The Map of Love

by Ahdaf Soueif

  My journal is of no use on such occasions for it would merely encourage the expression of these emotions that threaten me and that I must put aside.

  I cannot believe that he is happy.

  2

  Oh what a dear, ravishing thing is the beginning of an Amour!

  Aphra Behn, c. 1680

  Cairo, May 1997

  Isabel gives me bits of her story. She tells me how she met my brother. A dry, edited version, which, as I get to know her, as I get to be able to imagine her, I fill out for myself. Isabel thinks in pictures: as she speaks I see the pool of light rippling on the old oak table —

  New York City, February 1997

  A pool of light ripples on the old oak table, picking out the darker grains of wood, then shadowing them. At its centre shines a glass bowl in which three candles float like flat, golden lilies.

  ‘I thought maybe it’s like birthdays,’ Isabel says. Her voice has that slight, deep-down tremor she has noticed in it lately. She doesn’t know whether anyone else can hear it. She doesn’t know why it comes. She lays her fork down carefully on her plate.

  ‘I mean,’ she says, looking down, considering her fingers still resting on the fork, ‘you know how when you’re a kid every birthday has this huge significance?’ She glances up. Yes, she still has his attention. ‘You even think,’ she continues, encouraged, ‘that after a birthday everything is somehow going to be different, you’re going to be different; you’ll be new —’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then, later —’ she shrugs — ‘you realise it isn’t like that.’

  ‘My dear girl — I’m sorry: my dear young woman — you can’t possibly know that already.’

  Is he flirting with her? He leans back in his seat, one wrist on the table, an arm slung over the back of his chair. Beyond the bowl of light, the woman he arrived with turns laughing towards Rajiv Seth. A sheet of auburn hair falls forward, obscuring her face. My brother fingers the stem of his wineglass; the back of his hand is covered with fine, black hair. She looks full at him: his face so familiar from television and newspapers. They hate him, but they cannot get enough of him. When he conducts, the line snakes around the block as though for the first showing of a Spielberg film. The ‘Molotov Maestro’ they call him, the ‘Kalashnikov Conductor’. But the box office loves him. Now the dark, deep-set eyes are lit and fixed on her. He is laughing at her.

  From the head of the table, Deborah calls out, ‘Anybody want more salad?’

  There is a general clinking of cutlery and shifting of plates and after a moment Deborah says, ‘I’ll go get the ice cream.’

  Louis, her partner, groans and she flashes him a smile.

  Isabel gets up and even though Deborah says, ‘Sit down, sit down, I’ll do it,’ she picks up her plate and his and carries them into the kitchen. ‘Isn’t he just a doll?’ Deborah whispers amid the gleaming brass pots, pans and colanders.

  ‘He’s pretty gorgeous,’ Isabel agrees, not pretending not to know whom Deborah means. ‘And he’s approachable. Who’s the lady?’

  ‘Samantha Metcalfe,’ says Deborah. ‘She teaches at SUNY.’

  ‘Is she — are they — together?’

  Deborah makes a face as she leans into the freezer. ‘For the moment, I guess. Why?’ She straightens up and grins at Isabel. ‘Interested?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘He’s fifty-five,’ Deborah says, putting two tubs of ice cream on a tray. ‘And —’

  ‘— old enough to be your father,’ Isabel completes, smiling. ‘Is he really involved with terrorists?’ she asks.

  Deborah shrugs, arranges wafers in a blue porcelain dish. ‘Who knows? I’d be surprised, though. He doesn’t look like a terrorist.’

  Isabel picks up the bowls and follows Deborah out of the kitchen.

  When she sits down, he turns towards her. ‘I wasn’t laughing at you, you know.’ His eyes are still smiling.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, really. Really. You just looked so solemn.’ ‘Well —’

  ‘So, carry on. You were telling me about birthdays.’

  ‘What I meant was — well, for us, this is only the third time we’re seeing a new century come in. And we’ve never had a millennium. So maybe we’re —’

  ‘Like a small kid? That’s been said before.’

