by Ahdaf Soueif
He looks at me as though unsure what I am making of all this. He tries to ascertain how strange it is to me and whether there is anything that might be done to make it more familiar and more comforting. But in truth it is so strange — strange to such an extreme degree — that it does not matter any more. For my condition itself is strange and wonderful to me. And as I have had no experience of childbirth — either my own or anyone else’s — I am content to let Zeinab Hanim and Layla take charge and count myself in good hands.
It is as well that this impending baby keeps us happily busy, for so many things have converged upon us in the last few weeks. Our friend Sheikh Muhammad Abdu grows more ill and there is talk that he should go abroad for treatment. The students from the School of Engineering have gone on strike and are marching about the streets in their military uniforms, and we fear it will not be too long before a confrontation takes place between them and the Army. We have just had word that Shukri Bey and other Notables in Jaffa, Nazareth and Jerusalem have been put under house arrest by the authorities for possession of Naguib Azoury’s pamphlet Les Pays arabes aux Arabes. And through it all we hold on to our love and the expectation of the child. At times it seems to me that my baby is being placed in the balance against all the ills of the world. But so far the magic has not failed and my husband smiles to see me grown so big and makes great play of no longer being able to get his arms around me —
Cairo
3 June 1905
My dear Sir Charles,
I am awaiting my confinement daily and although I am in excellent health and spirits and am marvellously well looked after, I have such a sense of imminence that you must forgive me if I show somewhat less reserve than is generally considered proper and write to you today of what is in my heart.
My happiness here is such that every day I am grateful to be alive. And yet, I am greedy. For of all that I have had to leave behind, the loss I am not reconciled with is yours. We cannot come to visit you — will you not come to visit us?
Dear Sir Charles, you were a dear and loving father to me for so many years and you were also my guide in ways which perhaps at the time we were neither of us aware of. Whatever ideas I have of Truth or Justice I first learned from you. Not by direct teaching but from observing the positions you adopted on matters both private and public. My interest in Egypt was first awakened by you and, indeed, I still have the white shawl and the silver-cased coffee cup you brought back in ‘82.
The Entente has been a heavy blow indeed. Many of the Nationalists had counted France as their ally against the British Occupation. And although my husband has never been one of those who put their trust in France, he sees this new Entente as heralding an age where Britain can do what she will in Egypt with no thought for the opinion of the world.
Now there is nowhere to turn but to British Public Opinion. I have been thinking of Ireland and of how whatever progress the Irish Question was vouchsafed, it only came about because there were people in England prepared to state Ireland’s case. It was their good fortune that they were able to state it in English and that there were those among our rulers whom they could count as their friends. This is not how things stand for Egypt, for — besides yourself and Mr Blunt — there is no one to state Egypt’s case. (I had, I confess, expected Mr Kennel Rodd to do something.) However, I have come to believe that the fact that it falls to Englishmen to speak for Egypt is in itself perceived as a weakness; for how can the Egyptians govern themselves, people ask, when they cannot even speak for themselves? They cannot speak because there is no platform for them to speak from and because of the difficulties with language. By that I mean not just the ability to translate Arabic speech into English but to speak as the English themselves would speak, for only then will the justice of what they say — divested of its disguising cloak of foreign idiom — be truly apparent to those who hear it.
Well, what if there were someone, an Egyptian, who could address British public opinion in a way that it would understand? Someone who could use the right phrases, employ the apt image or quotation, strike the right note and so reach the hearts and minds of the British people? And what if a platform were secured for such a person? Is it not worth a try?
I know that the case of Ireland is different from that of Egypt. But there are aspects of that difference which are in Egypt’s favour; for surely the interests of Britain in Egypt are not yet so entangled that they might not be gently pulled apart without harm? There are no British settlers who have lived for years upon the land. The number of British officials here-although certainly too large in the view of the Egyptians — is not so large that their dislodging would constitute a serious problem. It is merely a matter of removing the Army of Occupation. And no Egyptian whom I know is not in favour of economic reform or of paying off Egypt’s debts. Indeed they would be more willing to be guided by Britain in economic and financial matters if the guidance were that of an elected Friend rather than an imposed Guardian.
Dear Sir Charles, will you help me?
Oh, if you could see the fields, tall with sugar cane, or purple and blue with the flower of the kittan. If you could see the children, making kangaroo-pockets of their galabiyyas to gather in them the new-plucked cotton. If you could see the ancient willow trees trailing their hair in the running canals and see Nestorian monks heading back to their monastery while the call of the muezzin unfurls its banner in the reddening sky! This is a land where God is unceasingly manifest.
