The building is rather like a mediaeval Castle and was established in the Sixth Century and soon afterwards, as the Moslem armies advanced Westwards from the Arabian Peninsula, somebody had the prescience to build a small Mosque in its courtyard to guard against it being burned or demolished. At the time of the Crusades it was the turn of the Monastery to protect the Mosque, and so it has been down the ages, each House of G.o.d extending its shelter to the other as opposing armies came and went.
Last night it was early when we all retired, and I thought to try on Layla"s gift. It is a lovely, loose gown of deep-green silk, and even though there is, naturally, no minor in my cell, I was happy to be wearing it.
I went out into the dark garden. I knew we would rise early, but the night was not much advanced and I thought there could be no harm in slipping out for a breath of air.
I saw him come out of the Chapel. He too had doffed his desert attire and was in plain trousers and a woollen jersey with his head uncovered to the night air.
I fancied he started when he saw me. He came towards me and I thought he would be angry that I had ventured out, and that in my woman"s dress with the kufiyya draped loosely about my shoulders. And indeed his first words were "Que faites vous ici?" I said I needed air as my room was close and he said, "You should go in." But presently, when I did not move, he gestured towards the seat and upon my giving him leave he sat himself down beside me. That he was troubled I could tell without even looking into his face. We sat in silence but there was that about his posture, his air, that betokened a restlessness, a disquiet, and eventually I ventured: "Could you not sleep?"
"I have not tried."
"You were in the Chapel," I said. And he heard the question in my voice.
"I was looking at the monks. The old ones. The bones," he said, and his voice was harsh and bitter. He sat stooped forward, his elbows on his knees, gazing into the darkness.
I could think of nothing to say. Indeed, all I was conscious of was a desire to put out my hand and touch that arm that was so close to mine, to put my hand upon that troubled head - a desire that grew in intensity so that I folded my arms about myself. He turned.
"You are cold?"
"No," I said.
"But you are shivering."
"No, not really."
He studied me for a moment, then turned away. "What brought you to Egypt, Lady Anna?" he said into the night air.
It was the first time he had said my name.
"The paintings," I said. And when he turned to me I told him about the paintings in the South Kensington Museum, about their world of light and colour. I told him about my visits there when Edward was sick. When he was dying.
"You have been very unhappy," he said.
"Yes," I said. "He did not need to die like that."
"Like what?"
"Troubled. Not at peace."
"But he did what he believed in, surely? He believed he should fight for his Empire."
"It was an unjust war."
"But he did not know that."
"I think - I believe he knew. But he knew too late. And it killed him."
There was a silence. It was the first time I had said this to anyone. Perhaps it was the first time I had put the thought so clearly to myself. I was shivering in earnest now and had he put his arms around me I believe I would have allowed myself - but he stood up and said, "You must go in."
"No," I whispered, shaking my head, and with an impatient sound he strode off. I thought he was going away but he strode about the garden, then he came back to a stop in front of me and said: "So. Tell me. What do you think? Which is better? To take action and perhaps make a fatal mistake - or to take no action and die slowly anyway?"
I considered. I tried to consider, but it was hard with the trembling upon me and he standing tall in front of me, blocking my view of anything but himself. At last I said, "I believe you have to know yourself first - above all."
"So. She is wise, as well as beautiful and headstrong."
I shook my head and kept my eyes on the ground. There was a mocking tone to his voice. But - "aussi que belle" - he had called me "belle".
"What if you know yourself too well? What if you do not like what you know?"
I was silent.
Within moments he had collected himself: "Forgive me. It is all those skulls and bones in there. The dead monks. So -" He sat down again. "You came to look for that world you saw in your museum. And you have found it?"
"In your house, monsieur," I said.
"Ah, there are other houses like mine," he said dismissively. "We must arrange for you to see them."
I did not know whether to be pleased or disappointed. He was sending me somewhere - but he was sending me away.
"What is the matter?"
"Nothing."
"I did not mean to frighten you earlier. Forgive me."
"I am not frightened."
"Then why are you shaking?"
"It is grown - rather cold."
"Then you must go inside. Now." He stood. "Will you go or shall I have to carry you?"
"You are a bully, monsieur," I said. But I stood up.
"Yes," he said, "I have been told."
At my door I held out my hand and he took it in both of his. "Will you be warm enough?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Then sleep well. Sleep well, Lady Anna who is never afraid," he said. He raised my hand and for a fleeting moment I felt on it the pressure of his lips. And even though I was warm, I cannot say that I slept well.
