Free Iris and Ruby by Rosie Thomas Page B

entertained. The musicians would have taken their places on the dais at the end and there might also have been a belly-dancer. The women of the household would have watched the party from the upper gallery, hidden from the men’s view behind the pierced screens.
    ‘Why?’
    Iris frowned. ‘Do you know nothing about Islamic culture?’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘The women occupy the haramlek , a part of the house reserved for them, where men may enter only by invitation. There is a separate staircase, a whole suite of rooms includingthe one where you sleep. And the other half, where the men may move freely, where visitors come, is the salamlek . Respectable women and men do not mingle as they do in the West.’
    Ruby wondered, is she talking about then – the past – or today?
    She listened, and ate hungrily. The meal was a simple affair of flat bread and spiced beans cooked with tomatoes and onions, of which Iris hardly touched anything. Ruby noted that her skin was stretched like paper tissue over her wrists, with tea-coloured stains spilt all over the knobs and cords of her hands. She wore no rings.
    Mamdooh and Auntie came softly back to remove the remains of the meal.
    ‘Ya, Mamdooh, Auntie. We have decided that Ruby will be staying here with us for a few days, before she goes back to her mother in England. We must make her welcome to Cairo.’
    Mamdooh’s expression did not change as he nodded his head, but Auntie’s walnut face cracked into a smile that revealed inches of bare gum and a few isolated teeth.
    After the shuffle of their slippers had died away Ruby sighed. ‘Mamdooh’s got a problem with me, hasn’t he?’
    Iris folded her napkin and slipped it into a worn silver ring. Ruby hastily uncrumpled hers and copied her.
    ‘He is set in his ways, that’s all. We both are. Do you know, when I was about your age, Mamdooh’s father was our house suffragi? He looked after us. Sarah, Faria and me. The three flowers of Garden City. I remember our Mamdooh when he was a plump little boy who followed his father to work. So we have known each other for sixty years.’
    Ruby waited for more, but Iris seemed to have lost herself. At last she shook her head.
    ‘We are set in our ways. It will do us good to have achange in our routine. Give me your arm, please. I think I will go to bed now.’
    With Iris leaning on her, Ruby walked slowly through the dim rooms to the haramlek staircase. Iris was explaining that during Ramadan the faithful did not eat or drink between sun-up and sunset, and it was tiring for the old people. If Ruby wouldn’t mind helping her to bed, they could eat their meal and have an evening’s rest.
    ‘Sure,’ Ruby agreed.
    In Iris’s bedroom she drew the white curtains and turned down the covers. She helped her grandmother to take off the striped robe and the old-fashioned camisole beneath. The creased-paper skin of her shoulders and upper arms was blotted with the same pale stains as her hands and her shoulder blades protruded sharply, like folded wings. She was as fragile as a child but at the same time there was a lack of concern in her, a disregard for her body that impressed Ruby with its simple strength. Ruby herself was prudishly modest. She hated exposing more than a calculated and obvious few inches of her own flesh. Doctors’ visits were torture, even sex was less of a major essential than it was cracked up to be. That was one of the reasons why she liked Jas. He was just as happy to lie down and hug and whisper. Without being like … like two dogs behind a wheelie bin.
    They had once seen a pair of dogs at it, and although they had laughed Ruby had been disgusted.
    ‘Thank you,’ Iris said coolly once she was in bed. It was only eight o’clock. Ruby lingered, not knowing what she was going to do with herself for the rest of the evening. Her glance fell on the framed photograph on the bedside table. A young woman, certainly Iris herself, stood with a tall man in an army shirt.