by Ahdaf Soueif
Jasmine is smiling. Looking at her. Does she see her? What does she see?
Oh, I wish Daddy was here!’ Isabel buries her face in her hands. Her mother’s hand strokes the chair.
Old people are starved of touch: no husband, no lover, no child to slip a hand into a hand, to plant sticky kisses on nose and cheek and mouth, to snuggle and fit into the curves of the body. I watched my grandmother — my mother’s mother — in her last years: her hand, the skin drawn parchmentlike over the bones, stroking, stroking, the chairs, the table, the bedspread.
‘Anyway —’ Isabel collects herself, shakes out her hair, runs her fingers through it — ‘I don’t know what he feels about me. When I’m with him I feel all his attention concentrated on me. I feel this — this energy between us. But I don’t know if he even thinks about me when I’m not there.’ She looks sadly at her mother. ‘I’m not sure what I should do.’
‘I’ve given him up, of course,’ Jasmine says. ‘It was the only thing to do. He’s very young, you see. Such eyes! He reminds me of Valentine, of course. I don’t need to be told that; I’ve known it all along, from the moment I saw him. Maybe that’s why I took him in. I don’t remember what it was, Algeria or CND or something — there were so many demonstrations that summer. But he was hurt. He was in danger and I took him in. No one could touch him then; he was on American territory — although he didn’t know it. Jonathan was away and I took him in and I dressed the cut on his head. It was already swelling up into a horrid bruise. And he was so fired up with the state of the world and how he was going to change it all — he and his friends. He was so young. I sat by his bed, and later, when he was asleep, I got in next to him. I couldn’t help myself. Well. There we are. I went to his place later, twice. But then I knew I had to give him up. But it’s been hard. It’s been like losing Valentine all over again.’
‘Mother?’ Isabel is sitting upright now. Jasmine sounded like herself again: chatty, regretful, resigned. But — an affair? Her mother had had an affair? When? Who? Had her father known? She looks at the dimmed eyes, the cropped white hair.
‘Did my father — did Jonathan know?’ she asks.
‘Such a sweet man!’ Jasmine shakes her head. ‘Such a sweet, sweet man! And so terribly in love with me.’ Shakily, she pushes herself up out of her armchair, pushes her feet into pink slippers. ‘I have to go now.’
‘Mother,’ says Isabel, sitting up straight, afraid to reach out and catch hold of a frail arm, afraid to hold on to her, ‘Mother, when was this? Who was he? Did Daddy know?’
A faded copy of the old, bright smile is turned on Isabel. ‘Goodbye,’ Jasmine says. ‘It’s been so pleasant talking to you.’
6
Do you not know that Egypt is a copy of heaven and the temple of the whole world?
Egyptian scribe, c. 1400 BC
By an odd — and, I hope, propitious — chance, we have arrived at Alexandria on the same day as the new Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church — a church which has its seat in this city. A Mr James Barrington, who hoarded as soon as we had docked and introduced himself as having been commissioned to meet me and bring me to Cairo safely (a courtesy for which I have to thank Sir Charles’s letters to the Agency), kindly suggested that I might like to witness the celebrations, and the formalities of disembarkation duly dispatched, we soon found ourselves in a funny little carriage, not unlike a phaeton, with our luggage following behind and Mr Barrington perched on the box with the driver, with whom he appeared to converse most cheerfully. The two somewhat indifferent horses seemed to know their way, and responded only with a toss of their decorated heads to the occasional flick of the whip, delivered in almost desultory fashion and — I felt — more for form’s sake than from any true necessity. In this manner we arrived at a tea-house (rather more in the, Viennese style, I’m afraid, than the Oriental) and, the two carriages having been told to wait (I later saw our driver standing by his horse’s head and most tenderly feeding him some green stuff which Mr Barrington tells me is known as ‘bersim’ and is similar to our clover), we settled ourselves at a window table, ordered tea and English cake (which turned out to be a plain but perfectly well-made sandcake), and waited for the parades.
