The Mistress of Nothing (22 page)

My Lady was well known to the authorities in Egypt, of course; it was very unusual for a
Frangi
to winter in Upper Egypt, let alone a woman; even the men most interested in what was hidden in the sand came and went but did not stay. Of course she’d be watched, spied upon even; it went without saying. That winter my Lady had begun to get news that her letters were going missing and not arriving at their destinations. “Henceforth,” she declared, “I’ll send my letters by hand with travelers and people I trust.”

And through all this, Omar was at her side. He was not among the men indentured to the Pasha’s vast construction project in the desert; his wages were not purloined. His position in the household of Lady Duff Gordon sheltered and protected him. “I am safe,” he said to me, and I saw that he despised himself for it and despised himself even more deeply as it became clear that while his own position remained sure, he could not protect me, the mother of his child.

MY ANGER HAS HARDENED A LITTLE NOW—CRYSTALLIZED—
and sometimes I can’t help but show this anger to Omar when he brings me my meal, when he pops in to see how Abdullah is doing. At these times I struggle to control my tongue; I want to shout at him, argue with him, provoke him to do something, anything, to save me. And I do control myself, most of the time, by remaining silent. I turn away from him, I stare out the window and will not allow myself to look at him. On these days he visits us less frequently, sending Ahmed to deliver my meal.

And yet, at night Omar comes to me; he can’t keep away, despite the fact that the door to my Lady’s bedroom across the house remains open and his sleeping mat is now permanently positioned outside. Though the hour is late, and Abdullah and I are sleeping, he enters our room and sits for a while, watching us both in the moonlight. He removes his tunic—the night air smooth against his skin—and lies down beside me; I wake up and reach out for him. Our love is fraught and anxious now, but neither of us holds back, whatever the daylight has revealed; we have no anger towards one another. In the dark, he does not hesitate to show himself to me, his urgency plain. The room is full of unasked questions, as well as desire: I do not ask him, “When will I have to leave?”; Omar does not ask me, “How will I live, once you have gone away?”

One night Omar stays on in my bed a little longer than usual and falls asleep. I curl against him and am soon asleep myself. In her room on the other side of the French House, my Lady stirs. Her lungs are heavy once again, and the pain in her side is worsening; she knows the signs all too well. She calls out for Omar. She needs a drink, hot tea laced with herbs and honey to soothe the pain. There is no reply. She calls out again, more loudly this time, “Omar.” Still no reply. She sits up in her bed and reaches for her shawl, wraps it around her shoulders. Outside her room the sleeping mat is bare, as she knew it would be. She walks slowly towards the kitchen; though it is still dark, Omar could well have risen to begin work already, but the room is empty, the oven cold. She makes her way to the salon, where she opens the shutters to let in more light; since first waking she has known where Omar is, but she goes through the motions of looking for him, of allowing him to be anywhere apart from where she knows he will be. Down the corridor, to the other room, the room she now thinks of as belonging to “that woman and her child.” She stands outside for a few minutes, listening. There is nothing to hear but she knows the house is full of the breath of lovers, lovers’ breath all mixed up with that of our baby. She pushes the door open slowly: now she wants to see us together, wants to witness, once again, this travesty of a marriage. The door swings back, and there we are, laid out before her in the moonlight like a tableau, like a painting of a Bible scene, man, woman, child. What my Lady sees is this: Englishwoman, Egyptian man, and between them, their little half-breed.

She makes a low noise, she doesn’t know where it comes from, it’s a growl, the beginning of a roar, a howl. She moves forward and, before she knows what is happening, she is on us, scratching, screeching, pulling off the cover, revealing the tangle of limbs, my long hair loose and splayed, both of us entirely naked. Omar wakes and shouts with alarm, and I cry out with fear, and we scramble for our clothes, our dignity, and Abdullah himself wakes and begins to cry. My Lady, as though driven mad by what she sees, screams at me, “What have you done to him? Why have you brought all this into my house? Why have you destroyed our peace?” before pulling back suddenly, shocked into silence by her own behavior. She falls into incoherent sobbing, ashamed and righteous and vindicated all at the same time, blustering, gesticulating, choking. She gives me a look of such pure hatred that I gasp and turn away.

I look at Omar, unable to speak. He throws on his tunic and reaches for my Lady, his arm around her shoulders, as much to restrain as to support her. “Hush, my Lady,” he says, his voice low, “hush. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I’m with you. I’m sorry. I’ll take you back to your room.” She is shaking with anger in his embrace.

What have we done? What has taken place? Have we pushed her too far this time? I can see that Omar is frightened now, for his own position, as well as for me. He glances back over his shoulder at me, as though to apologize for taking my Lady in his arms, not me. I am weeping; I gather up Abdullah and hold him as closely as I myself long to be held. The baby quietens quickly, as though he has had a bad dream and forgotten it already. Omar leads his mistress away.

I spend the rest of the night and the next few days in a state of extreme agitation, unsettling Abdullah. I don’t know what to do with myself. Omar does not come to my room; Ahmed delivers all my meals. He is, strangely, oblivious to what is happening, Ahmed who normally knows all the gossip in the village before it even takes place. He tells me all is well,
Sitti
is resting more than usual, there have been no visitors, Omar is busy in the kitchen, as always. I pace and worry and am convinced that my Lady will expel me and my child from her house any minute now.

