"But?"
"I haven"t got a handle on it. How it works."
"Listen," I say, "you know the alphabet and you"ve got a dictionary. Everything stems from a root. And the root is mostly made up of three consonants - or two. And then the word takes different forms. Look -" The old teacher in me comes to life as I hunt in my handbag for paper and a biro. "Take the root q-l-b, qalb. You see, you can read this?"
"Yes."
"Qalb: the heart, the heart that beats, the heart at the heart of things. Yes?"
She nods, looking intently at the marks on the paper.
"Then there"s a set number of forms - a template almost - that any root can take. So in the case of "qalb" you get "qalab": to overturn, overthrow, turn upside down, make into the opposite; hence "maqlab": a dirty trick, a turning of the tables and also a rubbish dump. "Maqloub": upside-down; "mutaqallib": changeable; and "inqilab": a coup ..."
So at the heart of all things is the germ of their overthrow; the closer you are to the heart, the closer to the reversal. Nowhere to go but down. You reach the core and then you"re blown away - "Is there a book that tells you all this?" Isabel asks.
"I don"t know. There must be. I kind of worked it out."
"That"s really useful."
"I think so. It gives you a handle."
"So every time you use a word, it brings with it all the other forms that come from the same root."
Yes, they come swimming along in a cl.u.s.ter, like ovae: the queen in the centre, and all the other eggs, big and little, who will not, this time, be fertilised ...
"Yes. Vaguely. Yes. Always look for the root: the three consonants. Or two."
"I"m going to work on this," she says.
"Tell me what you come up with."
Isabel folds the paper and puts in her handbag - her "purse", she would say.
Outside the plate-gla.s.s windows night has fallen and along Maspero the cars are fewer and the trees no longer look dusty. The lights of the Bateau Omar Khayyam and el-Basha gleam on the river. The odd small boat drifts quietly along, and by the railings couples linger; the men in short-sleeved shirts, the girls in big headscarves. Single young men walking by turn their heads to stare.
When we leave the restaurant we walk in single file along the narrow pavement to where the car is parked by the Rameses Hilton. I decline Isabel"s offer of a drink. I"ve laid enough ghosts for one day. I want to get back to my flat, to my room.
We do a U-turn in front of the television building, still barricaded with sandbags since "67, and head back towards Qasr el-Nil bridge.
"How"s Anna doing?" Isabel asks.
"You"re out of touch," I say.
"I am not. You said she"d gone to Egypt - come to Egypt. I"ve read the Alexandria bit."
"Well, she"s in Cairo now, and she"s very much with the English set. The Agency and all that. The British emba.s.sy. She wants to learn Arabic"
"Who"s she going to get to teach her?"
"I don"t know yet. James Barrington knows Arabic."
"Has she found what she"s looking for - the Lewis stuff?"
"Only a little bit; in the Bazaar. But not really, no."
"Will she? Find it?"
"I don"t know. I hope so. But she stays a long time, so she must have."
"So there"s a scene in the Bazaar?"
"Yes, complete with donkeys, and little old artisans and street cries and a frightened, disapproving lady"s maid and urchins yelling for baksheesh -"
"You"re making fun of me."
"Only a little. And nicely."
"You know, you"re terribly like your brother."
Ah. I"d wondered when we would get back to him. My brother.
9.
... in this story of Turkish, Albanian and British rule in Egypt, it is Egypt that is really counting all the time. It [is like the story] of a public man with a clever wife. While she helps him he flourishes, and as soon as she doesn"t he falls, but it is not easy to show how this happened.
George Young, 1927 Cairo
25 January 1901
Dear Sir Charles,
It feels very strange these days not to be in England. I have a sense of momentous happenings - but somehow disembodied, for nothing around me reflects recent events except the lowered flags and general gloom at the Agency - but then I have not known it to be a particularly joyous place. The rest of the country continues, so far as I can see, as usual - the people celebrating the Festival of the end of the Fast of Ramadan, while I know that in England, even for those who have no part in them, the preparations for the Coronation and the Funeral must be stirring both hopes and fears of imminent change. It is most odd to think that the Queen is gone when she has always had such a fixed place in our firmament. I cannot say that I grieve for her; she was too remote - even when one met her - to inspire that emotion; it is more that I am surprised afresh every time the thought comes to me: She is no more.
