He approached her as soon as she stepped off the train from Luxor, a gaunt ill-shaped boy of seventeen or eighteen, slightly taller than the milling heads around him.
‘You have too much luggage,’ he said, dragging her crammed rucksack from the train. ‘I shall carry it for you.’ He hoisted it on to his back – he wore a shirt and jeans, rather than the usual gallabiya of Upper Egypt – and strode off.
‘Have you somewhere to stay?’ He did not turn round.
‘Well, the people in Cairo recommended the Grand.’
‘The Grand is no good. You will stay at the pension of my brother-in-law.’
‘What’s wrong with the Grand?’
‘It is not clean; you will get dysentery. Besides, it is full.’
‘How much does your brother-in-law’s place cost?’ They were now outside; he paused on the top step of the flight leading up to the station and viewed the thronging square with indifference. She stood beside him, dazed by the fierce heat.
‘More cheap than the Grand. And much more clean.’
She followed as best she could, impressed by the curt way he dismissed all the touts and pedlars and hordes of small children: much more effective, and probably kinder, than her own vacillatory, apologetic shrugs. Often she did give baksheesh, and was then embarrassed by the pleading soft eyes of all the children to whom she had given nothing.
The modern square in front of the station led into a wide street lined with shops selling turquoise necklaces and scarabs and heads of Nefertiti. She stopped to examine a set of tiny brass coffee cups and tray.
‘For tourists,’ he said, dismissively. ‘No good. Fake.’
‘Are you sure? They look like brass to me. And they’re so beautifully engraved.’
‘Fake,’ he repeated stonily. ‘And you have no room for them in your bag. You have Aswan to visit yet, I expect.’
This was true. She followed him meekly as he veered off the main street into a dark maze of alleys, pungent with cumin and mint and animal droppings: workrooms for copper or leather were interspersed with private homes.
‘If you want to buy a gift I will take you to the shop of my uncle. He sells very fine things; very real. We will go there before lunch.’
‘Well, it’s awfully kind of you, but I think I’ll just book in and have a sleep. The train journey was pretty tiring.’
‘You should have taken the French train, not the Egyptian one. The French train is clean.’
‘But six times as expensive.’
‘Yes, of course. We have arrived. What is your name?’
‘Ginny.’
‘I am Ali. I will tell my brother-in-law to give you a very fine room.’
They entered a small, poorly-lit entrance hall with a desk along one wall and a tattered poster of President Sadat above it. The hall was empty, but behind a curtain a man and woman could be heard arguing. The woman seemed to be winning.
‘Wait,’ said Ali, disappearing behind the curtain. She heard him say something in Arabic and a curt male voice reply; the woman continued to articulate her grievances, undeterred. For a couple of minutes all three voices rose and fell.
‘Don’t worry if there’s a problem. I can easily go somewhere else.’
Ali emerged; his eyes were angry. ‘There is no problem. My brother-in-law is now coming. My brother-in-law has no education.’
The brother-in-law was a fat man and wore a gallabiya. He wiped his perspiring forehead with the back of his hand, nodded briefly to Ginny and asked for her passport. She rummaged in her bag, unearthing several intimate articles of clothing before finding it. The brother-in-law stared at her suspiciously and Ali stared into space.
Out in the street he still looked away from her, without expression. ‘I will come for you at 6.00.’
‘O.K.’ She was too tired to stop him.
‘You will need your passport.’
‘Why? Will the banks still be open?’
‘No, no, my uncle will change money for you. Very fine rates. The banks here are no good.’
The Voyage: Edited by Chandani Lokuge & David Morley Page 26
