Authors: Ahdaf Soueif
The Map of Love (55 page)
‘You are nothing but the slaves of our charity.’
And
Urabi’s reply, taken up by the whole country: ‘We are owned by no one and shall not be enslaved beyond this day.’
He goes through the demands they had drawn up and the nation had learned by heart — had they been too much for men to ask? CouldUrabi have known that demanding reform of the Khedive would bring the whole weight of the British Empire down on the country? Sharif Basha stands up. None of them were clever enough. A collection of army officers, poets and lawyers — evenUrabi would sooner hold forth on Byron than discuss strategy. Patriots but not politicians. And they had paid a heavy price. He lays his hand gently on his father’s balding head.
I wanted nothing more than to go home to him. But Layla and Zeinab Hanim thought it proper to stay until the suhur was served, and it would have been discourteous to leave without them. I had sensed the darkness of his mood when I went to bid him goodbye before I left the house, and when I looked down from the haramlek and saw him standing silent at the side ofUrabi Basha my heart went out to him, for I know how that old gentleman troubles him
.
I CAN SAY IN ALL
truth that my brother and Anna found happiness and joy in their marriage. And Anna lived among us in gentleness and mercy. She brought companionship to my mother and love to my son and even some joy to the heart of my poor father. And for me, she became my close friend, for she had none of the arrogance or the coldness we were used to imagining in her countrymen, so that we almost forgot that she was English except that she would wonder at things and admire things that we were so accustomed to that we no longer
saw them or thought about them, and the result of this was to make us look afresh at the things surrounding us and, seeing them through her eyes, find them fascinating once again.
It was enough to see her face light up when we heard the sounds that told us my brother was come home, or to catch the sudden tenderness that came into his eyes when he looked at her, to realise the depth of the love that had grown between those two strange hearts. And I remember once my brother came upon us while we were making music together: she at the piano he had bought her and I with theoud I had learned from Husni’s mother. We were playing a piece by Debussy that we had modified to allow room for theoud and we did not hear him come in or realise he was there till we heard the sound of applause and when I turned I was almost sure I saw tears in his eyes, and the blood rose to Anna’s face as it always did when she was taken by surprise and she went to him and he took her in his arms in front of me and said, ‘By God, in my whole life I have not heard music sweeter than this.’
But she was not able to bring him peace of mind. It was as though he was angry that his happy private life should exist within public circumstances that he hated. Or as though he longed that his personal happiness should extend to encompass all of Egypt. We all felt his impatience and his desire for change grow more acute, and he worked constantly to bring about this change in all the spheres in which he was involved. And Anna started to help him, to translate for him from the British newspapers, and to use her connections in England to bring him what news she could that had a bearing on life here.
21 December 1901
Yesterday my husband invited a number of the most noted leaders of Egyptian public opinion to a Ramadan Iftar
.
Among the guests were Sheikh MuhammadAbdu, Mustafa Bey Kamel, Qasim Bey Amin, Tal ‘at Basha Harb, Ahmad Lutfì al-Sayyid, Anton al-Jmayyil and a few others. His idea — his hope — was that they might be able, through amicable and private discussion, to agree upon positions that they could publicly hold in common upon certain questions. On some matters they were all agreed, and the first among these was the ending of the Occupation and the payment of the foreign debt. Beyond that they were agreed in general upon the need to modernise Egypt. Surely they could agree on other, more detailed questions?
‘You know what they are discussing?’ Layla says, nodding towards the curtains.
Anna shakes her head, glancing up for a moment from her paper, the pencil still in her hand.
‘They are discussing us,’ Layla says, a small smile forming on her lips as she bends her head again to her sewing.
‘How? Discussing us?’ Anna asks, intrigued.
‘Here —’ Layla leans over, riffles through the newspapers and magazines lying untidily on the low table by the diwan and comes up with a small book in a plain cover. She holds it up. Anna puts down her sketch pad and rises from her cushions to take it. She spells out the title as she sits down next to Layla:
‘Al-Ma
ah al-Jadidah
, “The New Woman”?’
‘Well done!’ cries Layla, clapping her hands. ‘See how well she is learning, Mama?’
‘She’s quick, the name of the Prophet guard her.’ Mabrouka has come in with the coffee tray. She puts it down on the floor and sits cross-legged in front of it, her bracelets jangling as she settles, adjusts, makes herself comfortable. Zeinab Hanim smiles, her eyes on the ledger of household accounts open in front of her.
‘May God always open the paths for her.’
‘So,’ says Layla, branching off into a pedagogic side stream; ‘what if, instead of having this —’ changing two diacritics on
the cover of the book — ‘we had this instead? What would it be?’
Anna gazes at the word. ‘Miraah’?’ she hazards.