Are you hopeful of a change for the better? You have always said that the Prince of Wales knows much more of what is going on in the world than his mother, or even Lord Salisbury. Will it be possible to stop the war in South Africa now? I spent the afternoon yesterday at the Sporting Club, and among the party was a gentleman from Finance by the name of Money (truly Charles d.i.c.kens himself could not have done better), who said that the South Africa Campaign has now cost us one hundred and fifty million pounds. I told him that at the beginning of the war you had estimated it would cost two hundred million and he said it might yet come to that. Pray do write and tell me what you think of all these events for, of my life in England, it is your conversation that I miss above all else.
Here, in Cairo, the days go on as usual. Today Mrs Butcher (of whom I believe I have written to you before) most kindly allowed me to accompany her on a visit to a wonderful old church, built upon the towers of the Roman Fort of Babylon in the old Christian district to the south of Cairo. It has a most curious wooden ceiling, like an upturned boat, and no domes of any kind. An old man there pointed out to us the image of the Virgin imprinted on a marble column. He spoke earnestly while pointing to it and Mrs Butcher later informed me that the Natives believe Our Lady left her image there as a token when she appeared in the year 969 to the Patriarch Abraham. The Caliph, al-Muizz, taking as his text Matthew 17:20, "Verily I say unto you. If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you" - the Caliph had asked the Patriarch to move the Muqattam mountain, and the Patriarch had responded by secluding himself in the church to fast and to pray. On the third day, the Virgin appeared to him and a terrible earthquake shook the Muqattam. Al-Muizz was satisfied and ordered the church restored, and rebuilt the Church of Abusifin into the bargain. It is a pretty tale, but the image looks very like the icons of the time, and indeed the face is almost identical to that in another painting, hanging near the entrance to the church, of Our Lady, crowned, the infant Jesus on her knee, crowned also, and St John leaning forward to kiss His foot. Of this latter painting it is said that the Virgin"s eyes move to follow you wherever you go, but I put this to a practical test - as much as I felt was proper in a church - and I did not think her eyes followed me. It is a very fine church, though small and dark, and I saw that the inlaid woodwork of the panelling and the pulpit, the tiles on the walls, the oil lamps in their niches and the stone flagging of the floors have much in common with what I have seen in the older mosques. Would you not imagine that this points to some unity of divine impulse and aesthetic principle which has found expression in both?
The Muallaqah. Once on a school trip, many, many years ago, I too experimented with the Virgin"s eyes. I wanted them to follow me, but I couldn"t really say they did. I remember the guide that day telling us that the wooden rafters of the ceiling symbolised Noah"s Ark and the eight columns Noah"s family. He said that the thirteen marble columns supporting the pulpit were for Christ and the twelve disciples, and the one black column in their midst was Judas Iscariot. I felt then that I understood the building better. Now I am not sure how accurate he was, but it was a starting point. Against the warnings of our teachers we climbed down the uncertain iron staircase to the damp keep below, and we saw how the bottom had filled with stagnant water encrusted with thick green slime. Then a dark creature fluttered past our faces and someone yelled that there were bats down here and we backed off and hurried up the staircase. And what a relief it was to pa.s.s through the red velvet curtains and enter the dim comfort of the church and from there emerge once again into the light of day.
We sat under a tree which they say sheltered Our Lady in her flight into Egypt with the infant Jesus, and I own myself touched by the simple faith with which our guide spoke of Settena Maryam and her son Yasu al-Masih and - Mrs Butcher relayed to me - his utter conviction that it was this very tree and no other that had offered them shelter. And, after all, it could have been this tree. And if it was not - since there are other trees under which she is said to have rested - what harm is there in believing that it was your own particular tree that had so hospitably offered its shade? As long as one does not come to blows with one"s neighbour over the question. Why should Our Lady not have rested under several trees during her sojourn in this land?
Mrs Butcher is most kind and good-hearted. She and the Dean have lived in Egypt now for many years. She speaks the language and appears to get on well with the Native people and is quite free from any rigidity of mind but holds the most generous opinions. She spoke to me with much interest and sympathy of the religion of the Ancient Egyptians and its similarities - in its most developed stage - with our own Christianity, saying that the Ancient Egyptian, like the modern Christian, knew that he lived in the sight of G.o.d, and under the shadow of the Eternal Wings.
