Song of the Nile

by Fielding, Hannah

  If the death of her father had begun Aida’s passage to adulthood with a cruel jolt, the crucible of war completed it in a baptism of fire. The chubby and confused teenager who had left Egypt grief-stricken spent the war years growing into a resilient and focused young woman. Yet while she was able to help mend the broken bodies of so many casualties of war, she carried her own pain inside like an angry wound that would not heal. Now, after what seemed a lifetime away from her country, she was back in Egypt … here to clear her father’s name.

  The creaking sound of metal broke into Aida’s reverie as Kherallah the ghaffir, rifle slung across his back, opened the gates. Dressed in a loose snowy galabeya, crowned with an enormous white turban, he raised his arm in salute as the car glided past, his face lit up with a smile that revealed dazzling white teeth. Aida waved at him. Good, loyal Kherallah. He had been gatekeeper for as long as she could remember. As a lad he had worked under his father, who had also been Ayoub El Masri’s gatekeeper and guardian of the estate before Kherallah took over.

  Through the mango and guava trees, the bright glow of their fruit startling in that place of shadows and silence, loomed the pink house where she had been born: Karawan House, named after the nightingale. Aida loved the beautiful but sad legend about the bird, which Dada Amina used to tell her when she was a child. In Arab tales, the rose was believed to have originated from a sweat droplet fallen from the prophet Mohamed’s brow. Legend has it that from the time the first rose was created from this droplet all roses were white, until a nightingale fell in love with one of the blooms and pressed its body so hard on the petals that the thorns of its stem pierced the nightingale’s heart, turning the white rose to red with its blood, as well as creating the sad notes of the wounded bird’s song. Aida’s eyes travelled over the exterior of the building. Once so full of life and laughter, it seemed that Karawan House finally lived up to its name. After all these years, and with her father gone, it seemed shrouded in melancholy and drained of its former colour.

  The finely carved old mansion that had been solidly built was now in bad repair. It displayed a neoclassical dark pink and cream crumbling stone façade with arches, pediments, columns and elegant, narrow windows masked by faded green wooden shutters. Its central structure was flanked by two lower wings, holding a ballroom and terrace on one side and a jardin d’hiver, the equivalent of an English conservatory, on the other, which was a suntrap even in winter. All the front rooms in the house looked out over the river and the desert, but the view from the back rooms was just as magnificent, taking in the grounds, with palm trees and green fields in the distance. It was not the most imposing house around, but it was grand enough, and despite losing her mother when she was only seven, Aida had enjoyed a happy childhood there with her father and Dada Amina. During term-time she had attended Cheltenham Ladies’ College, a boarding school in England, but whenever she could, she returned to her beloved home in Egypt for the holidays.

  The car came to a halt at the foot of broad white marble steps, which swept up to the veranda that ran along the façade of Karawan House, and Saleh the driver rushed round to open the door for Aida. Ragab the gardener, who had tended the gardens since Aida was a tiny child, walked up the drive with great dignity to shake her hand, his deep, gentle eyes proclaiming him a man close to nature. ‘Hamdelellah Al Salama ya Sit,’ he whispered, bowing a fraction with reverence.

  ‘Allah yé sallémak, ya Ragab,’ Aida said, returning his welcoming greeting. She hadn’t forgotten her Arabic, and it felt both strange and homely to be speaking the language again. The words came creakingly to the surface of her mind as if they had been deposited all these years somewhere in the pit of her stomach.

