"The desert ... the stars ..."
"You think they turned my head?"
"Well, listen. This is what I thought - do you want a cigarette? No?" He puts her out of his arms. He reaches for his cigarettes, gets one out and lights it. "If we had met on a boat, say, crossing the Mediterranean -"
"Why particularly on a boat?"
"I am trying to think of a situation where we would have naturally spent time in each other"s company. It is not easy."
"Very well. On a boat then."
"Or somewhere in Europe, somewhere that was ordinary to you, familiar, Paris, say, would you have stood in front of me like that, willing for me to touch you?"
"Yes. If I had got to know you the way I did here."
"You could not have."
"I know. So you see, it had to be here, mon amour. And the desert and the stars are all part of it."
"Merci le desert, merci les etoiles. Anna, stand up. There. I want to look at you. Now, undo those b.u.t.tons. Slowly."
Later, resting her back against his chest, feeling his breath in her hair, Anna asks: "Do you think it was meant?"
"Our meeting?" he asks softly, holding her close, marvelling that life could be so altered by nothing more than the presence of this one woman here, in his arms.
"Yes. Do you think Fate has been trying to throw us together? At the Costanzi, at Abdin Palace -"
"And then Fate grew desperate and had you kidnapped -"
"And delivered me to your house, so you had to pay attention."
"Mabrouka saw you in my coffee cup." Anna can hear the smile in his voice.
"That settles it," she says as she snuggles into him contentedly. "Mabrouka knows all about Fate."
A Beginning of an End
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man.
P. B. Sh.e.l.ley
Is it Fate? Or the pull of the past? Is the empty, unchanging house easier on the mind than the voices, the points of view, the hope and the despair? Or is it merely a conscientious application to a project?
A bend in the dark stairway. A thin strip of light betraying a door not fully closed.
Two days after her evening at the Atelier, Isabel paid her extra five-pound charge for the camera and slipped through the old doorway and into the cool, echoing courtyard. She shook off her guide with a small gift of money and wandered about the empty house, trying to imagine it as it must have been a hundred years ago with evidence of daily life strewn about the rooms: a ruffled newspaper by the window, a book lying open, a gla.s.s of water half drunk, a set of keys on a table, on the floor a pair of slippers left empty when their owner had settled on the divan, tucking her feet comfortably underneath her. Isabel wandered round the house. With her mind she put curtains up on the bare windows and watched them move gently with the breeze. She crumbled incense into the hanging burners and it filled the air with its sweet smell. She turned on the fountains and heard the soft patter of water on the tiles. And above it came the sounds of children playing and women"s voices calling out to them when their play got too rough. From the kitchen below the smell of frying spices and freshly baked bread came wafting into the room. She sat behind the mashrabiyya and watched Sharif Pasha once again stride the great entrance hall, his hands locked behind his back, Anna"s dejected young abductors waiting silently for him to speak. Time and time again she framed a scene in her viewer, adjusted her focus on the empty halls and clicked. She would surprise him with these photographs. She would surprise him with how much she knew.
And now she makes her way down the dark back staircase with its steep steps and as she arrives at the bottom she sees the streak of light. Isabel pushes the door. It opens and she steps out into blinding sunlight. Shading her eyes, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g them against the glare, she sees that she is in yet another courtyard. Two plain walls enclose it on the right and the left. Straight ahead, it is bounded by a low building crowned with a dusty green dome. A door opens and a woman comes forward. There is something vaguely familiar about the welcoming face, about the loose blue and white garments, about the woman"s posture as she stretches out her arms.
"Marhab," she calls out in a sweet, low-pitched voice. "Welcome! We have been waiting for you."
She stands to one side to let Isabel through the door. A cool room bathed in shadows. To the right, and separated from the room by a wrought-iron screen, stands a high tomb surrounded by lit candles; some have been burning for so long that they are reduced to flickers in pools of wax, others are tall and straight with ripples of varying length hardening down their sides. The flames illuminate the rich greens and reds and golds which pattern the cloth covering the tomb and falling on three sides to the marble floor. Near the tomb, a door stands ajar, seeming to lead out to the street. To the left, a large s.p.a.ce opens out until it is curtained off by an arrangement of straw mats, while more straw mats cover portions of the stone-flagged floor. There are two cushioned settles and a wooden coffee table. The only light comes from the small windows set high up in the stone walls and the distant flames of the candles. Under one of the windows stands a tall wooden loom, a length of shiny fabric rolled up beneath it. Near the loom Isabel sees an old man sitting on a straight-backed chair. He wears the gibba, the quftan and the white turban of a sheikh. His head is bent and he seems lost in thought. The noises from the street are faint and far away. Isabel turns, but the woman in blue is no longer by the door.
