Michael Pearce
The Last Cut
Chapter 1
'It will be for the last time, said Garvin, the Commandant of Police.
It seems a pity, said the Kadis representative, after a thousand years.
Oh, more than that, said McPhee, the Deputy Commandant. The rites almost certainly antedate the Arab invasion. The ancient Egyptians-
Yes, well, thank you, said Garvin. That all?
Theres the question of the gravediggers, said the young man from the Consulate.
Gravediggers?
Yes. The ones who actually make the cut. Its either the Muslim gravediggers or the Jews. This year its the Jews.
Well, then-
Yes, but it falls on their Sabbath this year.
Okay, let the Muslim gravediggers do it, then.
They wont like that!
The Muslims?
No, the Jews. Its their turn.
Yes, but they wont do it on the Sabbath, I thought you said?
Well, they will do it if theyre told to. And if they get paid extra.
There was a little silence.
I suppose I could get the Old Man to talk to the Finance Department.
And I could get the Kadi to talk to the Khedive and get him to tell them.
That all settled, then? Nothing else? asked Garvin. Right, Mamur Zapt, the rest is up to you.
As they got up from the table, McPhee said:
They used to sacrifice a maiden, you know.
Nonsense! said the Kadis representative. Thats just a myth. Anyway, it was the Christians.
Thats a myth, too, said the representative of the Copts hastily. You cant blame it on us. The Canal wasnt built till the Arabs came.
The rite may be older, said McPhee. It almost certainly dates back to the Pharaohs.
Lets blame them, then, said the young man from the Consulate, picking up his papers. At least they cant answer back.
Thats all in the past, anyway, said Garvin. These days weve got other things to think about.
What other things? asked Owen. It was the first time hed done this.
Oh, the general disorder. People use it as an excuse-
They certainly do, said McPhee, cheeks going pink.
To do what?
Well
The women go unveiled, that sort of thing, said the Kadis representative.
Worse than that, said McPhee primly.
Really? said Owen. Exactly what-?
Youll find out, said Garvin. At any rate, it will be for the last time.
Watch out for the Maiden, said the young man from the Consulate, as he and Owen left the room together.
They found her, of course, the next day.
The canal bed, awaiting the water, was dry now throughout most of its insalubrious length. It ran through the heart of the city from Old Cairo to the new barracks at Abbasiya and was a handy dumping-place for rubbish of all kinds, from excrement to onion peelings to collapsed angarib rope-beds to dead dogs; and, of course, to dead humans. It had the additional advantage in the last case that towards the time of the Inundation it had become so foul as to deter all but the lowest scavengers from venturing into it. The maiden would have gone undiscovered had it not been for the fact that the ceremonial cutting of the dam involved the construction of a tall cone of earth, and it was while the workmen had been working on this that they had come upon the body.
Bodies deteriorated quickly in the heat and it was by no means evident now that the body was that of a maiden, but the workmen were in no doubt. Nor, unfortunately, was the rest of the population of Cairo.
Blast it! said Garvin. Theyll all connect it with ending the Cut!
Every year when the waters of the Nile began to rise, a temporary dam was constructed across the mouth of the Khalig Canal, just opposite Roda Island. When the Nilometer on the Island showed that the water was at its highest, the dam was cut and the water allowed to flow through the canal. The moment traditionally marked the release of waters throughout the land, when the dams would be opened and the water pour into the canals and through the irrigation system as a whole.
After this year the water would still pour but the Cut would be no more. The canal was to be filled in and a tramway put on top of it.
All the Departments were pleased: Sanitation, because the canal was a notorious health hazard, Transport, because they got a new tramway out of it, Finance, because they got it at a cost of next to nothing, Irrigation, because the damned thing was an irrelevance anyway, the Government generally because it could be seen as modernization.
The ordinary Cairene, however, who had always had great affection for the festivities which accompanied the Cut, was much less happy
The British are taking away all our pleasures, they grumbled.
In most countries they would have blamed the Government. In Egypt they blamed the British. This was reasonable since the British ran the country. Invited in by a former Khedive to assist him to straighten out the countrys finances, they had decided to assist him to straighten out a few other things as well, and were still, thirty years later, assisting.
Another example of the British killjoy spirit! thundered the popular (Arab) press. First, they ban the Hoseini celebrations-
But that was because they were mutilating each other! protested Owen.
It had been the practice, as part of the general festivity, for dervishes to slash each other with swords, scourge their backs with razor-like chains, and impale themselves, and their neighbours, on meat-hooks.
