Sharif Basha feels in his pocket, then goes back into the bedroom for his cigarettes. And there is the high, carved, curtained edifice of his bed. The bed he has shared with no one for twenty years. He has his arrangements - abroad. But here, in his own house, to make love to her with no corner of his heart knowing he is doing wrong, to watch her eyes cloud with desire, to hope for a child, to be tender with her as she grows big - he turns away. How much of this is simple l.u.s.t? If he had met her in Italy, in France, would they have had an affair and thought no more of it? He thinks not. There is a seriousness and a depth to her. See how she spoke of her dead husband, her fool of a husband who had everything a man could desire - who had her and lived a free life in a free and powerful country, governed by a parliament he had elected, who rode through streets policed by his own people - who could have done anything he wished, and who chose to go and fight half a world away so that Kitchener might have the Sudan and grow cotton there to make the Manchester manufacturers wealthier than they were already. Had he even asked himself why Britain should conquer the Sudan? Had he asked himself, what of his old father? What of his young wife? To be fair, he probably had not planned on letting it kill him - just thought he would go and see some action and teach the heathens a lesson and come back to cut a fine figure and tell tales of his exploits at his London club. In any case, he, Sharif al-Baroudi, ought to be glad Captain Winterbourne was dead. Will it trouble him that she had been married to another man? He would wipe him out - burn him out of her body and her mind. No, it will not trouble him. He will not allow it to trouble him. What does he have left? Ten, fifteen years maybe - just enough time to make something of a life if he keeps it in focus, keeps it simple. And yet, how can it be simple? An Englishwoman. Sharif Basha turns abruptly from the garden. There will be no sleep for him tonight.
20 April 1901 "Enfin, what is the problem if you are inventing her? We all invent each other to an extent." Yaqub Artin Basha bends forward offering a cigar. His plump, compact body is wrapped in a silk robe de chambre with a brown, red and green paisley design. A deep green silk cravat is at his neck. Under the black trousers his Moroccan slippers are of green chamois. Sharif Basha selects a cigar and sits back, rolling it between his fingers before he reaches for the cutter.
"Our poet here will tell you that." Yaqub Artin gestures towards Ismail Sabri. The three friends are sitting in deep easy chairs in Yaqub Artin"s library. A low marble-topped table between them carries tomatoes, cuc.u.mbers, olives, cheeses, cold meats and bread. The french windows are open to the terrace.
"I have some good, excellent whisky. Here -" Yaqub Artin gets up again. He goes to a sideboard in the far corner of the room. "And since our friend will not drink, there is more for the two of us." He upends the bottle over the two gla.s.ses. "It is almost a crime to put water in it, mais alors -" He carries a gla.s.s over to his friend. "Let us drink to your dawning happiness!"
Ismail Sabri toasts his friend in lemonade. "You need children," he says. "We all need children."
"I could see that she was inventing me. Piecing me together as we travelled." Sharif Basha places a match to the tip of his cigar and takes several short, strong puffs.
"Ah! The Hero of the Romance! The Corsair! And why not, my friend? You have the looks -"
The desert and the stars and an ancient monastery with a mosque nestling within its walls. Those were his settings. Those and the old house out of the paintings that had brought her to Egypt in the first place. And what would she make of his doubt, his despair? Of how he sometimes hated himself for piecing a life together under a rule not of his choosing? "A citizen life, ruled by an alien lord." Could she ever know him? Could he ever know her? Or would they always hold fast to what they imagined of each other so that life together would for each be more lonely than life alone?
"We cannot speak each other"s language. We have to use French."
"Well," Ismail Sabri reflects, "perhaps that is better. You make more effort, you make sure you understand - and are understood. Sometimes I think, because we use the same words, we a.s.sume we mean the same things -"
"Ah! The poet!" Yaqub Artin cries. "You see! That is true. That is very true." He lifts his gla.s.s.
"I have been meaning to ask you," Sharif Basha says. "Is it not time we had a collected edition? One has to keep pieces of paper in a file -"
"He refuses," Yaqub Artin says. "It is too much work."
"If you print it I shall buy fifty copies for the school in Tawasi."
"I think he is afraid if people see what he is doing he will be attacked -"
"I"m not afraid!" Ismail Sabri laughs. "I simply haven"t got all my poems -"
"They will say he is destroying poetry." Yaqub Artin leans forward to offer the plates of food to his friends.
"They are saying that already," Sharif Basha says, picking up a small piece of flat bread, twisting it into a miniature shovel and dipping it in the beaten white cheese.
