Authors: Ahdaf Soueif
The Map of Love (61 page)
October 1905
I am content. If I look at myself with my old eyes, I see an indolent woman. A woman content to lie on a cushion in the garden, in this miraculous October sunshine, watching the stillness of the sleeping fruit trees and the changes of the light. Each thing that happens — and there are things that happen; small things — adds to my contentment, until I would say, as they do here, May God bring this to a good end. I hear Ahmad’s laugh ring out from somewhere in the house. My baby stirs on the cushion beside me. I slip a finger into her curled hand and I cannot resist kissing the comer of her mouth. Nur al-Hayah, light of our lives. I think of her father and feel that melting of my limbs as I sense again his breath, his smell, the warmth of his hand gentle on me. I think of his kisses, and how he would pause, his hand on my face, to look into my eyes. His eyes are intent and a small smile touches his lips. I stir and as the pause lengthens I murmur, ‘Please. ‘
‘Please what?’ he whispers
.
‘Kiss me.’
‘Why?’
I try to raise my head, to reach his lips, but his hand is in my hair and he holds my head back. His mouth is just out of my reach but I feel our breaths mingle
.
Cairo
15 November 1905
My dear Caroline
,
Has it really been so long since our last exchange? I know it has. And that knowledge was borne most powerfully upon me by the
joy with which I recognised your writing on the letter I received today. I do most happily accept your congratulations on the birth of Nur and your wishes for us both. Had circumstances been different, I would have wished you to be her Godmother — might you not consider yourself so, after a fashion?
You do not tell me much about yourself or the children -five years older now than when last I saw them. I know from Sir Charles that all is well with you, but I would be glad of some proper news
.
Nur is the most adorable baby and inspires the most tender affection in everyone around her. For myself I am in love with everything of her down to her tiny pink toes. This will not surprise you, with your experience, but I had not thought motherhood would be so wonderful
.
She is smiling now, and I fancy her babbling is the start of words. Sharif Basha says I should speak to her in English. I believe he fears I miss my own tongue for — as I think I wrote you a long time ago — all our conversations here are conducted in French, although my Arabic is now quite usable
.
It is true, though, that I use English only for writing and -sometimes — singing. It would be such a pleasure for me to use it in speech to you, my dear friend …
Cairo
20 November 1905
Dear James
,
Thank you so much for the
Tatler.
I
have been studying the evening gowns with Eugénie, with the result that we shall be visiting Madame Marthe, I think, quite soon! I wear Egyptian dress most of the time now but in the evening, for receptions and soirées, one is obliged to dress in the latest European fashion and I have had nothing made since I grew big with Nur
.
Mrs Butcher arrived this afternoon just as Madame Rushdi was leaving and we had a very pleasant time together. She was quite unable to let go of the baby, dandling and petting her all the while. She told me a most amusing story about our old friend Mr Gairdner who, after much trouble, succeeded — as he thought — in
the conversion of one boatman. He took the man in and gave him a room and prayed with him constantly, but after three days the man’s wife came looking for him and it transpired that the conversion had taken place under the effect of a matrimonial quarrel! Reconciled to his wife, the boatman apologised to Mr Gairdner, thanked him and took his leave, returning home with his wife. Mrs Butcher says Mr Gairdner was quite cast down but has since recovered his normal exuberance and is determined to redouble his efforts in the service of the Church
.
My husband urges me to celebrate Christmas in church this year, but I do not believe I shall. Even though Mrs Butcher — I think — would be kind enough to have me sit with her, it would be too uncomfortable. Can you not just see the heads bending towards each other, the ostentatious shifting of skirts and then the staring straight ahead? I would find it impossible to attend to the service or enjoy the singing. It would be more an act of defiance than worship and it seems wrong to taint Christmas in such a manner. I have made a Christmas cake, though, even if without brandy, and we shall have a little tree for Nur
.
I have grown quite proficient with the loom and have started on a most wonderful work — at least I hope it will be wonderful when it is finished. It is to be a tapestry six foot wide by eight foot long, made up of three panels, for my loom can only accommodate a width of two feet. I shall use nothing but what the Ancients themselves might have used in the way of flax or silk or dye, and it shall be my contribution to the Egyptian renaissance, for it shall depict the Goddess Isis, with her brother consort the God Osiris and between them the Infant Horns, and above them a Quranic verse — my husband will choose an appropriate one for me in time. I have already prepared a sketch of it and for the colours I will use the deep turquoises, gold and terracotta of the Ancient Egyptians and the deep green that I have never seen anywhere except in Egypt’s fields
.