  ‘What? What’s been said before?’ Louis leans over from Isabel’s right, his high forehead catching the candlelight. He is proud of his receding hairline and wears his black hair brushed back like a Spaniard’s.

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Deborah cries.

  ‘Can’t do what?’ asks Louis.

  ‘Butt into a conversation like that. This isn’t Wall Street. This is —’

  ‘Why not? It wasn’t a private conversation. Was it a private conversation?’

  ‘No, no, it wasn’t,’ says Isabel. ‘I was just saying that all this fuss about the millennium —’

  ‘Oh, not the millennium,’ Laura says, putting her hands to her head; ‘millennium, millennium, everywhere you look it’s the millennium. I thought you didn’t want to do the millennium?’

  ‘What are you doing?’ asks Louis. ‘I thought you were due to complete —’

  ‘She’s added on an option —’ Laura begins.

  ‘But that’s just the point,’ Isabel says. ‘I think maybe the millennium only matters to us because we’re so young — as a country, I mean. Maybe it would be interesting to see what people in a really old country thought of it.’

  ‘It’s an angle,’ Deborah admits.

  ‘India,’ Louis says. ‘Maybe Raji can help you there. Raji?’

  The bearded head turns from conversation with Samantha.

  ‘What does India think of the millennium?’ Louis demands.

  ‘Why don’t you ask her, man?’ A flicker at the corner of the dark lips, but the eyes don’t smile.

  ‘Come on, Louis, you know better than that,’ says Deborah.

  ‘Fucking inscrutable,’ says Louis.

  ‘Let’s have coffee through in the living room,’ says Deborah, standing up.

  ‘What is it you want to do?’ he asks as they walk into the living room.

  ‘I thought I’d go to Egypt. See what they think of the millennium there.’

  ‘Egypt? Why Egypt? Why not Rome? That’s an old country.’

  ‘Yes, but Egypt is older. It’s like going back to the beginning. Six thousand years of recorded history.’

  ‘Are they having a millennium there? Do you take cream?’ Deborah hands Isabel a cup of coffee and waits, the small silver cream jug poised. ‘Don’t they use the Muslim years?’

  ‘They use both,’ he says. ‘And they have a Coptic calendar as well.’

  ‘I know they celebrate both New Years,’ Isabel says, pouring herself a few drops of cream and handing the jug back to Deborah.

  ‘Any excuse for a party.’ He smiles. ‘I won’t have coffee, thanks. We have to be going soon.’

  ‘I was wondering,’ Isabel ventures, ‘if you could give me some pointers. I’ve been there before, but it was a long time ago, and I haven’t stayed in touch.’

  ‘Oh, I think you’ll find people will remember you —’

  ‘There, you see, you’re laughing at me again.’

  ‘My dear, not at all. I’m sure you made a powerful impression. What were you doing there?’

  ‘I did a Junior Year Abroad —’

  ‘Don’t you just adore these apartments?’ Laura says, joining them.

  ‘They’re so gracious.’

  ‘This one is beautiful,’ Isabel says. ‘And I love the red walls.’

  They all look around the high, galleried room.

  ‘Call me,’ my brother says to Isabel. ‘Do you want to call me? I’ll think of a few people you can go and see. Look, let me give you my number.’ He feels in his pockets. ‘Do you have a card or a piece of paper or something?’

  She looks in her handbag and passes him a small white notepad. He take
s the cap off his fountain pen and scribbles in black ink.

  ‘Can you read this? When do you want to talk? Do you have a deadline?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Isabel. ‘Imminent.’

  ‘OK. Call me. We’ll talk.’

  He turns back. ‘Are you OK getting home? Can we drop you off somewhere?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Isabel says. ‘I’m on the other side of the Park. I have a cab arranged.’

  The sky throws back the lights of the city, into her windows and who knows how many others. Isabel kicks off her shoes and stands looking out over the massed treetops below. If she were to open the window and lean out she would see, beyond the darkness, the lights of the Plaza and then down to Fifth Avenue where — is it her imagination or can she see a glow where Tiffany’s windows are? Tempted to open the window, she puts her hand on the catch, but it is a freezing February night and she turns back to the room and switches on one table lamp. Two years on, she is still enthralled by the freedom of not being half of a couple, by the pleasure of coming home to silence, by not having to feel relieved if Irving has enjoyed the evening or to make it up to him if he hasn’t — by the absence of resentment in her life.