  The mansion’s carved oak front doors were open and the numerous smiling staff of Karawan House stood at the entrance to welcome back their Sit Aida. There was Osta Ghaly, the kind, plump old cook who would secretly give Aida delicious sweetmeats when she was a child, conjured up in his kitchen where she was not allowed; Bekhit, the head suffragi, attired in his spotless white robe, red sash and red tarboosh – a man of great age who had been in the family’s service for fifty years; his eldest son, Guirguis, an alert young man with intelligent dark eyes that never seemed to miss anything, who would take over his father’s position one day, although remaining under Bekhit’s orders for now, while being trained for the job. There was Radwan the scullion, known as filfil, pepper, because he always interfered in other people’s arguments like pepper thrown into food; and his cousin Hassan the cleaner, a quiet youth who smiled a lot but didn’t say much. Both young men were the sons of fellahin, country folk, whose families had worked on the El Masri land for many generations. Then came Fatma, the washerwoman of the flashing gold teeth; Naima the maid, a young girl of seventeen who was only a child when Aida had left; and finally, Dada Amina, who had brought up her father Ayoub before caring for Aida.

  Small and chubby, with curly black hair tied back under a triangular headscarf and wearing a flowery galabeya robe, Dada Amina had been a close confidante and second mother to the young Aida, the bond between them strengthening even further after Eleanor El Masri was diagnosed with cancer and died quickly afterwards. Though she was kind and possessed an exceedingly soft and sweet expression, Dada Amina was far from being a pushover and had kept the somewhat rebellious only child in check as she grew up. Once Aida had become a young woman, Dada Amina remained at Karawan House in the formidable role of housekeeper.

  All these people had been in the service of Ayoub El Masri when he died, and Aida had insisted they should be kept on after his death even though she herself was making a hasty departure for England. Naguib, who had taken on the management of the El Masri Estate, had agreed, knowing that his friend Ayoub would have been proud of Aida’s loyalty to their household suffragis, many of whom had become almost part of the family. Today, the return of Sit Aida was regarded with obvious excitement. They beamed as, smiling, Aida shook hands with them one by one, thanking each of them for having looked after the family home during her long absence. When she reached the end of the line, Aida’s reunion with her old nanny was much more emotional. Dada Amina hugged the young woman to her heart and kissed her with tears glistening in her dark eyes.

  ‘Aida, habibti, my darling, all grown up!’ she exclaimed, holding Aida at arm’s length to inspect her. ‘Did you never eat during the war, ya binti, my child? You look so different, almost another person. But I would recognise you anywhere, ya danaya, my dear child … Allah, what have you done to your hair? You look like a film star! Baeti zay el amar, you have become as beautiful as the moon … Oh, it’s good to see you again!’ Fresh tears sprang from Dada Amina’s eyes as she clung to the girl whom she had missed as much as she would a daughter of her own.

  Aida wiped her own damp cheeks and spluttered out a laugh. ‘And you haven’t changed at all, Dada Amina. Tell me, what keeps you so young?’

  Naguib interjected, ‘Oh, bossing us all around and making sure we do what we’re told, isn’t that so?’, giving Dada Amina a cheerful wink and laughing heartily at his own joke.

  Time may not have changed Dada Amina, but not so Aida. The housekeeper was right: she felt like a different person. It now seemed an eternity since that far-off afternoon, eight years before, when she had seen her father, Ayoub El Masri, standing behind bars like a caged animal in the dark courtroom, and had witnessed his demise minutes after the verdict was pronounced. Branded a thief, the shock had been too great for the renowned archaeologist and, within minutes, he had died of heart failure. It was a tragic finale to his life, and a brutal end to the insouciant days of Aida’s childhood. The memory of those first weeks of stark despair made her shiver.

  Although she had no doubt about her father’s innocence, Aida had fled to England to get away from the hectoring of journalists and the malevolent tongues of society, who were quick to seize upon the scandal. The identity of the real culprit had been revealed to Aida the day her father was arrested, and she had carried
the truth with her all through the war years. Now that she was back in Luxor, she would do her utmost to find the proof she needed to confront the coward who had let her father – his neighbour and long-time friend – go to jail. The same man who had ultimately caused Ayoub’s death.

  * * *

  Once the moment of demonstrative homecoming had passed, the staff dispersed, each going back to his job, except for Dada Amina, who accompanied Aida and Naguib Bishara into the house.

