Rosie Thomas 2-Book Collection One: Iris and Ruby, Constance. Rosie Thomas

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 is this place?’ she murmured.

      Ash 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