Authors: Ahdaf Soueif
‘My sister has told me the story,’ he continued. ‘She has explained that you have not yet been missed?’
There was a note in his voice — disapproval is too strong a word, but it was clear he considered my escapade pure foolishness — that I had put myself in harm’s way, as it were, and somehow not being missed made it worse. I felt as though he would have preferred it if I had been missed. I said nothing.
‘I do not know what your wishes are,’ he continued, ‘with regard to reporting this matter to the authorities. If you choose to do so we will, of course, confirm your account and lend whatever assistance lies in our power. But the first thing to do is to return you immediately to your hotel. And to ensure your safety, I will accompany you there myself. Tomorrow, you may wish to think about the proper course
—
’
‘There is no need for that, monsieur,’ I said. I glanced up and caught his look of surprise, and Layla’s too. I think he is not used to being interrupted — or contradicted.
‘There is no need,’ I repeated. ‘As to reporting this incident, I
do not wish it as I fully understand the circumstances, and as no harm has come to me but on the contrary it has given me the opportunity of making the acquaintance of your charming sister. And now, if you would be kind enough to order our horses to be prepared, Sabir and I can continue our journey and need impose no longer on your kindness.’
Brave words. Why then, even as I uttered them, did a cold finger touch my heart and the journey ahead seem so arduous an undertaking?
‘Surely you cannot mean to go riding off into the desert now?’ Layla was at my side and gazing earnestly into my face.
‘But yes,’ I said, ‘yes, I do.’
‘May I sit down?’ he asked, indicating Layla’s divan.
‘Itfaddal,’ I said and was rewarded by a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth and a muffled laugh from Layla.
‘But seriously, Anna,’ she said, as she and I sat side by side facing him, ‘after all this?’
‘If I go back now,’ I said, ‘Emily, my maid, and Mr Barrington at the Agency both knew my intentions. Where would I say I had been — what account can I give of the last two days?’
‘The man can be silenced,’ he said, ‘And you can tell your maid you lost heart and decided to turn back.’
‘She thinks I am with a group.’
‘What the maid thinks is of no consequence,’ he said impatiently. ‘What matters is your safety.’
‘I would have been safe enough if your young friends had not interfered,’ I replied. I surprised myself. I could not recall speaking sharply to anyone before. He leaned back against the cushions and looked full at me. I looked down at my hands.
‘And Sabir cannot be silenced,’ I added. ‘He will be questioned most closely. It would not work.’
‘I can guarantee his silence,’ he said quietly.
‘No. And no one will believe I lost heart. It is not — in my character.’
There was a silence. I looked up. He leaned back on the
divan, his eyes on the prayer beads idle between his fingers. Then he raised his head and looked at me.
‘Very well,’ he said, ‘I understand. You shall go to St Catherine. But not tonight, and not alone.’
I glanced at Layla, who was looking intently at her brother. Would he propose that she travel with me?
‘Lady Anna has a point,’ he said to her. ‘And besides, since we are the reason her journey was so unpleasantly interrupted, we have an obligation
—
’ He broke off, as though impatient with his own speech. ‘In any case, you will permit me —’ this to me — ‘you will permit me to escort you into the Sinai and back. I trust you may find it safer and more comfortable travelling with my party than on your own?’
‘Monsieur,’ I said, ‘absolutely not. I am completely capable -‘
‘I will not allow you to travel alone.’
‘Forgive me, but it is not for you to allow what I may do.’
‘Anna!’ I heard Layla’s whisper and felt her touch on my arm but I sat still and unyielding: how dare he dictate to me?
‘You forget, madame,’ he said, ‘you are in my house.’
‘And that means?’
‘You will not leave this house alone. You will be escorted from here to your hotel. Whether you go directly or by way of Sinai is up to you.’
‘And if I refuse?’
‘Then you can stay here. After all, you will not be missed.’ And now there was something else in his eyes: a smile.
‘Monsieur,’ I said, ‘this is coercion.’
‘In a good cause,’ he said.
I turned to Layla, who seemed to shake herself out of her surprise. ‘It is a very good plan,’ she said. ‘And you will see everything better. I know you are not afraid to go alone, but believe me, once you are in the desert you will feel easier to be in company.’
