by Ahdaf Soueif
He turns. Milton Bey stands before him. Sharif Basha takes the extended hand briefly and steps back.
‘I believe we have never been properly introduced,’ Milton Bey says.
‘I regret, Milton Bey, I speak no English,’ Sharif Basha says in French.
‘Ah! Quel dommage!’ The physician gives him a shrewd look. ‘My French is very poor. We have need of an interpreter.’
Sharif Basha bows slightly and when Milton Bey is accosted by Ibrahim Bey al-Hilbawi, he excuses himself and turns away. He has nothing against Milton Bey: a doctor who came to Egypt and opened a hospital and is doing good work by all accounts. He is even training some young Egyptians. But the man has never spoken to him before; why come up so publicly to greet him? Is it being said now, of him, that he is a friend of the British? Sharif Basha is frowning when Qasim Amin puts a hand on his shoulder.
‘We are at a wedding, ya Basha,’ he says.
Sharif Basha smiles. ‘May we dance at yours,’ he teases his friend.
‘You know my opinions,’ Qasim Amin says. ‘But if I were lucky like some —’
‘I shall pray for you.’
‘I have been meaning to congratulate you.’ Prince Muhammad Ibrahim joins them. ‘You did a good job in the Council stopping that new tax. I was just talking to Mustafa Kamel about it.’
‘The Council does what it can.’ Sharif Basha shrugs. ‘But our opinion, as you know, is not binding.’
‘It was a nasty move, though,’ Qasim Amin says.
‘They will try again —’
‘I wonder Cromer has the face to do it,’ Prince Muhammad Ibrahim says. ‘To try to tax local textile manufacture. Even thread! To beat down our industry to give an advantage to theirs?’
‘Shameless,’ Qasim Amin says.
‘We stopped it in the Council, but let us hope the General Assembly does not pass it next year.’
‘We shall have to talk to each one of them,’ Prince Muhammad Ibrahim says. ‘And Mustafa Kamel will keep the case alive in al-Liwa.’
‘A carriage,’ Sharif Basha says to the doorman.
‘Your carriage is here, ya Basha. I’ll get the driver —’
‘No. I’m leaving that for the ladies. Just get me a carriage for hire.’
He has had enough. He cannot shake off his restlessness tonight. The letter from Muhammad Abdu giving him what he wanted, Urabi among the guests — If he were in Tawasi, or in the desert, he would gallop it off. If he were in Alexandria or by the Red Sea, he would go into the water. He is possessed by a sudden desire — almost a need — to go swimming. He imagines diving into the cold water, swimming, swimming against a strong current that would blank out his mind and leave him empty. But he is in Cairo, so he climbs into the waiting carriage.
‘Touloun,’ he says to the driver. There is no point in going to the Club; everybody is at the reception. He takes his watch out of his pocket: it will be at least another hour before Anna gets back. They drive past his sister’s house in Hilmiyya and then his own shuttered house, the old horse trotting doggedly, his head held low. He gives the driver the name of the street.
‘Near Beit el-Ingeliziyya?’ the man asks. He is a rough, uncouth fellow, slouching on his box, flicking his whip by his horse’s ears for no reason.
‘What did you say?’
‘Near the house of the Englishwoman?’ the driver repeats.
‘It is called the House of Baroudi, ya hayawan,’ Sharif Basha says, ‘not the House of the Englishwoman.’
‘But there is an Englishwoman living there,’ the man insists. ‘It’s well known: she fell in love with the Basha and married him. It’s a known story.’
‘And is something the matter with that?’ Sharif Basha growls.
‘Not at all. They say she is a good woman and does not go out except veiled even though the Basha did not make her become Muslim. But they say she’s like the moon: what whiteness, what —’
‘Let me off here!’
