by Ahdaf Soueif
I still paint and sketch but my new passion is weaving. My husband has bought a middling-size loom for me and — after I had asked him whether he meant to absent himself for twenty years — I have quite taken to it. I find that when I work at it I am still a part of everything that surrounds me. It is not like reading or writing, when you are necessarily cut off from everything so that you may not hear when you are spoken to — indeed you may look up and be surprised to find yourself where you are, so transported were you by what is on the page. When I work at the loom I am still part of things and it seems as if the sounds and the smells and the people coming and going all somehow get into the weave. I can see you thinking ‘Ah! Anna is getting metaphysical’, but I am really most practical, for when I work at it I can still join in with Ahmad’s chatter. When I paint I am always afraid of smudges and one has to get to a certain point or the light will change or the colours go dry. And then there is the pleasure of using the object you make — oh, I forget myself and preach. Preach weaving, now that’s a comical notion. But truly, I believe that my sitting at the loom in his courtyard has brought some pleasure to old Baroudi Bey —
17 December 1901
Sharif Basha straightens the covers over his father. He gently moves the old man’s foot in from the edge of the bed and covers it with the blanket. Then he leaves the room.
It was here, outside the shrine, that he had first come upon his father and Anna at their lessons: the fair head and the turbaned one bent over the book, his father’s finger, trembling slightly, pointing to something on the page, Anna looking up, her violet eyes smiling into the old man’s face. Anna. He walks back to the house. Her contentment delights him. If she is content. He watches out for signs of restlessness. It would not surprise him — God knows he would be restless in her position. He keeps her supplied with paints and paper, with every sheet of music he can find. When she exclaimed over a tapestry, he had a loom sent round and a woman to teach her how to use it. She set up the loom in the courtyard by his father’s door and there she would sit, working slowly as she learned this new art while the old man watched the balls of brilliant silk twitch and roll in the sunshine. ‘God has compensated you well for your patience,’ his mother said, and his heart was warm as he watched this strange wife of his busy herself around the old house as though this was where she had always wanted to spend her days. And his heart was full when she came to him in his bed as though this was how she had always wanted to spend her nights.
‘I told Hasna to go to bed. You have no need of her tonight.’ He fumbles as he unclasps, unhooks, unties. He loses patience before it is all done and, crushing the silk, the lace, the yielding body beneath him, he groans into her neck, ‘Oh, Anna, Anna! You have no idea how much I love you.’
1 January 1902
‘Hubb’ is love, ‘;ishq’ is love that entwines two people together, ‘shaghaf’ is love that nests in the chambers of the heart, ‘hayam’ is love that wanders the earth, ‘teeh’ is love in which you lose yourself, ‘walah’ is love that carnes sorrow within it, ‘sababah’ is love that exudes from your pores, ‘hawa’ is love that shares its name with ‘air’ and with ‘falling’, ‘gharam’ is love that is willing to pay the price.
I have learned so much this past year, I could not list all the things I have learned.
24
That moment when we dreamed we could change the face of our world was a luxury which later generations were denied. But for that short, dazzling moment we paid a heavy price.
Arwa Salih, 1997
15 September 1997
Three Palestinian suicide bombers killed seven people in West Jerusalem. An Israeli army unit tried to land in Ansariyyeh in southern Lebanon and was fought off by the people and an Amal unit killing eleven Israeli troops. ‘Arafat and Hussein arrived in Cairo for a summit meeting with Mubarak. An Israeli soldier shot randomly at thirty Palestinians in a bus in Hebron. One hundred and seventy Palestinians were arrested on the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority also arrested thirty-five members of Hamas and Israel arrested sixty-seven other Palestinians. In Algeria forty-nine were killed and sixty wounded in the Beni Sous district in the capital, sixty-four were killed in Beni Musa and one hundred and thirty-seven alleged terrorists were killed in Jibal al-Shari’ah. One hundred and thirty Algerians who had fled their country were killed when their ship collided with another off the coast of Nigeria. The United Nations had to borrow from its peacekeeping budget to pay its staff and Princess Diana died and five million joined her funeral. Mother Teresa died. Mobutu died. Austria agreed to compensate victims of the Nazis for their stolen gold. These were some of the things that happened during the two weeks that my brother stayed with me. I know because he could not last for two hours without reading a paper or switching on some radio or TV news channel.