  The hall of Karawan House was large and light. Its floor was made of cream calacatta marble, imported from Italy when the house was built in the early nineteenth century, its veins of gold giving it warmth and depth. The space was dominated by a grand wooden staircase, each side of which stood a pair of ionic columns in the same expensive warm stone. A magnificent Baccarat chandelier hung from the lavish ivory-coloured ceiling, whose decorative plasterwork panels were gilded and enriched by beige and brown low-relief details of various birds of Egypt.

  Dada Amina led them across the polished tiled floor into the long, rectangular drawing room, made bright by four tall windows, their edges softened by faded damask curtains opening on to a terrace. From here the view was breathtaking: the slow-moving Nile lying like a pearlescent sheet, so still it seemed as though you could walk across the water to the farthest bank, where the pink hills of the Valley of the Tombs rose up, changing colour as the sun rode the sky. During the day, feluccas, the romantic gull-winged sailing boats used since antiquity, skimmed over the surface of the river like big white moths.

  This room, like all others in the house, was done up in the formal English style – Ayoub and Eleanor had totally refurbished the house when they moved to Luxor, replacing the heavily gilded French furniture with the more sober and elegant Sheraton interiors.

  Aida smiled at the familiar surroundings. A nostalgic pang of sorrow gripped her heart. Her father always said that her mother’s hand was to be seen everywhere in the elegance of the Karawan House interiors. She needed beauty all around her, as he had put it. The room was still as Aida remembered it. Painted a sunny yellow, its walls were adorned with oil paintings by David Roberts, Prisse d’Avesnes and Augustus Lamplough, which depicted the landscapes of Ancient Egypt, the River Nile, the desert, as well as scenes from Egyptian life. The golden oak floor was covered with fine antique carpets from Iran and Turkey and at each end of the beautifully proportioned room a fine Adam fireplace was surmounted by a gilded mirror. Both were lit in winter as the nights in this part of the world, contrary to the mild daytimes, were bitterly cold. Beautifully inlaid demi lune tables in satinwood stood on tapered legs between the windows, topped with antique Chinese ochre vases made into lamps, and in the middle of the room a large round table held a vase which Dada Amina always made sure to fill with sweet-smelling flowers from the garden, even when the house was empty. A set of deep-seat sofas and armchairs upholstered in pale celadon green damask faced each fireplace; Aida remembered nestling with her mother as a small child on one of those voluminous sofas while she read her stories, feeling the comforting rise and fall of Eleanor’s breathing against her cheek. Growing up, all she had to rely on were memories such as these, and the reminiscences of her father and Dada Amina.

  Aida’s mother Eleanor and her family were passing through Egypt on their way back from India to England when she had met Ayoub El Masri at a drinks party at the British Embassy in Cairo. Ayoub was already a well-known and erudite archaeologist, renowned in his field, who had led many excavations and saved numerous Ancient Egyptian artefacts from destruction. Eleanor was young, beautiful and intelligent. It was love at first sight and the two had eloped and married very shortly afterwards. The ensuing scandal caused Ayoub, an only child who had lost his parents when he was still in his teens, to be disowned by the rest of his family and wide circle of friends, and Eleanor to be cut off from her own.

  At first, they had been snubbed by the outraged Egyptian and British social circles – mixed marriages were not viewed with a benign eye in those days. Though he was originally from Cairo, Ayoub and his new wife moved to the quieter town of Luxor in Upper Egypt, where he could allocate more time to his excavation work while keeping an alert eye on the land he had inherited from his parents.

  Society watched the golden couple furtively, and as Ayoub grew in status and his wife charmed her entourage, becoming an accomplished hostess, together they made valuable new friends in Luxor … and enemies too, because as the old Arabic saying goes: Envy is the companion of great success. And when that happens, as Dada Amina was always fond of telling the young Aida, ‘Who can pride himself on escaping the evil eye?’ It had not gone unnoticed by an older Aida that the El Masri family seemed destined to be blighted by suspicion and controversy.

  Aida followed Naguib towards the large sofas and chairs by the fireplace while Dada Amina left the room, closing the door quietly.