‘And then it must be good for the Basha. They rule us in any case —’
And what good would it have done to whip him? Sharif Basha leaves his tarbush in the hall and wrenches off his cravat as he walks through the silent house. The man was only saying what everybody must be saying. First Milton Bey greets him like a friend, then a arbagi calls his house ‘beit el-ingeUziyya’ …
Hasna gets to her feet as he arrives at his apartment.
‘Go to bed,’ he says.
‘But Setti —’
‘I shall tell her. Go.’
She is a curiosity, he tells himself. If he had bought a giraffe, people would have called his house ‘Beit el-Zarafa’. It has nothing to do with her being English.
In Anna’s room her atmosphere washes over him, laps at his jagged edges. The large wardrobe he persuaded her to have built fits discreetly into one wall, the frames of its mirrored doors echoing the woodwork of the mashrabiyya. The flowers on the low inlaid table pick out the colours of the cushions heaped on the diwan. The mirror above the dressing table reflects the graceful loop of the mosquito net above the bed. Her silk dressing gown, a soft white with a hint of bluish grey, the colour of doves, is draped over the back of a chair. He has only to come in here, even in her absence, and her tranquil spirit gently breathes its way into his own. Her journal lies on her table. She had looked up from her writing when he came into the room and said, ‘You can read English, can you not?’ And he had to admit he could — ‘a little,’ he said. ‘This has no lock,’ she said, her hand on the big green book, ‘I have no secrets from you.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘no. I am content with what you tell me.’
He throws his jacket and waistcoat on a chair and goes back downstairs and into the library. Sometimes it seems to him it could vanish in a breath, this world she has made for him, right here alongside his own — but different. She had looked splendid tonight when she came down to say goodbye, shimmering in violet silk, her hair like a cluster of golden flowers on top of her head.
‘All the ladies wear European dress to parties,’ she had murmured, half apologising, as he looked at her.
‘You look beautiful,’ he had said, and bent to kiss the top of her arm where the skin glowed between the violet of her dress and the soft black of her long glove.
Now he stands at his desk and surveys the papers spread out before him. The draft for the manifesto of the art school, the draft project for an Egyptian university, the draft for the bylaws of a workers’ union, the text of the speech delivered by the Khedive to Wingate in Khartoum: ‘… it is a source of the greatest joy to me to see you here in this wide land … the British and the Egyptian flags fluttering side by side … ‘ A disgraceful speech, almost certainly written for him by the Agency. And who knows how ‘Abbas Hilmi might have turned out in different circumstances? He had been willing to do good. They might have made a constitutional monarch of him. As it was, he had ascended the throne and each time he made a move Cromer threatened him with his guns. Now all his intelligence had curdled into cunning and all his energy was gone into plotting and making money, and the British could despise him as much as they wished and be right to do so.
Sharif Basha lights a cigarette and moves away from his desk. He sits down in an armchair, leans back and closes his eyes. He wonders what his father would make of Urabi’s interview in al-Muqattam. It is just as well that he will not read it.
When he opens his eyes they meet the heavy wine-red curtains veiling the wooden doors that in spring will stand open once again to lead into the courtyard of his childhood. It has taken weeks to move all his things out of Hilmiyya. Now his books are arranged in the bookcases that line three walls of the library. His desk sits at an angle in the far corner. He had hesitated over moving into what used to be his father’s favourite room, but his mother and his sister had both urged it and the old man had smiled and nodded and looked kindly when he went to ask his permission. The house in Hilmiyya is closed down and no one remains there but the gardener.
Anna
had looked doubtful when the cushioned armchairs and the big rosewood desk had been carried in. ‘I’m sorry,’ he had said to her, ‘I have lost the knack.’ And she had blushed as he read her thoughts, then rallied and said, ‘I suppose you can still be an authentic Egyptian and sit at a desk.’ And when he thought about it he realised that even in Sheikha ‘Aisha’s kuttab in Tawasi he had never learned to sit comfortably cross-legged and work at a wooden floor-desk. But she had had the cushions covered in the plain, coarse kittan from his fields, and the new furniture had merged comfortably with the old room, where he sits and reflects on what it means to have inherited from his father like this while the old man is still alive.
