The Last Cut Read Free

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 wajer.
    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