Waiters and hotel staff are professionally disinterested, of course, but it seemed to me that everyone must know, that everyone was thinking, They are lovers now. We had arrived in the hotel dining room separately, so perhaps our secret was still safe. And if it wasn’t? To my surprise, I didn’t care.
Finished with our meal, we left with Rosie for a stroll in the garden across the street. “So,” Karl said. “Tell me about Palestine.”
I did and took pride in recognizing how much I had noticed and retained: the overheard conversations, the attitudes, the negotiations, the plans for the Palestine Protectorate and the newly proposed nation of Trans-Jordan.
At first, Karl’s questions had a certain distracted abruptness. I recognized the distance in his manner; I had seen it before, that day in the Old City. Once again, I worried that I had ruined things between us. Soon, however, he became engrossed in the information I conveyed, and to my relief, we fell back into the easy rhythm we’d enjoyed during our first days together.
He was especially interested in comments that revealed the British wariness of a French Syria, which Karl seemed to share. “But the French may do better than the British in Arab lands,” he admitted, musing. “The cultures are fundamentally similar. Frenchmen and Arabs sit around talking politics all day while their women do the work. French and Arab women are the most industrious in the world because they cannot count on men to do anything but get children on them.”
And, “The difference between the French and the English can be seen in their cooking. The English throw a head of cabbage into boiling water and then eat it. The French have a thousand sauces—each a work of art. Thus: the English have no disguises; the French disguise everything.”
But, “The French are right about one thing, Agnes. Oil is the blood of victory. There are pools of oil near Mosul—on the surface of the land, like rain puddles. They burst into flame, all on their own. The British know this, of course, and will find a way to keep the Kurdish territory for themselves. From now on, oil will be at the heart of everything that happens in the Middle East.”
After a time, we went on to more personal things. When I told Karl of my reaction to the fakery in Jerusalem, I expected him to approve of my new cynicism. Well, of course, I thought he’d say, that’s why Jews don’t believe the stories. We know they’re all nonsense.
To my surprise, he laughed and told me, “You make a poor atheist. You were angry, not indifferent.”
“It wasn’t faith that angered me,” I lied. “It was the way the people there preyed on the simple and the credulous.”
For the first time that morning, he stopped to look at me directly. “You have seen Palestine, Agnes. What do they have? Stones, sand, and weapons! They have to earn a living somehow. Tourism is not the worst choice they could make,” he said reasonably, and we continued with our stroll. “Tell me, what did you do immediately after you left the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?”
Not sure why he asked this but certain he had some good reason, I did my best to remember. I could easily call up the Reformation outrage, the fury of Jesus overturning tables in the Temple, but what happened next? I had pushed through the crowds until I reached the exit doors, stumbled blindly in the sudden brilliant glare. When I could open my eyes again, I left by way of the Damascus Gate, where I was accosted by yet another group of beggars—The light dawned, as the saying goes. “I opened my purse,” I told Karl, “and gave all the money I carried to the lepers.”
“Then you learned what Jesus had to teach you,” he said simply.
Just then Rosie came to a sudden halt and began to growl. A few yards ahead, a man sat on the pavement next to a writhing canvas bag. “A snake charmer,” Karl said, picking Rosie up before she could pounce.
Loving as she was, Rosie was still a dachshund, and dachshunds are not lap dogs. The standards were bred to follow badgers down holes and destroy them in their lairs. Even the miniatures are quite athletic; despite their size, the drive to capture and kill prey remains strong. For a few minutes we stood and watched a cobra bob and sway, but Rosie continued to produce a low tense whine that sometimes became a snarl. If Karl had lost his grip on her, she’d have attacked without a moment’s hesitation.
We left the snake charmer two piastres and walked on to the shoe bazaar, close by and picturesque. Long, neat lines of leather slippers lit up tiny shops with vivid reds and yellows. “Come in! Come in!” each craftsman called. “No charge to look, madams!” I bought a pair in red, and Karl carried the package for me.
