by Ahdaf Soueif
Cairo
8 November 1900
Dear Sir Charles,
It is now a week that we have been in Grand Cairo and I have met with the greatest consideration and kindness from everybody here. I have been to dinner at the Residency, where Nina Baring has kept house for her uncle these two years. I am told Lord Cromer is a changed man since his bereavement and that the gentlemen of Chancery were much relieved when Miss Baring came, for she is lively and vivacious and teases her uncle and makes him smile. She has presented him with a complete set of silver brushes inscribed ‘Mina’, which occasioned a certain amount of perplexity at the Agency until she recounted a family tale according to which the Earl used, as a child, to pick up any object he could carry and cry ‘mine-a, mine-a’ till that became his childhood name. You can imagine how I thought of you upon hearing this, and I imagined you throw back your head and laugh — as you used to — then say, ‘That accounts for his attitude to Egypt, then.’
I find myself seeing many things here through your eyes, imagining that I know what you would think of them. I know you would be interested to learn — if you do not know already — that there is a newspaper, newly started here, that speaks against the Occupation. I learned this when someone mentioned at dinner that the paper, al-Liwa, is stirring up the people by writing against the Boer War and describing the methods used by the British army there. My ears pricked up at this — on your account — but to my questions Lord Cromer merely said it was a publication of no significance, paid for by the French and read only by the ‘talking classes’. After this the subject was dropped by tacit agreement and replaced by discussion of a Baron Empain and a French company that has bought a great tract of land in the desert North-East of Cairo and is planning to build a city there along French lines. When I questioned Mr Barrington later about the paper, though, he said that he believed it was paid for by subscriptions — although the French may have helped to begin with — and that it prints ten thousand copies a day. That seems a great many in a country where most people cannot read. I must see if I cannot get a copy and send it to you, although of course it will be in Arabic.
I must tell you, dearest Sir Charles, that your views are well known here, but the respect you command is such that no one has shown me anything but solicitude and kindness.
We are staying, as I told you in my telegram, at Shepheard’s Hotel, which is poised between the old and the new Cairo, and I have been once to the Bazaar with Emily. It is exactly as I have pictured it; the merchandise so abundant, the colours so bold, the smells so distinct — no, I had not pictured the smells — indeed could not have — but they are so of a piece with the whole scene: the shelves and shelves of aromatic oils, the sacks of herbs and spices, their necks rolled down to reveal small hills of smooth red henna, lumpy ginger stems, shiny black carob sticks, all letting off their spicy, incensy perfume into the air. It is quite overwhelming. I had not, however, imagined the streets to be so narrow or the shops so small — some of them are hardly shops at all but mere openings in the wall where one man sits cross-legged working at some exquisite piece of brass or copper. It is difficult, though, to examine the place at leisure as people are constantly calling out to you and urging you to buy their wares. I hear you tell me that those people are there to make their livelihood and indeed I know it is so, and I would buy, only I do not know the proper price of things and I have heard that you have to bargain and I have no experience in conducting that transaction. No doubt I will learn. Emily was much relieved to get back to the Hotel for she constantly feared we would be abducted and dragged into one of the dark, narrow alleys we sometimes came upon between shop and shop — and when I asked to what purpose, she said we should be sold as slaves, for it is well known that Cairo is a great centre for that trade. My assurances have proved of no avail and she is determined that neither she nor I will venture again into Old Cairo except under British guard! So you may be assured that all will be well with me and that I am most scrupulously looked after here in Cairo. Your loving …
And what of Emily? Anna’s references to her sketch out the portrait we have come to expect of a lady’s maid of the period: Emily ‘chides’ Anna into going out into the garden; Emily wishes to be allowed to dress Anna’s hair in a more elaborate style; she distances herself from the spectacle of the parade in Alexandria; she is fearful in the Bazaar. I try to focus on her as she waits on the sidelines, guarding the picnic basket, the rugs and the first-aid box. How old is she? What does she want for herself? Is she saving up to start a milliner’s business? Does she have an illegitimate child lodged with a foster mother in Bournemouth? Does she want something for herself? Or is Anna her whole life and occupation? Can she yet do what Hesther Stanhope’s maid did, who in Palmyra caught the fancy of a passing sheikh but was denied permission to marry him? Would she do what Lucy Duff Gordon’s Sally did and melt into the back streets of Alexandria, pregnant with the child of her mistress’s favourite servant, Omar al-Halawani? I don’t know; so far, nothing in Anna’s papers gives me any clue.
