by Bryher;
The jackal was an omen of an adventurous day. More than an hour later we reached a pile of what seemed to be sticks, glistening on the sand. “Insh’allah,” Ali muttered, “so near their destination.” I saw now that the heap was the ribs and skull of a camel, polished by the sand to an extraordinary whiteness. Ali shrugged his shoulders and I knew, of course, that he was thinking about “Mektoob,” or fate. Presently one of the donkey boys came up with a stalk of camel plant, full of thorns but with rubberlike leaves. The animals were fond of it and nibbled it when turned loose. Otherwise there was nothing but grit and dust, our own shadows and the burning sky, though we passed another bush that a boy slashed with his knife until an evil-looking sap oozed from its stem. I must notice it, Ali said, as if he were Pastor Robinson, it was poisonous and must never be touched because its juice could blind a man and it was the sign of a traveler that he could distinguish the difference between good and bad plants.
We had never been so far into the wilderness and it was past midday before we dismounted at the entrance to a deep valley to rest in the shade of an overhanging cliff. Why was there always too much food at the hotel and never enough on picnics? Ali told me stories about the Fayum while the boys unpacked the basket, he pulled an uncut turquoise from his pocket that he had picked up in Sinai, he mentioned an oasis of which I had never heard. He was still a Khalif’s messenger with a hundred tracks in his head. He might have been twice from Cairo to Alexandria by train but he had never entered a car.
The shadows lengthened, the boys collected the donkeys, I buried my eggshells carefully in the sand. A cloud of dust came towards us from the gorge. Ali gave a sharp command, we remounted, the boys yelled. The whirlwind swept towards us, it turned into a group of shrieking Bedouin, they flourished matchlocks, some had swords. It was ridiculously familiar, like one of those pictures labeled African Fantasia that hung in the Paris shop windows but this time it was real and directed against ourselves.
We formed ourselves into a compact group. I was not frightened, I was very, very happy. I snatched a stick, I kicked my donkey’s sides. I was ready and willing to meet the charge. My donkey boy pulled me back, swearing at me in Arabic. “They are going to murder us,” my mother gasped, couching her sun umbrella like a lance. It seemed probable because they were pointing their guns at our heads. “Keep quiet,” my father commanded, producing a revolver to our intense surprise, “and remember, whatever happens, the British army will avenge us.”
This statement did not seem to cheer my mother up at all. I was still struggling to fight but the donkey boy held my arms. The dust was suffocating as they charged to within a foot of us before they reined their beasts back. Ali, he had a dagger in his hand, pointed to our lack of baggage, protested tactfully that we had no alms to give them and suggested meeting them that night in the Assuan bazaar. Their white clothes were travel-stained, their camels thin. For a few moments, to quote the popular press, our fate hung in the balance, then Ali must have convinced them with his quiet explanations that we were not worth looting. The leader looked us over, gave a sharp command and they thundered away. One man, I noticed, had a shield.
Were we in danger? Yes, up to a point. We were further away than tourists were in the habit of riding and without the armed guards that accompanied a proper expedition. I do not think that they would have killed us but they might have held us to ransom, in which case we should have spent several uncomfortable days hidden in a cave, certainly with lice and fleas and possibly with scorpions and vipers for companions. We sent them something that evening, not much, because appeasement might have endangered the lives of other travelers, but enough, I expect, to have given them a meal.
We did not resume our homeward journey until they were out of sight. The hills turned from a glowing apricot to a brick and powdery red. There was no sound except for the scratch of hooves against a pebble or the jingling of a rein. Many things may befall me but until the gods take memory away I have had a day in Heaven, as much beyond imagination as Paradise is beyond life. Some, though not all, of us are born to the wilderness. The world may break us but we are seldom to be tamed because it is an inheritance that does not depend upon reason. What is a wild gallop through an unearthly land but the physical symbol of the spirit of man?