He got restless with the beach and we went back to Cairo, where each morning he took seven Arabic papers and last thing at night we went down to Midan Talat Harb so he could get the English and French ones. He bought me a PC and had me connected up to the Net. I told him that I had made contact with Tareq Atiyya and that he was going to help with the school on Tawasi. I did not tell him about Tareq’s plans for his land and I did not arrange for the two men to meet.
Isabel called and said she was staying in New York for a while as she had to sort out all the legal matters relating to her parents. I’m clogging up a room for you,’ she says.
‘It’s your room,’ I say.
‘You can move my things if you like,’ she says.
‘It’s your room,’ I say again. ‘Everything will stay as you left it.’
I know she was waiting for him to go back. When he speaks to her I can hear his voice shift into a deeper and more resonant pitch: the pitch of sexual tenderness. But he is unwilling to commit himself. He goes on about being fifty-five.
‘You look wonderful,’ I say, ‘you act thirty.’
‘But I’m not,’ he says. ‘And I am tired of explaining. If I am to be with a woman she has to be someone who knows it all. Someone who doesn’t need to be told.’
‘Knows all what?’ I ask, although I know what he means.
‘Everything.’
‘What? Egypt, Palestine, America, your kids, your music, the past, the future? Come on —’
‘She doesn’t have to know the future.’ He grins.
He planned concerts in Ghazzah and Jericho and Qana. They were to be free so he had his manager working to find sponsors. I said he should have one in the Said — and come to Tawasi. In the odd times when he went out alone, I worked on my Anna story. I would not show him my manuscript, but I showed him Anna’s journals, her letters, her candle-glass, her white shawl. I showed him the great green flag with the Cross and the Crescent and we unrolled, once again, the length of tapestry that I had found so carefully wrapped in a corner of the trunk; the tapestry that matched h
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, ‘I’ll bring it next time.’
We clipped the panel to a couple of hangers and hooked it on a high bookshelf: Osiris, seated. You would know him anywhere by his dark face, his shrouded body, the hands crossed over his chest carrying the sceptre and the flail. Above his tall crown, painstakingly woven in curling Diwani script, every diacritic meticulously in place, the single Arabic word ‘al-mayyit’.
10 May 1905
My husband lies sleeping and I am so restless with the baby that I cannot sleep. For weeks now I have been unable to lie down but must needs sleep propped up on cushions like an invalid. It is a small enough price to pay for the happiness this unborn child has already brought us but that I am tired and listless for lack of sleep and everyone is constantly telling me that I must build up my strength for the birth.
I am afraid of the birth. I cannot pretend otherwise. My husband has tried repeatedly to persuade me to engage the services of a British physician and he has even — once only, and that in the early days — suggested that I might like to go ‘home’ to be confined among ‘my
people’. I have refused both offers and said I could not feel safer or better cared for than I am here in this house. I am determined that I will not countenance any anangement that might hinder his joy in the occasion. He has much need of joy now for the Entente has cast its shadow widely over Egypt and, though he continues to strive and work for her good, there is that heaviness in the air which betokens the ebbing away of hope.
TOWARDS THE END OF 1904 Anna fell pregnant. My mother surrounded her with tenderness and as for my brother, if Anna had asked for bird’s milk he would have brought it to her. We had particular reason to be grateful to her for bringing this new happiness into our lives at this time. For in April of that year, and after Madame Juliette Adams had toured Egypt, hosted and feted by all the Nationalist Notables and even banqueted by Efendeena, France and Britain declared the Entente Cordiale, giving France a free hand against Morocco in exchange for letting Britain do what she would in Egypt. For seven months we campaigned and made representations. They came to nothing and the Entente was declared ratified. Then ‘Abbas Hilmi broke our hearts by standing with Cromer under the British flag in the court of Abdin Palace and surveying the Army of Occupation on the occasion of King Edward’s Birthday.