Toward noon, the strengthening heat demanded shade. We sat and ordered lemonade and a dish of water for Rosie. While we waited, I told Karl about British admiration for progress in the Jewish enclaves. I believed their approval would please him, but Karl dismissed it all as politics mixed with fantasy.
“There are Christians in the British Cabinet who believe that they can hasten the Second Coming by encouraging Jews to return to their biblical lands. If we’re all in one place, the theory goes, we can be converted wholesale. And if the Messiah tarries?” He cocked a canny brow. “Well, in the meantime, a non-Arab buffer state on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal will protect their sea-lane to India.”
As for the kibbutzim, they were mainly populated by Jews eager to leave Russia, where they had lived in abject poverty, subject to endless harassment and periodic violence. Karl didn’t expect the Bolsheviks to change those conditions anytime soon. For Russian Jews, Zionism was an immediate solution to age-old problems.
“Anywhere is better than Russia,” Karl agreed, “but for Western Jews, Zionism is a trap, I think. Once Jews are permitted a territorial center, it will be too easy to drive the rest of us from every other nation on Earth. ‘Go back where you belong!’” he cried dismissively, jerking his thumb toward Palestine. “‘Oh, by the way, leave all your possessions behind.’”
There were others who truly needed a nation of their own. “Look what the Turks did to the Armenians,” he said. When I admitted I had no idea what he was talking about, he explained, “They were massacred, and the remnants driven from place to place, like cattle, until they died on their feet. And the Kurds—they are Muslim, but never safe from their Turkish or Arab cousins. But I have no need of some artificial homeland invented by the British. I am not a German Jew, Agnes, but a Jewish German.”
Things had been difficult in the past, but since the war had ended, everything in Germany was different, he told me. The Roaring Twenties were not just an American phenomenon. In Germany, too, everything was changing. There was a new government, a new way of thinking, new art, new theater, new music.
“Germany is shaking off the dead past,” Karl said, “and I am part of that, Agnes. Why would I leave Germany now, when I can help to build the future in my own nation?”
He finished his lemonade and lit a pipe. For a while we watched the crowded street life around us, but where I still saw the exhilarating kaleidoscope of cultures Karl had introduced me to, he saw as well millennia of feuds, rivalries, jealousies, and jockeying for power.
“The Middle East is a paranoid’s paradise,” he said quietly. “If the Zionists settle here with Christian backing, Arabs will believe it is all a plot against Islam. Jews will be blamed for every act of violence that follows. Black seeds have been sown these past few weeks, Agnes. I fear we shall harvest a tainted crop for generations.” For a time, he stared into the middle distance. Then he glanced at me. “When you get home, buy stock in munitions,” he suggested with a grin that left his eyes sad. “I promise, you shall become very rich!”
With that, he leaned over to lift Rosie onto his lap, as he had so many times before. Propping her upright against his chest, he ran his palms along her back, from head to haunches, slowly, rhythmically, absentmindedly.
Her eyes closed and she relaxed under the waterfall of sensation, blissful as a Buddha. I watched his hands, and stood. Without a word, we went back to the hotel.
Later on, when Karl was out on the balcony smoki
ng an evening pipe, I could not help noticing his travel documents lying next to his wallet on the little desk. Curious, I opened the passport, and out fell a photograph of his family, which he’d tucked inside it for safekeeping. Had he left it there so I would notice it? Certainly he’d taken no steps to conceal it.
When he came back inside, I said, “Your wife is very beautiful.” And neither dead nor discarded. “Your daughter takes after you, I think.”
“Yes,” he said, and nothing more.
I knew without asking that he had no intention of leaving them for me. There had been no declaration of love, no talk of a future together. I didn’t care. Nor was I ashamed of my behavior. I was surprised only by the strength of my desires. At last, I had shared my bed with a man I loved, and in so doing, I had discovered a physical ruthlessness I had never suspected. It was like a heartbeat, that selfishness: I want. I want. I want…
Beneath the surface I sensed an element of commerce between us that had not been there before: some quid pro quo that I could not yet articulate, and willfully ignored. Karl even warned me, in one of those offhand political remarks he made often. “British colonialists establish their superiority and then save you from your ignorance and ineptitude,” he said. “The French are quite indifferent to those they colonize, as long as the colony pays.”
