‘It’s all got to come from the river, hasn’t it?’ said a man beside him. Owen could see him. It was Leila’s father.
‘Well, that’s more than we know,’ said the water-carrier who had first spoken.
‘You don’t know very much, then!’ retorted Ahmed Uthman.
‘What’s the trouble?’ said the driver of the cart. ‘Don’t you like our water?’
‘I like the water. It’s the price I don’t like.’
‘Well, you don’t have to pay it, then, do you?’ said the driver. ‘Tell him, Ahmed!’
‘Why don’t you just bugger off?’ said Ahmed Uthman, coming round the side of the cart.
‘Yes,’ said Leila’s father, joining him. ‘Why don’t you?’
‘Here, what’s going on?’
‘You don’t like the water? You don’t have to have it, then!’
‘Well, I won’t! Not if it’s like that!’
‘We won’t need to, will we? Not after the Cut!’ said his friend, supporting him.
‘We don’t like your water, either,’ said Leila’s father. ‘Wherever it comes from. We don’t want to see it in the Gamaliya!’
‘I take my water where I like!’
‘Oh, do you? Well, in that case-’
He moved forward threateningly.
Suddenly, he saw Owen.
Ahmed, it’s him!’ he said.
‘Him!’
Ahmed Uthman recovered first.
‘Get out of here!’ he shouted to the driver. ‘Quick!’
The driver seized his whip. Ahmed Uthman and Leila’s father threw their bags into the cart and leaped up after them. The cart shot away.
‘You watch out!’ shouted Leila’s father to the two water-car-riers as they lurched away.
‘We’ll be looking out for you!’ called Ahmed Uthman.
The two water-carriers stood there for a moment, dazed. ‘What’s all this about?’
‘I don’t know. Why do they have to be like that?’
Ahmed Uthman’s always like that. But what’s got into Ali Khedri?’
‘It’s his daughter, I suppose.’
‘He never cared two milliemes about his daughter! All he cared about was getting a job in that cart!’
‘Well, that’s gone, hasn’t it? Omar Fayoum won’t be interested in him now. Now that he’s not going to marry the girl.’
‘She’s well out of it, that’s what I say. Or would be if she wasn’t dead.’
‘She may well be. Do you know what Marriam said to me? She said, I’d rather be dead than marry that dirty old bastard!’
‘Ah, well, it’s one thing saying that-’
The two men shouldered their skins and walked away. Owen hesitated for a moment and then ran after them. ‘Your pardon, friends,’ he said. ‘I fear that I may have brought that on you!’
‘No pardon needed,’ they said courteously. ‘We brought it on ourselves. Though quite why-’
‘They did not like it when you spoke of where Omar Fayoum gets his water from.’
‘Up to some fiddle, I expect!’
‘Where does he get it from?’
‘He doesn’t always go to the river for it, that’s for certain. What do you think, Selim?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes into the es-Zakir and gets it out of the pond.’
The other man laughed.
‘He’d have to have something worked out with the gardeners.’
‘I wouldn’t put that past him.’
He looked at Owen.
‘You’re not supposed to take it out of the ponds,’ he explained. ‘Nor any other place where there’s stagnant water. Not these days. They say it’s not clean enough. Not for drinking. Though what Omar Fayoum is supposed to do and what he does are two different things.’
Owen was, as it happens, on his way to the Gamaliya. He wanted to make another attempt at a peaceful resolution of the dispute between the Muslim gravediggers and the Jews. The adjourned meeting had not resumed; but Paul and Owen, happening to meet up with McPhee in the bar of the Sporting Club, had agreed to try something out on the two sides.
McPhee was going to tell the Jews sternly that they could do the Cut, as it was their turn, but for no extra money. If the fact that it was the Sabbath ruled it out for them, then the Muslims would do it.
Owen, meanwhile, was going to talk to the Muslims, equally sternly, and tell them that it had been decided to return to the traditional arrangements for the Cut, that the Jews would do the cutting as it was their turn, but for no extra pay, and that if they didn’t like it, then the task would be offered to the Muslims. If there was any difficulty from them then British soldiers would do it.
The theory was that the prospect of the Jews declining would keep the Muslims happy, while the agonizing that the Jews would have to do over their decision would keep them, if not exactly happy, then at least preoccupied. With any luck both sides would dangle until the very last moment, until, in fact, it was too late for either of them to cause much trouble.
Thus the theory; not quite, at once, as simple in practice.
‘Suppose they don’t refuse?’ the Muslim gravediggers objected. ‘Suppose the buggers agree to do it after all?’
‘Well, then, they have to do it. It’s their turn.’
‘I don’t agree with this turn business,’ said one of the gravediggers. ‘Why have they got to have a turn at all?’
‘Because it’s always been like that’-normally a clinching argument in Cairo-‘and because it’s too late to change now.’
‘We can do it as well as they can!’
‘I’m sure you can. That is why we do it in turn. One year it’s you, the next year it’s them. This year it’s them.’
‘Yes, but this is the last year. We’re going to lose out.’
‘You don’t lose out. This is when it happens to stop.’
‘Yes, but if it stopped next year, then they’d be the ones to lose out!’
‘No one’s losing out. You’ve-’ a sudden moment of inspiration-‘you’ve both done it an equal number of times!’
They looked at each other, thunder-struck.
‘That so?’
‘Absolutely!’
No one was in a position to contradict. They subsided, grumbling.
But then returned.
‘Yes, but it wouldn’t have stopped if it hadn’t been for them, would it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Putting that girl there. That made it all wrong.’
‘That’s got nothing to do with it. Nor have the Jews, either. It was the Government that decided to end the Cut. For very good reasons, too. That land is a health hazard.’
Help arrived from an unexpected quarter.
‘I don’t think putting the girl there would have made it wrong, Mustapha,’ said one of the gravediggers diffidently. ‘It would have made it sweet, surely?’
‘Well, it would have if it had been one of their girls. But it was one of ours. I mean, you can’t have that, can you?’
‘The girl has got nothing to do with it!’ said Owen with emphasis. ‘Her death has got nothing whatsoever to do with the Cut. And she was not killed by the Jews!’
‘Who was she killed by, then?’ asked one of the men.
‘We don’t quite know that yet,’ Owen had to admit. ‘But we do know that she was not killed by the Jews.’
‘If we could be sure of that,’ said one of the more thoughtful gravediggers.
On his way back to the Ezbekiya, where he was meeting Zeinab, Owen cut across the Quartier Rosetti, and in doing so crossed the line of the Khalig Canal. To his surprise, down among the rubbish he saw Mahmoud.
‘Hello,’ he called. ‘What’s all this?’
Mahmoud looked up, saw him, and, with a certain amount of relief, climbed out and came towards him.
‘I’m retracing the line that must have been taken with her body,’ he said. ‘It’s a hell of a long way. She couldn’t have run there, as I had thought.’
‘It’s a long way to carry that sort of weight,’ said Owen, looking up the length of the Canal. ‘Not to mention the risk of being seen.’
‘That’s why he would have gone along the Canal,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It was dark, too.’
‘He’d have had to have known what he was doing to walk along the Canal in the dark.’
The bed was choked with rubbish.
‘That is what I am finding,’ said Mahmoud drily.