‘They’re working on some ikon. Down in one of the churches. Or so he said. “In that case,” I said, “you’ll not be wanting brick, you’ll be wanting dust.” No, he said, he’d prefer brick. “Well,” I said, “you’re probably not an expert, but I’m pretty sure that what you really need, if it’s an ikon you’re talking about, is dust. In any case, dust is all I can let you have. I get plenty of that left over. But if you’re talking about material to work, well, I only get as much as I need. You’ve got to pay cash.” Well, he went away, but then he came back and said he’d like dust. I sold him some but then he wanted more and I said, I haven’t got any more, not for a week or two, that is. And he said, it’ll be too late then. So I said, you’d better go and ask someone else, then. And that’s what he did, I think.’
‘Can you sell dust?’
‘Oh yes. There’s some people who want it. But what would be the point of selling it, if he’s only just bought it? And bought it from the likes of me? I mean, we’re not going to let him have it cheap, are we? I wouldn’t say we’re making a fortune out of it, but it’s not in our usual line of business and you naturally charge a bit extra. He ought to go direct to a supplier. But then, if he did that, they’d always be able to undercut him, wouldn’t they? If he was trying to sell it on!’ Owen agreed it was a funny business and asked how much dust the old man had purchased.
‘How many ikons is he doing?’ he said. ‘This seems a lot, if there’s only one.’
‘And he wanted more! “You’d better check your particulars,” I said. “With gold, you want to get it right.” ’
‘You certainly do,’ agreed Owen. ‘Did he say which church it was?’
‘No. It’s down in the Babylon somewhere.’
‘Oh!’ said Owen. ‘The Babylon?’
Owen had arranged to meet Georgiades in the old Greek cathedral. Arriving a little early, he climbed up to the roof to orientate himself. Babylon was spread out below him. Right at his feet were the vineyards which sheltered the seven ancient churches; and, at this height, the walls of the Ders, the fortified precincts, were plainly visible. At ground level it was sometimes difficult to distinguish them. Within the walls the people were going about their daily business: the little boys to school, the women to the pumps and wells for water, or perhaps making an early visit to the suk, the men to the little shops and workshops often set in recesses of the walls to begin their day’s work. Beyond the houses in one direction he could see the Nile, and Roda Island, with its Nilometer, and the ferry crossing the river, and on the other side the village of Gizeh and the pyramids. Turning round, he could see Saladin’s great aqueduct stealing along the sandhills of the Fustat until it reached modern Cairo with its minarets and domes and Saladin’s Citadel on its rock.
It was against the Muslim invaders that the Copts had built the Ders. For the Copts had been here before the Arabs, before even the Romans. They were the original inhabitants of the place and had clung on to their identity despite successive waves of invaders. Was there not a lesson here for Sorgos, Owen wondered?
If there was, he was not sure that he liked it. For the Copts had survived by going underground: underground literally, beneath and behind their great walls, but underground in other ways too, burying themselves in the general population, distinguishable by their clothes and their features, but never seemingly asserting themselves. If there was a nationalism here, it was a secret, covert one, though perhaps none the less tenacious for that.
Owen preferred to look at the Ders from up here. At ground level he had too much of the feeling of being in a ghetto. You were too conscious of the walls barring out the rest of the world. And everything seemed somehow underground. It was an effect, perhaps, of the architectural search for shade, but it made everything dark, claustrophobic.
He heard footsteps on the stairs. Georgiades emerged, breathing heavily.
‘Grandmother’s pleased,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Pleased at me coming here,’ he said. ‘To the cathedral. She thinks there’s hope yet.’
‘I didn’t know you had a grandmother.’
‘Not mine, Rosa’s. She used to come here regularly when the family first came to Egypt. They lived down here for a while before moving up to the city.’
He came across to the parapet and stood beside Owen. The catheral was built into a bastion of the old Roman fortress.
‘It’s the vineyards, too. Like home, she says. Greece.’
He bent over the parapet.
‘It’s over there,’ he said, pointing.
‘Al-Mo’allaka? The church where they’re restoring ikons?’
‘Yes. You can’t really see it from here.’
‘I’ve been there, I think.’
‘If you had, you’d remember it. Shall we take a look?’ They went back down the stairs and out into the cloisters. Within a few yards Owen lost his bearings. Cloisters became tunnels, tunnels, dark alleyways and then cloisters again. They went through underground arcades where the shops were illuminated only by candles. Eventually they emerged into sunlight, the sunlight of a small palm-tree court with a fountain in its middle. From one end of the court a staircase led upwards. Al-Mo’allaka, the Hanging Church, was at the top of that.
The church got its name not from the fact of being actually suspended, but from its having been built high up in one of the ancient gateways of the old Roman fort. To reach it you had to climb up the staircase. At the top was a kind of atrium and the church opened off this.
Owen stopped for a moment in the doorway to let his eyes get used to the darkness. The church was lit by old hanging lamps and the light that came from their tiny flames was hardly enough at first for him to be able to make anything out. But then he saw the antique columns of marble taken, so Georgiades said, from some Roman temple, which broke the space up into the traditional three parts of a Coptic church: the place of the women, the place of the men, and the place of the priests. Gradually he became aware of the old barrel roof, bolted to open woodwork like the timbers of a ship: and then of the low Moresco arches, outlined in ivory, which led to the sanctuary. His eye came back to more marble, that of an incredibly finely carved pulpit, very long and narrow, standing on delicate marble shafts. Only very slowly, because of the darkness of the wood, did he become aware of the backdrop to everything, a screen which, unusually, ran right round the church and which seemed, unbelievably, to glow in the darkness.
He went forward into the church and saw that the screen was covered with golden ikons. The gold caught the light from the swinging lamps and seemed both to absorb and reflect it, to take it into itself as a kind of inner energy and then to release it again, slowly.
Georgiades touched his arm. At first he did not see, but then Georgiades pointed and he realized that over in a corner a man was working on one of the ikons.
They went across. The man looked up. Owen couldn’t see him well but saw enough to know that he was not an Arab. Or a Copt, for that matter.
‘Fine work!’ said Owen.
‘Just the finishing touches,’ said the man. They spoke in Arabic but although the man spoke it well, it was not his first tongue. ‘We do most of the work in our workshop out the back.’
‘You have a lot of work here, then?’
The man nodded.
‘We are working on five. Just restoring, of course.’
‘Difficult, with the materials. Is that real gold?’
The man smiled.
‘Dust,’ he said, ‘fixed with paint. I wouldn’t try to get it off.’