eyes travelled upwards, over the wealth of pattern. High above was a flattened arch picked out in flaking gold.
The flame died and left them standing hip to hip in the blackness. Ash’s hands cupped Ruby’s face and his lips brushed her cheek as he whispered to her, ‘You were polite to my family. Like a good Egyptian girl. My mother will not be so unhappy.’
They stood close together. Ash was warm and he tasted of cigarettes and spearmint chewing gum. Light spilled inside Ruby, a brightness so easy and careless that she wanted to laugh. It was partly to do with wanting Ash and his narrow, brown body, of course it was, and she was surprised by how much she did want him, but it was also the opposite of the negative balance that had troubled her in the mosque of Mohammed Ali. There was a positive here, glimpsed in the tomb house of Ash’s family and in the way that life continued among the remains of other lives. It was very strong in Ash himself.
‘Was this what you meant, when I asked you if you believed in God and you said it is what I must do?’
Ruby’s hand travelled through an unseen arc, to take in the Mamluk tombs and the Dead Cities and the people who had to live there.
To believe would be an explanation, a system, and a lifeline. Otherwise there was only dust.
‘God is good. He takes care of each of us.’
‘I wish I believed that.’
Ash laughed. ‘Infidel.’
Ruby pressed her head against his shoulder, ran her hands down the curve of his back to the hollow above his hip bones. He was beautiful.
‘Sit down here. We will smoke one cigarette and then I take you back to your grandmother’s house.’
He guided her to a ledge that ran around the base of the nearest tomb. The lighter clicked again.
‘But, you know, it is not a free ride. God does not do that. I work hard and go to school, English, and I hope I will learn computers. I told you this, learning is important. Nafouz and I, we must look after our mother and brothers and sisters and we will live in a better place. But for now …’ His shoulder twitched against hers. ‘ … For now, we can enjoy too sometimes. Why not?’
Ruby laughed. She still felt the lightness inside her. ‘Yeah.’
Ash was vital, springing with energy. He wasn’t bored or disgusted with everything, as she quite often felt in London, and he was different from Jas. Jas used to lie on his bed for days at a time, smoking weed and listening to music.
‘So now you have made a tour, eh? Citadel, Mamluk tomb, my family.’
‘Yeah.’ The shock of the tomb houses still reverberated. She needed some time to absorb what she had seen.
‘Ruby, it is not possible for everyone to live in a house the same as your grandmother.’
‘I know that,’ Ruby said.
‘Now. It is time. I take you back.’
‘Will we go out again soon?’
‘Of course we will.’
They rode back to Iris’s door. When she looked up at the high wall, with not a light showing anywhere, Ruby thought of Iris sitting alone inside with only the two old people to look after her. Ash’s grandmother seemed the luckier, with her children and grandchildren around her and the dead too, everyone together.
Why was Iris cut off from her own daughter, and Lesley from her mother?
She would ask, Ruby decided. She would find out.
She scrambled off the bike and kissed Ash goodnight.
‘Ma’ as salama,’ she said. Go in safety.
‘Good,’ he crowed. ‘Soon you speak Arabic as well as me.’
The child has been to the cemeteries. As we are drinking our tea together she tells me about it and I can see that the experience has shocked her.
‘People live right on top of the graves. In the little tomb houses. There are sinks and electric lights and kids’ toys, just like anywhere else.’
Ruby’s appearance is changing. This morning her face is bare of the black paint and most of the studs and metal-work, and without this angry disguise she is becoming more familiar, as if history is seeping under her skin and bringing family contours to the surface. I can see something of my mother in the set of her mouth, and I notice for the first time that she has Lesley’s hazel eyes. She still tries to be hard-boiled, but I am beginning to see more of the underlying innocence. She is even swearing less than she did when she first came.
I tell her, ‘The cemeteries are poor areas, but they are quite respectable. There are schools, sewerage, clinics. Further on towards Muqqatam are real slums. Don’t go there, please.’
‘Ash said the one they live in is his family tomb.’
‘That’s right, it would be.’
‘But …’ She shivers a little. ‘All the dead people.’
‘Are you afraid of the dead? Of death?’
Of course she is; she is young.
‘No. Well, not of ghosts or … djinns. But I wouldn’t like to sleep the night in a cemetery.’ Her face changes, a shiver passing over it like wind across still water. ‘I don’t want to die.’
‘Someone close to you has, haven’t they?’
I was expecting to hear about a family dog, or perhaps even a school friend in a car accident. Her answer surprises me.
Ruby tells the story quickly, without embellishment, but her mechanical delivery hardly disguises the depths of horror. The last image of the crumpled boy with his head in a pool of dark blood will stay with me, too. I am filled with concern for her.
‘Ruby, who knows about this?’
‘I told Ash. But then I felt bad, like I was using Jas’s death to get sympathy or attention or something.’
‘No one else? Not your mother or father?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Why didn’t I tell them that Jas was on one then fell off a balcony and died?’
‘That would be the normal expectation, I suppose. You witness a tragedy, the violent death of a young man who is a close friend. Your mother would comfort you, wouldn’t she? She would want to do that.’
Ruby looks me straight in the eye.
‘You didn’t.’
She