"Nonsense! If anything, I am preserving poetry. No one has time to read those huge long rambling epics any more. If poetry is to have a place in modern life, the poem has to be short and intense -"
"Comme l"amour," Yaqub Artin says thoughtfully, taking an olive stone out of his mouth with delicacy.
Sharif Basha laughs: "he never stops, the old Don Juan."
Yaqub Artin shrugs. "Eh! What do we have to live for? He is lucky -" gesturing towards Ismail Sabri. "He is a poet. He will live for ever. But you and I, mon ami, we live today and are gone tomorrow. Like this -" he puffs an imaginary fleck from his palm - "just a breath and we are gone. You have your practice, the cases you defend. What will they bring you? Joy? Eternal life? Go. Go marry your pet.i.te Anglaise. Carpe diem."
Ismail Sabri hands Sharif Basha a piece of paper on which he has written a few words. Sharif Basha reads out loud: "Take your fill of the Moons before they set; The days of parting are dark and long.
Will you be strong, my Heart, tomorrow?
Or will you follow where her steps are bent?
Did you just write that now?" he asks his friend in admiration.
Ismail Sabri shrugs. Yaqub Artin says: "Promise you will write him a song for his wedding."
"I still love that old tune of yours," Sharif Basha says.
"Leave off your coyness and nay-saying
and water the fire of my love
A moment of closeness to you
Is more precious than my whole life -"
The voices of the three men rise gently as they sing together until the last verse: "For you sleep has deserted me
For you I"ve lost all my friends
And for the sake of your love
I befriend other than my people."
There is a silence and then Sharif Basha yawns, throwing his head back. "I have to go." He rises from his chair. "Do I have your support for the school of fine art?"
"You Muslims will have to fight it out among yourselves." Yaqub Artin chuckles. "I am only a poor Christian, what do I know? But if you go ahead, yes, you have my support - and some of my money."
Sharif Basha looks at Ismail Sabri, who nods.
"And your decision?" Yaqub Artin asks.
Sharif Basha picks up his tarbush.
"You are not afraid of displeasing the Lord, are you?" Artin Basha asks with a mischievous smile.
Sharif Basha places the tarbush carefully on his head. "As you see," he says, "I tremble."
27 April 1901 This is where he had first seen her properly. He had left a defiant, dishevelled creature in a man"s riding clothes and returned to find a sunny, golden woman, wrapped in his dressing gown, playing with his nephew by the fountain. As they travelled through the Sinai, he had laughed at himself - at the end of his time he would desire a man. A fair young amrad, who rode with grace and skill, who raced him neck to neck - there were times when he would forget that his companion was a woman, she blended so well with the taciturn men, with the silence of the desert. And then he would look at her and remember and the image of her wrapped in blue silk, her feet white and bare on the stone of the courtyard, would spring into his mind.
Sharif Basha strides through the courtyard. He enters the small vestibule at the foot of the back stairs and opens the door that leads to the shrine. Another courtyard and another door. He pauses. In the dark interior, an old man lifts his head slowly. Sharif Basha crosses the room.
"As-salamu alayk.u.m."
Alayk.u.mu"s-salam wa rahmatu Allahi wa barakatuh."
Sharif Basha sits on the wooden bench by his father"s chair. The old man bows his head, his eyes on the prayer beads moving slowly between his fingers. His robes and turban are spotless. His prayer beads shiver slightly with the tremor of his hands.
"How is your health, father?"
"Al-hamdu-l-Illah. Al-hamdu-l-Illah." The old man nods but does not look up.
What can he talk to him about? What is he thinking about? Is he thinking at all? His father is sixty-six. Only sixty-six. Muhammad Sharif Basha was seventy when he died and look what he was like - look at Tolstoy. The long, stone-flagged room is dim and cool. The only light comes from the small windows set high up in the stone walls and the few candles by the tomb of Sheikh Haroun which stands at the far end of the room covered by a dark cloth. For eighteen years his father has never left this place. At night he sleeps in the small adjoining cell. During the day he sits in this room. Sometimes, in winter, he is persuaded to sit in the courtyard, in the sunshine just outside the door.
"Your brother, Mahmoud Sami Basha, sends his salaam. He enquires after your health."
"Al-hamdu-l-Illah. Al-hamdu-l-Illah."