Nur al-Hayah lies in her basket and watches me as I work. Ahmad chases the balls of silk, and Baroudi Bey — as a change from his rosary — twines and untwines the silken thread around his fingers. I wish you could see them. I have asked Sir Charles
,
but I fear his back now gives him so much trouble that he cannot travel —
January 1906
‘I will plant some trees for her — here,’ my husband said. ‘As soon as the season is right.’ He did not turn as I approached, but drew me to his side and continued with his thoughts aloud. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I will make a garden for her, with shade, and a fountain where she can play when the world gets hot.’
Even when I sleep, I dream of him and of Nur al-Hayah
.
The want of gratitude displayed by a nation to its alien benefactors is almost as old as history itself.
Lord Cromer, 1908
Cairo, 18 September 1997
As for me, my dreams have become a confusion of times and places. I am lying in the courtyard of the old Baroudi house — ‘Beit el-Ingeliziyya’ as the driver called it — with Nur sitting by my head tugging at my necklace when I think to look in on my sleeping children. With Nur on my hip I go into the house and upstairs to the boys’ room in our house in England and there they lie: the older one splayed out like a starfish, open to the world, the younger curved and tensed gracefully, like a diver in mid-air.
And often, while I sleep, I find myself in a house I have never seen while awake. In the dream I know that I have dreamed of this place often and in the dream I am flooded with relief at having — at last — found it. It is exactly as I dreamed it would be: it has a light, open courtyard surrounded by delicate cloisters with graceful pillars of faded pink and in the middle there is a pool. It has an air of comfortable decay: the plaster is peeling a little from the walls and the garden is overgrown. I walk around. I plan how I will restore it, I note the crumbling capitals of the columns, the missing fragments of mosaic in the floor around the pool, the sagging cane chairs with their faded cushions. I love this place. I know that my mother is in her room somewhere inside, happy, not homesick any more. I shall go in to her soon, when I have collected Nur. I stand by the side of the pool, towels over my arms, calling to the child to come out. And we are expecting
others too. I know my sons will love this house. I can see my brother’s delighted recognition when he sees it. When I wake and try to capture its image in my mind, what I see are the frescoes of Pompeii.
My brother is gone and Isabel is not coming back for a while. Most people I know are still out of Cairo for the summer. I pack my PC, my manuscript, Anna’s remaining papers and my grandmother’s, and Madani carries them down to the car. I take Anna’s woven Osiris off his hanger, roll him up carefully and replace him in his length of muslin. I ask Tahiyya to come up to the flat every three days to water the plants and phone me in Tawasi. I decide, before I set out on the road, to go to the museum. Now that I know what the two tapestries are, I want to go and wander around there for a while. Maybe I will find the paintings that Anna used as her references. But in her letter to James she mentions three panels. Where, I wonder, is the third?
I cross Qasr el-Nil Bridge and turn right and pull in by the Mugama
building. As the parking attendant comes up, I say, ‘If I leave my keys, will you try and find a bit of shade for me?’ If Mansur were alive I’d have left the car with him.
‘How long will you be?’ the man asks.
‘A couple of hours,’ I say. ‘I’m just going to the museum.’
‘There’s no museum,’ he says, ‘the museum is closed.’
‘How is it closed?’ I ask. ‘We’re twelve o’clock and it closes at four.’
‘Because of the bomb,’ he says. ‘They’ve exploded a bomb there and they’ve closed the museum. Look.’
Across the square I see the smoke, the people running, the white uniforms of the police.
‘When?’ I cry. ‘What happened?’
‘They say someone threw a bomb and killed some tourists —’
‘Ya n’har iswid,’ I cry. I run. I run across the square, through the bus terminus and on till I am stopped by a policeman.
‘It’s forbidden, ya Sett,’ he says.
‘There’s been a bomb,’ a man tells me. Crowds of people are standing around. A charred bus is smoking. Officers are yelling into walkie-talkies and others are yelling at the crowd. A police officer turns to the man who’d spoken to me and shoves him in the chest:
‘Move away. It’s not a spectacle.’
The man moves a few paces and mutters, ‘Why don’t you do your job properly instead of acting brave on us?’
‘What happened?’ I ask. ‘Was anyone hurt?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘They’ve removed them.’
‘They say some are dead,’ another man says.
‘Tourists?’ I ask.