  ‘Come, Aida, let’s sit down. I know you must be tired, but we need to talk,’ the lawyer said, as he took a seat in one of the high-backed armchairs.

  ‘You look quite worried, Uncle Naguib. Is anything the matter?’

  ‘You are right, I am worried. About you, Aida.’ Naguib took out his black-stemmed pipe and filled the bowl with tobacco.

  ‘About me? There’s no reason to be worried about me.’ Aida sank back into the sofa. ‘I’ve survived the war, haven’t I? Trust me, that wasn’t a piece of cake, so I can look after myself.’ She looked at him quizzically. ‘Is it money? I haven’t touched my inheritance, so unless something really untoward has happened I should be all right on that front.’

  ‘No, no. My dear Aida, you are a very rich girl. Ayoub left you a great fortune, which is still intact since you did not give me or anyone else a power of attorney before leaving.’ With a whoosh of a match, Naguib lit the brown bowl of his pipe. ‘My concern is that you’re a young woman on her own. It is a bad thing for a girl to be left fatherless, and no man to protect her,’ he said. The vibrancy and laughter that characterised Naguib’s personality had left his voice and he spoke sternly.

  ‘Yes,’ Aida replied faintly.

  ‘You have no brothers, no family.’

  ‘I know that I have no one here in Egypt, Uncle Naguib.’

  ‘You have the Pharaonys. Your families were always very close … and in some ways they are your only family now. Of course you also have me – something you can always count on – but I’m not getting any younger and life is unpredictable, as you have seen.’

  The Pharaonys. For a moment, the familiar face of a young man swam into Aida’s mind – dark, disapproving eyes that turned her inside out. Eyes that had fixed on her the moment her father had died with compassion and regret. The image had haunted her painfully over the years, but now Aida’s face closed, her jaw set stubbornly. ‘The Pharaony family are of no interest to me.’

  Naguib’s small shrewd eyes fixed on her as he puffed on his pipe. ‘Don’t tell me that you still believe that Kamel Pharaony was behind that nasty business with your father.’

  ‘Yes, I do believe it. Nothing has changed as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘But Kamel and Ayoub were best friends! What have you ever had to substantiate such an accusation, Aida?’

  Aida took a breath. She had bottled up her resentment for so long that now she found it strangely difficult to speak. ‘Even though I have no proof, my information at the time came from a reliable source … The Nefertari statue belonged to Kamel Pharaony. He had brought it to our house earlier that afternoon.’

  Naguib shook his head. ‘You know that Kamel denied that, so why do you persist in thinking such a thing?’

  Aida paused. ‘Because my father was out, Kamel gave it to the maid, Souma Hassanein. He told her to put it in my father’s study and that he’d come back in the evening to discuss the authenticity of the piece with him. Those were her words.’

  Naguib’s eyes widened. ‘She told you this? Kamel would never have entrusted a valuable piece to a servant. He is one of th
e most cautious men I know.’

  ‘Maybe, but Souma swore on her child’s head that that was what happened.’

  The only problem was that the maid had disappeared before Aida could call on her to repeat her claims. Still, would it have helped anyway? A khadamma would never have been taken seriously.

  Judging by Naguib’s expression, she had been right. ‘You can’t believe servants’ gossip.’

  ‘Gossip?’ Aida kept her tone even, not wanting him to think she was still the hysterical, grief-stricken teenager. ‘Someone like Souma wouldn’t have been able to make up something like that. Those were exactly the kind of words Kamel Pharaony would have used. Besides, why would she lie to me?’

  Naguib shrugged. ‘Who knows? One can never be sure what ulterior motives these people have. Your father never liked Souma anyway. I know that a few days before the incident he caught her rummaging in some papers that were no business of hers, and he told her off. He only took pity on her because her husband had abandoned her and she needed a job to feed her son. He didn’t trust her, but Ayoub wasn’t a man to take the bread from a child’s mouth, so he kept her on. As our Arabic proverb says, Etak el shar le men ahssantou eleh, beware of him to whom you have been charitable.’