Iris and Ruby

by Rosie Thomas

  She sighed. This did ring a faint bell. ‘Yeah. Look, I’m crap at history, always was. And geography and maths and biology, you name it. But I’m not at school anymore so it really doesn’t matter, does it?’

  Ash looked dubious. ‘Learning is important. It is a way to make a life better for yourself and your family. You don’t believe this?’

  Ruby squinted against the light. There was a weight inside these walls that made her feel uncomfortable and Ash’s crowding insistence made it worse.

  ‘Yes, I believe it, but that doesn’t mean I have to do it.’

  He gave her his white crescent of a smile. ‘You are funny. And you are very pretty today.’

  That was better. ‘Am I?’

  Ruby had stopped making up her eyes with black lines and dark smudges, and she had also stopped gelling her hair into spikes because she had run out of gel with which to do it. It flopped over her forehead now in a shiny fringe that she clipped on one side to leave her pale forehead bare.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. He took her hand and turned it over to look at the veins on the inner side of her wrist. He glanced round to make sure that no one was watching them, then touched the tip of his tongue to the place where her pulse beat.

  A second’s giddiness made Ruby close her eyes.

  ‘Come on,’ Ash whispered at last. ‘I show you something.’

  The enormous mosque enclosed at the heart of the Citadel could be seen from almost every corner of the city, but from close at hand Ruby thought it was disappointing. The domes were covered in dull tin and the pale walls were stained, and a fat snake of tourist visitors lethargically coiled in front of the huge doors.

  ‘What are we looking at?’

  ‘This, the Mosque of Mohammed Ali.’

  Ruby was going to make a rejoinder, but she thought better of it. ‘It’s pretty big. Who was he?’

  ‘Two hundred years ago, he ruled this country. He made Egypt modern, and he is also responsible for the great massacre of the Mamluks.’

  ‘OK. Tell me. I suppose you will anyway, whether I want you to or not.’

  They passed into the parallelogram of purple shade in front of the mosque. Ash stood with one foot up on a broken block of stone.

  ‘The Mamluks were soldiers, born as slaves, with no families, made to gain power by the fight and scheming for the sultan. Mohammed Ali when he came to rule knew he must defeat them, or they will kill him instead. So he is giving a great banquet over there, in the Citadel Palace, and to be his guests five hundred of the most powerful Mamluks come, in their fine robes, up inside the walls here. There is feasting and dancing and everyone is happy. Then the day is ended, and the Mamluks mount their horses and make a procession back down the narrow road, between tall walls, to the al-Azab gate. But Mohammed Ali has ordered the gate to be locked and from the walls above his soldiers fire guns on the Mamluks, and when the men and horses and swords and fine clothes and coloured banners are all fallen in a mess of bodies, the soldiers come in and finish off each one so that a river of blood, from men and horses, runs down like a wave under the gate. Only one of all those fierce Mamluks escapes, by leaping his great horse over the wall and flying away.’

  ‘How horrible.’ Ruby could hear the terrified whinnying of horses and the screams of dying men, and the rattle of gunfire in the rocky defile. ‘I don’t like it here.’

  Ash touched her wrist again. ‘I feel it too. We will go, but first I must go inside to pray.’

  At the mosque doors there were guardians policing the tribes of tourists. Ash and Ruby exchanged their shoes for felt slippers and Ash lightly twitched the sleeves of her shirt to cover her arms. He lifted the folds of her scarf and draped her head, and then they passed inside.

  The domes and half-domes soared above them, like the insides of a giant’s eggshells studded with thousands of precious stones. Chandeliers and huge glass globes hung from the dim heights, and there were screens of latticed metal and borders of scalloped gold. Ruby stood with her feet together and her hands pressed against her sides.

  Ash stepped forward onto the intricate patchwork of rugs that scrolled away in front of them. He knelt and pressed his hands and then his forehead to the floor.

  As she waited Ruby felt an absence inside herself, a strange whisper of sensation that was more a negative balance than a physical reality. Surreptitiously she rested the flat of one hand against her belly, but that made no difference. It wasn’t hunger. It was more like being thirsty, while knowing at the same time that a river of water wouldn’t quench the thirst. Her only belief, ever since she had been old enough to reach for one, and which had been later thoroughly agreed with Jas, was that she didn’t want to believe in anything. And yet now she found herself parched with the need for whatever Ash had, for whatever kept his head bowed to the dusty rug.