Cairo
14 November 1900
Dear Caroline,
I have been in Cairo for close on two weeks now and I have seen a great many curious sights — the most curious of all perhaps being the sky, which is perpetually blue in the daytime and innocent of any wisp of cloud. How different it is here from November in England. I would so like it if you were to come out, for I am certain you would enjoy it. I dined at the Agency last night (the second time since I have been here) and I fancied myself exchanging glances with you across the dinner table when the conversation turned to the Khedive’s visit to England last summer and what a success it had been and how honoured ‘the boy’ ought to feel (this from Lord Cromer) at the Queen’s giving him the Victorian Order. I remembered you bringing over the Illustrated London News (indeed I have kept the copy) and how we read it in the garden —
— and there on the cover is the Toast to His Highness: a long table loaded with candleholders, flowers, epergnes and fruit bowls. Ranged behind it — the caption tells me — are the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Duke of York, the Marquess of Salisbury, the Lord Mayor of London and the Gaikwar of Baroda. The company raise their glasses. In the centre, tilting slightly to his right, towards the upright, tiaraed figure of the Princess, the Khedive — easily the youngest man there by thirty years — bows and leans with both hands on the table as though for support. As a Muslim, he should not drink alcohol. Looking in from the right of the picture is another fez-wearing head: the elderly Turkish ambassador, holding his wineglass uneasily by its stem, looks in a concerned manner at the young Khedive. Above ‘Abbas Hilmi’s head hangs a heavy-looking instrument with a tassel on its end —
— and Sir Charles came in and looked at the cover and the mace hanging from the wall of the Guildhall above the Khedive’s head and said, ‘That’s to pop him on the fez if he steps out of line.’ I believe that was the first time I had laughed since Edward’s death.
I am sure that Sir Charles’s opinions are well known here — indeed they must be, for, far from making a secret of them, he has published and declared them whenever possible — and I cannot imagine they are regarded with any sympathy by this company. No one speaks of this in front of me of course, partly out of natural courtesy, and partly because of the consideration they feel is due to me for Edward’s sake. But I hear them mention Mr Blunt, who holds views identical to those of my beau-père, and whom they regard as a crank who chooses to live in the desert, and they use of him the phrase ‘gone over’ by which I assume they mean he sees matters from a different point of view. I own I am curious to see Mr Blunt but he does not come into Cairo Society and I cannot call on him unless I am invited by Lady Anne. Nothing, it seems to me, could be further from the spirit of the desert than life at the Agency — indeed, while you were there you would not know you were not in Cadogan Square with the Park a stone’s throw away instead of almost paddling in the waters of the Nile.
I
t must be so hard to come to a country so different, a people so different, to take control and insist that everything be done your way. To believe that everything can only be done your way. I read Anna’s descriptions, and I read the memoirs and the accounts of these long-gone Englishmen, and I think of the officials of the American embassy and agencies today, driving through Cairo in their locked limousines with the smoked-glass windows, opening their doors only when they are safe inside their Marine-guarded compounds.
Lord Cromer himself (or ‘el-Lord’ as I am told he is commonly known throughout the country — a title, they say here, that denotes both affection and respect) is a large, commanding man with sad, hooded eyes and thinning white hair. I cannot pretend to know him at all well, of course, but I have observed him at the head of the dinner table, where he sits and exudes a quiet strength. He is a man of very decided opinions, to which the conversation in his presence always defers. I suspect you would not be able to work with him for long if you did not subscribe wholeheartedly to his views. He is sunounded by his gentlemen, chief of whom is Mr Harry Boyle, the Oriental Secretary. He is most interesting as a character (Mr Boyle) and I think makes something of a point of a certain eccentric untidiness or even shabbiness of dress and unruliness of moustache, but Mr Barrington tells me it is said that he has a very sound understanding of the native character and he does speak the language — although Mr Barrington stressed that his knowledge was only of the vernacular — and it is this understanding that has made him so useful to Lord Cromer and brought the two men so close that Mr Boyle has earned the nickname ‘Enoch’ (for walking with the Lord!). Lord Cromer himself speaks no Arabic at all — except for ‘imshi’, which is the first word everybody learns here and means ‘go away’, and of course ‘baksheesh’.
I am hoping to learn a little more of native life here, although I must say I have no idea how to put that hope into actual form. But I feel it would be a little odd to come all the way to Egypt and learn nothing except more about your own compatriots. I believe if Sir Charles were here he would be able to show me things I cannot yet see on my own. In any case I am very sensible that I know very little of the country and must be content to try to educate myself until such time as I am equipped to form my own views.
In that same issue of the Illustrated London News, there is what we call today ‘an artist’s impression’ of the Triumphal Entry into the Transvaal: lots of little people line a wide, dusty road. Some wave thin sticks fluttering with forked Union Jacks. In the centre of the road a man in uniform rides ahead of his troops. But in the foreground, closest to us, the artist has placed an old bearded man (a Boer?) who turns away from Lord Roberts and his prancing horse. He faces us, the readers, with furious eyes, his left fist clenched and raised to his chest.