But she does not and, slowly, I begin to breathe. And eventually Omar shows up at my door once again.

A FEW DAYS LATER, WHILE OMAR WAS DOWN AT THE RIVERSIDE NE
-gotiating the price of a sack of flour, a man stepped in front of him. “Omar Abu Halaweh,” the man said; Omar told me he was startled to be addressed by name by a stranger. “Please join me on my
dahabieh
for coffee.” From his dress, Omar could see the man was some kind of government official, and this was alarming in itself, but he agreed to go to the boat, as much out of cautious obedience as curiosity. He knew that there could be little evidence of his opinions of the Pasha and his policies, but others had been convicted and sent to Fazoghou for less.

But it was not Omar himself in whom the envoy was interested. They sat together under a low canopy in the stern of the boat and, once the coffee was poured, the man dismissed his serving staff. He turned to point at the French House, which sat above them in Luxor temple. “Lady Duff Gordon,” he said, smiling.

“Yes,” Omar said, and he bowed his head to show his estimation of his mistress. “My employer.”

“Her book,” said the man, “her letters. Annoying. Worse than that—embarrassing. The Khedive would prefer it if she did not write any more letters home to England.”

Omar did not know how to reply. “I cannot dictate what Lady Duff Gordon does or does not—”

“The Pasha will make arrangements for you. One hundred
feddans
of delta land? Or another payment of some kind?”

Omar was silenced. Did he understand the official correctly?

The man mistook this silence for bargaining. “Next time you make a trip on the Nile. You are close by her all the time, we know this. We have been watching. It would be simple. Good land, in the delta.”

Omar convulsed within and struggled to remain impassive outwardly.

The man continued, “You will be rewarded: the Khedive expects your loyalty.”

Omar knew he must make some kind of reply. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Thank you.”

The man waved his hand as though to say, it is nothing. “Ismail Pasha will reward you,” he said once again.

Omar stood and bowed and thanked the man for the coffee; he held his hands behind his back to stop them from shaking. As he made his way off the boat and along the embankment, he tried not to scurry; he knew the envoy would be watching. He forced himself to walk over to pick up the sack of flour he had purchased earlier. He did not allow Ahmed to load the sack onto the donkey but lifted it onto his own shoulder: he said it felt good to carry a load that was real, tangible. He walked up to the French House, through the ramshackle village, and greeted his neighbors in his usual fashion.

The French House was still cool; the heat of the day had not yet begun to accumulate beneath the high ceilings. My Lady was resting in her room, her door ajar to catch the breeze. Omar looked in on Abdullah and me: we were both sleeping; he had heard Abdullah crying in the night and me attempting to comfort and quiet him. He went into the kitchen and got out his pots and pans. He wanted to lose himself in his chores, he said, in cooking, to not think about what had taken place. I will feed and care for my Lady and Sally and Abdullah, he thought; that’s why I am in Luxor. I will make the French House a gracious place, full of ease and refinement for my Lady. I am not in Luxor to watch over the
fellahin,
to worry about the fate of my fellow Egyptians, to speculate about better, more able, fairer forms of government. I am not in Luxor to do the bidding of the Khedive, to drown Lady Duff Gordon in the Nile and thus eliminate one of the Pasha’s few
Frangi
critics. He picked up a pan and slammed it down hard on the work surface.

The noise Omar was making woke me, and I stole through the house, pausing to peer into my Lady’s room to make sure she was asleep. When I got to the kitchen, Omar, in his agitated state, told me what had taken place.

“What kind of a man do they think I am?” he said. “That the Pasha would make me into one of his murderers.” He picked up the pan and slammed it down hard once again.

I took his hand and tried to still him. “You’ll wake her.”

“I am here as dragoman to Lady Duff Gordon,” he said. “I am, as you used to say of yourself so proudly, in service to my Lady. What can I do? Nothing. I can do nothing to help you, my wife. And now this.”

One hundred
feddans
of land, I thought. I couldn’t help but think.

“I will do nothing,” he said. “I will continue to do nothing.”

THE COOL AND CHANGEABLE WEATHER OF JANUARY AND FEBRUARY
gave way to the growing heat of March, and then Ramadan arrived once again. Omar told my Lady he would not attempt to fast this year. “I need my strength, now that Sally is unable—” He paused. “Now that I am on my own.” She nodded and waved her hand to show she trusted her dragoman to make his own decisions regarding his faith, and that she was not to be swayed by reminders of me.

“I’d like to make the fast myself,” I said to Omar one night. “Not this year,” I added, “I know. The baby. But another year, perhaps?”

Omar nodded. “Another year.” And he looked at me then, and I could see him wonder at my ability to make assumptions regarding the future.

But the truth was I would have liked to make the fast for Ramadan; the ritual of fasting from dawn until dusk had a purity about it that I found appealing: let nothing pass your lips till night falls. Four weeks was a long time to endure such a thing and I couldn’t imagine quite how the devout coped when the fast took place in the summer months; how did they survive in the heat without drinking? Even so, I told myself, I would like to participate one year. And besides, making assumptions about the future was how I survived these weeks, hidden away in the French House; I planned for calmer times, for an imagined future when Omar, Abdullah, and I would be settled together, happy. Cairo, I thought vaguely, a courtyard dense and cool with bright red bougainvillea, Omar’s father’s house. One hundred
feddans
of land.