I observed that there were a great many decorations about: flags and strips of gaily coloured cloth and banners — to say nothing of the red and white rosettes decorating the carriage horses’ heads and harnesses — and upon enquiring whether it was the custom to deck out the town so profusely for a Christian occasion, I learned that the Khedive (having returned from Europe) is spending the rest of his summer at Ras el-Tin Palace here in Alexandria, and His Highness having attained his twenty-sixth year three days previously, the town has been so decked out to honour him, the new Patriarch merely benefiting — as it were — from the coincidence of dates. It was a most interesting and picturesque procession that accompanied him (the Patriarch) from the Port to his Cathedral with much costume and carriages and horses and uniforms, and I could not but wonder what Emily made of it all — but she kept her usual stolid stance, moving her chair a little distance from the table we were sharing and turning it to an angle away from us. Later, when we were installed in our Pension, I made a small attempt to explain to her the oddity of Egypt’s position, the country having won its independence in all but name from the Ottoman Sultan some sixty years ago though still nominally a part of his Empire, and now being ruled by the British through their Agency, and she said, ‘To be sure, ma’am, three rulers instead of one, that’s very odd.’ In any case, she is bustlingly happy for this is a very decent Pension, belonging to a Greek widow lady who, Mr Barrington assures me, is perfectly respectable but has been left to make her own (and her little girl’s) way in the world, her husband having died in some tragic circumstance which he seemed unwilling to expand upon and I cannot as yet ascertain.
I have a bedroom and a sitting room, both looking out to the sea, and both tolerably well furnished although a little dark and ponderous for my taste. Nothing would please the landlady but she must give me the grandest room with the ‘letto matrimoniale’, in which she clearly invests much pride. I said that, my condition being in one essential respect similar to hers, I would not have much use for it, but she was determined. It is a rather hideous affair, all brass knobs and foliage, but very firm and clean and well fortified by curtains and hangings and draperies against any mosquito or — what I find the thought of infinitely more alarming — the flying cockroaches that Captain Bourke so kindly warned me were a standard feature of life in Africa. However, I fancy I am not really in Africa yet, for certainly this place, from what I have seen so far, seems to have more of the Europe of the Mediterranean in it than anything else, and were it not for the costume of the native Arabs and the signs in their language, you might fancy yourself in some Greek or Italian town.
I must not run on any longer, dear Caroline, but I have so many impressions of this, my first day here, and none of them as yet anything like what I had — through my own reading or through the reports of others — been led to expect that I cannot, it seems, quite feel I have captured the day on paper, and so put down my pen.
I have just read this letter once before consigning it to the post and find that I have mentioned Mr James Barrington four times (this is the fifth!) and knowing my dear friend as I do, and being sensible that her wishes for my happiness may steer her thoughts along a particular course, I take the occasion to state here that the gentleman, though certainly a gentleman (Winchester and Cambridge) and an entertaining guide, is extremely young, no more than twenty-four or five years of age, and though he may in time prove a fine friend, that is all that you must now hope for your etc. etc.
And so Anna arrives in Egypt and this, it seems, is her first letter; a little self-conscious perhaps, a little aware of the genre — Letters from Egypt, A Nile Voyage, More Letters from Egypt. I assume that what I have is a copy of the letter she sent to Caroline. Perhaps she was thinking of a future publication. In any case, I
forgive her the mannered approach as she feels her way into my home. What else does she know — yet? And I am glad that she has broken away — that the brown leather journal is put gently aside. She did not draw a thick line under the last entry. She did not tear out and use any of the remaining pages. I flick through them, half expecting a note — a comment from later years on that early grief. But there is nothing. She simply left them blank.
I find myself curious, as I would have been with a foreign friend coming to visit: wondering what she will make of Egypt, how much she will see — really see. And I wish I were there to welcome her, take her in, show her around. Show her around? I, who have placed myself more or less under house arrest, moving from my living room to my bedroom to the kitchen — avoiding my children’s rooms. Angry with the city — with the country — to which I had returned to find so much had changed.
Now I find myself once again in the thick of traffic, of bureaucracy and procedure, as I try to see for myself the country that Anna came to. I try to reimagine it, to re-create it for Isabel. In the glass and concrete edifice that now houses the newspaper (though the letters spelling out its name still stand on top of the ruined, gracious building that used to be its home) I go through the archives of al-Ahram, cranking the blurred microfilm through the reader while three women in bonnets with crochet trimmings watch me from behind one desk.
