Authors: Ahdaf Soueif
The Map of Love (52 page)
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he says. ‘It’s too terrible.’
‘Why terrible?’ I ask, surprised.
‘I spent my last night in New York with her.’
‘Yes. She told me.’
‘Her mother had just died. I mean literally: just.’
‘That’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, fighting death with life and all that?’
‘No, but the thing is, I’d been in love with her.’
‘Who? Isabel?’
‘No, no. Not Isabel, her mother.’ He picks up his glass of Gianaklis, takes a sip and grimaces as he puts the glass down. ‘This stuff gets worse every year. Why can’t they produce decent wine in this country?’ he asks.
I am trying to take in this new twist.
‘When were you in love with Isabel’s mother?’ I ask. ‘Before she died?’
He gives me a look. ‘Yes, my dear. Many years before she died. In ‘62 to be exact.’
‘But —’ I am trying to imagine this. ‘She must have been a lot older than you.’
‘She was. It didn’t seem like it. I mean, I didn’t think of that. I was just a kid.’
‘But then — how did you know, I mean, when did you know —?’
‘Just that last night in New York. She woke up at dawn practically — Isabel, that is — and I hadn’t slept well and we made coffee and she started to talk about her mother and I suddenly realised — it’s just too awful. Really.’ He lays his knife and fork diagonally beside his half-eaten fish, pushes the plate a little way from him and wipes his mouth roughly with his napkin.
‘But had you not stayed in touch? I mean, how come you didn’t know -?’
‘No, no. It was a very brief thing. Very dramatic. I was pretty hard hit.’ He grins. ‘Literally. I was hit on the head. I was in some demonstration. A youthful folly. And it turned nasty and I got hit on the head and the next thing I knew I was in a bed somewhere and this beautiful woman was bending over me.’
‘And then?’ I prompt.
‘Nothing. I fell in love with her. I stayed in her house for a couple of days. And we met twice after that. And then she dropped me. I guess she just decided it wouldn’t work. And it wouldn’t have, of course. But of course I didn’t think so then.’
‘And that was it?’
‘I wrote to her a few times. Many times, I think. Imploring and arguing, you know the kind of thing. She wrote one letter. A short letter. Her decision was final and all that. I went around with an interestingly broken heart for a while. And then — khalas. Can you get me some cold water?’ he says to the waiter. ‘And can you clear all this? And —’ to me — ‘would you like some dessert? I’m having coffee.’
I ask for coffee too, and water.
‘When Isabel started to talk about her mother it fell into place. I’d thought there was something about her from the beginning. Something familiar but I couldn’t place it. But the name, the dead kid — her brother — the American embassy in London. It all fitted. She’d reminded me of her mother.’
‘Have you told her?’ I ask.
‘No, no. Of course not.’
I am not sure what I think. I can’t quite make out what I think. But what I say, after a while, is ‘It’s not so terrible. Of course it’s a shock and it brings back all sorts of things and it’s a bit weird but it’s not — like, it’s not a disaster, surely?’
‘It could be. She was born at the end of ‘62 and my affair with Jasmine was in March.’
‘You don’t think — you can’t think -?’
‘It’s a distinct possibility, as they say.’
The waiter brings the coffee and my brother downs a tall glass of water in one go and wipes his mouth again with his
napkin. We sit in silence. Family, yes, but this is too close. Did Isabel fall in love with him because he is her father? I pick up my glass.
‘I don’t think so, you know,’ I say after a few sips. ‘I would have felt something familiar about her. And I didn’t. I still don’t. There’s nothing about her that’s like you.’
‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ he says. And then he says, ‘That’s why I forgot your tapestry. I had it unframed and I was going to roll it up and put it in my bag at the last minute, but with all that stuff coming at me, I just completely forgot.’
We have a long drive back into Alexandria and out of it again and all the way to our beach house.
Thirty stars shine
On the valley of cypresses
Thirty stars fall
On the valley of cypresses …
We listen in silence to the tape of Sabreen he has brought back from Ramallah.
