The Map of Love (39 page)

‘Take your fill of the Moons before they set;

The days of parting are dark and long.

Will you be strong, my Heart, tomorrow?

Or will you follow where her steps are bent?

Did you just write that now?’ he asks his friend in admiration.

Isma
il Sabri shrugs. Ya
qub Artin says:

‘Promise you will write him a song for his wedding.’

‘I still love that old tune of yours,’ Sharif Basha says.

‘Leave off your coyness and nay-saying
and water the fire of my love
A moment of closeness to you
Is more precious than my whole life —’

The voices of the three men rise gently as they sing together until the last verse:

‘For you sleep has deserted me
For you I’ve lost all my friends
And for the sake of your love
I befriend other than my people.’

There is a silence and then Sharif Basha yawns, throwing his head back. ‘I have to go.’ He rises from his chair. ‘Do I have your support for the school of fine art?’

‘You Muslims will have to fight it out among yourselves.’ Ya
qub Artin chuckles. ‘I am only a poor Christian, what do I know? But if you go ahead, yes, you have my support — and some of my money.’

Sharif Basha looks at Isma
il Sabri, who nods.

‘And your decision?’ Ya
qub Artin asks.

Sharif Basha picks up his tarbush.

‘You are not afraid of displeasing the Lord, are you?’ Artin Basha asks with a mischievous smile.

Sharif Basha places the tarbush carefully on his head. ‘As you see,’ he says, ‘I tremble.’

27 April 1901

This is where he had first seen her properly. He had left a defiant, dishevelled creature in a man’s riding clothes and returned to find a sunny, golden woman, wrapped in his dressing gown, playing with his nephew by the fountain. As they travelled through the Sinai, he had laughed at himself — at the end of his time he would desire a man. A fair young amrad, who rode with grace and skill, who raced him neck to neck — there were times when he would forget that his companion was a woman, she blended so well with the taciturn men, with the silence of the desert. And then he would look at her and remember and the image of her wrapped in blue silk, her feet white and bare on the stone of the courtyard, would spring into his mind.

Sharif Basha strides through the courtyard. He enters the small vestibule at the foot of the back stairs and opens the door that leads to the shrine. Another courtyard and another door. He pauses. In the dark interior, an old man lifts his head slowly. Sharif Basha crosses the room.

‘As-salamu
alaykum.’

Alaykumu’s-salam wa rahmatu Allahi wa barakatuh.’

Sharif Basha sits on the wooden bench by his father’s chair. The old man bows his head, his eyes on the prayer beads moving slowly between his fingers. His robes and turban are
spotless. His prayer beads shiver slightly with the tremor of his hands.

‘How is your health, father?’

‘Al-hamdu-l-Illah. Al-hamdu-l-Illah.’ The old man nods but does not look up.

What can he talk to him about? What is he thinking about? Is he thinking at all? His father is sixty-six. Only sixty-six. Muhammad Sharif Basha was seventy when he died and look what he was like — look at Tolstoy. The long, stone-flagged room is dim and cool. The only light comes from the small windows set high up in the stone walls and the few candles by the tomb of Sheikh Haroun which stands at the far end of the room covered by a dark cloth. For eighteen years his father has never left this place. At night he sleeps in the small adjoining cell. During the day he sits in this room. Sometimes, in winter, he is persuaded to sit in the courtyard, in the sunshine just outside the door.

‘Your brother, Mahmoud Sami Basha, sends his salaam. He enquires after your health.’

‘Al-hamdu-l-Illah. Al-hamdu-l-Illah.’

Does he even remember his brother? Or
Urabi? Does he know who he is? He might as well be — Sharif Basha stands up and paces the length of the room. His father does not move. In St Catherine, in the room of skulls, he had been lost to bitter thoughts. What had become of his life? What would he leave behind? His uncle had rebelled, had made his mark. He would leave a name to be honoured by Egyptians throughout history, he would leave descendants, and poetry. What had he, Sharif al-Baroudi, done that would be remembered? He had led as honourable a life as was possible, had done what good he could — but was that enough? His thoughts had drifted, as they mostly did, into what life would have been like without the Occupation. If the Revolution had been left to run its course. If Tewfiq had been forced to give in to their demands. If they had been free to build their country as they had dreamed they might, to develop its institutions, to reform education, the law, to establish industries — instead their lives
had been taken up in this inch-by-inch struggle against the British, the battles to set up a legislative council, to fight each unjust tax the British tried to put in place, to vote more money for education — and always caught between the Sultan, the Khedive and the British. And what had he done about it all? Now it would not be long before he would become even as those ancient monks: a heap of bones and a skull, and it would be as if he had never lived. He might as well have been like his father, content to slide into senility in the shelter of a mad sheikh’s shrine. There was still time, he had thought, there was still time. But time for what?

And thinking these thoughts he had walked out of the chamber of skulls and into the garden — and had come upon her, sitting on a wooden bench. God, or the devil, had presented him with an answer to his question. Time for this. Take her. This beautiful, brave woman who had strayed into his life and who sat looking up at the stars, womanly again in some loose silken thing that shimmered in the moonlight. His impulse then had been to sweep her into his arms. To dispense with all the stuff of language and hold her and forget himself in that fair body that called out to him from under the silk. Then her story and the way she told it had touched his heart. That she should have tried so hard to understand — to offer help — and been turned away so often. Oh, he would not turn her away, he would take what she had to give and count himself rich for it. His father sits silently, the prayer beads trembling in his hand. How many times must his mother have wept in front of him? How many times must she have tried to draw him gently back — to no avail? And had he no thought for him, for the son that he had left to take up his responsibilities? The son who had no longer been able to allow himself his youth but had to calculate his every move with his mother and his sister firmly in mind?