Iris and Ruby: A gripping, exotic historical novel. Rosie Thomas

cups and bottles and bills. Ash had been right about the tourists, because almost all of the people crammed into the alley were Westerners with cameras and bags of bazaar purchases. Mucus-faced urchins and Egyptian women with dark faces and glittering eyes worked the tables, trying to sell purses and lighters and packets of tissues. Ash took Ruby’s hand and towed her through the crowd to a just-vacated table, well-placed on the threshold of the café itself. Peering into the gloom inside, Ruby saw the glint of huge, fogged mirrors covering the walls.

      A waiter was already looming over them as she sank into a chair. She asked for a bottle of water and a cup of coffee and some yoghurt and then gestured to Ash.

      He shook his head without speaking.

      ‘Sorry. Forgot,’ Ruby sighed.

      When the water came she tore off the plastic top and downed half of it.

      ‘Why are you in Khan on your own?’

      Ruby told him.

      ‘I am sorry for your grandmother’s illness,’ he said. ‘She will be well soon, inshallah.’

      ‘Yeah. I hope so.’

      Once she had quenched her thirst and spooned up some yoghurt, Ruby sat back and looked around. Ash was watching the crowds, with his face in profile. He was very good-looking, with fine, almost feminine features and thick, long eyelashes. She reached out to the pack of Marlboro that showed in the pocket of his shirt.

      ‘Can I bum one of these?’

      ‘You are a woman. It is better not smoke in public.’

      Ruby snorted, then clicked Ash’s lighter to the cigarette. After inhaling deeply she said, ‘So. No swearing or smoking. What am I allowed to do, according to you?’

      Ash raised one eyebrow. ‘Maybe come for a ride with me?’

      ‘You’ve got a car?’ It was an entrancing idea. She was dying to see Cairo beyond this isthmus of ancient streets but after her experience in the bazaar she would have preferred not to try it alone.

      Rather stiffly Ash said, ‘I have my moby. You can be pillion passenger.’

      ‘Moby? Oh, one of those bikes with engines. OK then.’ Ruby scraped the last of the yoghurt out of the jar.

      ‘You are still hungry I think.’

      ‘Yeah, I am, actually.’

      Ash stopped the waiter and asked him for something. While they waited they smoked and watched the tourists come and go. Because she was with Ash and because Iris actually lived here, Ruby now felt superior to mere holiday-makers.

      A plate was put down in front of her. There were two fried eggs and a basket of flat bread.

      ‘Perfect,’ she crowed, and Ash looked pleased.

      While she devoured the food he told her that he worked at night as a telephonist in a big hospital. ‘Very good job,’ he said.

      He was also trying to improve his English, and saving up to pay for a computer study course. Nafouz was helping him, but they had to give money to their mother and younger brothers and sisters. Their father had died more than two years ago.

      ‘May he rest with God,’ Ash added.

      Ruby put her knife and fork down on a clean plate, and picked up the bill the waiter had brought. She frowned at the blurry blue numerals.

      ‘I would like to pay for you, but this place is not cheap,’ Ash said awkwardly.

      ‘Why should you pay for me?’

      ‘Because I am a man.’

      ‘I can pay for myself. For now, anyway,’ Ruby said. ‘And you haven’t eaten anything. Shall we go?’

      They left the café and Ash led the way back to the underpass. It was surprisingly and disorientatingly close at hand.

      Ash’s bike was locked to a grille in the wall at the end of the narrow street leading straight to Iris’s house and the big mosque.

      ‘What’s it doing parked right here? You are following me,’ Ruby accused. ‘Did you tail me all the way round that bloody bazaar?’

      He only grinned and straddled the machine’s seat, sliding his hips forward to make room for Ruby on the pillion. ‘You are coming?’

      ‘I suppose so. Just for half an hour. Then you’ve got to bring me back to check how my grandmother is, right?’

      She sat primly upright at first, but then the little machine shot forward and she had to grab Ash round the waist in order not to fall off the back. He sped into the traffic, weaving in and out of taxis and buses. Ruby ducked her face behind his shoulder, too afraid to look where they were going. The dusty sides of cars flashed past an inch from her thigh and clouds of gritty blue exhaust fumes made her eyes sting. When they stopped at traffic lights she put her feet on solid ground with a gulp of relief, but only a second later they would lurch forward again in a surge of metal and revving engines. Cairo appeared to be one solid mass of overheated chrome and steel.

      ‘You like?’ Ash howled at her over his shoulder.

      ‘I hate,’ she screamed back, but he only laughed.

      They emerged into a vast square set about with tall buildings and with an inferno of endlessly revolving traffic trapped within it.

      ‘Midan Tahrir,’ Ash mouthed at her.

      ‘Is that so?’

      He waved a reckless arm at a low pink block. ‘Egyptian Museum. Very famous, I take you soon.’

      ‘Can’t wait. Are we going to stop?’

      ‘Maybe.’

      A moment later they shot out into slightly clearer air. Ruby saw branches and leaves against open sky as Ash swung the bike in a flashy circle and cut the engine to bring them coasting up against the kerb. Ruby sprang off, coughing and rubbing her eyes, and Ash locked the bike to a puny sapling rooted in the wide pavement. They were in a boulevard lined with trees. On the other side, beyond several lanes of traffic, was a low wall and then seemingly empty air.

      ‘Come,’ Ash commanded. He took her wrist and they darted into a gap between thundering buses.

      Below and beyond the wall, there was water. It was a wide, swirling, grey-brown river and on it sailed a dozen little boats with slanting masts and graceful sails like unfurled handkerchiefs. Ruby leaned far out over the wall, looking at the vista of bridges spanning the water, towers and distant trees.

      ‘Nile river,’ Ash said at her side. She gazed at the ripples and reflections. Tall buildings on the opposite bank and humid grey clouds swam on the moving surface.

      ‘That way’ – he gestured – ‘Alexandria. Then Europe. And that way’ – he swept his left arm in a stately arc along the river – ‘Egypt.’ For Ash, it seemed, the name was enough to convey the magnificence of his country. He took her hand to emphasise the importance of what he was showing her.

      ‘Yeah.’

      Her unwillingness to be impressed annoyed him. He began jabbing his finger towards nearby landmarks. ‘See, Cairo Tower. El Tahrir Bridge, up there 26 July Bridge. Gezira island. Sheraton Hotel.’ The last was a hideous cylinder on the tip of a tongue of land opposite.

      ‘No, really? Amazing.’

      He jerked her wrist sharply and she stood upright, startled and defensive.

      ‘Watch it,’ Ruby snapped.

      They faced each other, glaring. The breeze off the unfamiliar river was humid, and the sprawl of an unknown and hostile city stretched away on every side. Suddenly Ruby missed the clatter and roll of skateboarders under the concrete spans of the South Bank, and the smell of hot dogs, and all the damp, foggy chill of London. She heard Lesley’s voice and shut that off inside her head.