Forgive me. I ramble and am grown overwrought. Our beloved friend Sheikh Muhammad Abdu is gravely ill and we fear for him. Come and visit us when I am safely delivered, for I long to place my child in your arms —
ANNA WAS DELIVERED SAFELY OF her baby and we named the child Nur al-Hayah, for she did truly bring light into all our lives.
When my brother’s most beloved friend, Sheikh Muhammad Abdu, died three weeks after the birth, Nur al-Hayah was the one most able to give her father solace. He carried the baby in his arms, he walked her up and down when she cried, he attended her bath and wrapped her tenderly in her soft white towels. From the day she was born, Nur al-Hayah was beautiful. She had her mother’s fair colouring and her violet eyes, and she had my brother’s dark hair. He would sit and gaze into her face and bend to kiss the tiny foot. And although Mabrouka did her duty and secretly placed the baby’s first nail clippings into Abeih’s waistcoat pocket to ensure his constant love, it was clear that he had lost his heart to her without the aid of magic. In fact, my father, Husni and Ahmad all fell in love with little Nur immediately, and when I think of her now I see a smiling infant, surrounded on all sides by our love and attention.
October 1905
I am content. If I look at myself with my old eyes, I see an indolent woman. A woman content to lie on a cushion in the garden, in this miraculous October sunshine, watching the stillness of the sleeping fruit trees and the changes of the light. Each thing that happens — and there are things that happen; small things — adds to my contentment, until I would say, as they do here, May God bring this to a good end. I hear Ahmad’s laugh ring out from somewhere in the house. My baby stirs on the cushion beside me. I slip a finger into her curled hand and I cannot resist kissing the comer of her mouth. Nur al-Hayah, light of our lives. I think of her father and feel that melting of my limbs as I sense again his breath, his smell, the warmth of his hand gentle on me. I think of his kisses, and how he would pause, his hand on my face, to look into my eyes. His eyes are intent and a small smile touches his lips. I stir and as the pause lengthens I murmur, ‘Please. ‘
‘Please what?’ he whispers.
‘Kiss me.’
‘Why?’
I try to raise my head, to reach his lips, but his hand is in my hair and he holds my head back. His mouth is just out of my reach but I feel our breaths mingle.
Cairo
15 November 1905
My dear Caroline,
Has it really been so long since our last exchange? I know it has. And that kn
owledge was borne most powerfully upon me by the joy with which I recognised your writing on the letter I received today. I do most happily accept your congratulations on the birth of Nur and your wishes for us both. Had circumstances been different, I would have wished you to be her Godmother — might you not consider yourself so, after a fashion?
You do not tell me much about yourself or the children -five years older now than when last I saw them. I know from Sir Charles that all is well with you, but I would be glad of some proper news.
Nur is the most adorable baby and inspires the most tender affection in everyone around her. For myself I am in love with everything of her down to her tiny pink toes. This will not surprise you, with your experience, but I had not thought motherhood would be so wonderful.
She is smiling now, and I fancy her babbling is the start of words. Sharif Basha says I should speak to her in English. I believe he fears I miss my own tongue for — as I think I wrote you a long time ago — all our conversations here are conducted in French, although my Arabic is now quite usable.
It is true, though, that I use English only for writing and -sometimes — singing. It would be such a pleasure for me to use it in speech to you, my dear friend …
Cairo
20 November 1905
Dear James,
Thank you so much for the Tatler. I have been studying the evening gowns with Eugénie, with the result that we shall be visiting Madame Marthe, I think, quite soon! I wear Egyptian dress most of the time now but in the evening, for receptions and soirées, one is obliged to dress in the latest European fashion and I have had nothing made since I grew big with Nur.
Mrs Butcher arrived this afternoon just as Madame Rushdi was leaving and we had a very pleasant time together. She was quite unable to let go of the baby, dandling and petting her all the while. She told me a most amusing story about our old friend Mr Gairdner who, after much trouble, succeeded — as he thought — in the conversion of one boatman. He took the man in and gave him a room and prayed with him constantly, but after three days the man’s wife came looking for him and it transpired that the conversion had taken place under the effect of a matrimonial quarrel! Reconciled to his wife, the boatman apologised to Mr Gairdner, thanked him and took his leave, returning home with his wife. Mrs Butcher says Mr Gairdner was quite cast down but has since recovered his normal exuberance and is determined to redouble his efforts in the service of the Church.
My husband urges me to celebrate Christmas in church this year, but I do not believe I shall. Even though Mrs Butcher — I think — would be kind enough to have me sit with her, it would be too uncomfortable. Can you not just see the heads bending towards each other, the ostentatious shifting of skirts and then the staring straight ahead? I would find it impossible to attend to the service or enjoy the singing. It would be more an act of defiance than worship and it seems wrong to taint Christmas in such a manner. I have made a Christmas cake, though, even if without brandy, and we shall have a little tree for Nur.