Does he even remember his brother? Or Urabi? Does he know who he is? He might as well be - Sharif Basha stands up and paces the length of the room. His father does not move. In St Catherine, in the room of skulls, he had been lost to bitter thoughts. What had become of his life? What would he leave behind? His uncle had rebelled, had made his mark. He would leave a name to be honoured by Egyptians throughout history, he would leave descendants, and poetry. What had he, Sharif al-Baroudi, done that would be remembered? He had led as honourable a life as was possible, had done what good he could - but was that enough? His thoughts had drifted, as they mostly did, into what life would have been like without the Occupation. If the Revolution had been left to run its course. If Tewfiq had been forced to give in to their demands. If they had been free to build their country as they had dreamed they might, to develop its inst.i.tutions, to reform education, the law, to establish industries - instead their lives had been taken up in this inch-by-inch struggle against the British, the battles to set up a legislative council, to fight each unjust tax the British tried to put in place, to vote more money for education - and always caught between the Sultan, the Khedive and the British. And what had he done about it all? Now it would not be long before he would become even as those ancient monks: a heap of bones and a skull, and it would be as if he had never lived. He might as well have been like his father, content to slide into senility in the shelter of a mad sheikh"s shrine. There was still time, he had thought, there was still time. But time for what?
And thinking these thoughts he had walked out of the chamber of skulls and into the garden - and had come upon her, sitting on a wooden bench. G.o.d, or the devil, had presented him with an answer to his question. Time for this. Take her. This beautiful, brave woman who had strayed into his life and who sat looking up at the stars, womanly again in some loose silken thing that shimmered in the moonlight. His impulse then had been to sweep her into his arms. To dispense with all the stuff of language and hold her and forget himself in that fair body that called out to him from under the silk. Then her story and the way she told it had touched his heart. That she should have tried so hard to understand - to offer help - and been turned away so often. Oh, he would not turn her away, he would take what she had to give and count himself rich for it. His father sits silently, the prayer beads trembling in his hand. How many times must his mother have wept in front of him? How many times must she have tried to draw him gently back - to no avail? And had he no thought for him, for the son that he had left to take up his responsibilities? The son who had no longer been able to allow himself his youth but had to calculate his every move with his mother and his sister firmly in mind?
"Father."
His father does not look up and Sharif Basha speaks louder: "Father." When he has his attention he continues, "I am thinking of getting married."
A pleasant smile crosses the old man"s face but he says nothing.
"Father. What do you say?"
" "Marriage is half of religion"," his father quotes.
"To an Englishwoman," Sharif Basha says.
The smile vanishes from his father"s face and he looks down again.
"I am thinking of getting married to an Englishwoman. What do you say?"
The old man, still looking at his prayer beads, quotes, almost in a whisper, " "And we have created you of nations and of tribes that ye may get to know one another. The most honoured among you in the eyes of G.o.d are those who fear Him most." "
Sharif Basha regards his father sadly. Eventually he speaks: "Then I shall consider that I have your blessing."
He finds his mother in the kitchen with two maids. She is selecting the fruit to go into the bowls which stand ready at her side.
"Ahlan ya habibi!" She holds out her arms. She hugs him and he bends to kiss her forehead.
"Have you had breakfast?"
"Al-hamdu-l-Illah."
"Then I shall peel you an orange. Smell." She holds out a smooth, shining orange. "The last of the season. From Yafa. A present from Shukri Bey." She takes his arm to lead him out of the kitchen. "Shall we sit here? It"s not too hot yet," she says, leading him to the covered loggia where he sat that first morning with Anna and Layla.
"Kheir ya habibi," she says, when they have sat down. "You look tired and the world is still morning?"
"I"ve just been to see my father. He seems in good health."
"Al-hamdu-l-Illah," she sighs.
After a pause, Sharif Basha says, "What does he think about all day?"
"Who knows? He recites the Quran."
"Does he know you?"
"I think so. He smiles when I go in."
Sharif Basha makes an impatient movement and his mother continues: "You have to clear your heart towards him. He is your father. And if he has been unjust to anyone, he has been unjust to himself more."
"Every time I think of what he has done to you -"
"He has done nothing to me. He was kind and good to me for twenty-six years and then this catastrophe came to us -"
"He could have handled it differently."
His mother shakes her head. "What could have happened? We could have been exiled. He could have been (may evil stay far) killed. He could have been in prison for years. You with all your philosophy - can you not see that? Once the revolution was defeated, all of life had to change."
"My heart does not forgive him."
"Because you feel he shamed you. My son, "G.o.d asks of no one except what he can give". G.o.d forgives, and you cannot? Your uncle has brought us honour enough. And you, you have lived an upright life. I know it has been hard on you, but you have borne it and you have made a name and a reputation - even in these difficult times. Don"t carry bad feelings in your heart towards your father."