Akhen Atun. The young king who rebelled against the powerful priests of Amun. Who took his wife, Nefert.i.ti, most beautiful of the ancient queens, and his household and built a new capital at Tal el-Amarna, and there proclaimed the worship of the One G.o.d: Atun. What happened next? We have fragments of a story. Pictures. On the throne itself we see the Queen bending, her hand stretched out to touch with tenderness the royal collar of the seated king, her husband. We have images, unprecedented, of the royal family at play, the King holding one of his daughters on his knee, the Queen kissing another. And then something happened. What made him discard Nefert.i.ti and cast her out? What forces did she then gather against him? What we know is that when he died the priests of Amun-Ra staged their comeback and forbade the burial of his body, so that his sister stole out at night and anointed him and buried him, and for this she was condemned to a dark cell to die of hunger and of thirst.
I see Anna put down her pen. She reads her letter through and folds it. It is eleven o"clock. Emily has gone to bed and Anna is restless. She walks about her room. She opens the shutters of her window and peeps out: it is a January night and there is nothing to be seen except a horse and his syce waiting patiently for their master to end his evening at Shepheard"s Hotel and go home.
10 February
I was speaking of learning Arabic and Dean Butcher said, "Ah! you want to read the Muallaqat?" When he saw that, far from wishing to read it, I did not even know what it was, he explained that it was the name given to seven Odes that are the most famous in Arabic poetry from the days before Islam. I was struck by the similarity of the word to the name of what has now become my favourite church in Egypt, and the Dean explained that "allaqa" means "to hang" and the Muallaqah is named thus because it is hung on the ancient gateway of the Roman fort. The Muallaqat are the "hung" poems, because they were the winning poems in the great poetry compet.i.tion that took place every year in Mecca and so had the honour of being "hung" on the door of the House of G.o.d (the Kaba).
I was loath to give up the idea that the shared name was somehow significant and I asked whether anything else was known by the same epithet. After some thought the Dean said that the only other instance that he could bring to mind was the Hanging Gardens of Babylon on the Euphrates: "Hada"iq Babel al-Mu"allaqah".
A, l, q: to become attached, to cling, also to become pregnant, to conceive; and in its emphatic form "a, ll, q: to hang, to suspend, but also to comment.
I have returned to the Muallaqah again and again, and as my familiarity with it grew - as I came to know the figures in the paintings, and their expressions and att.i.tudes became things I recognised rather than discovered, as my ear became attuned to the eastern sound of Coptic chanting or the m.u.f.fled hush of the empty church broken only by the odd Arabic call from the courtyard without, and my nose ceased to be surprised at the oddly tinny edge of the incense - as my familiarity with the church grew, so my consciousness increased of the effect it was having on my heart and on my soul, an effect that I can only describe as a sense of increased s.p.a.ciousness within myself, as though the age of the building, the years it had hung as a hallowed s.p.a.ce between its twin Roman towers, were working its way into my soul and I too, somehow, was becoming a part of that great tract of time. I cannot express this better, but its effect on me is of a deep - and I pray enduring - peace.
And now I want to go there again. To read, cut into the stone gateway, in Arabic: ask and you shall be given, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. I lean back against the side of my bed. Beside me on the floor lies Anna"s open journal; around it lie the letters. I do not want to be infected with restlessness. I shift and sit cross-legged and straight-backed, a wrist on each knee. I used to love wandering around in that district: visiting the mosque of "Amr, then the churches. Walking through the narrow cobbled streets of the Coptic quarter and sitting for a while in the cemetery - so different from our own - where the grand Coptic families are buried amid evergreen trees and marble statuary. I shall tell Isabel. I shall tell her she has to go to the Muallaqah.
