by Ahdaf Soueif
Sir Charles writes to me, but not so often. And after the first letter in which he wished me happiness — ‘although, my dear, I cannot say I confidently expect it’ — he writes without mention of my new condition, so that I feel constrained not to mention any particulars of my life to him and restrict myself to reports on my Arabic and the garden and such political news as I hear from my husband. Caroline writes from time to time with news of our friends and she expresses curiosity about my life but I find in myself a strange unwillingness to provide a detailed picture of ‘life in the Harem’. If she were to visit, however, I would be glad to have her as my guest for it is only then, I think, that she would gain a true picture of my life here. Mrs Butcher is the only one of my English acquaintances here who continues to see me and she brings me news of James Barrington, who is soon to leave for London. I have given her a parcel to give to him with the request that he deliver it to Sir Charles that he may in turn give it to Mr Winthrop. It contains the camphor and the oil of Habbet el-Barakah he asked me for many months ago, and will serve as an introduction between Mr Barrington and Sir Charles. Mrs Butcher has promised to write some pieces for the ladies’ magazine that we are planning. The magazine is the idea of Madame Zeinab Fawwaz and a young woman by the name of Malak Hifni Nasif. They plan Arabic and French editions and wish to attract writers from as many communities as possible and — while the idea is to compare the condition and the aspirations of women in different societies — it is not to confine itself to the ‘Question of Women’ but to enter into matters of more general concern and so demonstrate that women are ready to enter a wider arena than that to which they have hitherto been confined.
My husband speaks of a School of Fine Art that is being planned and has said that he wishes me to have a part in the planning. Nothing is to be done until November, though, for all of Cairo is now gone either to Europe or to Alexandria for the summer months and, if we can prevail upon my beau-père to travel, we shall go to Alexandria as well and I shall be most curious to see — in such different circumstances — that city which was my first port of entry to this my new world.
25 August 1997
My brother is incapable of walking slowly. He takes long strides along the sea’s edge and I find myself playing my old game of secretly trying to match his footsteps. I manage to stay in rhythm for seven long steps, then I have to do a speedy little cha-cha shuffle forward. My earliest memories of him are on this beach — no, my earliest memory is of him leaving: there I am, in focus, in a red sun frock with ribbons for straps, seated on my father’s shoulder waving goodbye. My mother stands next to us and in the distance, across from the men rushing about on the quay, across from the expanse of brownish water dotted with small boats with more men in them, my brother stands at the rails of his ship, a pale, slim figure, his black hair shining in the sunshine. After that my memories of him are here on this beach at ‘Agami, where our father built his own modest beach house for us after he sold the big villa that my grandfather and Sharif Basha had built on the other side of Alexandria so that their wives might play and swim with their children in privacy. My brother came back in the long vacations and amused himself as best he could with a sister twelve years his junior. We built sandcastles and he taught me to swim and to play racquet ball and we went for walks like this one: he marching by the edge of the sea, kicking up the spray with his feet, while I ran along at his side.
I catch his arm and hold on, slowing him down.
‘But it must be good,’ I say, ‘in principle, anyway, to get everybody together to talk?’
‘It’s just containment,’ he says. ‘What ‘Arafat is interested in is containment and maintaining his credibility. But what’s he doing? He’s got eleven security services. Eleven!’
My brother speaks with vehemence. I’ve hardly ever heard him speak except with vehemence — each word underlined. To look at him you would think he was a dandy, a dilettante, with his good looks, his fine clothes, his fastidious attention to detail; then he moves into action and you are caught up in a whirlwind. A whirlwind with method.
‘He has his own prisons and he uses torture and bone-breaking just as much as the Israelis. At least with them there’s some kind of process by which people can question what goes on in their jails. But with him there’s nothing. Nothing at all. The only ones with anything to offer now are Hamas. They’re the ones with credibility on the streets. And they’ve earned it. They’re the ones who’re putting up resistance — and suffering losses.’
‘So?’