He stubs out his cigarette and leaves the room. He goes out into the cold courtyard and crosses into the smaller one next to it. He pushes open the door of the shrine and Mirghani, who lies sleeping on a wooden pallet inside, sits up.
‘There’s nothing,’ Sharif Basha says. ‘Go to sleep.’
The big room is dark except for the candles that light up the simple tomb. Sharif Basha picks up a candle and, shading it with his free hand, he enters the inner room and stands looking down at his father. The old man lies on his back under some blankets, snoring gently, one thin foot uncovered and almost falling off the edge of the low, narrow bed. His mouth is slightly open and his head is bare. How long has it been since Sharif Basha has seen him without a turban? His pale scalp shows through the thin white hair. He is old. The day is not far off when it will fall to his son to close those eyes, to stop that mouth with cotton wool and wash the thin body and wrap it and carry it down into the family tomb. And how he had loved him! Sharif Basha squats down and holds the candle close to his father’s face, trying to find again the laughing, handsome face he had adored as a child, as a young boy. When he brought home his reports, when he graduated from law school, each step he made, his first thought had been to make his father proud of him. And how proud he had been of his father in his army uniform. And prouder yet when he joined Urabi’s movement with his older brother, Mahmoud Sami. Looking into the sleeping face, Sharif Basha al-Baroudi re-imagines once again the scene twenty years ago with his father and the other officers behind Urabi at Abdin, Auckland Colvin at the Khedive’s side urging him to shoot, Urabi putting up his sword and Tewfiq hesitant but summoning up a weak-chinned anger:
‘You are nothing but the slaves of our charity.’
And Urabi’s reply, taken up by the whole country: ‘We are owned by no one and shall not be enslaved beyond this day.’
He goes through the demands they had drawn up and the nation had learned by heart — had they been too much for men to ask? Could Urabi have known that demanding reform of the Khedive would bring the whole weight of the British Empire down on the country? Sharif Basha stands up. None of them were clever enough. A collection of army officers, poets and lawyers — even Urabi would sooner hold forth on Byron than discuss strategy. Patriots but not politicians. And they had paid a heavy price. He lays his hand gently on his father’s balding head.
I wanted nothing more than to go home to him. But Layla and Zeinab Hanim thought it proper to stay until the suhur was served, and it would have been discourteous to leave without them. I had sensed the darkness of his mood when I went to bid him goodbye before I left the house, and when I looked down from the haramlek and saw him standing silent at the side of Urabi Basha my heart went out to him, for I know how that old gentleman troubles him.
I CAN SAY IN ALL truth that my brother and Anna found happiness and joy in their marriage. And Anna lived among us in gentleness and mercy. She brought companionship to my mother and love to my son and even some joy to the heart of my poor father. And for me, she became my close friend, for she had none of the arrogance or the coldness we were used to imagining in her countrymen, so that we almost forgot that she was English except that she would wonder at things and admire things that we were so accustomed to that we no longer saw them or thought about them, and the result of this was to make us look afresh at the things surrounding us and, seeing them through her eyes, find them fascinating once again.
It was enough to see her face light up when we heard the sounds that told us my brother was come home, or to catch the sudden tenderness that came into his eyes when he looked at her, to realise the depth of the love that had grown between those two strange hearts. And I remember once my brother came upon us while we were making music together: she at the piano he had bought her and I with the oud I had learned from Husni’s mother. We were playing a piece by Debussy that we had modified to allow room for the oud and we did not hear him come in or realise he was there till we heard the sound of applause and when I turned I was almost sure I saw tears in his eyes, and the blood rose to Anna’s face as it always did when she was taken by surprise and she went to him and he took her in his arms in front of me and said, ‘By God, in my whole life I have not heard music sweeter than this.’