8
A woman like her
Should bear children
Many children,
So she can afford to have
One or two die.
Ama Ata Aidoo, 1970
Cairo, May 1997
The loud buzz of the intercom sounds through the corridor. I’d been in my bedroom, working, as is usual with me now, on my Anna project, reading on the period, looking at pictures, trying to imagine. I’ve always liked working in bedrooms, moving from the desk to the bed to the dressing table and back to the desk. At one stage of my life it had been necessary; now I ignore the empty rooms and spend my days and nights in this one corner of my flat. I think of the table by the window as ‘Anna’s table’ and it is covered with her papers. I’ve arranged them chronologically as much as I could; the undated sheets I’ve compared to dated ones and matched the paper. They stand in twelve piles, one for each year — some years are more substantial than others. The journals stand alone. I have tried not to read through them, to read only one year at a time. But then I know how the story ends. I don’t think that matters. We always know how the story ends. What we don’t know is what happens along the way.
Anna’s objects I keep wrapped as I found them, in the trunk which now stands by the wall next to my dressing table.
I was expecting Isabel and I had stopped work and was standing at the window, vaguely watching a woman hang out laundry. She must have done a white wash for she hangs out vests, white vests, one after the other: big ones, medium ones, little ones. She bends down and vanishes for a moment behind the wall of her balcony, then straightens up with a vest in her hand and a clothespeg in her mouth. She shakes out the vest and pegs it by the shoulder next to its brother. When she has finished and picked up the green plastic tub and gone inside, the vests hang in the still air shoulder to shoulder.
And to think that there were times when I grumbled at their washing. But there were also times when I stood still, one wet sock in my hand, struck by a premonition of what it would feel like when there would be no more socks to wash, no more games kits to hang up to dry on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when all my time would be my own to do with as I wished. What do I wish? That I was still with my husband? That my children lived next door? No one lives next door any more. That woman there across the road — who knows where her children will go when they grow up? Canada, Dubai, the moon. Maybe she’ll be lucky and one of them will settle here, in Cairo, close enough to give her grandchildren to hold and talk to in her old age.
I looked down at the trees in the garden below. I wondered, if they were washed, if someone just washed them down with a hose, how long would it take for the dust to settle again? I wondered how old the trees were: were they left over from the time when this part of the city was all green, planted fields? Or had they started their lives as town trees? Unlikely, I think. In this city trees are torn up, not planted. The great avenue of giant eucalyptus at the beginning of the Upper Egypt road in Giza, destroyed. Trees that soared up to sixty metres, reached to the sky, planted by Muhammad ’Ali close to two hundred years ago, torn up by the roots to make a wider road for the cars and trucks heading for Upper Egypt.
When the buzzer went I thought it was Isabel come early. I walked to the door and picked up the handset, and Tahiyya’s voice rang in my ear: ‘Daktora! Ya Daktora!’
‘Aywa,’ I shouted back, ‘yes,’ holding the handset away from my ear.
‘Can I come up to you for two bits?’ she shouts.
‘Of course,’ I say, ‘Itfaddali.’
‘Now?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Come.’
Tahiyya is the doorman’s wife — and my friend. She asks after me and sends her children to see if I need the washing-up done or my clothes taken to the ironing shop. Now she comes in smiling, with her littlest — his leg still encased in plaster — on her hip.
‘Please God you weren’t asleep?’
‘No, no,’ I say, crossing the room to close the balcony doors as she puts the child down on the floor. ‘But that thing is so loud; it startles me every time.’
‘Why don’t we get the engineers to turn it down?’ she suggests, looking at it.
‘We could,’ I say, looking at it too.
‘Or they might ruin it,’ she says.
‘Let’s not,’ I say. It’s a new addition, a modernising touch, and she and Am Madani are very proud of it.
‘We don’t mean to wake you,’ she says.
‘I wasn’t asleep,’ I say. ‘Let’s make some tea.’
We go into the kitchen and she says ‘You rest’, so I sit at the table while she fills the kettle. ’Abd el-Rahman follows us, back to crawling now because of his plastered leg. He settles on the floor in front of my father’s tall dresser and opens the lowest drawer. This is where the coloured plastic clothespegs are kept.
‘Look at this for me,’ she says while we wait for the tea leaves to settle. She puts a large brown envelope in front of me. I open it and pull out an X-ray — no, a scan. I read the tiny English writing and look up at her tired, pretty face; the brown eyes lined with kohl, the eyebrows plucked thin, the blue kerchief tight across her forehead:
