Chapter 38

‘Fahid,’ Fareeha called along the dim corridor, ‘are you there?’

Nobody answered. She already knew that Phipps wasn’t home: she had sneaked up the side alley to the back of the building and checked for the donkey and cart. But she knew the boy custodian would be here—protecting his precious relics. Ignoring the spiral staircase, she moved away from the portico and over the cool stone slabs that chequered the surface of the ground-floor corridor. She tried the first door: locked.

A monochrome photograph hanging on the wall caught her attention; it showed a handsome, middle-aged man dressed in the formal clothes of Victorian England; but he wasn’t a foreigner; he was a local, with the correct pigments in his skin and the correct shine to his dark hair. He stood smiling with one foot about to push the cutting-edge of a spade into the rocky desert floor. The inscription said something about an important irrigation channel that had been started on that day in 1902. Neither the name of the official nor the ditch was familiar to Fareeha.

She wrung another door knob, which turned without hindrance until the latch slipped from its restrainer. Daylight arrowed in through the jalousies of a high window, just enough to illuminate the clutter. Fareeha glanced around at the scattered objects, some of which—an urn, a statue—were partly covered in tatty, yellowing newspaper, stuck here and there with odd bits of tape. Other artefacts—a shield, a sword—protruded from the tops of packing crates. The whole room looked as if a forgetful family had confused their moving date and had had to hastily pack up the entire contents of their house the night before the removal van was to come and they had to move out. Rubbish, Fareeha thought, as she stepped back from the mess.

But she didn’t make it to the door; an odd stack of books in a corner had attracted her attention; it grew directly from the floor in a kind of lopsided pyramid, the largest books at the bottom, mostly smaller ones at the top; but most intriguing were the stalks that stuck out from the heavier tomes near its base. Fareeha peered through the half-light at the strange pile and then began to pick her way over to it.

Bending over, she fingered one of the dry stalks: it was a straw of wheat, wedged between the leather-bound covers of two immense works. She read their spines: Sa An’s Ottoman Heritage was one, Archaeological Digs West of Wadi Haifa., the other. She then noticed, sticking out from the side of the tower, a ripe ear of corn, the colour of liquid gold. It was not between the covers of two books but hanging from the middle pages of one. She looked back to the front of the pyramid to check its name: The Eastern Edge of the Roman Empire. She stood up, careful not to touch the precariously-stacked books, and wondered who would want to collect specimens of wheat and why they had done such a bad job of pressing them.

Fareeha backed away from the pyramid, sliding her sandals over the gritty floor until the right one came up against something. She looked down and saw an ochre-coloured plate. It had somehow escaped from the solid protection of a crate or from the flimsy covering of newspaper and simply lay naked on the cool stones. She reached down and picked it up. Besides being a little dusty and showing a few hairline fractures on one side, it was a perfectly good plate—better, in fact, than many of those that survived in her own house. She noticed the clear picture of a sail boat on its eating surface and even made out the face of a man who stood before its mast. Wonderful, she said to herself and then gripped the plate between the palms of both hands; she rotated it, and after inspecting the whole rim, she stopped and threw it up in the air, catching it on its way down by clapping her hands together. She frowned and wondered what a perfectly good household plate was doing here, amongst all this other ancient rubbish. She flung it up again.

‘Careful with that, Misses.’

The voice came out of nowhere, with not a sound preceding it, a fraction of a second after she had stopped the plate’s downward movement between her palms. Fareeha’s body instinctively closed in on itself, an exaggerated flinch that began with a jump from her heart. The plate slipped through her moist flesh at the very instant she realised who had called out and what he had said. But it was too late, the plate was already on its way to meet with the hard stone floor. In one single movement she pulled her torso back and tried to close her knees around the falling object; but her skirts were too thick and her knees could not make a purchase. The plate bounced away from the dark material and hit the ground with a loud crack, shattering instantly into a thousand pieces.

‘No . . .’ the voice cried, before breaking into a wheeze and then gasps.

Fareeha turned away from the smithereens, towards the door, but at first she saw nothing—just an empty frame where the ravaged body of the custodian should have stooped on a crutch. Then, dropping her eyes, she saw him, writhing in the seat of a wheelchair, as if he were undergoing some kind of hideous medical examination.

She took a quick step forward. ‘Fahid . . . I . . . I am so sorry.’ But her sympathies were with the boy himself and his pitiable physical condition and not with his despair at the loss of one of the relics in his charge.

‘It . . . it was . . . price . . . less . . .’ he gasped.

Desperate to get the boy’s eyes off the broken china as quickly as possible, Fareeha walked behind the wheelchair; but before rolling him away, she reached down and touched his shoulders, pinching a little tenderness into the skin and bones. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It was just an old plate.’

*

‘Missis . . . uh . . . Azziz,’ Phipps said as he hoofed around the spiral of the staircase.

Fareeha was already on her feet and was helping up the boy, but she still noticed Phipps’s sharp eyes, glinting in the candlelight as they scanned the dark corridor behind her. You’re alone? his expression questioned loudly.

He pushed by, leaving in his wake the musty smell of his unwashed body. He attacked the door with his iron key and without looking around he called out, ‘Come in . . . please.’

Fareeha rubbed the boy’s shoulder, made sure he could reach his crutch, and then padded along the hallway towards the open door. She thought that Phipps hadn’t heard her enter; but she had taken no more than two steps across the carpet, when he turned and scowled at the door which she had left open. She stopped dead, turned around, and obliged him by using the heel of her right hand to push it back. She then heard the clump, clump of Fahid’s crutch as he struggled along the corridor. ‘I think I have broken that boy’s heart,’ she said.

Phipps was by the window, ready to light one of the room’s several oil lamps. Holding a struck match, he turned and stared back at her.