I was silent.
‘Good. It is settled then,’ he said, straightening up. ‘I will need tomorrow to organise matters and to get the Maître out of
custody.’ He smiled at his sister. ‘We will leave the day after in the morning, and try to make up for your lost time.’
He stood up and Layla stood too. She put on her shoes and her cloak and started fastening her head-dress. He turned and spoke to her in Arabic. After a few exchanges she came to me and took my hands.
‘I do not want to leave my child alone a second night. You will not be nervous alone here tonight, will you? I would ask you to come with me but it’s best if not too many people know about this. I will come back in the morning and bring Ahmad for you to see.’ She smiled and kissed me, first on one cheek and then the other and then again on the first. ‘I am very happy to know you,’ she said, and when she left, he left with her.
I sat on the divan. How dare he, I thought, how dare he simply put himself in command like this? But underneath that thought I had the strangest feeling of life expanding and opening out. I found myself thinking about Sir Charles, wondering what he would make of this Egyptian Pasha into whose house I had landed in so odd a fashion. And then came the thought that under the same circumstances, Sir Charles himself would probably have acted in the same way. It must be an inconvenience — he had not been planning to make a journey into the desert. And if Lord Cromer should hear of this? It would be worse, in his eyes, than my travelling alone. It dawned on me that Sharif Pasha was putting himself in the way of a great deal of unpleasantness, as well as inconvenience, to give me my expedition.
I heard a knock on the door and called out absently, in English, ‘Come in.’ But nobody came in, and presently I got up and opened the door. He was in the corridor a few paces away with Sabir hovering behind him.
‘Pardon me,’ he said, ‘I thought you cannot be comfortable. This is the best I can do, for now.’ He held something out and I took it, a neatly folded garment with a silken feel. I could not see its colour in the dim light. ‘It will be too large, of course, it is mine, but even so —’
‘Thank you,’ I said stiffly, ‘I am sure it will be most comfortable.’
‘It is a problem that there is no woman in the house tonight who can look after you, but I have — if you would like to go into the bathroom in fifteen minutes you will find … things …’ He trailed off with a vague gesture and I found myself hurrying to assure him he was most kind.
‘Good night,’ he said, and gave me that first grave bow again and turned away.
‘A moment, monsieur,’ I said, and he paused. ‘I have been thinking,’ I said, ‘I will be putting you to much inconvenience. And —’
He looked weary now. ‘I thought it was all agreed?’
‘It occurs to me, if word of this should ever reach Lord Cromer …’
I felt him stiffen. ‘Yes?’
‘It would make problems, would it not?’
‘You should have thought of that sooner. You are afraid?’
‘Not for myself, monsieur.’
‘Well, then?’
‘I thought it might make an unpleasantness for you.’
‘I can manage that,’ he said. ‘Does anything else trouble you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not at present.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then good night again.’ And with that he strode off down the corridor with Sabir behind him.
The ‘things’ I found in the bathroom were a copper pot full of steaming hot water, a bar of soap smelling of olive oil and roses, and a pile of warm towels.
I sat on the edge of the big marble tub. The flame in the oil lamp hanging from the wall flickered on the tiled walls. I poured water over my head with the blue and white enamel tumbler. Thoughts of Lord Cromer vanished from my head, and I was content.
And when, wrapped in his dressing gown of dark blue silk, with the sleeves turned up several times over, I padded back with my hair wrapped in a towel, I found a large, round brass tray
placed on a folding stand in the centre of the room and on it was a lit candle and yoghurt and cheese and apricots and clementines and olives and warm bread wrapped in a linen napkin and a tall frosted glass of cool water. And I sat on the floor in front of it and ate heartily my mind a tired blur of contentment.
And it was only when I lay on my divan, the grey shawl with the pink rosebuds drawn up to my chin, that I fell to wondering whether he too recognised me from our previous encounters, for I am sure our eyes had met …
But still the heart doth need a language.