Cairo
12 May 1905
Dear James,
I have received yours of 10 March with the picture of your new house in Chelsea. It looks delightful and if we ever come to England you may he certain of a visit. I am sure your mama is most happy to have you near her.
We are expecting our baby in early June and there is a great fuss being made of me. I am not permitted to make or buy anything for the baby, however, until it is born, as that would bring bad luck. The rules and edicts concerning Fate and the Stars and what acts bring Good Fortune and what bring Bad are laid down by Mabrouka, an old Ethiopian serving-woman who is my belle-mère’s childhood companion. Even Sharif Basha more or less heeds her, for she was his nanny when he was a child.
Ahmad is now five years old and is a very handsome little boy. I believe he has a musical gift for he happily spends much time with me at the piano and can already play tolerably well. We have told him I am growing a little cousin for him and he daily enquires how the baby is doing and whether some bit of it has not appeared that he might see it.
Our household is a happy one, although the waves created by the Entente Cordiale are felt everywhere and no one knows where they will end. The Khedive, for one, has abandoned all hope of being a true Ruler and now gives free rein to his cupidity. He tried to engineer a land deal of advantage to himself in Mushtuhur, but Sheikh Muhammad Abdu — as being responsible for Awqaf — put a stop to it. Since then the Palace and its newspapers have mounted a virulent attack on the sheikh and — since Lord Cromer supported Muhammad Abdu in this matter — the attack takes the form of publishing scandalous (and counterfeit) pictures of Muhammad Abdu drinking and consorting with foreign women. It has had the effect of provoking his resignation from the Board of al-Azhar and indeed has made him so ill that it is a cause of grave concern to us all
I have heard that there is talk in London that Cromer is negotiating with Eldon Gorst that he hand over Egypt to him, on condition that Gorst hands it to Cromer’s son Errington in later years. You would think he was the Monarch here. And indeed it seems that he imagines himself so now — although I suppose we have to thank him for putting an end to the al-Arish project in Sinai. But he has lately been touring the Provinces in a kind of Triumphal Progress which sits most ill with people of patriotic feeling.
I had not heard of the al-Arish project. Once again I enlisted the help of my son in London, and his research yielded the following story. In 1902, Herzl, in his search for a homeland, hit upon Cyprus and al-Arish as possibilities. He won the support of Lord Rothschild by describing how the new community of settlers would guard the Suez Canal, sabotage the German-Turkish autobahn project and generally keep an eye on Turkey to the advantage of Britain. With Rothschild’s support he approached Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary. Chamberlain said he could not give him Cyprus but set up an appointment with the foreign secretary, Lord Lansdowne, to discuss al-Arish. Lansdowne duly sent a Mr Greenberg, his friend and confidential agent, to speak to Cromer. Cromer commissioned a feasibility study, but eventually decided that the amount of water needed for the agricultural settlements Herzl wanted could not be spared from the Nile — and the laying-down of pipes would interfere with the Canal for several weeks. And so it was that one evil diverted another.
There is nothing for us to do, however, but continue with the works we are engaged in. I work on L’Egyptienne with the other ladies. We have set up a fund to start a hospital. My husband and his uncle have established a school in Tawasi and we have high hopes of the School of Art, and Mustafa Basha Kamel has already started campaigning for a national University. My husband, having resigned from the Legislative Council in protest at their approving the latest Budget without a murmur (indeed, they thanked the Government for the efforts of all the ministries — another effect of the Entente), is working more with Mustafa Kamel now and together with Yaqub Artin Basha, Hussein Rushdi Basha and some other Notables they have started a campaign for a Graduate Club as a paving of the way for the University.
