Rosie Thomas 2-Book Collection One: Iris and Ruby, Constance. Rosie Thomas
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you know? Mint tea.’
‘I like it. We don’t have it at home. Well, maybe Mum does. She drinks those herb tea things, but I shouldn’t think they’re like yours. Can I try some of this?’
Iris nodded. She watched as the girl spooned honey onto bread and ate, biting off thick chunks and chewing with strong white teeth. Honey dribbled down her chin and she wiped it off with her fingers before greedily licking them too. After the bread and honey she turned her attention to the figs.
‘How do you eat these?’
Iris showed her, slicing open the skin to reveal the velvet and seed-pearl interior. Ruby ate, her smudged eyes screwed up in a comical spasm of pleasure. She followed the figs with most of the bowl of yoghurt and then drank more tea.
‘Aren’t you going to eat anything?’ she asked.
‘I’ll have one of those.’ Iris pointed to the triangles of baklava. Ruby put the pastry on a plate, handling it as if it were burning hot so as to be seen to limit the contact from her own fingers, and set it next to Iris’s glass of tea. Then she stretched out her legs, sighing with satisfaction as she looked around the little courtyard.
‘It’s like another world. Well, it is another world, of course. Glorious Araby.’
‘What did you say?’
‘When? Oh, that. I dunno, it’s from a poem or something, isn’t it? Don’t ask me who wrote it or anything. I suppose I read it or heard it. Probably bloody Radio 4, it’s always on in our house. You know how some things you don’t try to remember, quite weird things like bits of poems or whatever, they just stay in your mind? And other things you’re supposed to remember, however hard you try it’s just like, phhhhht, and they’re gone? Stuff you’re supposed to learn for exams, mainly?’
‘If it matters, you will remember it. You have to hope for that.’
‘Depends on what you reckon matters.’ Ruby laughed, then caught sight of her grandmother’s face. It had fallen suddenly into lines of anguish and the powdery skin under her eyes looked damp with tears.
She bit her lip. ‘Did I say something wrong?’
Iris reached a hand inside the sleeve of her robe and brought out a handkerchief. She dried her eyes carefully and tucked the hanky away again.
‘I am becoming forgetful myself,’ she said. She made a little gesture with her hands, swimming them through the air and then closing them on nothing. It made Ruby think that memories were slippery, like fish.
‘That must be frightening, sometimes,’ she ventured.
‘It is.’
‘What can you do?’
Iris turned her head to look full at her. ‘Try to … try to capture what you can’t bear to be without.’
Ruby didn’t understand this but she nodded anyway. The sound of water splashing from the little spout filled the courtyard. The sun had crept closer and now the thin stream sparkled like a diamond necklace.
‘Well,’ Iris said in a different voice. ‘Have you had quite enough to eat?’
‘Maybe one more of these.’
She bit into another pastry. Sugary flakes stuck to her lips and she darted her tongue to retrieve them.
Mamdooh came through one of the arches and stooped beside Iris’s chair. It was time to move it further into the shade. As she watched him helping her grandmother and settling her again Ruby noticed he wore the same tender expression as last night, as if Iris were a little child.
While they were talking quietly together, Ruby stared up into the parallelogram of sapphire-blue sky. She could just see the tips of towers, topped with slim bulbs of stone and spikes bearing crescent moons. There was a whole city on the other side of these walls, the teeming place she had seen out of the taxi windows last night. Now that she had found her feet she was longing to explore it.
‘Mamdooh is going to the market now,’ Iris said.
Ruby leapt up so eagerly that her stool tipped over. ‘Can I go with him?’
Iris lifted her hand. ‘You will have to ask Mamdooh.’
‘Please may I come with you?’
He had round cheeks, rounded eyelids, full lips the colour of the breakfast figs, but his bald head was all speckled and his eyes were milky. His stomach made a sizeable mound under his long white robe. He didn’t look as old as Iris or Auntie, but he wasn’t young by any means. He looked Ruby up and down as she stood there with Iris’s shawl knotted round her midriff.
‘To the market, Miss?’ He sounded doubtful.
‘I’ll, um, put a cover-up shirt thing on? I’ve got one in my bag. I could help carry the shopping, couldn’t I?’
‘I do this for many years, thank you.’
‘I’d really like to come.’
Iris closed her eyes. ‘Show her the market, Mamdooh, please. She will be going home to England tomorrow.’
He bowed. ‘Of course.’
When she came downstairs again with a man’s shirt buttoned up over her vest, Mamdooh was waiting for her. He had a woven rush basket over his arm, and a faded red flowerpot hat set squarely on his head. A black tassel hung down towards his left eye. Ruby felt a giggle rising in her throat, but Mamdooh’s expression quelled it.
‘Is this OK?’ she meekly asked, indicating her cover-up.
His nod was barely perceptible.
‘If you are ready, Miss?’
They went out through the blue-painted door and the sun’s heat struck the top of Ruby’s head. She took the few steps to the corner and looked up at an ancient crenellated wall, a cluster of smaller domes surrounding the large one and the three slender towers.
‘What is this place?’ she called to Mamdooh who was making stately progress in the other direction.
‘It is the mosque of al-Azhar. We are going this way, please.’
‘It’s very old.’
‘Cairo is a place of history.’ The way he said it told Ruby that he was proud of his native city and his reverence made her want to know more of it. She quickened her pace to catch him up again, and they swung down a narrow street and out into a much broader, almost Western-looking one. Out here there was a roar of traffic and hooting and tinny amplified music, and they were caught in a slow tide of people before Mamdooh ducked down into a tiled modern subway not much different from the one beneath Oxford Circus. When they surfaced again Ruby blinked.
Mamdooh beckoned her. ‘Khan al-Khalili bazaar. Follow close to me, it is easy to be lost here.’
He was right. It would be the easiest thing in the world to lose yourself in this maze of tiny alleys leading away from the almost-familiarity of the main street. There were canvas awnings looped overhead, and in their welcome shade the brightness of the crammed-together shops and stalls was dazzling. The merchandise was piled up and hung in tiers so it seemed to drip stalactites of hectic colour. One shop was crammed with interesting-looking brass and ceramic hookahs, another niche was festooned with belly dancers’ costumes gaudy with nylon fringing and glass beads. Another little recess was shelved from top to bottom with hundreds of glass jars containing oils in all the shades of precious stones. Next door open-mouthed hessian sacks spilled ochre- and saffron- and pearl-coloured grains.
The footpaths between the stalls were choked with people and wooden carts and porters with boxes piled on their heads. There were men in Western clothes, and others in galabiyeh and tarboosh like Mamdooh. There were women robed in black from head to toe, others in trousers and sturdy blouses with just a scarf wound over their hair. Ruby was startled and slightly affronted