16.
Our frailties are invincible, our virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun.
Robert Louis Stevenson Cairo, 13 July 1997 An old story and plus ca change and all that. I too did not sleep well last night for I was in a magic garden of my own, in a London square one cool summer night, at the moment when a man I had met a few hours before took me in his arms and changed the course of my life. How could I at that moment have foreseen the desolate s.p.a.ces we would later inhabit? And then the question I had for so long put aside: will there ever be another? Will there be time - will there be heart for another? Having lunch with Tareq Atiyya was the closest I had come in years to a man I could imagine fancying. But he was married - and thinking of doing business with the Israelis. I do not believe I am living in a time-warp, but I confess I find the events of a hundred years ago easier to deal with than the circ.u.mstances we are in today.
So when I let my mind wander, it wanders back to Anna. I see her in her shimmering silk gown, her golden hair loose on the kufiyya draped around her shoulders. She stands for a moment, half leaning against the door she has just closed behind her, her hand still glowing with the imprint of his kiss. She lies on her bed and lives again the scene that has just taken place. And she sees again another country where a man had sat helpless and dumb with misery. A man who could not be comforted. But tonight Sharif Pasha al-Baroudi had shaken himself free of his thoughts, walked about the garden, and come back to her. She thinks of his words, his tone, his aspect, how he has made her feel. What woman will at that moment think about signs and significations? Wonder "do we - by the same words - mean the same things?" I think of Isabel and her confident cry: "If he cared for me as I care for him, I should not be hurt." And Isabel is determined to share my brother"s world. She shares the American one already - and now she wants this one. She wants to surprise him when she goes back by her grasp of things Egyptian. And I have arranged to take her to the Atelier. I have told people - yet again - that she is engaged to my brother, and also that she is doing a graduate project on how people here view the millennium. I"ve lied a bit and said she has been on a march to end the suffering of the women and children of Iraq.
15 July In the Atelier am Ghazali, the waiter, spoons coa.r.s.e sugar into the gla.s.ses of tea that he hands out. In a corner of the long, low room, its whitewashed walls coloured with the smoke of thousands of cigarettes, my old professor, Ramzi Yusuf, is once again conquering Mahgoub al-Tilmisani"s white army on the old chessboard. Deena al-Ulama sits with them, correcting the proofs of a set of papers for the Nasr Abu-Zeid case. They stand up to greet us and Mahgoub says: "Khalas ya Doctor?"
"Mafish khalas," Ramzi Yusuf says. "You play to the end."
"But the guests?"
"They will wait." He gestures round the room. "Sit and look. Experience the ambience. I will beat him in a minute," he says to Isabel. "You do not mind to wait, do you?"
When we sit, Deena stuffs her papers into a large bag and calls out to Ghazali to take our order.
"So, is this your first visit to Egypt?" Deena asks Isabel. Deena teaches mathematics at Cairo University and does a lot of volunteer work for the Teachers" Union, the human-rights organisation, the Legal Aid Bureau and the Committee for the Support of the Palestinian people. She is in sandals, jeans and a loose, dark blue top. She looks tired. There is a general hubbub and people continually leaving or coming in or pa.s.sing through looking for someone. A telephone rings incessantly. Two exhibitions of painting are showing: one in the gallery upstairs and one in the smaller room next door. One of the artists has just been placed under Administrative Detention for signing a statement against the land laws. The other from time to time joins the main group in the room.
"Sallim silahak ya Urabi," Dr Ramzi says in a low singsong.
"Lessa, ya Bey, lessa," Mahgoub demurs, moving his wazir to protect the king.
"Mafish lessa," Dr Ramzi says triumphantly, moving his horse. "Kesh malik!"
"Lek yom ya Doctor!" Mahgoub says cheerfully, collecting up the pieces, pouring them into their wooden box. He shakes out his cigarettes and offers one to Isabel, who smiles and refuses. "Egyptian cigarettes," he says. "Look!" He holds the white pack up, showing her the image of the queen. "Cleopatra. No?" He puts the pack down on the table.
"We have not seen you for a long time, Amal." Dr Ramzi smiles. "You must wait for an American to come with her?"
"You know how it is, ya Doctor," I say lamely, "circ.u.mstances."
"You are from New York?" he says to Isabel.
