shrugged, carelessness only partly masking an evident anxiety.
‘Cities of the Dead.’ He grinned, flicking an eyebrow at her. Ruby looked at a broken wall of pink-tinged plaster that was printed all over with child-sized dark-blue hand prints, a charm to ward off the djinns.
All the little houses were tombs. But the whole place was busy with the living, too. There was an old man in a blue galabiyeh and a white headcloth, minding the sheep. A little boy sat on a step, stirring the dust with a stick, and his mother looked out of the doorway behind him and tipped a bowl of dirty water into the gutter. There was a tap on the wall beside her and she refilled the bowl and went inside again.
‘A place to live,’ Ash added.
Ruby kept quiet, waiting and half guessing why he had brought her here.
‘My family. You can meet them. Not Nafouz, of course, he is with the taxi.’
He wheeled the bike and they walked down an uneven street of tomb houses. The departing sun left an ash-grey light filtering through the feathery acacia leaves.
They reached an ochre-painted building with a single stone step, none of it very old-looking. Ash led the way and she followed, ducking her head beneath the lintel. Inside there was light from a single electric bulb, a table with an oilcloth, a very old woman sitting with a child in her lap. Ruby stared, trying to make sense of what seemed so unlikely. In the middle of the small space was a raised stone covered with incised inscriptions. It was unmistakably a tomb, and above and around it lived Ash’s family.
The old woman and the half-dressed child both held out their hands to Ash.
‘Misa’ al-khairat’ (evening of many good things). The woman beamed and the child scrambled off its grandmother’s lap and ran to him. Ash swung it up by the hands and kissed its brown cheeks.
‘Habib, habib.’
Then everyone’s eyes slid towards Ruby.
Ash said her name and added, my friend. Ruby carefully skirted the tomb, and went to stand in front of Ash’s grandmother. Her head was wrapped in a dark cloth, her skin was seamed with wrinkles and as brown as a walnut.
‘Ahlan w-sahlan,’ she said, with her bird-eyes on Ruby.
‘Ahlan biki,’ Ruby muttered, as Ash had taught her. She was rewarded with a string of Arabic exclamations and a wide smile. Ash’s grandmother folded Ruby’s hands between her own two. It was all right, Ruby thought. She couldn’t look quite as disconcerted as she felt. Holding the child in one arm, Ash was hunting among the jars and packets that stood on a shelf. Like Jas, she thought, or Ed – searching for something to eat as soon as he came home. This was a home, but the grave drew her eyes. She wanted to stare at it, but thought it would be better to pretend it wasn’t there.
A woman came in with a thin blue plastic carrier bag in either hand. There were shops too, then, in the Cities of the Dead.
‘Ummi,’ Ash said. He went to her and kissed her, and unwound the handles of the plastic bags from her fingers. He dumped the shopping on top of the grave.
Ash’s mother was small and thin, with the same dark eyes as her sons. Ash introduced Ruby and they went through the same greeting, but Umm Nafouz (Ruby knew she must call her by the name of her oldest child, Ash had told her that too) was busier and less cordial than the grandmother had been. She turned away quite quickly and began to take bags of flour and tinned food out of the shopping bags. Ash scolded her and moved her to one side, so that he could do it. The child ran between them, laughing and exclaiming.
No one was looking at her now, so Ruby gazed at the room’s centrepiece. It had plain stone walls and a slab on top with all the lettering. How many people were buried within, and how long ago? The dead were too close. She looked quickly away again.
Ash’s mother was laying out pans and food, preparing to make a meal. There was a gas bottle with two ring burners beside the table, a radio and cassette player on a shelf, and a curtained doorway at the back of the room that must lead to where the family slept.
There was warmth in this place that more logically should have felt cold and gloomy. The child wriggled between her legs and Ash’s, and put its hands over its eyes, then lowered them just far enough to be able to peep over the fingertips. She was inviting Ruby to play the game.
Ruby hid her own eyes briefly then exposed them again. ‘Boo,’ she said and the child laughed. Ruby was quite surprised by this. Usually little kids disliked her.
It was dark outside. She looked quickly at her watch.
‘It’s half past five. I told Iris six o’clock, remember?’
Ash said, ‘You are right. I will take you home.’
Ruby put her hands together and bowed to Ash’s mother and grandmother. ‘Masa’ il-kheer,’ she said. Ash nodded as if he were her schoolteacher.
‘Masa’ in-nur,’ the two women replied. The grandmother lifted her hand in a blessing.
The child wrapped its arms round Ash’s leg and shouted a protest at him. He bent down and whispered something, then took a sweet out of his pocket and popped it into its mouth.
‘Yalla. Let’s go.’
The shepherd and his sheep had gone. Ash wheeled the bike and Ruby walked beside him, unsure what to say. There were lights in many windows of the little houses, people walking by with bags of shopping like Umm Nafouz’s, and in a beam of light from a doorway a couple of children intently playing a game with a handful of stones. Other tombs had barred doors, windows protected by metal screens. They were dark, guarding their secrets. Crooked alleyways led away in all directions. Ruby remembered how vast the burial areas had looked from up at the Citadel. You could get lost in here, among the dead houses, and never be found again.
He said, ‘You are quiet.’
‘Yes.’
‘You think it is a strange thing.’
‘It’s only strange … to me. That doesn’t mean it is strange.’
‘It is my family tomb. When we were young we came here once every week to visit, to have picnic among our dead, to celebrate the moulid. It is not a place of fear for us, but of memory and respect. Then after my father died …’ Ash shrugged. ‘It is a home to live in. And the dead and not-yet dead, we are company all together. Why not? The dead do not harm us, only the alive.’
A much bigger structure loomed ahead of them, a dome and finial outlined against the navy-blue sky.
‘See in here,’ Ash breathed. He took her by the wrist and they glided through heavy doors into a cold, close atmosphere. It was quiet enough in here, Ruby thought, to hear the dust settle. A shiver began beneath her hairline and ran the length of her spine. Ash clicked his cigarette lighter and a fragile nimbus of light spread around them. There were more tombs here, but these were built in tier upon tier up to an invisible ceiling, carved and decorated over every inch with patterns and lettering and painted in red ochre and cerulean blue. Here and there, in the flicker of the lighter, was a glint of gold.
‘Mamluk tombs,’ Ash said. He traced the line of a stone wreath.