Shadows lunging across the reddened skin of his face distracted her for a moment. ‘I . . .’

Phipps broke his stare, turned back to the oil lamp, and gave it the flame.

‘He surprised me in one of the rooms downstairs,’ Fareeha began, ‘and I dropped a plate.’

The light swelled, just in time to illuminate the sneer which slid across Phipps’s face. He scoffed. ‘Byzantine or Mesopotanium?’

‘No idea.’ Fareeha said. ‘He just whimpered. "Priceless" was the only word he could manage.’

Phipps walked over to his desk, not stopping until he was behind the monstrosity. He snorted again through his nose and then raised his shoulders, as if he were shrugging off millennia of civilisation and culture. ‘What’s gone is gone,’ he said.

Fareeha shed a little guilt and moved towards her side of the desk. ‘He’s using a wheelchair now,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Phipps began, ‘I picked that up for him in Wadi Rahia, the first village out of town. Brought it back in the cart. It had been abandoned.’ He reflected for a moment then added, ‘the whole village had been abandoned.’

‘It does make his movement around the building a lot quieter,’ Fareeha said.

‘Mmm; but he only uses it when he thinks that nobody is around. Something to do with his manhood, I suppose.’ Phipps stopped and gazed over at his guest, as if his last word had shunted in a whole new train of thought. ‘Anyway,’ he said at last, ‘you’re back safe and well.’

‘Oh, yes,‘ Fareeha said, ‘I almost forgot; your equipment is down at the harbour—the soil tester.’ She couldn’t stop herself smiling.

Phipps’s face, as red as a setting sun, beamed. ‘Great,’ he said, balling his hand into victory fists. ‘There weren’t any problems?’

‘Well, in fact, it only just made it; I suppose it was lucky that I had to stay an extra few days.’

Phipps’s face was expressionless again; he said nothing.

‘Just pop down and see Muzaffer Hussein.’

‘I will, I will—and thanks.’ Phipps finally stopped hovering behind his desk and sat with a heavy exhalation of breath. ‘Thirsty work this job is,’ he said, reaching behind him for the pitcher and glass. ‘Care for a drink would you?’

‘Thanks,’ Fareeha replied, a little too eagerly. ‘But I can’t stay too late tonight; it’s horrible trying to get home after dark.’

Phipps stopped drinking halfway down the glass. ‘Yes, I know what you mean.’ He resumed the drink and didn’t stop until the glass was empty. ‘Always try to get back well before nightfall myself.’ He looked into the empty glass then set it on the desk and filled it up. ‘Drink up then,’ he said, pushing the glass towards her. ‘Oh . . . and . . . take a seat.

Fareeha reached for glass. As she raised it to her mouth she inspected the rim, half expecting to find flakes of chapped lip sticking to it. She saw nothing untoward and put it to her mouth. She drank it off in one and then, replacing the empty glass on the edge of the desk, she said, ‘thanks,’ and sat down.

Phipps reached across and slid back the empty glass

‘Don’t you need to eat something?’ Fareeha asked.

‘Already eaten,’ Phipps said. ‘Picked up a nice kebab on the way back into town this evening—bought it from a vendor near the citadel road. Famished I was. Strange place to set up a stall, but who am I to know, eh? Bloody delicious kebab, though. You’ve eaten?’

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine,’ she lied, trying to push away images of skewered lumps of juicy meat.

Phipps reached down to the cupboard at his feet and brought up a new bottle of scotch. ‘We should celebrate your return, Missis Azziz.’ He twisted off the cap. ‘Pity you can’t drink, though. He took hold of the bottle ready to pour. ‘I think I have a little orange juice, if you would care for some?’

Fareeha hesitated. ‘I have to . . . alright a quick drink would be lovely, thanks.’

From a shelf behind him, Phipps took a small bottle and removed its top. ‘No refrigerator,’ he said sniffing at the bottle’s contents, ‘but it should be alright.’ He picked up another glass.

Fareeha wanted to tell him how local people kept food cool without the use of electricity and fridges, but the sudden sight of sunshine-yellow juice splashing into a glass tumbler took her breath away. She reached across and took the drink. It had been such a long time since . . .

‘To the soil-tester,’ Phipps said, he had already poured a large measure of whiskey into his own glass, which he was now holding forward. ‘uh . . . with my thanks.’

Fareeha raised the tumbler and wetted her lips with the filmy taste of fermented orange juice.

Phipps spoke after a long gulp and a short clearing of his throat: ‘Finally faced the dunes.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The sand dunes, beyond the steppe. I finally made it out there. Not in one day, of course. Too far for that. No, I’ve been camping out for these last few nights in villages.’ His next large swig finished the glass. ‘Wonderful,’ he said with a roughened voice.

Fareeha leaned forward a little in her chair. ‘Dunes?’ she asked, ‘I thought you were fixing the water table.’

‘Ha,’ Phipps said ‘I’m afraid this county has more than one intractable problem.’ He poured more whisky. ‘Anyway it’s not as comfortable as it was in my youth—camping out I mean. And bloody cold at night.’ He tried to shiver. ‘One good thing though: it’s a lot more difficult for the sick people of this city to find me when I’m out there.’ He almost grinned into his drink.

‘They still come?’

‘Yes, they still come,’ Phipps said in a slower, deeper voice. ‘The morning I left I had a teenage boy on the doorstep, hobbling around on bunions . . .’

The bottle of rancid orange juice now stood on the desk between them.

‘Help yourself,’ Phipps said as he refilled his own glass with whisky.

‘Thanks.’

‘The dunes . . . ah, those beautiful dunes . . . seems such a shame to stop them . . .’

Fareeha said nothing as Archie Phipps melted away into the degraded hinterland of Sa’ An.’