S. T. Coleridge
14 March 1901
It is almost the middle of the day. Layla al-Baroudi reclines on linen-covered cushions in the cool shadow of the protruding haramlek terrace. In her hands she holds a small, white garment. She looks down at the needle piercing the fabric, pushes it through with a thimbled middle finger, and as she pulls it away — feeling the thread grow taut against her little finger — she hears Ahmad’s laughing shriek and glances up: in the centre of the courtyard the fountain plays on its coloured tiles and Anna holds up her hand and sprinkles drops of shining water on the baby’s plump legs. Layla smiles and bends her eyes to the next stitch.
Husni, as her brother had promised, was released on his own assurance first thing this morning. He had walked into the house brisk and cheerful as though he’d been out to breathe the morning air. He kissed her and Ahmad, washed, shaved, put on clean clothes and called for fried eggs. Over breakfast he told her how he had refused to leave prison without his comrades and how eventually they too had been released on his surety. Ready as ever to look on the happy side, he was glad that — like most of his clients — he had undergone the experience of jail; ‘Gladder,’ he said with a laugh, ‘that it has only been for three nights’; and as she poured his tea he looked up and whispered, ‘I missed you.’
He was looking forward to his trial; it would give him a chance, he said, to put forward the legitimate grievances of the
workers of the country. And now he was back at his office, working, and writing an article for
al-Liwa.
He had been very grateful to his brother-in-law for his intervention and had promised to speak harshly to Ibrahim and the others about their rash action. How harshly, Layla did not know. She had never seen or heard him speak harshly to anyone. He was always the one who said — as he said on this occasion — ‘Hasal kheir’, it ended well, calm down, everything has a solution. ‘But seriously,’ she had said, ‘you have to speak to them, they’re going to take you into a catastrophe — and if not for yourself, then for their colleagues, for themselves even. My brother had half a mind to take them with his own hand to the police —’
‘Ya setti hasal kheir,’ he said. ‘Isn’t the lady well, al-hamdu-l-Illah?’
And in fact it was hasal kheir: for no harm had come to anyone, and here was this delightful young woman who was such a charming guest and so taken with everything she saw — Layla glanced up, and Anna, looking up at the same moment, smiled back. She stood up straight and tightened, for the tenth time, the tie belt of the blue dressing gown around her waist. Ahmad was clearly in love, thought Layla, watching the baby sit up and gurgle and babble at the pale feet, the tall white legs, the blue silk and the shining head beyond — a head which bent down, down, down, until the boy was ensnared and raised his hands to wonderingly finger his net of silken gold.
Layla held up the little frock, shook it out, and laid it down on her knee again. Anna had looked so serious when she told her the name of the stitch: ’ish el-naml. ‘Why, of course,’ she’d said, ‘of course,’ staring at the intricate folds of cloth, and Layla, examining the name ‘ants’ nest’, for the first time had seen its aptness. Although it would not do to pursue the image too far; she shook the dress out again and considered whether to add some yellow to the blue and white.
It was a pity Anna was going away tomorrow; she could imagine so many things they could do together, so many things she could show her, this woman who had come across
Europe and the Mediterranean Sea to find Egypt, and who had confided yesterday that she felt it had eluded her, that she had touched nothing at all. Layla understood what she meant, for what would
she
have known of France had she not been befriended by Juliette Clemenceau? Still, Anna was going to see Sinai and St Catherine, and she would be travelling safely and in comfort — with her brother. Layla had to admit she had been surprised when Abeih Sharif made his offer yesterday — offer? It had been more like decree, a royal firman: you shall go to St Catherine’s, and you shall go with me. And Anna had bristled and answered him in a manner such as Layla had never heard anyone speak to him before. That was always his way: to issue firmans. But it was not his way suddenly to undertake journeys across the desert with strangers — with strange women, foreign women: an
English
woman. And she had wondered, still wondered: could it be that he — that Anna had taken his fancy? Layla had grown, they had all grown, so used to thinking of him as a bachelor, as a man who preferred to live alone, that they had stopped urging him to consider remarriage, had stopped bringing possible brides to his attention, had stopped wondering how he managed. ‘Your brother takes everything so seriously,’ her mother had said. ‘He’s read books and taken them seriously, he read your uncle’s poetry and it settled in his heart. He philosophises everything and there is no arguing with him.’