And for Anna, as it happens sometimes, once you start thinking about something circ.u.mstances push you into thinking about it even more: a letter to Caroline Bourke, the first page missing, but dated, I believe, on or around March 10: ... but she was mostly silent except when Mr Barrington asked her advice concerning a horse he was considering, and on one other occasion. Among those present was a young man by the name of Temple Gairdner, a very tall, ungainly young man with a big mop of hair, who was ordained yesterday in Alexandria and is shining with his enthusiasm to begin the work of converting Mohammedans in Cairo. He was rather disconcerted, I think, when Mrs Butcher questioned him on the wisdom of his undertaking; he did not expect it from the wife of the Dean. She did it very gently but there was no doubting her intent as she pointed out the consequences (to the convert) of his success: the legal problems of inheritance, the inetrievable loss of family and friends. For while the native Mohammedan may have a friendship - of sorts - with his Coptic neighbour, she said, to have his own son or brother repudiate the faith was another matter entirely. Mr Gairdner made a brave defence, declaring that such worldly matters could not be weighed against the suffering of Our Lord and undertaking that he and his Society would be all the family the convert would need. Lady Anne then broke her silence to ask why he deemed it necessary to make a Moslem embrace Christianity since the Moslem is, in any case, a Believer? Was it worth the trouble it would cause to the convert and all who knew him, she asked, that he should worship the same G.o.d, but in a different manner? Mr Gairdner thus found himself trapped between two gentle but formidable ladies and I own I felt sorry for his discomfiture for he seems quite without any ill intent; indeed, he is bent on good. It all ended in friendly enough manner, though, for he declined to enter upon a discussion of theology but contented himself with saying that even if we looked at the matter from a wholly historical point of view, the entire edifice of Mohammedan belief is "in the face of Christianity" and that his wish was to "reclaim" for Christ souls that were His. The ladies indulged him and let the matter rest and Mr Boyle told a story of a donkey-boy who is famous for falling to his knees in front of lady tourists crying "Lady, lady, me believe. Gib it plenty Bibbie", thus sounding a variation on the usual cry of "Baksheesh". But Mrs Butcher said to me privately that she thought Mr Gairdner"s kind of activity only led to much mischief here and she doubted whether he would make a single true convert for his troubles.
And now, my dearest Friend, lest you think I am grown too dull and solemn I will tell you that I have attended that apex of the Egyptian Winter Season: the Khedive"s Ball. It had been postponed out of respect for our Mourning, but the Coronation having taken place, it was considered proper to hold the Ball - particularly as it is the one Event here at which all the Nations mingle and so has a most particular political and diplomatic standing.
It was a very grand affair, held at Abdin Palace, the official Residence of the Khedive (his personal Residence is at the Qubba Palace), and on the night the carriages were nose to back from the Hotel and progress was very slow indeed. (Made slower by an odd occurrence, for as we came to the southern end of Opera Square we were halted by what I took to be a procession: two hundred or so men, in the official workers" clothes of the Tram Company, together with some young Egyptian men in European dress, all marching, preceded by a bra.s.s band! They came from the direction of the Citadel and turned ahead of us so we had to follow them all the way to the Palace. n.o.body knew who they were but it was thought they might be celebrating some event.) I went with Lady Wolverton and Sir Hedworth Lambton and we were deemed of enough importance to be presented to His Highness and to be placed well to the front in his train when entering the Ballroom. The Khedive really seems a very pleasant young man, with an intelligent look and a good-humoured smile and perfect manners, and it is a shame he and Lord Cromer cannot get on better with one other. The Lord made an appearance but left early - before supper even - and this was excused on account of his bereavement and his known antipathy to festivities.
The Ballroom itself is of surpa.s.sing magnificence, gilt and crystal and velvet everywhere and on the whole everything you would expect in a Royal Palace and more. At one end it had huge doors which opened later in the evening to reveal a Banqueting-Hall of equal magnificence. At the other end, a kind of narrow gallery ran around the higher portion of the wall and at the back of that was a curious golden grille, behind which I was told the ladies of the household sat and watched the proceedings if they had a mind to. My interest was naturally immediately captured by this and throughout the evening I found myself glancing up at it so that, were I a man, my behaviour would surely have been construed as indelicate. And yet, I think that for all my commonplace curiosity about the world behind that screen, my greater wish was somehow to know how we, in the Ballroom, appeared to the hidden eyes which watched us.
For the dances, they were in every point similar to what we would have at a formal ball in a great house in England - but I have never before seen such a mix of nationalities, for all the Consuls of the Powers and the Consuls of every other Nation were there together with their Ladies, and naturally there was a very large British Presence. The Native notables were there (and those are the people I was most curious about, not having met any at all though I have been here more than five months) but not one single Moslem lady. No doubt they were all behind the grille! The Natives were in the uniform of the Egyptian Army, or in the robes of the religious orders or, like the Khedive, in Court dress topped by the scarlet fez, and I own I thought some of them looked most gallant. But they kept to themselves. I did not see one of them dancing.