He’s shaken free of my arm and once again I am breaking into the occasional trot to catch up. The sea is turning iron grey and people are rolling up their straw mats and shaking out their towels.
‘So it’s very sad. They turned up to my talk and they asked good questions. They’re intelligent. They’re committed. They certainly have a case. But one cannot approve of fundamentalists — of whatever persuasion.’
‘And the conference?’
‘Nothing. Empty talk. He wants Hamas to stop operations. But they said, quite rightly, that without them the Israelis have no incentive to give up anything.’
‘And you? How did you leave it with him?’
He kicks the water, bends down and picks up something, wipes it on his trousers and holds it out to me: a smooth shiny black stone, a perfect egg-shaped oval, polished by sea water and sand and sun over who knows how many hundreds of years.
‘Keep it,’ he says. ‘I told him this was the first meeting — the first official meeting I’d attended since Ï resigned from the PNC, and it would be the last. It’s a good job I have an American passport. But I’m going back. I am going to Jerusalem. I want to see our mother’s house.’
‘You want to be careful,’ I said. Hate mail is a normal part of my brother’s life and his house in New York has been letter-bombed twice.
‘So tell me about her, about Isabel,’ I say at last. Outside the glass panes of Zephyrion the night and the sea are all one blackness. We are in Abu Qir, where my grandfather’s house used to be; a large, many-roomed villa with an enclosed sand-garden where the fig trees grew. It was pulled down years ago and everywhere now there are small cement shacks which families that used to be middle class but are now poor rent for their summer holidays. But it is mercifully dark and we cannot see them. We can hear the gentle roar of the waves. The old British soldier who had stayed behind after the war and beat his unending tattoo on this beach is no longer there. We used to sit in this restaurant and the strains of ‘Scotland the Brave’ from his bagpipes would float in as he approached, and recede into a ghostly echo as he retreated. Perhaps he is dead, I think. Lay down and died on this beach and people found him in the morning and picked him up and gave him a shroud and a grave as they had given him food and shelter when he was alive.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he says. ‘It’s too terrible.’
‘Why terrible?’ I ask, surprised.
‘I spent my last night in New York with her.’
‘Yes. She told me.’
‘Her mother had just died. I mean literally: just.’
‘That’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, fighting death with life and all that?’
‘No, but the thing is, I’d been in love with her.’
‘Who? Isabel?’
‘No, no. Not Isabel, her mother.’ He picks up his glass of Gianaklis, takes a sip and grimaces as he puts the glass down. ‘This stuff gets worse every year. Why can’t they produce decent wine in this country?’ he asks.
I am trying to take in this new twist.
‘When were you in love with Isabel’s mother?’ I ask. ‘Before she died?’
He gives me a look. ‘Yes, my dear. Many years before she died. In ‘62 to be exact.’
‘But —’ I am trying to imagine this. ‘She must have been a lot older than you.’
‘She was. It didn’t seem like it. I mean, I didn’t think of that. I was just a kid.’
‘But then — how di
d you know, I mean, when did you know —?’
‘Just that last night in New York. She woke up at dawn practically — Isabel, that is — and I hadn’t slept well and we made coffee and she started to talk about her mother and I suddenly realised — it’s just too awful. Really.’ He lays his knife and fork diagonally beside his half-eaten fish, pushes the plate a little way from him and wipes his mouth roughly with his napkin.
‘But had you not stayed in touch? I mean, how come you didn’t know -?’
‘No, no. It was a very brief thing. Very dramatic. I was pretty hard hit.’ He grins. ‘Literally. I was hit on the head. I was in some demonstration. A youthful folly. And it turned nasty and I got hit on the head and the next thing I knew I was in a bed somewhere and this beautiful woman was bending over me.’
‘And then?’ I prompt.
‘Nothing. I fell in love with her. I stayed in her house for a couple of days. And we met twice after that. And then she dropped me. I guess she just decided it wouldn’t work. And it wouldn’t have, of course. But of course I didn’t think so then.’
‘And that was it?’