There was plenty to learn about the present as well as the past. Every evening while my parents were at dinner, the chambermaid came in to see that I had not disobeyed orders and turned on the light in order to read. She was Swiss, we chattered together in French and I learned a lot about her own surprising sphere.
It had taken her nine years to get to Egypt. Every new hotel was a steppingstone because the “higher” it was in the season, the more she earned. Assuan was good, yes, but it was below Cairo, Monte Carlo or Saint-Moritz. No, they paid her her fare but hardly any wages, she depended on tips. Could I believe it! That miserable Frenchwoman down the corridor, the one who had taken the morning train, had I noticed perhaps that she already dyed her hair, well, she had rung her bell four and five times in an evening and what had she finally left? Five piasters and a bundle of worn-out stockings to be immediately thrown away. Five piasters! And the woman had been in the hotel three weeks. She knew merely by looking at us that our treatment of her would be correct. I must not think her avaricious, all she asked for was her due. Did I know that she and the floor waiter played a game of glancing at the new visitors and estimating what each would give or that they marked the trunks downstairs when the tips were poor? I should remember these things, someday I might marry and have to arrange the pourboire myself. Ah, but that was a long way off, she wished she had a baby of her own as active and as plump. I writhed with indignation over the word “baby” but curiosity kept me silent.
The stumbling block was the Direction. One had to accommodate one’s self to the chef, the concierge, even the undermanager and thus, gradually, one arrived at Saint-Moritz. No, she had never been out to the temples. If she did have a few hours to herself she wrote to her mother or sewed, I must tell my mother that she was always happy to oblige a client. The young couple next door would give her a good present, I could make no idea to myself of how considerate they were. Finally we would hear my mother’s footsteps, hurrying up from dinner (my parents annoyingly assumed that I would get up to mischief if I could), the covers were pulled up to my ears, the maid disappeared and by the time that the family peeped round the door I was seemingly fast asleep.
A few quiet breaths, the imitation of a dormouse and then, as soon as the danger of parental interference was over, I crept to the window. It was too dark to see the Nile but I could listen to the wild songs of the Nubian rowers as they brought the last visitors home.
French, Arabic, English, I moved so easily between the worlds. My donkey boy was perhaps eighteen, I, at ten, was roughly at the same level of development. The corvée had ended, he twitched Ginger’s rein and we turned down another alley, but his brother would be called up for military service in a year and how was the family to be fed? There were many children, some younger than myself. The visitors were generous with bakshish, yes, but a boy had to give so much to the sheikh and so much to the dragoman; otherwise a strap would be slit secretly, the saddle would slip, he would be disgraced and sent about with the second-class tourists. The donkeys had to be fed in summer when there were never any travelers and people were mistrustful if a bridle had been mended. They wanted everything to be new. Wouldn’t I ask my father to buy me Ginger Brandy? He gave me every gift I desired (sadly I wished that this were true), and I should never regret having a donkey of my own. Were we not always the first away, when had Ginger ever stumbled? His family would sell the animal to me for a good price, they would make a feast, oh, just a little one and he would chew sugar cane, he promised me, in my honor. Then on a fortunate day they would find a cheap donkey to train up for the following season.
We understood each other, though neither accepted at full value the other’s protestations. I never made the suggestion ab
out Ginger because I knew that the animal could stand neither a long voyage nor the English climate. Besides, I preferred a pony. I was cautious about bakshish, fearing the wrath of the dragoman, but I used my wits in the traditional Eastern manner and when the boy saw us off at the station, he was not, I think, displeased. It was part again of the common background of children brought up in the Orient; every word had its double meaning and we moved powerfully but also with discretion between the palaces and the souk.