You will want to know what I wore. I chose my violet silk, which Emily did not think was grand enough and I own it probably was not, but as I knew that Moslem notables were to be present I thought it would provide me with adequate covering and would not cause offence. We are, after all, in their country. But I did wear Lady Winterbourne"s tiara and my mother"s amethyst necklace and I believe I did not disgrace the Empire!
When the doors to supper were opened there was such a rush to enter the room, you would have thought all these people had not had a bite in weeks. Lady Wolverton and I stayed back awhile and I saw that some Native gentlemen did the same and indeed took the opportunity very soon to leave. I had the oddest feeling that I had seen one of them before - I only caught the briefest glimpse of him as he was turning to leave, but something in that moment transported me back to the Costanzi and it seemed to me that I could hear again Dardee"s anguished lament rising into the House - with such inconvenient consequences for you, my dearest friend - But it was the beginning of my healing and I trust you will see from all this that I have made great progress since those sad days which I shall always remember for the angelic kindness you demonstrated towards your devoted, One of the Ulama present that evening, wearing "the robes of the religious orders", was Sheikh Ha.s.souna al-Nawawi. In a letter to Sheikh Muhammad Abdu he writes that of course he knows that foreigners" ways are different, but that of the foreigners" behaviour, the aspect which he found most astonishing was that "ladies with bare arms and almost bare bosoms danced with other men while their husbands watched with equanimity and apparent approval".
Cairo
10 March 1901
Dear Sir Charles,
I was delighted to receive your last, so generous in recounting recent events and the conversation of friends that it made me quite long to be in London again. It is melancholy to me to think of the house shut and desolate and cold, but I a.s.sure you next winter we shall be our old selves again - or as close to our old selves as possible - and when you come to see me in the evening, I shall have your whisky and water waiting and fires burning in all the grates.
I dined earlier tonight in pleasant company, among whom were your old friend Sir Hedworth Lambton and Lady Chelsea, who both promised to call on you in London next month and give you a good account of me! Lady Anne Blunt was also there (the invitation to visit their house in Heliopolis was not forthcoming - so I have no prospect as yet of meeting Mr Blunt and will have to wait until you can arrange a dinner in London) with her daughter Judith, who is very lively and pretty, and we talked much of England and our common friends and acquaintances.
Yesterday, though, I attended a conversation (I say attended because my part in it was chiefly confined to that of listener) which would have been of interest to you, and in which, unlike me, you would have had a great deal to say. It took place at the foot of the Great Pyramid (which I have eulogised enough already in previous letters), where luncheon was laid out after the expedition by boat and donkey (I have not yet dared to ride a camel!). You can, I am sure, imagine the scene: the rugs spread out, the baskets opened, the food served, the servants employed in shooing away the various turcomans and children offering services, donkeys, camels, escorts to the top of the Pyramid or simply asking for money, and Emily seated on the comer of a rug. I had prevailed upon her to accompany me, saying she could not go back to England without at least seeing the Pyramid. I believe she took this as a sign that we were soon to leave and, wishing to remove any possible obstacle to our departure, came along and sat staring obstinately away from the Pyramid and towards the lush vegetation that precedes Cairo - the closest thing to civilisation that she can hope for at this moment.
I own I cannot as yet believe the evidence of my own eyes in that sudden transition from the sand of the desert to the green of cultivated fields and palm groves. What must it be like for the traveller, after days and nights of crossing the vast and empty expanse of desert, to come suddenly within sight of such green and fruitful abundance? It must seem like a miracle - but I digress.
