CHAPTER 15

BENZAMIR TOOK THE first step out of his door and entered a world of noise and colour and scent.

The calls of the merchants wove in and out of each other; the cries of men outraged at the latest price; the guttural shouts of the camel and donkey drivers goading their beasts through the narrow streets; the hammer of brass and copper and tin and silver and iron; the rasp of cut wood; the chip of stone; the last bleat of a goat as its throat was cut to the incantation of ancient words. The flash of saffron and carmine and azure and crimson and olive and pomegranate, on clothes and on walls and over archways and covering shutters. The glance of dark eyes beneath a veil.

It was the smells that fascinated him most: he could identify each one, pick up its signature over the others if he screwed his eyes up and concentrated hard. There, bread; there, cinnamon and pepper. Again, as he let himself drift with the mass of people pushing at him from all directions – sharp sweat, stinking fish, burning charcoal, over-ripe melon, the damp alluvium of the Nile, the dry wind from the desert.

It was amazing, and his senses sang at the banquet delivered to him quite without payment. Misr El Mahrosa, the city on the Nile from the dawn of civilization to the present day, and it still stood, vigorous, dazzling, rich. He stepped briefly out of the way of a cart pulled by two chained Ewer slaves, and continued his wandering, his sandals treading the hot, dusty paths trod by generations of people. Once or twice he looked up at the slits of bright sky between the buildings, attempting to orientate himself using the towering and elegant minarets as landmarks.

Said and Wahir found the streets terrifying, too crowded and alien for them ever to be comfortable with. They would emerge later, after the dawn rush had dwindled to a manageable trickle of traffic.

Not Benzamir. He revelled in the contact, in the sheer press of the bodies against him. He dived in like it was clear, cool water, and only came out reluctantly. He was so proud of them all, every one – every indigent beggar, every shoeless urchin, everyone who clung to life on the back of this great beast of a city – that he thought his heart would burst.

As the purposeful yet chaotic movement of the streets drove him on, it washed him up in a metalworkers’ quarter. Smoke and sometimes flames poured out from open doors. Sparks flew and anvils rang with industry.

‘Salam,’ said a worker, plunging a red-hot piece of work into a bucket by the door. The water hissed and spat, then merely bubbled.

‘Let me see,’ said Benzamir, and the man lifted the tongs he was using clear of the bucket.

The object clasped in the tongs was a knife blade, as long as Benzamir’s hand, a beautiful blue steel, forged and not cast. The edges would need to be ground, and a haft attached to the spike protruding backwards from the guard, but already it was a fine piece of work.

‘Do you have others like this, finished?’

‘My master’s inside. He’d be pleased to meet you.’ The man ushered Benzamir into the dark heat of the forge.

‘Salam alaykum,’ he shouted over the hammering. There was a boy, no more than Wahir’s age, heaving at the leather bellows, pumping the coals to an incandescent white. The smith, stripped to the waist and gleaming with sweat, brought out another knife blade from the heart of the fire and placed it on his anvil. He worked it hard, beating life into it with his hammer before the cherry-red glow faded. He held it close to his face and nodded with satisfaction.

Benzamir could tell he was in the presence of greatness, a man who didn’t mind what others thought of his work because he held himself to the highest standards.

The smith handed the blade over to his servant to be cooled in the bucket outside, and took notice of his customer.

‘Salam. Come and drink with me. We’ll talk, and you can tell me the news.’

There was a back room, separated from the forge by a simple heavy curtain; once through, Benzamir could see that the room faced a courtyard full of light and shadows.

‘Selah,’ said the man. ‘If I had any other name, I’ve forgotten it by now. Selah the Ironmaster at your service.’

‘Benzamir Mahmood at yours.’

‘Not from round here? Up the coast?’ Selah plumped up some cushions with his huge hands and indicated that Benzamir should sit.

‘Most recently from El Alam, my ancestral homelands.’ It felt strange for him to say that. He’d never used those words before in his life, and he suddenly felt rootless and sad.

‘But you’re a traveller. A merchant, buying and selling, not getting home as often as you ought.’ Selah sat opposite and clapped his hands. A door behind a tapestry opened and a woman came through carrying a tray of coffee and sweets.

‘Almost. A soldier looking for his people’s enemies.’

‘Let’s look at you. Yes, you could handle a sword. You have the eye.’

‘I was admiring your fine knives. You don’t see craft like that often.’

‘Now you’re flattering me. I do what I can with these poor hands, and it provides well enough.’ He touched the woman on the arm, indicating ownership, but the way his touch lingered showed much more.

She poured the coffee in two steaming streams and set Benzamir’s cup before him first.

‘Thank you,’ he said to her.

‘If I was rich,’ said Selah, ‘I’d have more than one wife. But I’m not, so I have to put up with what I have.’

The woman moved Selah’s cup across the low table to him and he smiled lovingly at her; his gaze followed her as she left.

Benzamir had the man’s measure. ‘Master Selah, you make fine knives, but the finest knife needs the finest metal.’

‘That it does, my soldier friend. Which is why you’ll find me down at the diggers’ market, picking up only the best finds. I have a reputation for paying well, and the diggers bring me only their choicest pieces.’

Benzamir had heard that word before, but had failed to discover its full meaning. To him, a digger was one who dug, but it was clear that digger was a profession, and an important one.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘does anyone here in Misr El Mahrosa take iron and make steel from it? Do you?’

‘Now you’re asking. Steel is to iron what teak is to cedar. Both useful, yes, but in these parts both steel and teak are as rare as hen’s teeth. I’m told that the Kenyans can make steel’ – he snapped his fingers – ‘like that. But for me, in this little forge? It’s hard. I’ve done it once or twice, to prove to doubters that I can. Mostly brass and iron does. Steel is a rich man’s metal.’

‘I’ve two compatriots who’d be delighted to wear your knives at their belts. So would I, Selah. We can settle a price later, but what about these diggers? Where do they find their treasure?’ Benzamir lifted his coffee cup and breathed deeply. ‘Very good. You honour me with your best.’

‘From the hills of Yamin, brought up by camel train by the Kenyans. It’s a vice, but an agreeable one.’ Selah raised his cup and saluted his guest. ‘You’ve heard of El Iskandariya, of course.’

‘Yes. It used to be on the coast, south of here.’

‘You sound so certain. In a time that was and was not,’ said Selah, ‘there was black land, rich and well-watered, between here and the end of the estuary. There were cities on the plains, huge and populous. Many farms, lots of children. But the Users hated us, and they tortured the seas to make them rise up in torment and swallow these cities whole, and Iskandariya was lost beneath the waves.’ He shrugged. ‘So the stories go. But there are tar roads that disappear out to sea, and the fishermen sometimes drag up things. Diggers go and dive there, and believe they are diving on the ruins of Iskandariya. Other than that, the diggers dig where they can. Some organize expeditions and visit the rubble fields of the far south, where the Ewers now live. Rich pickings, if they make it back.’