Isabel takes two steps forward. The sheikh does not stir.
"As-salamu alayk.u.m," she says in a hesitant voice.
"Wa alayk.u.m as-salam," comes the response, "and the mercy of G.o.d and His blessings." The sheikh lifts his head and turns towards her. The weakened beams of light coming through the door behind her fall upon an open, youthful face.
"Come closer," the sheikh says.
Isabel moves forward to what she considers a seemly distance and stops. The sheikh looks up and into her face. He speaks, and it seems to Isabel that she hears the wistful eagerness in his voice before she hears the words: "Have you come to marry me?" he asks.
"I ..." Isabel falters.
"Salamu aleik.u.m," a voice rings out in the courtyard and a woman hurries in through the door. She wears the usual loose black smock of the working-cla.s.s woman, over the usual plump figure, topped by a cheery, round face wrapped loosely in a black tarha.
"Salamu aleik.u.m ya Sheikh Isa," she cries again as she hurries up to Isabel. "Marhab ya Sett, welcome!" Isabel scents a whiff of orange blossom as she is folded against the woman"s warm, substantial breast. "Welcome and a hundred times welcome," she cries again. "Sit down, my darling, sit down, lady of them all, why are you standing like this? Shouldn"t you ask your guest to sit down, ya Sheikh Isa? Never mind, my darling, don"t hold it against him. We don"t get many visitors. Apart from those who come to visit Sidi Haroun -" waving at the tomb - "they come in nations. Of course they don"t come in here, but they bring light for us too as you see. But you have brought us light and honour. Welcome, welcome! Shall I make you some tea, or what would you like? Will you drink tea, ya Sheikh Isa?"
"No," Sheikh Isa says, "I want something cold. I want Seven-Up."
"Very well, my love. I"ll get you a bottle of Seven-Up. And the lady? We"ve not been honoured with your name?"
"Isabel," says Isabel.
"May the name live long. Your servant Ummu Aya. Well, Sett Isabel - that"s right, sit down, sister, sit down and be comfortable. You see this cloth -" smoothing out the cover on the settle cushion - "it"s full of barakah. Sheikh Isa himself made it. Will you drink hot or cold, my darling?"
"Whatever you"ve got," Isabel murmurs as she sits down, placing the holdall with her camera, open, on the bench beside her.
"Everything we"ve got," cries Umm Aya, unwinding her tarha from round her head to reveal the white kerchief beneath. She folds the tarha into an untidy bundle and tucks it under her arm. "Hot and cold, in a second they"ll be with you. I"ll tell you what: I"ll bring you something cold first, and the tea in a little while. Welcome, welcome. Talk to your guest, Sheikh Isa. Don"t let her sit and be bored."
She hurries out and the room is once more silent. The sheikh stares at Isabel.
"Are you a foreigner?" he says.
"Yes," she answers.
"Your hair is yellow," he says.
"My father"s hair was this colour."
"And your mother?"
"My mother"s hair is - was - dark, almost black."
"Do you love your mother?" he asks.
"Yes," says Isabel. "Yes, I love my mother."
"Paradise," the sheikh says, "is at the feet of mothers. Remember that."
Isabel fingers the fabric she is sitting on. In this light she cannot quite make out the colours, but she sees strips of varying dark and, at irregular intervals, a gleaming strip of gold.
"So, you made this?" she asks.
"Yes."
"What else did you make?"
"Oh. Many things," he says, and his voice is sad. "I can only work when my hands are well," he says.
"What is the matter with your hands?" Isabel asks.
"Sometimes they hurt," he says, "sometimes they are wounded."
He spreads his hands out and looks at them. In the dim light Isabel can just make out a faint mark in the centre of each hand before they are covered by the long, white hands of the woman in the blue robe. She kneels at his feet and in the face looking up at the sheikh Isabel sees a look of melting tenderness.
"Are they hurting?" the woman asks.
"No," he answers. "No."
The woman bends her head and places one kiss in the palm of each hand. Then she folds them together and places them in his lap.
Umm Aya hurries in carrying two green bottles on a small bra.s.s tray. "Salamu aleik.u.m, Our Lady," she says. She puts the tray down on the table and, as the woman rises to her feet, Umm Aya catches her hand and kisses it.
"Don"t you find him well, the name of G.o.d protect him?" she asks anxiously.
"Praise be to G.o.d," the other answers.
"And now, Sett ..." She turns to Isabel.
"Isabel," says Isabel.
"Sett Isabel has come -"
"I - Perhaps I shouldn"t have -" Isabel begins uncomfortably but Umm Aya interrupts: "Why shouldn"t? "And enter the houses by their doors" ", she quotes; "you entered by the door and we gave you welcome."
