The Map of Love (36 page)

In the billiard room, Prince Ahmad Fuad is winning. This does not prevent him looking dour. It was in this same room that Prince Ahmad Sayf-el-Din shot him a couple of years ago and, had it not been for Milton Bey, he would have been dead. As it was, he was ill for a long time and that did not improve his habitual moroseness. Yusuf Kamal is completely the opposite: quick and nervous, perpetually worried, but a man of vision and enthusiasm.

Sharif Basha lights a cigarette and settles down to wait. He wants to talk to Prince Yusuf about the new art school. Work on the museum is going more or less to schedule. The university is a slow business — mainly because of Cromer’s opposition. The art-school project is still in its beginnings. Well, these are good things to be working on. But it all takes so much time. Raising the money is not easy. All of it private. Not one piastre of state money will they get as long as Cromer is in power. ‘The budget does not permit …’ the British Agent repeats and repeats. But the budget permitted more than one and a half million pounds of Egypt’s money to be spent on the Sudan Expedition and another quarter of a million every year to make up the Sudan deficits, and what was the benefit to Egypt in this? The budget permits the employment of British officials in Egypt at triple the salaries of the equivalent
Egyptians. But it does not permit an extra piastre for any project to do with culture or education. Technical education Cromer is coming round to; schools to produce clerks and workers. British brains and Arab hands is Cromer’s recipe for Egypt. Sharif Basha stands up, stubs out his cigarette and walks over to the window. Over there lies Qasr el-Dubara, where even now ‘el-Lord’ is making his plans for the country. ‘Come, come, man. He’s probably eating his dinner.’ A brief smile touches the corner of Sharif Basha’s mouth as he imagines what his friend Ya
qub Artin would say if he could hear his thoughts. ‘Even Cromer has to stop scheming sometimes. You’ll find he has guests there now and they’re not thinking of Egypt at all. They’re talking about the latest news from London —’ Anna. She might be there. Sitting at the table. Dressed in her own clothes. Speaking her own language. Her eyes raised to some young officer — Sharif Basha reaches in his pocket for his prayer beads. He stands at the window, his hands clasped behind him, the beads going round and round between the fingers of his right hand. How can he permit himself to think that an understanding might be possible between them? It cannot be. In any case she would have forgotten him by now. Or, if not forgotten, he would have receded into an exotic part — a remote part — of her Egyptian journey. A better kind of ‘Native’ she had travelled with in the desert and spoken with one night in a moonlit garden. And now she is back where she belongs: at the Club in Ghezira, the donkey races and paper chases, the fancy-dress balls and Agency dinners with her own people. There are men out there, younger than he, who would shoot Cromer and hang for it and consider their lives well spent. And what would be the use? The Qasr el-Nil Barracks are right there: five minutes’ walk away. The British will not go. They will never go of their own free will. The only force that will make them go will be the force of arms — or interest. And they know that. Hence the disbanding of Egypt’s elite forces; the scattering of the army, the British officers at
the head of every regiment. And meanwhile the British Army of Occupation costs one million pounds every year. A million pounds that could go towards paying the country’s debt and setting her free of her foreign masters. And the people will not fight. Cannot fight. Oh, he held back the hot-heads and talked about due process of law. That was one point on which he was in agreement with Cromer: ‘due process of law’. Cromer also wanted an end to the Capitulations by which every foreigner in Egypt was tried by his own consul, not by the Egyptian courts. But Cromer had shown bad faith by bringing in the Special Laws to deal with ‘Natives’ confronting British personnel. He had brought them in after the Gelgel case that he, Sharif Basha, had defended. Ending the Capitulations would only deliver Egypt more completely into Cromer’s hands. They should hold on to them, even though they placed every foreign national above the law. To barricade your soul against the thousand indignities you suffered as a man ruled by outsiders — And meanwhile time was being lost. The generations that should have been educated, the industries that should have been introduced, the laws that should have been reformed, and worse, the ascendance of those who curried favour with the British, how would you dislodge those when the occupier had gone? The distrust sown between Muslim and Copt — A hand on his shoulder and he turns —

Prince Yusuf Kamal is a slight man with a sensitive, intelligent face. He has a passion for art and intends personally to fund the school if no other money can be found. ‘Where has it all gone?’ he is fond of saying. ‘Look at the statues, look at the temples our grandfathers built. Look at the mosques of the Fatimids, the book-bindings and the glass of the Mamelukes — and now? The Ottomans have a lot to answer for.’ But at this moment it would appear another opposition is gathering force.

‘Would you believe,’ the Prince says sadly, ‘they are accusing me of encouraging kufr?’

‘Kufr, your Highness?’

‘Drawing! Sculpture! Here —’ He takes out an envelope from his pocket, draws out a letter and shakes it open. ‘Read this.’

Sharif Basha reads:

Sharif Basha hands back the letter. ‘Your Highness can hardly give weight —’

‘I have to take them seriously,’ Prince Yusuf says. ‘They could incite the people. Ya Basha, all they would have to say is that I am in collusion with the British to import evil European arts into the country, to train our young men into them …’

Harry Boyle strolls into the room and Sharif Basha places a hand on his friend’s arm. ‘Shall we go and get something to eat?’ he suggests.

