The Last Cut

by Michael Pearce

  ‘I did not know that I would be asked to repay in that way. He and his family had left the village. Before they went, he came to me and said: “I know that you cannot repay me now what you owe me, and therefore I shall not ask it; but lest the debt you owe me be forgotten when you pay off your other debts I shall ask you to swear me an oath before the fiki.”

  ‘And I said:

  ‘“It is true that I cannot repay you now, for all that I have earned has gone on my wife and child; but one day I shall repay it.”

  ‘And he said:

  “I know you will. But still let us swear the oath.”

  ‘So we went to the fiki and when he heard what the oath was to be, he said: “That is not a good oath, for who knows its meaning?”

  ‘And I said:

  “Never mind if it is a good oath or not, that is the one he wants me to swear.”

  ‘Still the fiki demurred. But I was firm. “For,” said I, “the man has helped my family when it was in need, and shall I now not repay him?”

  ‘“Repay him, by all means,” said the fiki, “but in money. For was not that what he lent you?”

  ‘Well, I will not say that my heart was not troubled. But still I said: “I will swear as he wants, for am not I his debtor? And, besides, he says that a man may never be able to repay in money, but still he may repay in service. Even the poorest can repay in service.”

  ‘“Well, that is true,” said the fiki, and so I swore the oath as he had asked.’

  ‘What was the oath?’

  ‘That when the time came for me to repay him, if he asked for service and not for money then I would be bound to offer him service; and that I would do whatsoever he demanded.’

  ‘That was foolish!’

  Babikr shrugged.

  ‘So I see,’ he said, ‘now.’

  ‘But did you not say so when you heard what he demanded?’

  ‘I did. But he said: “I, too, am bound by an oath. An oath of revenge. I have sworn I will be revenged on him for what he has done to me. And now are you saying that I should break my oath as well as you break yours?” And I was troubled, for he had helped me freely when I was in need, and I had sworn freely. However I said to him: “You lent me money when I needed it—let me now give it back to you when you need it.” For I could see that he had need. But he said: “The need I have is inside, and that is where you must repay me.” But still, Effendi, I would not, and I left his house.

  ‘But then I said to myself: “Babikr, have you not sworn? Did he not help you? And are you now saying that you will not help him?” So I went back to him and tried to reason with him. I said: “I came to you with joy in my heart that at last I could repay what I owed you. I came with flowers in my hand, wishing well to you and yours. But now that joy has turned to bitterness.”

  ‘“Well, then,” he said, “it matches mine.”

  ‘I said: “This thing you wish to do is foolish as well as wrong. For it will hurt not Al-Sayyid Hannam alone but everyone else.”

  ‘But he said:

  ‘“I will revenge by water what was done by water. I will use the river to avenge what was done by the river.”’

  ***

  ‘Yes,’ said the fiki. ‘I remember the oath.’

  ‘You did not remember it the other day,’ said Owen.

  ‘I hear many oaths.’

  ‘From Babikr?’

  The fiki was silent.

  ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘perhaps not from Babikr.’

  ‘Did you not think? Knowing that the man was in prison?’

  ‘I thought,’ said the fiki, ‘but I could not believe what I thought.’

  ***

  So Owen went to the house of Ali Khedri; but he was not at home. That at first did not surprise him, for he supposed that the water-carrier would be out on his rounds. Then he saw, however, the water-skins thrown down in a corner and felt puzzled. He went to the neighbours and asked if they knew where Ali Khedri had gone, but they did not. He wondered if the water-carrier was over at Omar Fayoum’s stable, helping the cart driver ‘unharness the horses’. He and Georgiades began to make their way in that direction.

  ***

  The building where Omar Fayoum kept his water-cart was empty. Of people, that was. The cart itself was there and there in a shed nearby which served as a stable were the horses. Which again was puzzling, for Omar was not a man to let his assets stand idle.