It was not all sunlight. We were strolling along the river late one afternoon when the sky turned to fire. The news of an explosion at the hotel reached us by mouth-to-mouth radio, a mile in a minute. People began to run, we followed, a fiery wind like one of the Bible plagues beating against our faces. We actually saw a pillar of flame. A boiler had exploded in the laundry, two men had been killed, they were fighting desperately to save the hotel. A regiment of Egyptian soldiers had been called out to prevent looting, men were carrying invalids out on stretchers whose very existence had been unsuspected, and hauling up improvised beds. Some of the staff were holding down the brother of one of the victims; he was screaming horribly and had tried to throw himself into the blazing ruins. Darkness came, the electric plant was flaring in front of us, the hotel would have followed if it had not been for the skill of a visitor, an American engineer. He sent hundreds of men into the desert to collect buckets of sand and these eventually extinguished the flames. I went to bed that night by the light of a small candle, I could see the ring of soldiers round the trampled courtyard, I felt death was near. It was the dark side of the mirror, it threatened my ordinary world of riding, sailing or chatter and as I looked at the wreckage I decided solemnly that I understood now all that Ali meant when he spoke to me about Fate.
This sense of circumstance beyond human control was intensified when we visited Philae. The temple was about to be submerged through the barrage that we crossed on a little trolley and that was the symbol of a new, nationalistic Egypt whose birth we unknowingly watched. It is strange to think that a few engineers were able to change a land completely that neither the Emperors, the Khalifs nor Napoleon had altered. The Egyptians spoke uneasily of desecration as we wandered for the last time between the graceful columns of the little temple. I was torn, as usual, between the past and the future; I loved everything connected with ancient Egypt but the dam had its own excitements when we rode along it. A row of pelicans watched us from their safe and distant ledges to the roar and buzz of vociferous machines. Perhaps it was the fire or knowing that I was looking for the last time at a colonnade soon to become part of the river but a little of my child’s sense of invulnerability cracked, I began to be conscious that I was as subject to destiny as Ali, although I was ten and he seemed, in his fawn-and water-colored robes, older than my parents.
The Luxor hotel was full so on our way back to Cairo we stayed at a bungalow in the grounds. It stood in a garden of palms, roses and bougainvillaea which was, my mother said, swarming with snakes. We teased her for being afraid but it turned out that she was right. It was the custom at that time for tourists to meet and stroll beside the Nile punctually every evening at six. English traditions were relaxed but we spoke, I believe, only to fellow guests. Occasionally a dahabiyah arrived, then a discreet whisper passed along the road, “Do you know who’s on board?” It was already considered an ostentatious way of traveling and our humbler multitude delighted in exaggerating its difficulties. “I should be afraid, dear,” the lady was in billows of white muslin, “think of sleeping so near a native crew without a policeman on board.” Her companion would lift her parasol an inch higher to stare at the intruders before murmuring, “And they say that they were caught in a sandstorm, miles from a hotel.”
One after the other, small black boys ran up to us with their hollow, pink palms full of imitation scarabs. Would we like ostrich feathers, a colored reed basket, this beautiful prayer rug (it had obviously come from Birmingham), a string of blue beads? We met friends, discussed the badness of the food, took our films to be developed and agreed that Egypt was wonderful.
I was to take no ordinary farewell of the Nile. One afternoon I heard my parents whispering together and with the special sense children develop under such circumstances, I knew that they were discussing a problem connected with myself. “Shall we tell her?” I heard. Tell me what? I pretended to be absorbed in my book and waited.
The sheikh of the donkey boys had brought me a scarab in token of recognition. I was one of them, he said, I belonged to the East. Of course my family had some tiresome explanations although they added generously, “He really wants to give you a present,” but I was glad that they were unaware of my hold over the villagers. It was so useful being able to chatter in a language that they could not understand. Naturally these were my people, I looked at the boy holding Ginger Brandy in front of the bungalow and smiled. Why did they call me conceited? It was a fact. They could not change me any more than they could change that alabaster chip. It would remain a stone, it would never be a growing leaf and so it was with me while I went my adventurous way, seeking for some absolute although I was only ten, there would always be something Eastern in my heart. I strolled onto the terrace and thanked the sheikh royally though not in pride, we understood each other and I was grateful. What were the winds of England to me and its cold narrow streets?