“And the Germans?” I asked, smiling.
“Ah. Germans will use you like a tool,” he said lightly, “and lay you aside when their job is done.”
Two days later, he left for Alexandria on the morning train. I recognized the pattern, though I’m not sure I could have told you that, at the time. He was going to report to his superiors, I understood, and to visit his family, I supposed.
”When will you be back?” I asked, wondering if he would lie.
“On Wednesday,” he said.
“I could take a Cook’s tour up the Nile,” I offered.
“I keep my promises,” he said.
IMAGINE A COFFEE-BROWN RIVER, lazy between high black banks. Listen to the palm fronds rustle and crackle. Hear the strange crooning of the falcons that soar above you, sharp-winged silhouettes against the luminous sky. Close your eyes against the bright Egyptian light. Feel the thrumming of the engine, the constant subtle vibration of a stern-wheeler.
Imagine that it is April. The Nile is low and shifts in its banks constantly. Crewmen stand in the bow of your steamer’s lower deck, testing the depth of the water with long poles. Even so, the boat often runs aground in the muddy shallows. A turbaned Nubian pilot, white-bearded and black-skinned, shouts to his men. Watch them strip off their robes and leap into the mud. Gaze at sinewy muscle and slender bone as they strain to haul the boat into deeper water. Hear the songs as the men work, chanting in unison.
A narrow highway runs along the length of the river. Lie on a teakwood chaise on the top deck, under a red canvas awning. Drowse, then awaken to watch strings of heavily loaded camels swaying along. Donkeys carry men. Women carry water jars and small children. Dust rises at every step, fine as flour. It is dried river silt, that dust. Add water, and the soil is so fertile that you could plant a pencil and harvest a book.
The river is locked, its flooding controlled with immense dams built by the English to regulate the flow of water but, even now, Egypt’s farms depend on the river and its silt, as they have since long before Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams.
Whenever the steam engine quiets, its thrum is instantly replaced by the creak and bind of wooden cogs. Water must be raised to reach the fields along the Nile. Oxen circle hour after hour, turning the sakieh’s great wooden sprocket, driving wheels that operate belts that carry buckets into the river. Watch buckets lift water up and over the bank, dumping it into irrigation trenches. The friction load of this mechanism is enormous. It makes a rhythmic music you can hear all night long, while the steamer is tied up along the bank.
Dance to that music in your little cabin.
Because you want to.
Even older than the sakieh: the rhythm of the shaduf. Imagine a deep trench cut at right angles to the river, with two stout poles astride it, driven into the earth. Between the poles, a rigid bar rests on a fulcrum. The bar rises and falls, rises and falls…A heavy ball of Nile mud is formed around its short arm, a pottery jar lashed to the other end. A single man—thin, nearly naked, too poor to own an ox—can lower the bucket into the river. It quickly fills and he raises it, using the mud ball as a counterweight, then tips the water into an irrigation ditch six or seven feet above the river. This he does over and over, for hours on end. Farther inland, the operation is repeated, and then once more at a greater distance from the river. By working these shadufs relentlessly, three brothers can water a large field.
Their work never ends, night or day, and it has been done by fellahin in just this way for five thousand years. You can see their ancestors’ portraits on the painted walls of pharaohs’ tombs: the same deep bronze skin, the straight black brows, the lushly fringed dark eyes. The fellahin live in a circling world where time revolves but never rolls. They know the future by remembering the past. No event is unique. Every event is a reenactment.
I was glad to live in that timeless world, forgetting the past, ignoring the future. I was afloat in sensations that were no less sweet for being commonplace, laughing and weeping when my own high cry joined that of the curlews amid sounds of the river, and the thrumming of the engine, and the relentless beat of the shaduf.