I find that pride of place, on 29 September 1900, is given to the arrival the day before of the new archbishop, Fotios, to his patriarchal seat in Alexandria. The article mentions the welcoming speeches delivered to the Archbishop while still on board his ship in the harbour and details the procession which carried him through the streets of Alexandria: the Cavalry, the Patriarchal Ceremonial Carriage, the Carriages of the Bishops and the Clerics, the Consuls of the Powers and the Foreign Nations, the People of Official Rank, the Lower Ranks of Clerics, the Leaders of the Orthodox Community and Representatives of the Community from the Regions of Egypt, Representatives of the Associations and Brotherhoods, the Learned Sheikhs of al-Azhar, Men of Letters, Professionals, Financiers and Merchants … all these passed in pageant in front of the teashop where a young widow fresh from England sat with her maid and the consular attaché, while her luggage waited in a hired carriage round the corner and the driver held a fistful of barsim to his horse’s munching mouth and raised his head to watch the notables go by.
Alexandria
29 September 1900
Dear Sir Charles,
You have been much in my thoughts (that is to say much more than the usual much!) since the cry was heard and we all hurried on deck to peer into the horizon and make out that low-lying grey-blue shore you first saw in such unfortunate circumstances eighteen years ago.
We, however, sailed peaceably into the harbour, and I was met straight away by a young gentleman by the name of James Barrington, who had been detailed by Lord Cromer himself to find me and offer me every assistance. I know I have to thank your letters for this and I am most grateful for your kindness, for not only was the transition from ship to land achieved quite without pain, but my guide pointing out that the Court, the Government and all the Consuls — in short everybody — was still in Alexandria for the end of summer, I agreed to stay in this city for a while and see the sights. And, lest you imagine I am no longer the daughter you know but am grown fond of Society and Show, I will assure you that I felt that by insisting on continuing immediately to Cairo I would cause some inconvenience to Mr Barrington and to such others — as yet unknown — who feel it their duty to assist and chaperone an unprotected female in a strange land.
We are, therefore, lodged in the Pension Miramar, in the care of an excellent respectable Greek widow lady with a young child: a pretty little girl of about four who has taken to Emily and is constantly chattering to her in Greek, and begging her, with the most winning gestures, to dress her hair in braids and bows — a service which Emily is glad to render, since she does not consider she does enough of it where it would be most proper!
I wrote of our arrival yesterday to Caroline Bourke, and since I am sure you will be given an account of my letter, I will not say more, save that today further Jubilations were in evidence on the streets as His Highness the Khedive has been blessed with the arrival of a new baby Princess.
Alexandria seems, on the face of it, a rather jolly place and today I ventured out for a short walk on my own along the seafront, within sight of the Pension. I could see no trace of your famous ‘bombardment’ and — receiving nothing but smiles and kind looks from the Natives and doffed boaters from the Europeans — was hard put to imagine scenes of fanatical wickedness. But I am yet new to this place and know nothing of it save what can be seen by the most superficial eye.
Mr Barrington says that as I am in Alexandria I must see the sights: Pompei’s Pillar, the Mohammedan Cemetery, the Museum and the Catacombs — he is arranging some expeditions to these. He mentioned that Alexandria had boasted two fine Cleopatra’s Needles and commented on the oddity of Egypt’s rulers giving them away — one to us and the other to the Americans. Then he said that he supposed if they had not given them away they would have been taken in any case, and muttered something about ‘Budge and Morgan’? He knows a great deal about the country and cares for it very much, I think. It appears he is an excellent speaker of the native Arabic and I count myself most fortunate in having him for my guide and interpreter.
My thoughts turn often towards you, my dearest friend and parent. How I wish I could have prevailed upon you to undertake this journey with me! I have, however, the comfort of knowing that I am here with your encouragement and blessing — indeed, I would not have gone without — and that the purpose for which we decided I should travel is even now being achieved; for I am better in health and spirits than I have been for a long time. You must tell Mr Winthrop that. Poor man, what a hard time he has had with us these last eighteen months! I will search out the herbs he mentioned when I find my way to the souks of Cairo — although Alexandria must have souks too, for all that it looks so like a European city, but I doubt I shall have the time to find them; besides, I imagine he will want them as fresh as possible.
Dearest Sir Charles, I am rambling, but that is because I miss your company and our conversations. When you are next on the Embankment, pray look at Cleopatra’s Needle and remember me in the land of Tuthmosis III. May it please God that you remain well and that I find you so when I return — and that you will be pleased to welcome back your loving daughter …
Sir Charles stays in his rooms on Mount Street. The house he had left to his son and his son’s bride stands empty. The gardener comes in once a week to keep the flowers in order.