Surely you dont defend- he had said to his friend, Mahmoud.
Mahmoud, a young lawyer in the Ministry of Justice, was the last person to defend such practices. He regarded them as a thing of the past and the past was exactly what he wanted to get rid of. Like most of the Ministry lawyers, he was a member of the Nationalist Party and committed to modernization. For that reason he wasnt much in favour of the canal, either.
Its an open sewer, he said.
Nevertheless, he felt sorry about the ending of the Cut.
If even he, arch-modernizer that he was, felt a twinge over the Cuts going, then Owen could just imagine how the ordinary inhabitants of the city felt. The Cut was part of popular history. Removing it was like removing a part of oneself, a tooth, say, yes, a wisdom tooth, useless but painful to extract. Not only that; some people believed in the wisdom. They might resist its going.
That was why this time Owen had become involved. Ordinarily, marshalling the festivity was a matter of simple policing and Owen preferred to leave simple policing to the simple police. The Mamur Zapt, Head of what had in the past been known as the Khedives Secret Police and what was today very properly thought of, in English terms, as the Political Branch, had a more discreet responsibility for preserving law and order. The Khedive liked to say that the Mamur Zapt was the hidden hand that held the city. Rather too often he saw the hand as a fist; whereas Owen preferred to keep it hidden.
What concerned him now was that whereas in any normal city the ending of the Cut would be merely a matter for mutter, in the explosive mixture of races and religions that was Cairo it could very quickly and all too easily ignite into violence. And the Maiden was just the thing that could provide the spark.
About the Maiden as maiden, Owen, as Mamur Zapt, cared nothing at all. Ordinary murder was not his concern. But about the Maiden as a possible source of political conflagration he cared a great deal. Even if she was a myth.
Which was why he decided to take an interest in the case. He rang up the Parquet to ask who was handling it.
El Zaki, they said.
This was fortunate, for El Zaki was Owens friend, Mahmoud.
Where is he? he asked.
At the mortuary.
This was fortunate, too, as the mortuary was the only cool place in Cairo. He went there with speed, or, at least, in an arabeah, the horse-drawn cab which at that time in Cairo served as taxi. Unsurprisingly, this being August, when men, flowers and horses drooped, by the time he got there Mahmoud was coming out.
Do they serve coffee in there?
Yes, but it smells of formaldehyde.
They went instead to a cafe round the corner. It was an Arab cafe and, as in most Arab cafes, the main room was underground, where darkness provided relief from the sun.
So theyve put you on this?
Yes, said Mahmoud ruefully. You cant win them all.
Id like to take an interest.
No one else is, said Mahmoud sourly. Not at the Parquet, at any rate.
The Parquet was the Department of Prosecutions at the Ministry of Justice, to which Mahmoud belonged. In Egypt criminal investigation was not the responsibility of the police. Their task was merely to notify the Parquet that a crime had been committed. Once that had been done, responsibility for conducting the investigation was, as in the French system on which the Egyptian system was based, with the lawyer the Parquet assigned to the case.
I hope youre right about that.
He told Mahmoud of his fears. Mahmoud dismissed them.
The body could have been dumped anywhere, he said.
Yes. I know. But people are making a connection with the Cut.
Mahmoud had little time for myths and none at all for the Myth of the Maiden.
Superstitious nonsense, he said. Were not still in the Dark Age, you know.
Owen thought that some Egyptians, the ones he was worried about, might be dragging their feet. He wisely kept silent, however. Mahmoud was inclined to be touchy about remarks which he considered reflected upon Egypt.
What does the autopsy show? he asked.
The reports not ready yet. Its taking a while because of the condition of the body. There is some evidence of deterioration through water. If that turns out to be true, it would help us to establish when the body was dumped. There was still water in the Canal. That would put it in March or April.
Or later, said Owen. Even when most of its dry, there are still stagnant pools. Have you established the cause of death?
Impossible to tell yet. Some evidence of wounding to the lower abdominal region. But that could just have been dogs.
No evidence of, well, wounding of a ritual nature?
I dont know what that would be, said Mahmoud coldly. We dont have ritual killings in Cairo. Now, if we were some obscure tribe down in the Sudan-
All right, all right. I dont know what it would be, either. But if we could rule it out publicly, that might help to dispel the myth-
She could have died of old age for all we can tell at the moment, said Mahmoud. And its about time the Myth of the Maiden did.