  They walked round the building and came out at the back, where it crumbled away into the canal. A man, tarbooshed, dark-suited and perspiring, was picking his way gingerly along the bed. It was the manager from the Water Board; and this, too, was puzzling for in Cairo managers usually preferred the cool of their offices to the heat of the streets. He waved when he saw Owen and Georgiades and climbed up to meet them. He looked hot and bothered.

  ‘You have not seen Suleiman?’ he asked exasperatedly. ‘I have been looking for him for the past hour. He is not supposed to be here at all. I did as you advised and ordered him out. He is supposed to be working in another district today and they are expecting him. But one of my people said that they had seen him over here!’

  ‘And you came yourself?’

  ‘Well, I was worried about him. After what you had said. And it was clearly no good sending anyone else!’

  ‘He is disobeying instructions?’

  ‘Yes. I had made it perfectly clear. I had him in yesterday and told him I was transferring him temporarily to the Hilmiya. He didn’t like it. In fact, he begged me to let him stay, just for another day or two. Well, I remembered what you had said, and that a day or two would probably make no difference, but then I thought, no, if the boy is in danger, then he is in danger now, and what will his father think if I delay? So I told him firmly that he must transfer at once, that very day. He pleaded for just one more day, he said that he was on the brink of solving a problem that had been troubling us for months, that if I gave him just twenty-four hours—

  ‘But I said no, if he had information he could give us, then he would receive the credit for it but that he himself must start at once in the Citadel.’

  ‘And yet today, you said, someone saw him here?’

  ‘Yes.’ The manager mopped his face with a large silk handkerchief. ‘I don’t mind telling you that I am very angry,’ he said. ‘He has been foolish, very foolish. And even though I am a friend of his father’s—’

  Owen interrupted him.

  ‘This problem that you say he thought he was on the brink of solving: can you tell me what it was?’

  ‘Yes. We have been concerned for some time that we have been losing water over here in the Rosetti. Now you always lose water, there is always a leaking pipe somewhere. But this was big and continuing. We were sure that someone was tapping the pipe. But what we could not understand was that it was the unfiltered water. Now if it had been the other pipe, the filtered water, that I could have understood, for the water there costs a lot more. But the unfiltered…It comes straight from the river. We don’t do anything to it and so it is dirt cheap. It would hardly be worth anyone’s while—’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Owen; ‘you say you think someone was tapping it? And that Suleiman was on the brink of finding out who it was?’

  ‘So he said.’

  ‘And it was here in the Gamaliya?’

  ‘Somewhere over here. In the Rosetti, more likely. We haven’t really gone into the Gamaliya yet.’

  ‘Then I think,’ said Owen, ‘that I am beginning to understand. And I think we should try to find him quickly!’

  ***

  The workman had reported seeing Suleiman near the Khan-el-Khalil. The manager had gone there first and luckily found someone who remembered seeing Suleiman that morning. From there he had followed his trail along the Sikkel-el-Gedida to the Place-el-Kanto. In the souk there he had tal
ked to an onion seller who had pointed him on towards the Khalig Canal. There he had hesitated for a while but then, remembering that the Water Board’s pipes ran along the bank of the canal at one point, had nobly set off along the bed.

  ‘Right,’ said Owen. ‘Now, you go to the police station, as fast as you can, and tell them that the Mamur Zapt needs men. At once!’

  The manager set off. Georgiades, meanwhile, had run along the canal bank to where a donkey was cropping the greenery that stretched down into the canal bed. Not far away, as he had suspected, its owner was stretched out in the shade. He came hurrying back.

  ‘The boy came along here less than an hour ago. He was looking around him. At the banks, the man says. He says he climbed out of the canal about here and went in among the houses.’

  They began to walk along the Sharia Ben-es-Suren, Georgiades taking the streets on the left, Owen the little alleyways leading down to the Canal on the right. In one of them he saw some women chatting at a fountain with pitchers balanced on their heads.

  ‘I am looking for a boy,’ he said urgently. ‘Leila’s friend. Have you seen him?’