My happiness was pure, and remorseless.
Each morning at seven, we were awakened by a boy who delivered cups of tea to our bed, with two sweet crackers on each side of the saucers. A brass bell rang at eight A.M., summoning passengers to the dining room, where breakfast awaited. At one P.M. and again at eight in the evening, the bell rang for luncheon and dinner. Each meal was served in courses, with half a dozen changes of plates and glassware and cutlery.
The crew bought all our supplies along the river: fresh bread and fresh fish, poultry and lamb, vegetables and rush baskets full of the tiny eggs that tiny Egyptian chickens laid. In the evenings, the steamer was tied up, its engine quiet. Passengers were free to walk along the bank or to sit and watch the river turn purple as the sun set fire to the western sky. First singly and then in battalions, stars revealed themselves in the clear desert air. They burned with a brilliance I had never seen before and never would again.
We stopped to explore Amarna, where the strange pot-bellied Akhenaten’s worship of the sun flared up and died out with the pharaoh himself. We marveled at the Valley of the Kings, surrounded by steep cliffs and honeycombed with tombs chiseled from the limestone with nothing more than a carpenter’s square, a plumb bob, and a piece of string to guide the workmen.
The graves, of course, had long since been emptied of their treasure—gold amulets stripped from the mummies’ linen windings, the papery corpses sold for firewood or as curiosities. The walls, however, were still marvelous, painted in dazzling detail with scenes that were familiar to me now: waterfowl amid papyrus reeds and lotus blossoms; flop-eared donkeys laden with baskets of ducks and chickens; peasants grinding flour for flat bread, or carrying jars of beer, or honey, or bright red tamarind juice.
“These scenes are maps, really,” Karl told me. “The walls of a tomb are meant to help the dead find their way in the afterlife. The embalmers had no more than seventy days to make the body ready for its journey. If the pharaoh didn’t find his way by then, he would wander as a ghost forever.”
Across the river, we visited Luxor, of course, where the great temple of Karnak took two millennia to build and two millennia to go to ruin. There one sees the history of Egypt graven in stone, from its glory days as a great empire until it sank in status to a mere province of all-powerful Rome, itself long gone. Avenues of broken sphinxes still line the ancient road. Once upon a time, they witnessed stately processions that bore the mighty dead to their temples. Today, children climb on the sphinxes, playing hide-and-seek among them, while the ph
araohs rest in glass cases to be stared at by impious barbarians from the West.
One morning, our first stroll around the deck with Rosie was interrupted by a BANG!, a jolt, and a shriek of metal. An Arab waiter was passing just then, carrying two large breakfast trays. Thrown off balance by the shock, he lost his grip. Teacups, bottles of Evian, plates, eggs, toast: everything tumbled onto the engine room, its roof open to the deck above it. With a seemingly endless crash and smash, bits of glass and china were ground into the works. Nobody moved or said a word until the cascade had run its course.
The waiter, nearly paralyzed, slowly looked up and met my eyes. It was a moment of human connection. Try as we might to look horrified, our dismay was quickly subverted by stifled laughter. With guilty looks over his shoulder, the young man put a finger over his lips. We nodded our conspiracy, and he scuttled away, hoping no one else had seen him feed a disastrous meal to the machinery below.
Karl went off to see how much damage had been done. I leaned over the deck railing, watching fishermen in feluccas put out from a nearby village. One by one, they reached their favored spot and flung out circular webs, beating the water to drive fish toward the nets.
Oils, I was thinking. Keep your oils! This is a watercolor world, all haze and mist.
“A piston rod snapped,” Karl reported on his return. “The crockery made it worse. They’ll need most of the day to fix the engine.”
He stood behind me. I moved against him, shameless in the sunlight. “What are they singing?” I asked, raising my chin toward the feluccas.
“A song for the fish. ‘Be careful! We are poor! We are coming to get you!’” He moved to my side, at the railing. “Would you like to join one of them? The river is entirely different when you are close to the surface.”
Dreamers of the Day Page 25