There were times, however, when I blotted my copybook badly. I was more tiresome than usual one afternoon and was sent to bed early without a book. It was asking for trouble. I looked round for something to do and found that the sheet was loose. I draped it about myself and turned off the light.
Presently there was a knock at the door. The Egyptian boy who came round every evening to pull the mosquito nets and empty the washbasins because there was naturally no running water, hearing no reply, entered the room. He did not turn on the electric switch, probably he was afraid of it, and enough moonlight came through the slats of the blind for him to grope his way to the cords. I crawled slowly upwards, uttering little whistling grunts. The man turned, saw me, dropped his pail. A yell, rather than a cry, startled the guests in the distant dining room. He trembled, staring at me, too frightened to move.
I heard (triumphantly) my mother scream, “The child’s been murdered!” My father dashed in only to find that he had to rescue the Egyptian and not his daughter. He went out saying disgustedly, “She has turned a black man white.”
Next morning there was a solemn conference that I was forbidden to attend. No native servant would approach the bungalow. I had bewitched it and might bewitch them. My victim had wailed all night, he was very ill. It was known now that I was a small but powerful evil spirit. Would my family remove me immediately? The manager had to consider the rest of the hotel. Ali offered a loan of a well-seasoned hippopotamus-hide whip, excellent, he insisted, for the bringing up of girls. I remember that he scolded my mother for her mistaken kindness when she refused it. I flicked my leg with it experimentally. It hurt.
According to Greek tradition, Fate itself took my punishment in hand. The net had not been drawn and I had deemed it prudent to go immediately to sleep. The next day my eyes were closed up with mosquito bites and my arms were so badly stung that I had to have them bandaged for several days.
It was fortunate for me that we had already intended to leave for Cairo that evening.
Egypt was an ideal beginning. A child thinks in nouns and sees in pictures. I had the excitement of learning to read a second time with fingers as well as eyes as I moved along the sunlit temple walls. Here, and I tapped it, was a jackal but it was also the sign for knowledge, as well as being a bird the flamingo was the color red, and because of the dual meanings I began to understand abstractions. I followed the recovery of the ancient Egyptian language with the breathless attention that I might otherwise have given to a penny dreadful, there must be other secrets in the world and perhaps I could discover them, I would be an explorer of more even than seas.
How much I
owe to my parents’ courage. Imagine the fuss today! “Take your child to the East! Think of the games and companionship the poor little thing will miss, besides, how can she make her lessons up in time to sit for the eleven plus with the rest of her class?”
It was a question of love rather than of wealth. Not all of us can cross the seas but a simple day’s holiday at the beach can be as rich as an Oriental palace if the parents explain its wonders vividly and with affection to the child. I knew that my family wanted me to be with them. Society did its best by constant stories of danger and supposed lack of educational opportunity to persuade them to leave me behind. I might have caught typhoid or malaria, we were nearly kidnapped, there was always some peril from snakes. My mother was warned to keep me away from the Assuan bazaars where a number of Egyptians were dying from smallpox behind the open booths.
Yet think of what I gained! I was reading history from books written not for children but for scholars by the time that I was ten, I could chatter in Arabic, I knew some hieroglyphics. More important perhaps than knowledge I had been near to poverty, fire and death; I may not have understood them but I had heard the Sufis speak. What school, what routine, could have given me so much?
I cannot remember Arabic now; it is the common experience of children once they have left a foreign country. To retain a tongue it is essential to be able to read in it and there is a gulf between “donkey-boy Arabic” and the beautiful language with its usually unpointed texts; nor did I study hieroglyphics after I was twenty. Yet a carpet of sounds, colors and smells is at the back of my mind ready to recur as sharply as ever once certain impulses touch my brain.
