smoking at tin tables. Shafts of light came out of open doorways, shining on women with black shawls over their heads who sat on stone steps with children squirming around them. There were crates of globular shiny vegetables and crooked towers of coke cans, a thick litter of rubbish in the gutters, scrawny dogs nosing at it all. Men selling things from trays yelled on the street corners, other bent old men pushed hand barrows through the traffic. Neon lights blinked everywhere and there was the endless honking of horns.
‘Busy place,’ she said at last, wanting to make it smaller and less threatening with a casual phrase.
Nafouz shrugged. ‘Who your friends here?’
He was either being nosy, or he was concerned for her. Neither was welcome.
‘Family,’ she said discouragingly.
They were winding down smaller streets now, leaving the main thoroughfares behind. Ruby glanced upwards and saw onion domes and tall thin towers pasted against dark-blue sky. The street was so narrow that there was only room for one car to pass. The women sitting on their steps lifted their heads and stared as the taxi slid by. There was one great dome just ahead, cutting an arc of sky, and a trio of thin spires that rose beside it.
Nafouz stopped when he could go no further. The street had become a cobbled alley and it took a sharp-angled turn just in front of them. A stone pillar blocked the way. In the angle of a pale blank wall was a door with a small flight of stone steps leading up to it.
‘Here is place,’ Nafouz announced.
Ruby stared at the door. She could just see that it was painted blue, old paint that had bubbled to expose wood split by the sun. She hadn’t at all worked out what to expect, but it wasn’t this. There was nothing here to give any clue to what or who might be inside.
She summoned up her resolve.
‘Yeah. How much money d’you want?’ She opened up her nylon sack and her Discman and headphones and an apple and tubes of make-up rolled over the seat.
‘Fifty bounds.’
‘Fifty? D’you think I’m stupid or something? I’ll give you twenty.’ She opened her wallet and fumbled with torn filthy notes.
‘From airport, fifty.’ Nafouz wasn’t smiling any longer.
‘Get lost, right?’ Ruby gathered up her belongings and hopped out of the car but the driver was quicker. He ran round and held down the boot so she couldn’t retrieve her rucksack. They squared up to each other, faces inches apart.
‘Twenty-five,’ Ruby said.
‘Fifty.’
‘Give me my fucking bag.’ She kicked his shin as hard as she could. Unfortunately she was only wearing flipflops.
Nafouz yelped. ‘Lady, lady. You are not behaving nicely.’
‘Really? Now hand over my bag.’
‘You pay first.’ But Nafouz was relenting. This tourist’s resistance earned a glimmer of his respect. Usually they just gave in and handed over the money. ‘Thirty,’ he conceded.
‘Fuck’s sake.’ But she sighed and took another note out of her purse, crumpling it and flinging it against the sleeve of his leather jacket. Nafouz’s smile was restored. Thirty Egyptian pounds was the going rate for a ride in from the airport.
Ruby took her rucksack and hoisted it over her shoulder. With the wires of her headphones trailing and the contents of her other bag spilling in her arms she marched up the stone steps without a backward glance. She heard Nafouz reversing the car the way they had come, then a squeal of tyres as he raced away.
As soon as he was gone she regretted the loss of even this brief relationship. Maybe she should have asked him to wait. What if there was nobody here? What if the address was wrong? Where would she go, in this city where she couldn’t even read the street signs?
Then she lifted her head and straightened her shoulders again.
There was no door knocker, nothing. She knocked on the blistered paint. There was a smell of dried piss in this alleyway, competing with all the other stinks.
There was no sound from within.
Ruby clenched her fist and hammered even harder. Some poem that they had all been made to learn at school floated into her head and, without thinking, she yelled the words in time to the banging: ‘“Is there anybody there,” said the Traveller?’
The door suddenly creaked open, revealing a six-inch slice of dim light. Ruby was so startled that her voice trailed away in a squeak. She could just see a big fat man in a white dress.
She said, ‘I am Ruby Sawyer.’
Having taken one look at her, the man was already trying to close the door again. Ruby’s foot flew out and wedged itself in the crack. She wished for the second time that she was wearing proper shoes. She repeated her name, louder this time, but it clearly wasn’t enough.
She added loudly, ‘I am here to see my grandmother. Let me in, please.’
The resistance diminished a little. Immediately she put her shoulder to the door and pushed hard. It swung open and she fell inwards with a clatter of spilled belongings. The man’s face was a dark purplish moon of disapproval. He frowned, but he did help her to her feet.
Ruby looked around. Her first impression was of the inside of a church. There was a stone floor, musty wood panelling, a pale, weak light suspended on chains inside a glass vessel. A smell of incense, too, and some kind of spicy cooking.
‘Madam is resting,’ the man said frigidly.
The best course was obviously to be conciliatory.
‘I don’t want to disturb her. Or disturb anyone. I’m sorry if I made a noise. But, you know …’ The man didn’t help her out. He went on impassively staring at her. ‘I … I have come all the way from London. My mother, you see … Um, my mother is Madam’s daughter. You know?’
There was another silence. Whether he knew or not, the connection didn’t seem to impress him. But at last he sighed heavily and said, ‘Follow me, please. Leave this here.’ He pointed to her bags. She relinquished them with pleasure.
He led the way beneath an arch and through a bare room. Behind a heavy door there was a flight of enclosed wooden stairs. The lights were very dim, just single bulbs in the angles of walls, shaded with metal grilles. They went up the stairs and along a panelled corridor. It was a big house, Ruby thought, but it was dusty and bare, and all the stairs and corners and screens made it secretive. A place of shadow and whispers. It was much cooler in here than it was outside. A faint shiver twitched her skin.
The man stopped at a closed door. He bent his head and listened. She noticed that his face had turned soft and concerned. There was no sound, so he lifted a latch and eased the door open. There was a light burning in a teardrop of crimson glass, a carved divan seat piled with cushions under a shuttered window. In a low cushioned chair with a padded footstool a very old woman was propped up with her eyes closed. A spilled glass lay on the kelim rug.
Ruby took a step forward and she opened her eyes.
Dream?