  It is after midnight and yet she is full of energy. She crosses over to the desk and checks her answering machine. Nothing. And nothing on the computer or the fax. She goes to a bookshelf and picks out Who’s Who:

  Ghamrawi, Omar A. s of Ahmad al-Ghamrawi and Maryam, née al-Khalidi; b 15 September 1942, Jerusalem; educ Cornell Univ New York and … coached by … Career pianist, conductor and writer; debut with NY Philharmonic 1960 … tours … The Politics of Culture 1992, A State of Terror 1994, Borders and Refuge 1996 …

  Thirty-seven years of music, and five years of words. And it is in these last five years that he has hit the news. In her bedroom, she flicks the television on and catches Jerry Springer, pointing, haranguing, ‘You had his baby — you deliberately entrapped him —’ A fat woman with mascara running down her face along with her tears yells back, ‘He needs to get real —’ Isabel hits the mute button, goes into the bathroom and turns on the taps.

  Hair caught at the top of her head with a giant black butterfly clip, a rolled-up towel wedged behind her neck, the water pale green pools shimmering amid soft hills of foam, she slings her legs over the edge of the tub, lets her arms float and settles into this, her favourite position. The automatic thought comes that it would be nice to have some music but she pushes it aside. How many times has she put on a disc only to be irritated by it after a few minutes? And then she’d have to pad out on wet feet and switch it off before it drove her crazy. She couldn’t do it with the remote because of the position of the player in the bedroom. No, she would settle into the silence, and when it needed to be broken she would shift a part of herself and the soft lapping of the water would give her the sound she needed to hear.

  Would tomorrow be too soon to call him?

  Pharaonic toes, Irving used to say, when he was still talking about her toes — about her. Long, straight, even toes that could belong to any one of those sideways figures in the reliefs and the wall paintings, except hers were pale, not brown. She spreads them and frowns to focus on the neat, square-cut nails with their one coat of white pearl. Not chipped; good for another two or three days maybe. And besides it’s winter now and who’s going to see them? She lets her leg fall and slips further down into the water. Toes to go with the name. It was her father who had explained to her her name. Isa Bella: Isis the Beautiful. ‘So you see,’ he’d said, that summer’s day, in the woods back of the house in Connecticut, ‘you have the name of the first goddess, the mother of Diana, of all goddesses, the mother of the world.’ She had been walking at his side, carrying a long stick with a fork at the end, engaged in a divine task: holding it out, waiting for it to tremble, to tell her she had found water, there under the grass-covered earth. And then, on the swing, as he had pushed her, and she rose higher and higher with each thrust, a chant had formed in her head Isa — Bella, Isa — Bella …’

  Keeping time with small splashes in the water, Isabel drifts into memories of her father, her small hand secure in his big, warm grasp, their feet kicking up the spray as they paddle on the beach in Maine — her mother slightly apart, anxious, holding her breath almost, fearing that if she relaxed for a moment, if she let go, this child would be snatched from her as the other had been. Jasmine Chirol Cabot had never stopped mourning her son; she had held on to the birthdays, the Buddy Holly singles, the photographs. Isabel had grown up with a brother sixteen years her senior who was forever fourteen and turning for a second from the fish in his hand, from the ball in the air, from the snow-covered slope ahead, to squint into the camera. An absent brother.

  Would tomorrow be too soon to call him?

  She slips all the way down into the bath, butterfly clip and all, until the water closes over her face and she feels the tingle in her scalp as it penetrates her hair.

  3

  Whatever happens, we have got

  The Maxim gun, and they have not.

  Hilaire Belloc, 1898

  Cairo, May 1997

  I am obsessed with Anna Winterbourne’s brown journal. She has become as real to me as Dorothea Brooke. I need to fill in the gaps, to know who the people are of whom she speaks, to paint in the backdrop against which she is living her life here, on the page in front of me.