When we get to the house I make tea and serve it in the living room. We settle into our cane chairs and my brother looks at me.
‘You grow more beautiful each time I see you,’ he says.
Surprised, I run my hand through my hair tangled with the salt sea air.
‘It’s true,’ he says. ‘Is there someone around?’
I shake my head. I consider telling him about Tareq ‘Attiyah.
‘There should be,’ he says.
‘No thank you,’ I say, ‘I’m done with all that.’
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘That’s ridiculous. A woman like you?’
‘I’m through.’ I smile. ‘Unless, of course, I find someone like you.’
‘Nonsense,’ he says. ‘You don’t want anything to do with someone like me.’
‘At least we know for sure you’re not my father.’
‘For God’s sake, Amal! This isn’t a joking matter —’
‘You are not her father.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know.’
‘How
do you know?’
‘There are too many coincidences in this thing already. She finds this trunk, you meet her and it turns out you’re cousins. That’s enough, surely?’
‘What? Bad art? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Look. Tell her and do a DNA.’
He groans. ‘I told you I didn’t want this,’ he says. ‘I told you it was going to be trouble.’
12 September 1901
I should not have thought I would mind so much. I met today two ladies with whom I had a slight acquaintance — I
say ‘met’ but that is hardly accurate: I went into the jeweller’s on rue Qasr el-Nil and they were there and, naturally — I did not stop to think — I bade them a good afternoon, whereupon they looked away and made a great business of gathering their purses and parasols and left the shop immediately, all the while being careful to preserve a studiedly blank expression on their faces. Six months ago they would have been flattered that I recognised them
.
I continued with my business, made my purchase and left — the shopkeeper pretending that he had noticed nothing. But my hands were frozen the while and for a few moments I could hardly see the trinkets laid out before me. I will tell no one of this — least of all my husband, for I can imagine his hurt and anger on my behalf — but any hope I had of one day resuming a normal relationship with my compatriots here must now be set aside. If Mrs Butcher seemed extraordinary to me before, she seems doubly so today and I shall make sure I value her friendship accordingly. I do not truly set store by the good opinion of these ladies — and yet I am wounded
.
This incident will, I am sure, be a source of satisfaction at many dinner tables —
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
17 December 1901
Painting is a kind of visual poetry as poetry is a kind of verbal painting. If you ask me about the Prophetic Tradition ‘Those who will be most severely tormented on the Day of Judgement are the image-makers’, I would say that this Tradition comes from the days of idolatry, when images were made as empty entertainment or with the purpose of setting them up in shrines to worship and implore. If both these motives are absent and painting or sculpture is attended by a seriousness of purpose, then the representation of the human or the animal form is of the same standing as the representations of flowers and other plants which we find decorating the margins of the Qur
an itself since ancient times. On the whole I would regard serious art as a means to elevate the emotions and educate the spirit —
‘It is preposterous,’ Sharif Basha explodes, the letter from Muhammad
Abdu in his hand, ‘preposterous that we should need this — this
testimonial
before we dare set up a school. What are we? A nation of infants?’
‘Ya Sidi, calm yourself! At least we have an enlightened friend in the Mufti. I should have thought you would be glad to get his endorsement?’ Ismail Basha Sabri raises a quizzical eyebrow as he regards his friend.
‘It is I myself who asked for it.’ Sharif Basha strides the room impatiently. ‘But it galls me that every basic thing should have to be spelled out again and again. Art elevates the spirit. Don’t we know this? After five thousand years? Do we have to keep going back to the beginning?’
Ismail Sabri spreads out his hands in a gesture of momentary helplessness. ‘These are difficult times,’ he says.
Sharif Basha frowns. ‘Let us go,’ he says abruptly, folding the letter and putting it into his pocket. ‘Let us go and get this over with.’
The two men pause to adjust their cravats in the great mirror in the hall of Ismail Sabri’s house. They settle their tarbushes on their heads and get into the waiting carriage.