The Last Cut

‘Cut? What’s that? Oh, I know, the Khalig Canal and all that stuff. No, that’s all in the past. We don’t wait for that nowadays. No, it’s nothing to do with us.’

The single long wall of the barrage was in a sense illusory. There were, in fact, two separate barrages, one across the Damietta arm of the Nile, the other across the Rosetta arm. Each barrage was about five hundred metres long and they were linked by a revetment wall which ran for a thousand metres over the triangle of ground between the arms. The triangle had been made into spectacular gardens which were a great draw to the city’s inhabitants at weekends and on festival days.

Today, of course, there was an even greater draw and the Gardens on the Rosetta side were a solid mass of people. Policemen had to force a way through for the Minister and his party.

They were also trying, rather less successfully, to clear a passage for a long line of carts piled high with rubble, stretching now right across the Gardens. As each cart came up to the damaged regulator, it was turned and then backed up on to the embankment which led to the small service road running across the top of the regulator gates. It was then edged along the road until it reached the gap, where it would discharge its load in a great crash of stone and spray.

It was the turning of the carts that was the problem. The people were wedged in so tightly at that point that the carts could hardly make inroads. The drivers lost patience and laid about them with their whips, the constables with their batons. The crowd did not, could not budge.

‘Clear the bloody lot out of the way!’ shouted a furious voice from down at the foot of the regulator somewhere.

Constables, carts, workmen and sympathetic onlookers hurled themselves at the crowd. It gave a yard or two. Some small boys fell into the river. Other onlookers were forced on to the flower beds.

‘My beds! My beds!’ cried an anguished voice.

A stocky little man, galabeeyah skirts hitched up round his knees, skull cap askew on his head, rushed across desperately.

‘Have you no thought? Have you no sense? Have you no feeling?’

He hammered on the sides of a cart with his fists.

The driver, face running with sweat, glanced down.

‘Abdullah, there are more important things in life just now than bougainvillea!’

He struck the horse a mighty blow with his whip. It shot forward; across a rose-bed and into a clump of datura, where it stuck. The heavy white blossoms closed over its flanks like ornamental wreaths.

‘I shall kill it!’ cried the gardener wildly, seizing a spade.

Concerned onlookers seized him.

‘But, Abdullah,’ one of them remonstrated, ‘the water is important –’

The gardener stopped his struggling. ‘Water?’ he said. ‘Do you think you need to tell me about water? Me? How do you think all this grows, then? What do you think I –?’

Owen moved away. If there was one thing any Egyptian was guaranteed to have a view on, it was water.

Which made it all the more extraordinary that –

The Ministerial party had at last reached the regulator. Down at its foot, some in the water, some out, men were working frantically. Among them was a European in a helmet. He looked up, then scrambled up to meet them.

‘Hello, Minister! Glad to see you!’

‘How are you getting on?’

The helmeted man shrugged.

‘At the moment we’re just trying to get it under control,’ he said.

‘Any idea of the extent of the damage?’

‘One of the gates has gone.’

He pointed to the regulator. The gates had been forced open. One of them bent back at an angle.

‘It got the full force of the blast.’

‘It definitely was a blast, was it?’ asked Owen.

The man looked at him.

‘Owen, is it? The Mamur Zapt? Seen you at the Club, but not spoken. Glad to meet you.’ They shook hands. ‘Yes, it definitely was. I can show you. Not just this moment, though. I’ve got things I must –’

He glanced back at the regulator.

‘No, that’s fine. Look, I won’t take your time. Can you put me on to someone else? Anyone see anything? Presumably you yourself weren’t –’

‘I was in bed. It was two o’clock in the morning.’

‘Someone called you. Who was that?’

‘The watchman. Ahmed.’

‘Can I have a word with him? Where would I find him?’

The engineer pointed up to the main wall of the barrage.

‘He’s up there,’ he said. ‘Ask for Ahmed.’

The watchman’s hut was empty except for a woman with a baby and a small boy. When Owen asked for Ahmed, she nodded and sent the boy to fetch him. Meanwhile, Owen walked out on to the barrage.

Upstream, feluccas were tacking gracefully in the wind and, closer to, a large gyassa, sails newly lowered and rigging bright with the little scarlet flags used for marriages and the return of pilgrims from Mecca, was disgorging passengers on to the shore. They were already beginning to make their way up to the gardens, past a long line of stalls selling peanuts and pastries and sweetmeats and souvenirs. In the gardens there were yet more stalls, tucked among the bamboo thickets and the prickly pears, the clumps of datura and the bright masses of bougainvillea.

Everywhere, too, there were water-sellers. It was a hot day and their services were much in demand; so much so that there was a steady file of them going back to the river to replenish their water-skins. Down by the gyassa he could see their black bags floating on the water.

The boy returned with an old, grey-haired man; not too old, apparently, for both the boy and the baby were his.

‘Pardon my slowness, Effendi.’

‘Even the Khedive should wait for age,’ said Owen courteously.

‘Ah, it’s not age,’ said the man, tapping his leg. ‘It’s this. I broke it when we were building the Dam at Aswan. It set badly and they said I could not work again. But when Macrae Effendi came up here he sent for me and made me watchman.’

‘And you were watching last night?’

‘That is so.’

‘And what did you see?’