Ramzi Yusuf is around seventy. The thick, smooth hair and dark, gentle eyes that made his philosophy lectures so popular when I was a student are still there. But the eyes, although they seem brighter, are smaller and more deeply set. And the hair is completely white. He has always been fond of women and now he looks at Isabel with unconcealed admiration.
"Ah, if I was twenty years younger - only twenty years - I would show you an Egypt ..." He shakes his head ruefully.
"And twenty years from now?" Isabel asks.
"Twenty years?" He bursts into loud laughter and then a slight fit of coughing. "I can show you my other home, in the Imam. Or paradise, maybe."
"Isabel wants to know how we see the next millennium, ya Doctor," I say. "She"s doing a project -"
"I know, I know." He waves his hand impatiently. "I am the wrong person to ask such a question. I am old -" he shrugs - "for me it is all the same."
"Youth is the youth of the heart, ya Doctor," Mahgoub says. He works for an airline but he has been suspended for spitting into the drink of a pa.s.senger in first cla.s.s who touched up a stewardess and made her cry.
"Even the heart too, it grows old," Dr Ramzi says. He is silent, gazing into the middle distance. I cannot tell what he sees. "But you are young and you will not believe me. For the millennium - everything, it is always the same," he says. "It will be the same."
"How can it be the same, ya Doctor?" Mahgoub objects.
"Haram "aleik, ya Doctor," Deena adds. "Ya"ni everything we"re doing will come down on nothing?"
"Eh!" Dr Ramzi shrugs. "What you are doing, this is because you are young. Young people, they must struggle. If they don"t struggle they think life has no meaning. They feel lost. You see -" to Isabel - "in countries where there is no need to struggle - in Norway, in Sweden - the young people kill themselves."
"So we"re killed either way," Mahgoub says. "Thank you."
"Surely that"s too simple," Isabel says. "Things change. You have great changes happening here -"
"Toshki," Mahgoub laughs. "Toshki will solve everything -"
"Toshki walla ma Toshki," says Dr Ramzi. "It is all -" he spirals a hand gently into s.p.a.ce - "it is all talk in the air."
A woman hesitates in the doorway, then takes a few steps into the room. People glance up. Deena stands.
"Arwa!" she cries and goes to greet her.
"Who is that?" Isabel asks.
Arwa Salih, one of the leaders of the student movement of the early Seventies. I remember her from the night of the Great Stone Cake in "72, when our comrades were arrested in the university and we staged a sit-in in Tahrir Square and all of Cairo came to join us. That too ended in nothing. We were defeated - or diffused - and she opted out. She chose to work at a press agency, translating the financial news. In the evenings she helps out at a small art gallery in Zamalek. She has married three times and never had kids.
"She"s stunning," Isabel says as Deena brings her over.
"I don"t want to interrupt -" Arwa begins, and then she sees me and we go into a big hug. It"s been more than twenty years. Mahgoub brings over a chair.
"Look, ya Setti," he says and starts to tell her what Isabel wants. "And Dr Ramzi is saying that everything will stay the same," he ends.
"It won"t," Arwa says, sitting down, hanging her handbag on the back of her chair, crossing her legs. "It will get worse. We"re headed for an age of Israeli supremacy in the whole area. An Israeli empire."
"Bravo!" Mahgoub cries. "Arwa goes to the bottom line."
"Do you really think so?" Isabel seems astonished, but then we have never talked about this; I judged our friendship too fragile.
"Yes. That"s what they"re working for - and they have America behind them. A pax Americana, and within it an Israeli dominance over the area that they like to call the Middle East."
Arwa has always surprised people: she speaks more directly than you expect of a woman - a beautiful woman with a shy, hesitant air.
"Surely that"s extreme?" Isabel says.
"They"re already talking of Israeli brains and Arab hands," Deena says. Deena, with her jeans, her spectacles, her cigarettes, was always expected to be militant, and she is - militant but tired. That is the first thing you notice, I think, when you look at these three women: Arwa and Deena, with faint circles under their eyes, a slight droop of the shoulders, a certain dullness of skin, look worn. While Isabel, shining with health and a kind of innocent optimism, looks brand new.
"And look at the whole region," Mahgoub says. "Look at Algeria. Look what happened to Lebanon. Look at the Palestinians. The Sudan. Libya. Look at Iraq. The next millennium? The future being planned for us is a terrible one -"
"What"s terrible," says Deena, "is how we"ve taken on the role of the victim, the Done-To. We sit here and say "they"re planning for us, they"re doing to us" and wait to see what "they" will do next."
"And what"s in our hands to do?"