mouths was important in such places.

  ‘How long was she with you?’ asked Owen.

  ‘No more than five days.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Well, then she went out one day and—’ the woman looked bewildered—‘and then we didn’t see her any more.’

  ‘The Jews got her,’ said the man.

  ‘She went out?’ said Owen. ‘What for?’

  ‘To meet up with that boy,’ said the man.

  ‘No, she didn’t!’ said the woman angrily. ‘She went out to see if she could find any leavings of onions at the stalls.’

  ‘That’s what she said,’ retorted the man.

  ‘And that’s where she was going. She’d stopped seeing that boy.’

  ‘That’s what she said!’

  ‘That girl,’ said the woman, eyes flashing, ‘is as honest as an Imam. Which is more than could be said of you. And of Ali Khedri, for that matter!’

  ‘Enough, woman!’ said her husband, sheepishly.

  ‘And she didn’t come back?’ said Owen.

  ‘No. After a time I went out to look for her—I thought she might have fallen, you know, she wasn’t right yet, not after all that cutting—but I couldn’t find her. So I thought—’

  ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I thought, may I be forgiven, that she was with that boy. But then when she didn’t come home, I know she couldn’t have been.’

  Her husband started to mutter something. The woman faced him down.

  ‘When it got on to night,’ continued the woman. ‘I knew that something must have happened to her. Because otherwise,’ she said, looking fiercely at her husband, ‘she would have come home. She wasn’t that kind of girl. Her heart was pure.’

  ‘If it was so pure,’ asked the man, ‘how did she get to be talking to him in the first place?’

  ‘Talking is nothing. It’s what all women do. It never got to anything more than that.’

  ‘But she didn’t come back?’

  ‘No. I went to the souk. I asked round the neighbours. I went to the hospital—I thought that maybe she’d collapsed. You know, after all that bleeding. I even,’ said the woman, with an edge to her voice, ‘went to Ali Khedri.’

  ‘More fool you,’ said her husband.

  ‘I walked all over the quarter. I knew something must have happened to her.’

  ‘The Jews got her,’ said the man.

  Owen turned to him.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it’s where they found her. Under the Bride. That’s not accident, is it? She was put there for a purpose.’

  ‘She could have been put there by anyone. Anyone could have had that purpose. Muslims, Copts. Anyone.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the man, unconvinced, ‘but the Jews…’

  ‘Did she ever have anything to do with Jews? Was she ever seen with Jews?’ demanded Owen.

  ‘Well, no. But then she wouldn’t have been, would she? They’re too cunning for that.’

  ‘But then—’

  It was useless, however, trying to talk to him. He couldn’t see it. It had to be the Jews.

  ‘They’re always creeping around,’ he said. ‘They’re worse than that boy.’

  It was the same story as everywher
e else.

  ***

  Coming back through the souk he met Mahmoud. He was talking to one of the stall-holders.

  ‘No,’ the stall-holder was saying, ‘I don’t remember seeing her. I wouldn’t remember her anyway. She was that quiet! Like a mouse.’

  ‘You remember, though, that she used to come to the souk?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Before her—well, you know, before it happened—she used to come most days. Always the same time, just when the stalls were closing. You can pick up a few things then, you know—I mean, if they’re going off, you might just as well give them away as throw them away. And the water-carriers’ wives—well, they’re not too well off. And God says, look after the poor, doesn’t he? And it’s well to have one or two things to your credit when the Angels come asking their questions.’

  ‘So she would probably have come late?’

  ‘Yes. We don’t close till dark. And then we close pretty smartly because if you’re not careful those thieving boys will have half your stuff before you can get it away!’

  ‘So she would have been walking home in the dark?’

  ‘She would. And if I could get my hands on—’

  The news was already round the souk. People talked about it in shocked whispers. In one way it made Mahmoud’s task easier, for he had no need to recall Leila to their minds.

  He, too, had discovered that when Leila had been thrown out by her father, Fatima had taken her in. He had been checking her story and, although it had all happened some time ago now, had been able to confirm much of it. Neighbours remembered her being ‘in a state’, as they put it, that night about ‘little Leila’. Some of them had, in fact, gone out with her to help in the search. The hospital, surprisingly, had a record of her making enquiries; and Ali Khedri’s neighbours confirmed that Fatima had indeed called on him, recalling with relish the altercation that had followed on her rebuff.

  The local police themselves could help. Leila’s disappearance had not been formally reported to them, but then, in that poor quarter it wouldn’t have been. One of the local constables, however, recalled being asked about her. Had a body been found? Several, but none of them Leila’s. When, weeks later, a female corpse had been found buried beneath the ‘Bride of the Nile’, he had wondered if it might be that of the missing girl and had mentioned the possibility to a friend, a gravedigger, who had in turn mentioned it to his brother, who worked at the mortuary. And so it was that long before identification had been officially made, everyone had known all about it. Which was, said Mahmoud, pretty well the usual course of things.