In the dining room the two men pause to greet Milton Bey and Prince Gamil Tusun. They take a corner table and order grilled pigeon and salad. A pitcher of lemonade sits in its silver castor between them.

‘What do you propose to do?’ Sharif Basha asks.

‘I don’t know. Give me your opinion.’

‘Set up a public debate. You can wipe the floor with them.’

‘What’s the use —’

‘Accuse
them
of conspiring with the British to hold us back.’ Sharif Basha laughs at his own idea, but Prince Yusuf is troubled.

‘You cannot convince these people with logic. You have to speak to them in their own language.’

The waiters appear with the food and the two men shake out their napkins. Prince Yusuf pours olive oil and vinegar on the salad.

‘If you speak to them in their own language, you have already agreed to fight on their ground,’ Sharif Basha says, picking up his fork. ‘Our position should be that faith is one thing and colleges — civil institutions — are another.’

‘They will never accept that,’ Prince Yusuf Kamal objects.

‘But we shall have this problem with the university, with the education of women, with banking — with everything. This is the question that has to be decided once and for all: to what extent should these people interfere in the practical development of the country? And notice that their interventions are always in a negative direction — everything in their book is haraam —’

‘Ya Sharif Basha, this is a debate we cannot enter into now. With the British here, people will not say of us, “These men are patriots who think differently from us.” They will say, “These men are in the pay of the British”, and they will conspire even more with the Sublime Porte to tie us closer to Turkey. For the moment, we keep our eye on our target, our limited target: the School of Fine Art.’

‘Let me speak to Sheikh Muhammad
Abdu,’ Sharif Basha says impatiently, taking his napkin off his knee, crumpling it on the table by his plate. ‘He supports the school. He can give us arguments for it — arguments that they would find convincing.’

‘If he would declare his support,’ Prince Yusuf says hopefully, ‘that would be the end of it. After all, he
is
the Mufti and the highest religious authority.’

‘I shall speak to him,’ Sharif Basha says. Then, after a moment: ‘As soon as he gets back from Istanbul. And if he’s
for it, and willing to declare himself, you reply to this letter by asking
them
to put the question to the Mufti. Say you will abide by his decision.’ He pushes back his chair. ‘But these are piecemeal solutions in the end.’

No question that needs settling can be settled now. There is always a reason to avoid confrontation. Sharif Basha orders his driver to go slowly over Ismail Bridge and back before returning home. He wants to look at the Nile. He would have liked to walk home: a long, brisk walk in the crisp air. But now, at one o’clock in the morning, it would be asking for trouble. He was bound to come across some British soldiers and if challenged in any way he could not trust himself to keep his temper. Sharif Basha leans back in his carriage as the horses turn and wheel to recross the bridge. On the right he can see the low-lying form and the lights of the Agency. Even if she has been to dinner there, she will be back in her room at Shepheard’s by now. And something tells him she is not happy. He imagines her walking into her room, dressed in European clothes. She pauses by a mirror and raises her arms to take the pins out of her hat. Sharif Basha sees his own image in the mirror behind her. He stands so close that he can feel the warmth of her body, can smell the scent rising from her liberated hair …

Sharif Basha has neglected his heart for so long that it had fallen silent. And now it speaks. It lies in wait for him and chooses its moment: as he enters his house where the servants are all asleep. As he walks into his library Anna lets the curtain fall, turns from the window and smiles at him. ‘Tu es en retard. Je commençais à m’inquiéter.’ ‘Tu!’ He grimaces; he already has her calling him ‘tu’. He checks his desk to see if any messages have arrived while he was out. There is a copy of
al-Mu’ayyad
with a note from Sheikh Ali Yusuf pinned to it. There is also a large embossed card, an invitation to attend the opening of Mustafa Kamel’s new school in Breem on the 15th. He turns off the lamp and walks from the room and up the stairs. Mustafa Kamel is a patriot, absolutely. He is rousing people against the Occupation. He is establishing schools.
Why then is Sharif Basha not comfortable with him? As he dries his face he frowns into the bathroom mirror. Is he jealous? Because Mustafa Kamel is young and fiery and a good rhetorician? No. He detects something in the younger man, something on the make, something too fond of itself. And he is too close to the Sultan. He does not wish for the end of Turkish rule in Egypt. And he invests too much trust in the French. He thinks that because they are the traditional enemies of Britain, they will stand by Egypt. He did not live through the Joint Note, the ultimatums. He goes to Paris and they fete him and spoil him and call him Caramel Pasha behind his back and he believes whatever Madame Juliette Adams chooses to tell him. But traditional enmity is not enough. Britain and France are both European countries in any case and sooner or later they will do a deal. They will unite as they had done for the Crusades and the Caisse de la Dette and the Joint Note. An alliance between Britain and France is more natural, after all, than an alliance between Egypt and France. But at least Mustafa Kamel has started a newspaper and what has he, Sharif al-Baroudi, done? Now in its forty-fifth year, what did his life amount to?