‘I wrote to her a few times. Many times, I think. Imploring and arguing, you know the kind of thing. She wrote one letter. A short letter. Her decision was final and all that. I went around with an interestingly broken heart for a while. And then — khalas. Can you get me some cold water?’ he says to the waiter. ‘And can you clear all this? And —’ to me — ‘would you like some dessert? I’m having coffee.’
I ask for coffee too, and water.
‘When Isabel started to talk about her mother it fell into place. I’d thought there was something about her from the beginning. Something familiar but I couldn’t place it. But the name, the dead kid — her brother — the American embassy in London. It all fitted. She’d reminded me of her mother.’
‘Have you told her?’ I ask.
‘No, no. Of course not.’
I am not sure what I think. I can’t quite make out what I think. But what I say, after a while, is ‘It’s not so terrible. Of course it’s a shock and it brings back all sorts of things and it’s a bit weird but it’s not — like, it’s not a disaster, surely?’
‘It could be. She was born at the end of ‘62 and my affair with Jasmine was in March.’
‘You don’t think — you can’t think -?’
‘It’s a distinct possibility, as they say.’
The waiter brings the coffee and my brother downs a tall glass of water in one go and wipes his mouth again with his napkin. We sit in silence. Family, yes, but this is too close. Did Isabel fall in love with him because he is her father? I pick up my glass.
‘I don’t think so, you know,’ I say after a few sips. ‘I would have felt something familiar about her. And I didn’t. I still don’t. There’s nothing about her that’s like you.’
‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ he says. And then he says, ‘That’s why I forgot your tapestry. I had it unframed and I was going to roll it up and put it in my bag at the last minute, but with all that stuff coming at me, I just completely forgot.’
We have a long drive back into Alexandria and out of it again and all the way to our beach house.
Thirty stars shine
On the valley of cypresses
Thirty stars fall
On the valley of cypresses …
We listen in silence to the tape of Sabreen he has brought back from Ramallah.
When we get to the house I make tea and serve it in the living room. We settle into our cane chairs and my brother looks at me.
‘You grow more beautiful each time I see you,’ he says.
Surprised, I run my hand through my hair tangled with the salt sea air.
‘It’s true,’ he says. ‘Is there someone around?’
I shake my head. I consider telling him about Tareq ‘Attiyah.
‘There should be,’ he says.
‘No thank you,’ I say, ‘I’m done with all that.’
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘That’s ridiculous. A woman like you?’
‘I’m through.’ I smile. ‘Unless, of course, I find someone like you.’
‘Nonsense,’ he says. ‘You don’t want anything to do with someone like me.’
‘At least we know for sure you’re not my father.’
‘For God’s sake, Amal! This isn’t a joking matter —’
‘You are not her father.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know.’
‘How do you know?’
‘There are too many coincidences in this thing already. She finds this trunk, you meet her and it turns out you’re cousins. That’s enough, surely?’
‘What? Bad art? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Look. Tell her and do a DNA.’
He groans. ‘I told you I didn’t want this,’ he says. ‘I told you it was going to be trouble.’
12 September 1901
I should not have thought I would mind so much. I met today two ladies with whom I had a slight acquaintance — I say ‘met’ but that is hardly accurate: I went into the jeweller’s on rue Qasr el-Nil and they were there and, naturally — I did not stop to think — I bade them a good afternoon, whereupon they looked away and made a great business of gathering their purses and parasols and left the shop immediately, all the while being careful to preserve a studiedly blank expression on their faces. Six months ago they would have been flattered that I recognised them.
I continued with my business, made my purchase and left — the shopkeeper pretending that he had noticed nothing. But my hands were frozen the while and for a few moments I could hardly see the trinkets laid out before me. I will tell no one of this — least of all my husband, for I can imagine his hurt and anger on my behalf — but any hope I had of one day resuming a normal relationship with my compatriots here must now be set aside. If Mrs Butcher seemed extraordinary to me before, she seems doubly so today and I shall make sure I value her friendship accordingly. I do not truly set store by the good opinion of these ladies — and yet I am wounded.
