The Map of Love (74 page)
Authors: Ahdaf Soueif
Tawasi, March 1998
My computer pings and I’ve received an e-mail from Isabel:
Amal, Hi,
About those letters: It will be all right God, I must have sounded bad the other day. I was very confused. I have read them over and over again and now I feel as if they were written tome. It’s not just that l’ve gotten used to them. It feels more real than that. Does this sound crazy? If people can write to each other across space, why can they not write across time too? And after all, she was my mother. He is not my father, though. I am totally definite about that. I *know* Jonathan was my father. I have suggested that we do a DNA but Omar does not want to. So that’s fine by me. Amal, I do miss you and I would so love to sit with you again on your balcony and talk as we did before. You are very sweet and generous to keep my things for so long. Do feel free to move them if you have to. But I like the idea of them there, in your flat in Cairo, waiting for me to come back. How is Anna doing? No, don’t tell me. You can tell me everything when we are back on that balcony with our cold drinks in our hands and your neighbours’ TV flickering away. Tell Deena I’m so sorry about Arwa Salih. Love, Isabel.
18 November
We have just heard the news of Tolstoy’s death. He has lived to a good old age and has achieved as much as a man can hope to -and yet his death saddens me. I have derived more enjoyment from
Anna Karenina
and
War and Peace
than from any other novels that I have read
.
‘Deux phénoménons importants, de même nature et pourtant opposés, qui n’ont encore attiré l’attention de personne, se manifestent en ce moment dans la Turquie d’Asie: se sont, le réveil de la nation arabe et l’effort latent des Juifs pour reconstituer sur une trés large echélle l’ancienne monarchie d’Israel. Ces deux mouvements sont destinés à se combattre continuellement, jusqu’à ce que l’un d’eux l’emporte sur l’autre. Du résultat final de cette lutte entre ces deux peuples représentant deux principes contraires dépendra le sort du monde entier.’
Négib Azoury, Paris, 1905
Cairo, 20 October 1911
‘The whole area stands together or falls together,’ Shukri Bey says. Omar Tusun is right to call for volunteers to fight the Italians in Libya. The Libyans themselves have requested it.’
‘Kitchener will not allow them to go,’ Ya
qub Artin Basha says. ‘He will find a way to stop them.’
In the midst of the men a black upright stove sends out its heat‥ On the glowing holes at the top Yaqub Artin has carefully placed some chestnuts, each with a neat incision in its side. The men are ten years older than they were at the beginning of this story. Yaqub Artin is a little plumper but as sleek as ever. Shukri al-Asali and Sharif al-Baroudi are both still tall, broad-shouldered men, but their hair is more shot with white, the lines around their mouths and in their brows more pronounced. Of the two, it is now Shukri Bey who gives off more nervous energy, more anger:
‘Sharif Basha? You have been silent all evening?’ he prods his old friend.
‘Yaqub Basha is right,’ Sharif Basha says. ‘It is all arranged -since the Entente.’
‘France takes Morocco and the Italians’ price is Libya,’ Yaqub Artin says. ‘Germany and Russia will divide up Persia. Britain has the biggest prize in Egypt, but she is also arming the Arabs in Sinai —’
‘And we will go to the Zionists,’ Shukri Bey says bitterly.
‘You might not.’ Yaqub Artin picks up a chestnut with his
silver tongs, examines it and lays it down carefully on its other side. ‘You just won a battle against them in Parliament.’
‘I lost the Sursuq case.’
‘But you forced Çavid Pasha to resign.’
‘It was shameful. He is a Dönme, and as minister of finance he has been borrowing from the Zionists against crown lands in Palestine. The government is so indebted to the Zionists it is practically in their pockets.’
‘Money, money,’ Artin Basha says softly, ‘always money.Abd el-Hamid at least used to turn them down.’
‘They say he is so ill-tempered in his exile, all his hareem have left him.’ Shukri Bey smiles briefly.
A chestnut pops and Yaqub Basha picks it off the stove with his silver tongs, laying it on a plate to cool down. He turns over two of the others.
Abd el-Hamid did not need money so badly,’ Sharif Basha says. ‘The Turks are beleaguered on every front.’