It was getting dark.
Trying to control her panic, Yasmin starting walking through the eerie City of the Dead. While there were tombs everywhere, some ancient, others modern, almost all of them bore signs of … life.
Yasmin had heard about this place. For centuries, Cairo’s poorest people had made their homes inside and around these tombs. All Egyptians knew about it but few ever ventured there, scared off by spooky stories of murderers and ghosts.
She didn’t see either. Instead, from inside an open crypt, she saw the flicker of a television, while lilting music drifted from another. She smelled cooking fires and heard children laughing. Washing hung from lines above gravestones. Power cords looped across the tomb roofs. Despite the sprawling cemetery’s foreboding name, this was very much a city of the living.
‘Hello, miss, pen?’
Yasmin spun around, startled, and saw a skinny boy holding out his hand. Her heart melted even though she was no stranger to beggars—Cairo had more than its fair share. She wished she had a pen to give this little boy. But all she had were the clothes on her back and her phone and passport.
‘Sorry, I have no pen today,’ she said. ‘But can you tell me which way to the railway station?’
The boy blinked. Yasmin wondered whether he understood. She didn’t know whether children raised in the City of the Dead even went to school. And she felt sure they didn’t take trains very often.
‘You know, trains?’ she said. ‘You know, choo-choo?’
The boy nodded eagerly. ‘You come. This way, OK?’
Yasmin followed him as he skipped through a nearby archway that led into a courtyard. They walked across and down a lane that wound between crypts, chickens scattering ahead of them. A scrawny dog ran alongside for a while, before realising she had no food to offer. Then the boy led her into another alley lined with shadowy doorways, rough walls and wooden shutters. After a while, everything looked the same. Yasmin’s sense of direction was all mixed up and she feared this boy was taking her ever deeper into this maze.
She steeled herself against the fear that he was being used as a lure by people who meant her harm.
‘Is this the right way?’ she asked nervously.
The boy stopped. He nodded and smiled as he pointed at the entrance of a tomb. It was just like dozens of others they had passed.
‘My house,’ he said. ‘You come.’
Yasmin tried to control her frustration.
‘Choo-choo?’ the boy said and made an eating motion. ‘You are hungry? Chew-chew?’
‘You look lost,’ said a witch-like woman with a walking stick who’d appeared from the shadows. ‘Do you want to come in and have some tea?’
All Yasmin wanted was to get to the railway station.
‘Yasmin!’
She stiffened. It was his voice. Jackal. Somehow he’d realised he was following Mahmoud. Now he sounded close. Just a few courtyards away. ‘Where are you?’ he called. ‘I am going to find you!’
Suddenly having a cup of tea in a tomb house seemed like a very good idea.
‘Shukran,’ Yasmin said, nodding. ‘You are very hospitable.’
Yasmin followed the woman and boy into a small dark room. At its centre was an old stone coffin, being used as a table to hold pots, plates and glass jars of rice and beans. Along two walls were rolls of bedding.
‘Please, rest,’ the woman said, pointing to cushions and mats around a low table.
Yasmin sat farthest from the door, trying to melt into the shadows. But if Jackal poked his head in, there was no doubt she’d be trapped. They didn’t make tombs with rear exits. Grinning, the boy plonked down next to her and buried his nose in a comic book.
‘My name is Sybil,’ the woman said, pouring cups of tea from a steaming pot.
‘I’m Yasmin.’
A shiver danced up Yasmin’s spine. ‘How do you know?’
‘Sometimes I see things that others cannot,’ Sybil said, chuckling as she sat with their drinks. ‘But in this case I saw the look on your face when that man called your name.’
‘He’s a—a bad cop, trying to kidnap me,’ Yasmin blurted out. ‘Please, help me.’
Sybil nodded. ‘I will. You are among friends here.’