But she was not able to bring him peace of mind. It was as though he was angry that his happy private life should exist within public circumstances that he hated. Or as though he longed that his personal happiness should extend to encompass all of Egypt. We all felt his impatience and his desire for change grow more acute, and he worked constantly to bring about this change in all the spheres in which he was involved. And Anna started to help him, to translate for him from the British newspapers, and to use her connections in England to bring him what news she could that had a bearing on life here.
21 December 1901
Yesterday my husband invited a number of the most noted leaders of Egyptian public opinion to a Ramadan Iftar. Among the guests were Sheikh Muhammad Abdu, Mustafa Bey Kamel, Qasim Bey Amin, Tal ‘at Basha Harb, Ahmad Lutfì al-Sayyid, Anton al-Jmayyil and a few others. His idea — his hope — was that they might be able, through amicable and private discussion, to agree upon positions that they could publicly hold in common upon certain questions. On some matters they were all agreed, and the first among these was the ending of the Occupation and the payment of the foreign debt. Beyond that they were agreed in general upon the need to modernise Egypt. Surely they could agree on other, more detailed questions?
‘You know what they are discussing?’ Layla says, nodding towards the curtains.
Anna shakes her head, glancing up for a moment from her paper, the pencil still in her hand.
‘They are discussing us,’ Layla says, a small smile forming on her lips as she bends her head again to her sewing.
‘How? Discussing us?’ Anna asks, intrigued.
‘Here —’ Layla leans over, riffles through the newspapers and magazines lying untidily on the low table by the diwan and comes up with a small book in a plain cover. She holds it up. Anna puts down her sketch pad and rises from her cushions to take it. She spells out the title as she sits down next to Layla:
‘Al-Maah al-Jadidah, “The New Woman”?’
‘Well done!’ cries Layla, clapping her hands. ‘See how well she is learning, Mama?’
‘She’s quick, the name of the Prophet guard her.’ Mabrouka has come in with the coffee tray. She puts it down on the floor and sits cross-legged in front of it, her bracelets jangling as she settles, adjusts, makes herself comfortable. Zeinab Hanim smiles, her eyes on the ledger of household accounts open in front of her.
‘May God always open the paths for her.’
‘So,’ says Layla, branching off into a pedagogic side stream; ‘what if, instead of having this —’ changing two diacritics on the cover of the book — ‘we had this instead? What would it be?’
Anna gazes at the word. ‘Mir aah’?’ she hazards.
‘Right,’ says Layla, ‘and what does that mean?’
Anna shakes her head. Layla points at the large mirror on the left wal
. ‘Mirror?’
‘Yes,’ Layla nods.
‘But why are the two words so close?’ Anna asks. ‘ “Woman” and “mirror”?’
‘Well, “mirror” must be from “raa”:
to see. But I don’t know where “woman” comes in — oh, wait — mar’ is “person” so marah is the feminine. Can it be that mar has to do with being visible?’ She turns to her mother. ‘What do you think, Mama? Mar from being visible?’
‘Is it just people who are visible, child? Animals and trees and all the created world is visible.’
‘Perhaps it is only people who see themselves —’
‘Some see with their eyes, some see with their hearts. The name of the Prophet preserve you and guard you.’ Mabrouka presents a cup of coffee to Zeinab Hanim.
‘We’ll have to look it up,’ says Layla. ‘Or ask Abeih.’
‘Do you think “mirror” came from “mir’ah”?’ Anna says.
‘I don’t know,’ Layla says. ‘Who had mirrors first?’
‘If it comes from a root in Arabic,’ says Anna, ‘it must have originated in the language.’
‘You’ll have to look that one up,’ says Layla.
‘But what about this book?’ Anna says. ‘And why did you say they were talking about us?’
‘The author —’ Layla points at his name on the book — ‘is down there, with Abeih. This is his second book. When the first came out there was such a fuss he was even banned from the Palace. He says women shouldn’t have to wear the veil and girls should be educated just like boys — Isn’t that so, Mama?’ She says it again in Arabic.