  A pair of tourists passed close beside her, a man and a woman in their fifties, European or even British. The woman had her finger folded as a bookmark inside her guidebook. Something about her, maybe her clothes or a just-perceived hint of perfume, or even the unexpectant set of her features, made Ruby think of her mother. She felt another small pang, an indicator of absence, and she acknowledged that she missed her.

  Ash’s narrow back arched like a cat’s and then he unfolded himself to the vertical once more. They walked out of the mosque and reversed the shoe procedure. In the few minutes that they had been inside, the sun had dropped behind a bank of pale lavender cloud on the western horizon.

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ Ruby said.

  Across a square paved with uneven blocks of stone, polished by centuries of footsteps, a drinks vendor’s little metal cart stood against a low wall. From the child vendor Ash bought two cans of cold Coke, ripped the ring-pull from one and handed it to Ruby. He drank from his. Ramadan was over now.

  Ruby cooled her cheek with the beads of condensation from the can and wandered towards the wall. She had been expecting a view, but what she saw made her eyes widen in surprise. Cairo lay spread out beneath them. From this height and distance the jungles of apartment blocks looked desolate and deserted, leaning inwards to each other, concrete towers with empty windows, threaded with twisted metal. The only colours were grey, sand, brown and khaki, with scoops of purple and indigo where the shadows lay. In the far, far distance three tiny triangles toothed the cloud horizon. It was another view of the Pyramids, separated by most of the city from the one Ash had shown her from the top of the hotel. She stared across at them, trying and failing to fit herself into the warp of distance and history. She felt Ash close behind her and turned. Their faces almost collided and she pressed awkwardly against him, finding his mouth with hers.

  ‘Go on, you can kiss me.’

  Ash moved an inch away. ‘Perhaps not a good place.’

  Groups of tourists were being marshalled by their guides. Smaller knots of young Egyptians took photographs of one another and the European couple drifted past, the wife two steps behind her husband. Ruby glanced at the needle minarets against the subsiding sky. In an hour it would begin to get dark.

  ‘Do you believe in God, then? Allah, whatever?’

  ‘It is what I must do.’

  She was left in doubt whether the compulsion was from piety or social pressure or as an insurance policy.

  ‘Must?’

  ‘Yes, Ruby. This is simple for me, more easy than you think.’

  Ash took her arm and they followed the angle of the perimeter wall. To the east of them were the brown ribs of the Muqqatam hills and ahead, stretching north, another landscape of brown diggings and ragged buildings, blistered with a few domes, a low-rise reflection in miniature of the other city.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Shall we visit something else?’ His face was serious.

  Ruby sighed. What she would have liked was to sit or lie down with Ash somewhere quiet and private and have him put his arms round her and press their foreheads together, not even needing to talk, as she and Jas used to do. Since that p
lainly wasn’t going to happen, they might as well pass the time in some other way. She felt out of sympathy with the brutal scale of the day, and no longer disposed to enjoy whatever it brought.

  ‘If you want.’

  They went back and unchained the moby. It was a short ride to the sepia walls of the low-rise mirror city they had seen from the heights of the Citadel.

  The bike threaded on a narrow dirt road between what looked like very small square-built houses, with arched open doorways and lattice-screened windows. A line of children skipped across in front of them and Ash called a warning, then they came into a paved yard where a flock of longhaired white and brown sheep bumped at a wooden feed trough. Between a pair of dusty acacia trees Ruby saw a high domed canopy sheltering a pair of stone tombs, and to the side of the pillars supporting the canopy there were more stone blocks, the same shape as the houses but smaller, just big enough for one person to lie within. A child’s ball and a pink plastic doll, legs askew, lay in the dirt in front of the bike wheel.

  ‘What is this place?’ she murmured.

  Ash shrugged, carelessness only partly masking an evident anxiety.

  ‘Cities of the Dead.’ He grinned, flicking an eyebrow at her. Ruby looked at a broken wall of pink-tinged plaster that was printed all over with child-sized dark-blue hand prints, a charm to ward off the djinns.