Our party was made up of Harry Boyle, the Oriental Secretary at the Agency; James Barrington, the Third Secretary; your friend Mr Rodd, the First Secretary, who is soon to leave Egypt; Mrs Butcher (acting also as my chaperone); Mr Douglas Sladen and Mr George Young, both of whom are writing books on Egypt; and Mr William Willc.o.c.ks, who is responsible for the building of the great dam and reservoir at a.s.souan - and myself In the shadow of forty centuries, the talk turned naturally enough to Egypt, to the uninterrupted way of life of the Egyptian fellah and labourer, to Egypt"s successive rulers and to our presence there now. Mr Boyle took the line you would expect: that the country had never been run so efficiently and that the Egyptians had never been happier or more prosperous than under Lord Cromer. Opposition came, though, from a most unexpected source: Mr Willc.o.c.ks (who, I later learned from Mr Barrington, is known to have subscribed Five Pounds to a Nationalist paper, al-Mu"ayyad, and lives under Lord Cromer"s consequent displeasure) asked why then were the papers agitating against us? Mr Boyle replied that he was not aware of any such agitation and both al-Muqattam and the Gazette were friendly enough. At this, I fancy a smile pa.s.sed around the company, and Mr Willc.o.c.ks said, "Oh, I do not mean those two. I meant one of the two hundred other papers that come out here: the Native newspapers." Mr Boyle (with some contempt): "My dear fellow, those are the "talking cla.s.ses", the effendis. Professional malcontents. " Oh, how strong the temptation was to whip out my journal and take notes as they spoke! But that would not have done, and so I resorted to subterfuge and took out my sketching-pad and pencils - for the scene was delightful and each person had such a different aspect - and I was able also to jot down the odd note and I have written it all out for you as a little "scene", which I hope, together with the drawings, will give you some pleasure.
Here is the scene by the Great Pyramid with the gentlemen lolling at their ease, Mrs Butcher sitting very upright on her cushion in a neat dress of grey with navy tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and a well-restrained bonnet; Emily is in one corner looking away from the party, and I in another with my sketching-pad poised on my knee; the native hurly-burly waits - at a distance of some yards - to erupt. These Egyptians sit (or crouch or squat) quietly for some stretch of time, and you begin to imagine that nothing can move them from their seeming placidity - until suddenly there is a murmur and there are movements and men standing up and arms waving and raised voices and then it all subsides again into quiet, the peace and the restiveness alike being incomprehensible to me. Mr S (whom I confess I do not much like for he has a superior manner which extends to everything except certain old buildings) holds forth on the subject of the "effendis" whom he terms "verbose jackanapes" and dislikes intensely for - as far as I can tell - their attempts to emulate us. He derides their golf collars and two-tone boots, their "undigested" championing of European ideas of liberty and democracy. He is suspicious of their French education.
Mr S, small and thin and sallow, and HB, large and ruddy, seem to agree on all things; each picks up where the other leaves off. HB holds that the people who matter in Egypt are the fellaheen and for them the British have brought nothing but good. You can see him in the drawing with his drooping moustache, his untidy jacket, and his dog Toti, who goes with him everywhere but is so old that he has to be carried. You see the white and blue striped bonnet on Toti"s head to protect him from the sun? HB put it on him most solicitously and fed him morsels from the picnic. Meanwhile he describes how the Lord abolished the corve, the courbash and the bastinado and how the fellah can now stand up to the Pasha and say, "You cannot whip me for I shall tell the English." Mr Barrington looks doubtful at this, but he is very gentle and not given to contradicting people - particularly people with strong opinions. You can see, I hope, the gentleness (I would not call it exactly weakness) of his face - and indeed his stance - in my drawing. He wears a suit of fine linen and an elegant cravat in pale lavender. It is he who insists on extracting a portion of food from the picnic and hands it to his manservant Sabir, who he has a.s.sured me is utterly devoted and loyal (and indeed they seem to have a regard for each other that I have not seen in other members of the Agency and their servants), to share among the waiting natives. HB concludes that the effendis are not real Egyptians and their opinions can therefore be safely neglected. Mr S, however, will go further: there is no such thing as an Egyptian, he avows: it is only the Copts who can lay claim to being descendants of the Ancients, and they are few and without influence. For all the Mohammedans, they are Arabs and are to be found in Egypt through relatively recent historical circ.u.mstance. Mrs Butcher remonstrates: the Ancient Egyptians, she believes, were of so definite, so vivid a character that traces of that character cannot be completely lost to the Egyptians of today. Mrs Butcher"s gentleness of manner rather hoodwinks those who do not know her well and Mr S cuts across her with "Not lost, ma"am, degraded. Completely degraded." That is a term which I have often heard used to describe the Egyptian character. It is supported by a disquisition (which Mr S now proceeds to set forth) on their subscribing to a system of Baksheesh, their propensity to falsehood, their ability to bend with the wind. Even the Khedive exhibits these traits - and that is why Lord Cromer will not deal with him. Mr Rodd comes to the defence of His Highness, who, he pleads, being educated in Austria and ascending the Throne at eighteen, had princely notions beyond his station and found the heavy hand of the Lord hard to bear. And yet I wonder whether it is possible for a conquering ruler to truly see into the character of the people whom he rules. How well, in fact, I found myself wondering, do I know Emily? We are both English, we have shared a life for some twenty years, and she is free to give me one month"s notice and find another job. Yet I look at her keeping her distance and pinching herself to a little s.p.a.ce on the rug, and I imagine her transported into a small cottage somewhere - a cottage that is hers, with an independent livelihood, however small, and perhaps her own children around her, and I fancy I see her bloom and open into more vivid life - but I digress again.