"But still, maybe ..." She makes to stand but the woman in the blue robes turns towards her with a smile of great sweetness.
"You bring us good company," she says. "Stay in comfort. The house is your house."
"Do us the honour," Umm Aya says, wiping the mouth of a bottle with her sleeve and offering it to Isabel. Isabel takes it and Umm Aya gives the other bottle to Sheikh"Isa. "Drink, my darling, in happiness and health," she says.
The woman in blue is by the door. "I leave you in good health," she says and vanishes into the sunlit courtyard.
Umm Aya sits on the other settle. "So, tell us now, my darling," she says, "where did you learn Arabic?"
And Amal has made up her mind. When Anna"s story is finished she will close down her flat and move to Tawasi. Not for ever, but for a while. If she has any responsibility now, it is to her land and to the people on it. There is so much there that she can do, so much she can give, so much she can learn. If only she can sort out the business with the list; she cannot ask the fallaheen for a list of names - and she cannot reopen the school without it. As she approaches the end of University Bridge the statue of Nahdet Masr rises before her: the statue at whose feet they had gathered in the days of the demonstrations. When, after the war of "67, their whole generation had seemed to sense what that defeat would do to them, how it would stretch its ill shadow over all the years of their lives, and they had spilled into the streets to try to ward it off. In "68 when it had seemed that the young would conquer the world and they, the students of Egypt, would be among the conquerors. They had taken Nahdet Masr as their symbol: a fallaha, one hand on the head of a sphinx, rousing him from sleep, the other putting aside her veil; a statue at once ancient and modern, made of the pink granite of Aswan. Designed by Mahmoud Mukhtar, the first graduate of the School of Fine Art, and funded by a great collection to which government and people had contributed. Well, it still stands and the renaissance must surely come. If she can open up the school she"ll whitewash the walls and put bright posters up on them. She"ll record the children"s songs and learn to make bread. She"ll find some old man who still has an Aragoz and a Sanduq el-Dunya - and a storyteller. There must still be storytellers around - As she waits at the traffic lights she becomes aware of somebody looking at her and glances up. From the high window of the police van next to her, a young man stares intently. His beard is thick and black, his dark eyes are intense, his hands grip the iron bars of the window. Amal averts her eyes and then looks straight ahead. But she feels ashamed. Ashamed that she should be free, here in her car, free to drive wherever she wishes, while this young man is caged like an animal. Whose country is it? That is what it amounts to now. The light turns green and she accelerates forward. She had cried when she told Omar over the phone about the men she had seen, tied together and huddled in the roadside kiosk, when she had told him the stories the fallaheen had told her.
"It"s an ugly world," he"d said, "On the whole."
"But it doesn"t have to be like this," she"d said. And that is what she will hold on to. What"s twenty years, fifty years, in the life of Egypt? As long as some of us hold on and do what we can. And what she can do is go and live on the land. She cannot do anything about the sale of the national industries, about the deals and the corruption and the hopelessness and brutality that drive young men to grow their beards and try to shoot and bomb their way into a long-gone past. But she has a piece of land and people who depend on it. She can hold that together. She can learn the land and tell its stories. And perhaps her sons will visit her. It"s been such a long time since they"ve been to Minya. Perhaps one of them will pick up the phone and say, "Mama, I"m coming to stay with you for a while." Then she can show him the school and the clinic. Introduce him to the people; "Masha Allah!" they will say, "How he"s grown, may G.o.d preserve him for you." She can sit with him on the veranda and listen to his stories. And if he stays long enough, she can show him Anna"s story. And as they sit together in the dusk they will feel the presence of Anna and Sharif al-Baroudi and Layla and Zeinab Hanim and all their ancestors and perhaps sense - however dimly - the pattern of the weave that places them at this moment of history on this spot of land.
"Look at this," Umm Aya says, "and this." Bringing out folds of cloth, unfurling them and throwing them over Isabel"s knees.
"They are beautiful," Isabel murmurs, holding them up to what little light there is and wondering if Umm Aya wants her to buy something. "Is there enough light in here for his work?"
"My hands need no light," Sheikh Isa says.
"His heart gives him enough light, the name of G.o.d bless him," Umm Aya says. "Tell us, Sett Isabel, are you staying in Egypt long?"
"I"m leaving tomorrow," Isabel says, putting the fabric down.
"But you will come back."
Isabel is not sure if that was a question. "Yes," she says. "But I have to go home and see my mother. She"s not well."
"May G.o.d set your heart at ease and you come back comforted, inshaAllah. And you"re not married?"
"No. I was married but we divorced. Without children," Isabel adds, knowing enough now to antic.i.p.ate the question.
"G.o.d will compensate your patience, ya habibti."