  All the little houses were tombs. But the whole place was busy with the living, too. There was an old man in a blue galabiyeh and a white headcloth, minding the sheep. A little boy sat on a step, stirring the dust with a stick, and his mother looked out of the doorway behind him and tipped a bowl of dirty water into the gutter. There was a tap on the wall beside her and she refilled the bowl and went inside again.

  ‘A place to live,’ Ash added.

  Ruby kept quiet, waiting and half guessing why he had brought her here.

  ‘My family. You can meet them. Not Nafouz, of course, he is with the taxi.’

  He wheeled the bike and they walked down an uneven street of tomb houses. The departing sun left an ash-grey light filtering through the feathery acacia leaves.

  They reached an ochre-painted building with a single stone step, none of it very old-looking. Ash led the way and she followed, ducking her head beneath the lintel. Inside there was light from a single electric bulb, a table with an oilcloth, a very old woman sitting with a child in her lap. Ruby stared, trying to make sense of what seemed so unlikely. In the middle of the small space was a raised stone covered with incised inscriptions. It was unmistakably a tomb, and above and around it lived Ash’s family.

  The old woman and the half-dressed child both held out their hands to Ash.

  ‘Misa’ al-khairat’ (evening of many good things). The woman beamed and the child scrambled off its grandmother’s lap and ran to him. Ash swung it up by the hands and kissed its brown cheeks.

  ‘Habib, habib.’

  Then everyone’s eyes slid towards Ruby.

  Ash said her name and added, my friend. Ruby carefully skirted the tomb, and went to stand in front of Ash’s grandmother. Her head was wrapped in a dark cloth, her skin was seamed with wrinkles and as brown as a walnut.

  ‘Ahlan w-sahlan,’ she said, with her bird-eyes on Ruby.

  ‘Ahlan biki,’ Ruby muttered, as Ash had taught her. She was rewarded with a string of Arabic exclamations and a wide smile. Ash’s grandmother folded Ruby’s hands between her own two. It was all right, Ruby thought. She couldn’t look quite as disconcerted as she felt. Holding the child in one arm, Ash was hunting among the jars and packets that stood on a shelf. Like Jas, she thought, or Ed – searching for something to eat as soon as he came home. This was a home, but the grave drew her eyes. She wanted to stare at it, but thought it would be better to pretend it wasn’t there.

  A woman came in with a thin blue plastic carrier bag in either hand. There were shops too, then, in the Cities of the Dead.

  ‘Ummi,’ Ash said. He went to her and kissed her, and unwound the handles of the plastic bags from her fingers. He dumped the shopping on top of the grave.

  Ash’s mother was small and thin, with the same dark eyes as her sons. Ash introduced Ruby and they went through the same greeting, but Umm Nafouz (Ruby knew she must call her by the name of her oldest child, Ash had told her that too) was busier and less cordial than the grandmother had been. She turned away quite quickly and began to take bags of flour and tinned food out of the shopping bags. Ash scolded her and moved her to one side, so that he could do it. The child ran between them, laughing and exclaiming.

  No one was looking at her now, so Ruby gazed at the room’s centrepiece. It had plain stone walls and a slab on top with all the lettering. How many people were buried within, and how long ago? The dead were too close. She looked quickly away again.

  Ash’s mother was laying out pans and food, preparing to make a meal. There was a gas bottle with two ring burners beside the table, a radio and cassette player on a shelf, and a curtained doorway at the back of the room that must lead to where the family slept.

  There was warmth in this place that more logically should have felt cold and gloomy. The child wriggled between her legs and Ash’s, and put its hands over its eyes, then lowered them just far enough to be able to peep over the fingertips. She was inviting Ruby to play the game.

  Ruby hid her own eyes briefly then exposed them again. ‘Boo,’ she said and the child laughed. Ruby was quite surprised by this. Usually little kids disliked her.

  It was dark outside. She looked quickly at her watch.

  ‘It’s half past five. I told Iris six o’clock, remember?’

  Ash said, ‘You are right. I will take you home.’