Mr Y, who is an Historian, expressed the view that the Egyptians do indeed have a National Character, but that they are not yet aware of it. He called on the movement of Urabi Pasha (which I have so often heard you discuss) as proof of that incipient character - but that was somewhat too metaphysical for HB, who held forth quite fervently about the economic reforms Lord Cromer"s administration has effected: the cotton yield, the sanitation, the trains running on time. But I was distracted by the thought that his clothes seemed to get more and more crumpled - by their own agency, as it were, though he was engaged in nothing more strenuous than eating his lunch. Mrs Butcher - neat as a new pin - suggested that while material progress was, naturally, to be commended, our administration could be reproached for having ignored the spiritual life of the nation we govern. This was a signal for Mr Willc.o.c.ks, who deplored how little was being done for education and said he did not believe we intended to leave Egypt when we had finished reforming her - or we would be doing more to educate the people that they might be able to govern themselves. He spoke with a clear conscience since as an engineer he is engaged in a task that is of benefit to the country and intends to leave when it is done, but both HB and Mr S held that it would take generations before the Natives were fit to rule themselves as they had neither integrity nor moral fibre, being too long accustomed to foreign rule - and if foreign rule was their lot, then British rule was surely to be preferred to that of the French or the Germans, who would surely have been here if we were not. On this last, I fancy you would agree. Mr Y, holding a strip of smoked ham to the nose of Toti, who showed not the slightest interest in it, said mildly that we would have to go one day and that if we did not do so of our own accord, Egypt would do it for us. And Mr Barrington, lying back and placing his hat over his face and his arms under his head, said, "George would have us think that we are a dream only: a figment of Egypt"s imagination."
Egypt, mother of civilisation, dreaming herself through the centuries. Dreaming us all, her children: those who stay and work for her and complain of her, and those who leave and yearn for her and blame her with bitterness for driving them away. And I, in my room, home after half my life has gone by, I read what Anna wrote to her father-in-law a hundred years ago, and I see the English party, lunching by the Pyramid, their Egyptian servants keeping their Egyptian pet.i.tioners at bay. I record what she has written, and I prepare my explanatory notes for Isabel, and I am torn. I like Mr Young, I imagine him dark-haired and with a hint of the ironical about his face, and I want to say to him, "But we knew very well that we"re Egyptians. Urabi Basha - at the bottom of his pet.i.tion for a representative government, a pet.i.tion which so (unwarrantedly) startled your bond-holders for their money that your Liberal government saw fit to send in Sir Beauchamp Seymour with his ships and Sir Garnet Wolseley with his troops to "suppress a military revolt" - Urabi Basha signed himself: "Ahmad Urabi, the Egyptian"." "Ah," he would say, "but he only meant as distinct from the Turks who were getting all the top jobs in the army." "No," I say, "no, he demanded a Const.i.tution. He was speaking for us all." And Harry Boyle, big and bluff and definite, would declare I was talking nonsense. "Are you speaking for the fellah," he would say, "you with your city ways and your foreign languages? The fellah doesn"t give a d.a.m.n about a Const.i.tution. He wants to till his land in peace and make a living. The man in the street wants a decent place to live and money to feed his children. Is that what he"s getting now?"
Each week brings fresh news of land expropriations, of great national industries and service companies sold off to foreign investors, of Iraqi children dying and Palestinian homes demolished, fresh news of gun battles in Upper Egypt, of the names of more urban intellectuals added to the Jamaat"s. .h.i.t lists, of defiant young men in cages holding open Qur"ans in their hands, of raids and torture and executions. And next door but one, Algeria daily throws up her terrible examples; and when people - people like Isabel - put the question, we say no, that can"t happen here, and when they ask why, we can only say: because this is Egypt.
10 March