‘They say Americans.’
‘What a disaster, what a disaster —
‘Of course it’s a disaster. They won’t stop till they’ve ruined the country —’
‘They were Germans,’ a woman says. Her make-up is caked with perspiration under the big headscarf. ‘All from that bus over there — eight dead. And the driver. God have mercy on them. My heart on their children and their people —’
I stand in the burning sun and think of the tourists on holiday, of Mansur and how I’d never known if he had a wife and children, and I listen to the voices asking questions, answering them, speculating, praying for mercy for the souls of the dead.
‘They say it was one man. And they’ve caught him.’
‘They’ve caught one. But it will happen again —’
The asphalt is so hot it feels like marshmallow under my heels as I walk back across the square. The car is still in the sun and the seat burns the back of my legs and the steering wheel stings my hands. The barricades on the Upper Egypt road will be worse than ever today. Somewhere in the world eight families do not yet know of the grief that has struck them.
I drive. In Tawasi I will be far away from all this. I will see the school working, see my garden and the fields beyond it. And I will be with Anna.
Cairo
30 April 1906
Dear Sir Charles
,
You will know by now that the Sultan has refused to vacate Taba and there is a general understanding that he is backed by Kaiser Wilhelm. If Britain should force the matter and issue an ultimatum, it cannot but be war. I am certain that you and our other friends in England are doing everything possible to put the situation forward in its true light and to that end I am sending you an article which sets out the legal and international position with respect to Taba from 1841 when the Vice-Regency of Egypt was granted to Muhammad Ali. Perhaps the
Manchester Guardian
or the
Tribune
might print it?
The general feeling here is very much with the Sultan, not from any love of him, but from a revulsion at Britain tightening her grip yet more upon Egypt. The Khedive is perceived to be with the Sultan, he confers daily with Mukhtar Pasha. But it is known that he is grown closer both to the King and to the Prince of Wales and it is probably only a matter of time before Cromer calls him to heel
.
Cromer appears more determined than ever now to show us who is master here in Egypt. In February the students of the Law School went on strike to protest against new regulations very like those operating in the primary schools. They saw these regulations — instituted by Mr Dunlop, the new Secretary of the Ministry of Education — as an affront to their dignity. The Government immediately closed down the School for a week, during which time they negotiated with the students, who returned to their classes on 3 March. On 24 March Cromer appointed Mr Dunlop Adviser to the Ministry of Education — in effect the Minister. This has been a most unpopular and provocative appointment, especially as it is in Education that the Egyptians find themselves most badly served by the British Administration
.
You see how politics overshadows everything? Is it so in England? I do not remember it so — except at the end with Edward. But perhaps I was young and unaware. Here nobody
escapes its malign shadow except for old Baroudi Bey, who has long since retreated into a world of his own, and our precious little Nur, who every day brings fresh and clear pleasure into our lives. She is taking her first steps now, so precarious and full of courage and adventure, and is a truly blessed child for no one sees her but falls in love with her and she is very generous in her affections and will happily submit to being hugged and petted by anyone. My husband’s cousin Shukri Bey el-Asali is visiting us from Nazareth and has for the first time accepted our entreaties that he not open up his family house but stay with us instead. We believe this is due to Nur’s having made a complete conquest of him, for she is the first person he asks after when he enters the house and he has infinite patience with retrieving her ball countless times from the fountain where she loves to throw it. As for her cousin Ahmad, who is six, he has appointed himself her guardian and her tutor and allows her free access to his books and his slate. She will be reading at three years old if he has his way. Her most serious affections, though, she reserves for her father: she will hang about his knee, her eyes spaniel-like with devotion, and whatever his business, he has to be home at her bedtime or she will not go to sleep. Bedtime is the one thing I have held to; for here, children are allowed to stay up until sleep overtakes them wherever they may be and I cannot think that is good for them. So I carry Nur off to bed at seven despite daily remonstrances from Zeinab Hanim and Mabrouka. The child is well for it and loves the ritual of bidding good night to all her favourite people and things in the house, ending up at last in her father’s arms for a lullaby and a kiss before he lays her in her bed
.
I fancy I am going on too much, but if you will not come and see her for yourself you must resign yourself to these detailed bulletins, for the prospect of our ever being able to come to England grows more remote with each event that comes to pass. Mustafa Kamel Pasha will be in Europe soon and he has expressed the wish to see you and Mr Blunt also. It would be good if that can be arranged —