It is a shame that you have never seen the new Museum, it houses objects of such amazing beauty that alone it would make a visit to Egypt worthwhile. I remember when I first came to Egypt how you spoke to me of the ancient monuments and your regret that the most choice among them had found their way to Europe. I have since found out that your feelings, not surprisingly, are shared by many educated Egyptians, who see in the trade their past being stolen as surely as their present is. It is a source of some sad satisfaction that the French have insisted on the Entente stating that they retain control of the Department of Antiquities, for today the British and the Americans are the gravest threat to the monuments.
Dear James; I have some news that I think will make you happy. I did not tell you of this before, ‘but when you were leaving and were so anxious to secure positions for your staff before your departure, I — knowing of your regard for Sabir and also sensible myself of an affection for him due to his loyalty on that occasion which was to have such far-reaching consequences for me — I asked my husband whether we might not take him on. He refused and I did not press the point, particularly as you then succeeded in placing him in an English household. However, it appears that he was unhappy there. He moved to another, with no better results. A short while ago he presented himself at my husband’s offices, and Sharif Basha consented to see him. He has since then entered my husband’s employ — in the offices, not in the house — where he is being taught to read and write and some use is being made of his knowledge of English, and it seems everyone is well pleased with the arrangement. My husband commends his intelligence and zeal, and Sabir is happy, for I took occasion, when he once delivered some papers to the house, to go down and see him and he told me so himself He ended with his hand on his heart and the wonderful phrase: ‘Ya Sett Hanim, my neck is for you and the Basha. ‘ And I do believe he means it.
I send you two books: the collection of poems compiled by the late Mahmoud Sami Basha, God rest his soul. And the book which everyone here is reading: Muhammad al-Muweilhi’s Hadith Isa ibn Hisham. I hope you enjoy them. At the least they will serve to polish up your Arabic —
WHEN LORD CROMER TOURED THE provinces in triumph in January of 1905, one month after the death of my uncle Mahmoud Sami Basha, it seemed that our cup of bitterness was full to the brim. Many Notables, seeing that there was no present hope of getting rid of the British, vied to host Cromer on his progress through Egypt. And there were those who came to my brother to advise him to abandon a stance that was sentenced to failure, and to say that were he to be in Minya at the appropriate moment so that the Lord might drink tea in his house, it would be well for him and would be counted in the balance for him against his history, his known views and his marriage. My brother remained in
Cairo and Mustapha Bey el-Gham-rawi also removed to Cairo for the duration of the Lord’s Progress. And so it was that Tawasi remained unvisited, as did the lands of al-Minshawi Basha and other of the more steadfast Notables.
Al-Minshawi Basha had personal reasons, besides the public ones, that precluded his offering hospitality to Cromer; for it was the Lord’s policy of combating any nascent national industry that led directly to the bankruptcy of the Basha’s textile factory. Other friends, who had invested in the tobacco and sugar industries, were in similar difficulties, but we were fortunate in that our material fortunes could not be touched by the Occupation and our household was — within the confines of our domestic life — a happy one. Our one concern, in those months, was for Anna and although she made it clear that she lacked no reason for happiness, our sensibilities constantly urged us to compensate her for the absence of a mother or a sister who would naturally have been with her at this time.
21 May 1905
The midwife comes to see me often now, and every time Zeinab Hanim or Layla or my husband set eyes upon me it is ‘let us walk around the garden’ or ‘let us go sit on the roof, so that I have never walked so much nor climbed so many stairs in my life as I do now. Zeinab Hanim shows me exercises that are reputed to ease the birth, Hasna rubs me all over with sweet-smelling oil each day and Mabrouka is scarcely to be seen but she is murmuring incantations and swinging her incense-burner. One of the guestrooms has been prepared as a birthing chamber and the huge birthing chair — which shares certain features with a commode — has been earned into it. There is a bed there too and it will be there that I sleep after my confinement until I may rejoin my husband after forty days.