And Anna starts another journal; a handsome, thick volume in dark green with a navy spine:
28 September
My thoughts tonight keep turning to my dear Edward, for four years ago he made this very journey and saw the same shore that I have seen today and disembarked at the very port. The waves breaking against the sea wall beneath my window are not the waves he listened to, but their sound cannot be too dissimilar and I find myself wondering, as I sit here in the shadow of my great bed, whether we would have shared it, had we come here together — whether being thrown together in travel might not have broken down some of that reserve that featured so large in our marriage — and so immovably. Idle thoughts …
7
In his first interview with the Governor of St Helena, Napoleon said emphatically: ‘Egypt is the most important country in the world.’
Lord Cromer, 1908
I can see her now, my heroine: she sits at the window of her bedroom in the Greek widow’s pension, her letters neatly folded, her new journal open on the table towards which she leans to command as wide a view as she can of the Eastern Harbour; two arms of the city stretching out to encircle a portion of the Mediterranean. Did Anna see, as she looked to her left, the lights of the Fort of Sultan Qaytbay? Her edition of Cook’s Tourist Handbook does not mention the
old fort at all. Did James Barrington tell her that this, more than anything, perhaps, is an exemplar of that tired phrase, ‘the palimpsest that is Egypt’? For here the Pharos — the great lighthouse of Greek Alexandria — once stood, and from its ruins and with its stones the Mameluke Sultan Qaytbay built his fort in 1480 against the Crusaders coming from the north, and within that fort a mosque was later built, and the minaret of that mosque was destroyed by Admiral Sir Beauchamp Seymour in the bombardment of 1882.
Isabel talks of making a film of Anna’s life, the opening credits rolling across a long shot of the old fort. I say, ‘It’s a military museum now, I don’t know if you’d get permission.’
‘Sure I would,’ she says confidently. ‘The guidebook says at dawn its stones look like they’re made of butter. It would be a great shot: a fairy-tale cake of a fort, creamy against the blue sea. You could even see it from the sea to begin with, then swing around as the boat docks —’
‘It would have docked in the Western Harbour —’
‘Then the camera pulls back and back and back until we’re with Anna in her window, seeing what she sees.’
‘It was night-time,’ I say, literally, stubbornly. I want to keep Anna for myself; I don’t want her taken over by some actress.
‘That’s a detail,’ says Isabel.
Anna looks out of her window. It is night-time. I insist that it is night-time, and between the lights of the fort and the lights of Silsila the Mediterranean is a black, blank expanse ahead of her. Her hair is brushed and lies soft on her neck and shoulders. She wears a peignoir (is it a peignoir? I like the word; tasting of the nineteenth century, of fashion and a certain type of woman, of Europe and the novel. Anna Karenina might have worn a peignoir as she prepared for bed; certainly several of Colette’s heroines did, but my English Anna seems worlds away from Coline and Rézi who are her contemporaries) — a peignoir gathered at her shoulders and falling over her breasts in silken folds. Perhaps it has a trimming of soft fur around the neck and at the end of the long, loose sleeves. It is in a pale, pale grey shading into blue. The card propped up on my dressing table calls this colour ‘Drifter’. This colour card has been of no use to me for years, and yet I cannot bring myself to throw it away; it startles me that an object of such beauty should be held in such low esteem — and yet there they were in every B&Q, Salisbury’s HomeBase, etc., not to mention the specialised paint stores and hardware stores: hundreds of cards, stacked, inviting the most casual passer-by to pick one up, glance at it, and throw it into the nearest bin. But look what it does with the seven basic colours; it lobs you gently into the heart of the rainbow, and turns you loose into blue; allows you to wander at will from one end of blue to the other: seas and skies and cornflower eyes, the tiles of Isfahan and the robes of the Madonna and the cold glint of a sapphire in the handle of a Yemeni dagger. Lie on the line between blue and green — where is the line between blue and green? You can say with certainty ‘this is blue, and that is green’ but these cards show you the fade, the dissolve, the transformation — the impossibility of fixing a finger and proclaiming, ‘At this point blue stops and green begins.’ Lie, lie in the area of transformation — stretch your arms out to either side. Now: your right hand is in blue, your left hand is in green. And you? You are in between; in the area of transformations. Enough. Enough. And yet, I imagine that Anna would have had these same thoughts about whatever version of the colour card there was in her day, for she was a woman who was arrested by small things, by shades of colour.