This incident will, I am sure, be a source of satisfaction at many dinner tables —
23
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
17 December 1901
Painting is a kind of visual poetry as poetry is a kind of verbal painting. If you ask me about the Prophetic Tradition ‘Those who will be most severely tormented on the Day of Judgement are the image-makers’, I would say that this Tradition comes from the days of idolatry, when images were made as empty entertainment or with the purpose of setting them up in shrines to worship and implore. If both these motives are absent and painting or sculpture is attended by a seriousness of purpose, then the representation of the human or the animal form is of the same standing as the representations of flowers and other plants which we find decorating the margins of the Quran itself since ancient times. On the whole I would regard serious art as a means to elevate the emotions and educate the spirit —
‘It is preposterous,’ Sharif Basha explodes, the letter from Muhammad Abdu in his hand, ‘preposterous that we should need this — this testimonial before we dare set up a school. What are we? A nation of infants?’
‘Ya Sidi, calm yourself! At least we have an enlightened friend in the Mufti. I should have thought you would be glad to get his endorsement?’ Ismail Basha Sabri raises a quizzical eyebrow as he regards his friend.
‘It is I myself who asked for it.’ Sharif Basha strides the room impatiently. ‘But it galls me that every basic thing should have to be spelled out again and again. Art elevates the spirit. Don’t we know this? After five thousand years? Do we have to keep going back to the beginning?’
Ismail Sabri spreads out his hands in a gesture of momentary helplessness. ‘These are difficult times,’ he says.
Sharif Basha frowns. ‘Let us go,’ he says abruptly, folding the letter and putting it into his pocket. ‘Let
us go and get this over with.’
The two men pause to adjust their cravats in the great mirror in the hall of Ismail Sabri’s house. They settle their tarbushes on their heads and get into the waiting carriage.
‘But you have seen Urabi already, since his return?’ Ismail Sabri asks.
‘I called on him. But we were alone, and it was before these recent … developments.’
‘Perhaps he won’t be there,’ Ismail Sabri suggests, as the carriage rattles through the dark streets and they lean back in their opposite corners.
‘Let us hope so,’ Sharif Basha says. ‘But I believe he is not even aware of the effect he is having. That the day should come,’ he says, ‘when I find myself siding with Mustafa Kamel against Urabi!’
‘Whatever possessed him to give such an interview?’ Ismail Sabri wonders. ‘To say he is happy to see the British in Egypt? After all these years?’
‘He has gone senile. Turned into another foolish old man. He should have sensed a trap the moment al-Muqattam approached him.’
‘He was never very clever,’ Ismail Sabri says. ‘He was patriotic and brave, and he had presence. But he was not clever.’
‘He should have remained silent. Come home if he wished, but remained silent.’
And there indeed is Ahmad Urabi. Sharif Basha spots him the moment he enters Wisa Basha Wasif’s salamlek. The room is crowded with men come to celebrate the return of Wisa Basha’s son from Europe. Smoke and the buzz of conversation and the clink of glasses and beyond it all Urabi stands alone. The head that towers over most men in the room is grizzled now, the beard completely white. Our own Garibaldi’, Sharif Basha thinks bitterly, even as he feels again that surge of affection he had felt when he had called on his father’s old commander upon his return from exile at the end of September. A historic affection now, and suffused with sadness. It angers him that Urabi should now, at the end, have betrayed the Revolution — but it pains him to see the old man stand so markedly alone. He seeks out Wisa Basha and says a few words of congratulation, then makes for Urabi’s corner. He is aware of heads turning as he greets the old man and yet, beyond enquiring after his health and that of his family, he finds himself with nothing to say and is relieved when Mustafa Basha Fahmi eventually strolls over. Well, both men are avowed friends of the British and can converse with each other freely. After a moment he leaves them together — the prime minister and the failed revolutionary — and turns away. Anna is upstairs with the women. He wonders if she is near the lattice, if she is even now watching him. But he does not, of course, raise his eyes to the haramlek. ‘Sharif Pasha al-Baroudi?’
