It’s the Saturday before Easter, the “Joyous Saturday” of the Christian tradition.

Tonight, more than ever, they need their luck. To separate a semblance of winking joy from the muck they toil in every day, sometimes he strikes gold - literally - in the deposits dredged up from the garbled veins of the Old City.Īround him stand men from the colony in a tight knot, watching him pan for gold, their dark faces animated by quiet anticipation as they wait to exhale a whoop of exaltation, should something shine in the sandy grey sediment that the prospector is busy stratifying - soaking and combing through with fingers, busy hands agitating the water, as if cajoling his luck to rise, to rise from the dregs of the drains of this city. The profession of cleaning, this knowledge of the city’s drains and what flows through them, has taught him how to extract a modicum of luck from misfortune.

Scrupulously, he sifts layers of sand with running water in a stainless steel parat.

He sits in the narrow street between a tangle of tiny houses, a path so thin no two men could walk it side by side comfortably.

Hand dredge for gold