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 plainly 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