  Ruby put her hands together and bowed to Ash’s mother and grandmother. ‘Masa’ il-kheer,’ she said. Ash nodded as if he were her schoolteacher.

  ‘Masa’ in-nur,’ the two women replied. The grandmother lifted her hand in a blessing.

  The child wrapped its arms round Ash’s leg and shouted a protest at him. He bent down and whispered something, then took a sweet out of his pocket and popped it into its mouth.

  ‘Yalla. Let’s go.’

  The shepherd and his sheep had gone. Ash wheeled the bike and Ruby walked beside him, unsure what to say. There were lights in many windows of the little houses, people walking by with bags of shopping like Umm Nafouz’s, and in a beam of light from a doorway a couple of children intently playing a game with a handful of stones. Other tombs had barred doors, windows protected by metal screens. They were dark, guarding their secrets. Crooked alleyways led away in all directions. Ruby remembered how vast the burial areas had looked from up at the Citadel. You could get lost in here, among the dead houses, and never be found again.

  He said, ‘You are quiet.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You think it is a strange thing.’

  ‘It’s only strange … to me. That doesn’t mean it is strange.’

  ‘It is my family tomb. When we were young we came here once every week to visit, to have picnic among our dead, to celebrate the moulid. It is not a place of fear for us, but of memory and respect. Then after my father died …’ Ash shrugged. ‘It is a home to live in. And the dead and not-yet dead, we are company all together. Why not? The dead do not harm us, only the alive.’

  A much bigger structure loomed ahead of them, a dome and finial outlined against the navy-blue sky.

  ‘See in here,’ Ash breathed. He took her by the wrist and they glided through heavy doors into a cold, close atmosphere. It was quiet enough in here, Ruby thought, to hear the dust settle. A shiver began beneath her hairline and ran the length of her spine. Ash clicked his cigarette lighter and a fragile nimbus of light spread around them. There were more tombs here, but these were built in tier upon tier up to an invisible ceiling, carved and decorated over every inch with patterns and lettering and painted in red ochre and cerulean blue. Here and there, in the flicker of the lighter, was a glint of gold.

  ‘Mamluk tombs,’
Ash said. He traced the line of a stone wreath. ‘The stone carver, once he finished … kkkk.’ He mimed a chop at the wrist of the hand holding the lighter. ‘This work done, finish, no more carving for other masters.’

  Their eyes travelled upwards, over the wealth of pattern. High above was a flattened arch picked out in flaking gold.

  The flame died and left them standing hip to hip in the blackness. Ash’s hands cupped Ruby’s face and his lips brushed her cheek as he whispered to her, ‘You were polite to my family. Like a good Egyptian girl. My mother will not be so unhappy.’

  They stood close together. Ash was warm and he tasted of cigarettes and spearmint chewing gum. Light spilled inside Ruby, a brightness so easy and careless that she wanted to laugh. It was partly to do with wanting Ash and his narrow, brown body, of course it was, and she was surprised by how much she did want him, but it was also the opposite of the negative balance that had troubled her in the mosque of Mohammed Ali. There was a positive here, glimpsed in the tomb house of Ash’s family and in the way that life continued among the remains of other lives. It was very strong in Ash himself.

  ‘Was this what you meant, when I asked you if you believed in God and you said it is what I must do?’

  Ruby’s hand travelled through an unseen arc, to take in the Mamluk tombs and the Dead Cities and the people who had to live there.

  To believe would be an explanation, a system, and a lifeline. Otherwise there was only dust.

  ‘God is good. He takes care of each of us.’

  ‘I wish I believed that.’

  Ash laughed. ‘Infidel.’

  Ruby pressed her head against his shoulder, ran her hands down the curve of his back to the hollow above his hip bones. He was beautiful.

  ‘Sit down here. We will smoke one cigarette and then I take you back to your grandmother’s house.’

  He guided her to a ledge that ran around the base of the nearest tomb. The lighter clicked again.

  ‘But, you know, it is not a free ride. God does not do that. I work hard and go to school, English, and I hope I will learn computers. I told you this, learning is important. Nafouz and I, we must look after our mother and brothers and sisters and we will live in a better place. But for now …’ His shoulder twitched against hers. ‘ … For now, we can enjoy too sometimes. Why not?’