  ‘Suleiman?’

  The word passed round. People began to join them in the search. Two of them brought a match seller along who claimed to have seen him.

  ‘Which way?’

  The man pointed towards the canal. Owen plunged in that direction. This part of the city, one of the oldest, was like a warren. Streets gave onto streets, alleyway into alleyway. They became narrower and narrower, mere tunnels beneath the walls. They turned in on themselves, back on themselves.

  Emerging, to his surprise, on to a street he had already canvassed, he saw with relief the manager returning with policemen from the local station; with Mahmoud, too.

  ‘I was at the station when he came,’ he said. ‘I wanted a constable. But your need seems greater than mine.’

  He disappeared with the constables into the alleyways.

  Owen went back towards the canal. That at least was a thread of direction. He tried to keep going alongside it but some of the streets ended before they quite reached it and blocks of houses, tiny and ramshackle, were forever intervening. In this labyrinth a man could easily disappear: for ever.

  In the distance he thought he heard a shriek.

  Another block. He descended into the canal in order to get round it. As he climbed up the other side he saw a man waving urgently.

  ‘Effendi! Effendi!’

  At the end of the street he saw Georgiades. There was a woman beside him, collapsed on the ground, rocking herself to and fro in the posture of grief. He ran towards them.

  The woman looked up at him. The tear-stained face was that of Um Fatima.

  ‘They went out to look for him!’ she moaned.

  ‘Ali Khedri?’

  ‘And Uthman!’

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘I do not know. He seized his knife and ran out. I tried to hold him back. “Have you not done enough?” I said. But he thrust me aside. “Out of the way, woman!” he said. “This touches us all!”’

  She began to rock more violently. Women rushed up to her and tried to comfort her. Some began to keen in sympathy.

  Owen looked frantically around him. Minute alleyways ran away on every side.

  The Water Board manager was standing there bewildered.

  ‘The pipes!’ said Georgiades. ‘Where are they?’

  The manager looked at him mutely. Georgiades took him by the lapels and shook him. ‘The pipes! Where do they come out?’

  ‘Further up!’ whispered the manager. ‘In the canal. Further up!’

  Georgiades jumped down into the canal bed and began running.

  ‘You can get there more quickly through the houses,’ said the manager, recovering.

  ‘Show me!’

  He gave the man a push and he started running. Confidently at first, doubling through the houses, plunging unhesitatingly through the alleyways, but then, after one double too many, more slowly. Owen raced after him.

  ‘This one!’ he said, making for a narrow snick, almost invisible in the shadow.

  They ran down it and emerged high up on the bank of the canal. To their left was a mass of crumbling fretwork, the remains of some old meshrebiya windows, covered now with creeper and weed, the heavy corbels that had once supported them still jutting out from the wall; to their right, the canal bent round a corner and just out of sight Owen could hear urgent, scrambling footsteps. Georgiades came into sight, panting.

  ‘It must be further up,’ said the manager doubtfully.

  Owen cursed and dropped down into the bed in a shower of stones. Georgiades ran past without speaking. Owen caught up with him where a fall had spread rubble along the bed for perhaps twenty yards and where they had to pick their way over crumbling bricks and huge, rotting baulks of timber.

  He knew now where they were. Ahead of him were the old Mameluke houses, with their picturesque balconies and great, protruding, box-like windows, built to look down on a canal which had been the glory of the Old City, now frail and crumbling, hanging on to the houses by a thread.

  A stone landed at his feet. He looked up and saw the stone-throwing small boy of the other day. The stone, though, this time, was thrown less in hostility than as a declaration of identity.

  ‘Where are they?’ he called urgently.

  The boy pointed up beyond the houses.

  ‘Is he there?’

  ‘They have him.’

  He tried to find a burst of speed but they had come now to a place where the rubble had given way to mud in which their feet sank and kept sticking.

  ‘You are faster than I,’ he called to the boy. ‘Run on and shout that the Mamur Zapt is coming!’