  I go to the British Council Library, to Dar al-Kutub, to the second-hand bookstalls even though they’ve been moved from Sur el-Azbakiyya up to Darrasa and browsing among them is no longer so pleasant. I even write to my son in London and ask for cuttings from old issues of The Times.

  And I piece a story together.

  London, October 1898 to March 1899

  The light is like nothing Anna has ever seen before. Day after day it draws her back. Day after day it scatters itself on the rich carpets, on the stone or marble floors, on the straw matting. It streams through the latticed woodwork, tracing its patterns on mosaic walls and inlaid doors and layered fabrics, illuminating flowers and faces and outstretched or folded hands.

  Anna looks down at her own hands, folded tight in her lap: her wedding band gleaming dull against the pale skin, her knuckles raised ridges of paler white. She unclenches her hands, stretches out the fingers and replaces the hands gently, open, on her knees.

  He is not himself. I have heard this phrase before, and now it falls to me to use it. Edward, my husband, is not himself.

  For seven months I followed, with Sir Charles, all news of the events in the Soudan. For seven months I prayed for his safety and for his return unharmed. And now he is back I hardly know him. He is grown thin, and though his face is flushed with the sun of the south, it is as though a pallor lurks beneath.

  Mr Winthrop has seen him and says he has caught some infection of the tropics and shall be well again with tranquillity and nourishing food and, later, exercise. Upon his insistence (Mr Winthrop’s) I go out for a walk in the air each day. And I have taken to walking to the South Kensington Museum, which is a most beautiful and calming place and where I have come upon some paintings by Mr Frederick Lewis. They are possessed of such luminous beauty that I feel in their presence as though a gentle hand caressed my very soul.

  On a low bed, pressed into a pile of silken cushions, a woman lies sleeping. Above her, a vast curtain hangs, through the brilliant billowing green of which the fluid shadows of the lattice shutters can be made out, and beyond them, the light. One wedge of sunshine — from the open window above her head — picks out the sleeper’s face and neck, the cream-coloured chemise revealed by the open buttons of her tight bodice. A small amulet shines at her throat. Anna glances at her watch: she has ten more minutes.

  Today I found Sir William Harcourt in the hall, taking his leave of Edward and Sir Charles. Sir Charles, shaking him repeatedly by the hand, said (in his usual robust fashion) that it was a sad day for England when a man like Sir William resigns from the Leadership because of the conversion o
f the Party to Jingo Imperialism. He spoke harshly of Rosebery and Chamberlain calling them men of war and Sir William said it was the spirit of the age and he was grown too old to fight it. Edward became much agitated and retired to his chamber. He refused to allow me to sit with him or bring him tea.

  It is now eight weeks since Edward returned from the Soudan, and, I would have thought, time enough for him to grow well again, but for all that ails his body, I now fear that worse is a sickness of the spirit. He will not speak to me about anything of consequence and barely answers when I address him on commonplace matters. He will sit listless in the library for many hours and yet start if someone should enter of a sudden, so that I have learned to make some small noise before entering a room and to conduct a business with the doorhandle. He cannot bear the clatter of the teacup against its saucer —

  So Anna has taken to placing folded muslin napkins under the cups. She knows he will not drink his tea, but he accepts his cup from her hand and suffers her to sit with him — no, suffers her to sit in the same room, for she cannot be said to be truly with him. She cannot, for instance, guess what thoughts are at this moment in his mind. Except that they are not thoughts of a happy — or even comfortable — nature. He sits upright in the big chair, his grey woollen dressing gown belted neatly at the waist, his hair combed back, his moustache hiding his upper lip, the lower lip drawn. His eyes fix upon some object behind her left shoulder, then move to the shrouded window, then down to the floor. They never meet her own. A muscle works, from time to time, in the clean-shaven jaw. He is waiting for this formality of tea-drinking to be over so that she may leave him.

  ‘Edward,’ says Anna, ‘I have been speaking with Mr Winthrop, and he agrees that a change of air could do you good —’