  It might lose them the men; but it might save Suleiman.

  The boy hesitated.

  ‘They will kill me,’ he said.

  ‘They will reward you. And I will reward you too!’

  The boy set off, scrabbling along the bank, his bare feet finding a purchase where their shoes could not.

  They heard him shout.

  Owen hurled himself on, his feet sticking now on slime-covered slabs of stone that had fallen out of the steps leading down from the old, decaying houses.

  There was a bend in the canal and now, emerging from the bank and leading along the side of it, he could see pipes.

  He came fully round the bend and then there, ahead of him, he saw them: four figures, Suleiman, high up on a terrace, hammering desperately on a door, and three men, Ali Khedri, Ahmed Uthman and the cart driver, advancing up the steps towards him.

  Owen and Georgiades ran forward. The cart driver, knife in hand, dropped back to meet them.

  ‘Help me, Ali!’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘Leave it to Ahmed!’

  Ali Khedri took no notice.

  ‘Ali!’

  ‘I want to do it,’ said Ali Khedri; and began to move up the steps.

  The cart driver cursed and fell back to the bottom of the steps.

  ‘Come down here, you fool!’ he called. ‘This needs two of us. One will do for him!’

  Ali Khedri wavered, dropped down a step and then stood there undecided.

  Ahmed Uthman took a length of cord out from under his galabeeyah and ran up on to the terrace.

  Suleiman left the door and ran to the end of the terrace. Above him was a huge box-like meshrebiya window, so huge even by Mameluke standards that at some time in the past it had been found necessary to support it by putting two posts beneath it.

  Suleiman looked around desperately and then began to climb up one of the posts.

  Ahmed Uthman ran forward and tried to catch him by the leg. Suleiman kicked his hand away and climbed further, up to where he could reach the window. There, though, he came to a stop. Every time he reach
ed for a new hand-hold, the worm-eaten fretwork crumbled away.

  Ahmed Uthman began to climb up the post towards him.

  Back along the terrace the door suddenly burst open and Mahmoud came through, followed by a group of constables.

  ‘Enough!’ he shouted, running along the terrace. ‘Enough!’

  The cart driver, distracted, looked towards the shout. Georgiades hit him hard behind the ear. He fell back on to the steps and the knife dropped from his hand.

  Owen had reached Ali Khedri. He caught him by the galabeeyah and swung him round. He came down the steps to Georgiades, who hit him as he came.

  Up on the terrace, though, Ahmed Uthman had nearly reached Suleiman.

  Suleiman made another despairing grab. A large piece of fretwork came away in his hand. The whole structure began to totter. Up above, there was a tearing sound as the woodwork detached itself from the wall.

  ‘Get hold of the supports!’ shouted Mahmoud. ‘Get hold of the supports!’

  The window collapsed in a great cloud of dust. For a moment or two they could not see anything; and then there was Suleiman still above them, somehow clinging to one of the massive corbels that had once supported the huge, protruding window.

  ***

  Suleiman was able to show them the place. It was a little further along the canal, where the fine old Mameluke mansions gave way to lower, humbler ones, some of them derelict, others occupied, rather than rented out, as workshops. Omar Fayoum had taken over one of them as a place, he said, to store gear for his horses and the water-cart. It had the added advantage of a cellar right next to the bank of the canal.

  The pipes of the Water Board disappeared at this point, not so much underground as into a mass of debris. Most of it came from adjoining houses which had collapsed into the bed long ago but some of it was new and it was this that had drawn Suleiman’s attention to the place. Clambering over the wreckage, he had seen signs of recent working about the pipes which had aroused his suspicions. He had attached flow measuring gauges on either side of the spot and been able to establish that on occasion substantial quantities of water were illicitly drawn off.

  He had guessed that the pipe was some how being tapped from the premises above but it had taken him some time to work out, first, that the house must have a cellar, through which the pipes could be reached, and then that it belonged to Omar Fayoum.