I have grown quite proficient with the loom and have started on a most wonderful work — at least I hope it will be wonderful when it is finished. It is to be a tapestry six foot wide by eight foot long, made up of three panels, for my loom can only accommodate a width of two feet. I shall use nothing but what the Ancients themselves might have used in the way of flax or silk or dye, and it shall be my contribution to the Egyptian renaissance, for it shall depict the Goddess Isis, with her brother consort the God Osiris and between them the Infant Horns, and above them a Quranic verse — my husband will choose an appropriate one for me in time. I have already prepared a sketch of it and for the colours I will use the deep turquoises, gold and terracotta of the Ancient Egyptians and the deep green that I have never seen anywhere except in Egypt’s fields.
Nur al-Hayah lies in her basket and watches me as I work. Ahmad chases the balls of silk, and Baroudi Bey — as a change from his rosary — twines and untwines the silken thread around his fingers. I wish you could see them. I have asked Sir Charles, but I fear his back now gives him so much trouble that he cannot travel —
January 1906
‘I will plant some trees for her — here,’ my husband said. ‘As soon as the season is right.’ He did not turn as I approached, but drew me to his side and continued with his thoughts aloud. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I will make a garden for her, with shade, and a fountain where she can play when the world gets hot.’
Even when I sleep, I dream of him and of Nur al-Hayah.
25
The want of gratitude displayed by a nation to its alien benefactors is almost as old as history itself.
Lord Cromer, 1908
Cairo, 18 September 1997
As for me, my dreams have become a confusion of times and places. I am lying in the courtyard of the old Baroudi house — ‘Beit el-Ingeliziyya’ as the driver called it — with Nur sitting by my head tugging at my necklace when I think to look in on my sleeping children. With Nur on my hip I go into the house and upstairs to the boys’ room in our house in England and there they lie: the older one splayed out like a starfish, open to the world, the younger curved and tensed gracefully, like a diver in mid-air.
And often, while I sleep, I find myself in a house I have never seen while awake. In the dream I know that I have dreamed of this place often and in the dream I am flooded with relief at having — at last — found it. It is exactly as I dreamed it would be: it has a light, open courtyard surrounded by delicate cloisters with graceful pillars of faded pink and in the middle there is a pool. It has an air of comfortable decay: the plaster is peeling a little from the walls and the garden is overgrown. I walk around. I plan how I will restore it, I note the crumbling capitals of the columns, the missing fragments of mosaic in the floor around the pool, the sagging cane chairs with their faded cushions. I love this place. I know that my mother is in her room somewhere inside, happy, not homesick any more. I shall go in to her soon, when I have collected Nur. I stand by the side of the pool, towels over my arms, calling to the child to come out. And we are expecting others too. I know my sons will love this house. I can see my brother’s delighted recognition when he sees it. When I wake and try to capture its image in my mind, what I see are the frescoes of Pompeii.
My brother is gone and Isabel is not coming back for a while. Most people I know are still out of Cairo for the summer. I pack my PC, my manuscript, Anna’s remaining papers and my grandmother’s, and Madani carries them down to the car. I take Anna’s woven Osiris off his hanger, roll him up carefully and replace him in his length of muslin. I ask Tahiyya to come up to the flat every three days to water the plants and phone me in Tawasi. I decide, before I set out on the road, to go to the museum. Now that I know what the two tapestries are, I want to go and wander around there for a while. Maybe I will find the paintings that Anna used as her references. But in her letter to James she mentions three panels. Where, I wonder, is the third?
I cross Qasr el-Nil Bridge and turn right and pull in by the Mugama building. As the parking attendant comes up, I say, ‘If I leave my keys, will you try and find a bit of shade for me?’ If Mansur were alive I’d have left the car with him.
‘How long will you be?’ the man asks.
‘A couple of hours,’ I say. ‘I’m just going to the museum.’
‘There’s no museum,’ he says, ‘the museum is closed.’
‘How is it closed?’ I ask. ‘We’re twelve o’clock and it closes at four.’
‘Because of the bomb,’ he says. ‘They’ve exploded a bomb there and they’ve closed the museum. Look.’
Across the square I see the smoke, the people running, the white uniforms of the police.
‘When?’ I cry. ‘What happened?’
‘They say someone threw a bomb and killed some tourists —’
‘Ya n’har iswid,’ I cry. I run. I run across the square, through the bus terminus and on till I am stopped by a policeman.
‘It’s forbidden, ya Sett,’ he
says.
‘There’s been a bomb,’ a man tells me. Crowds of people are standing around. A charred bus is smoking. Officers are yelling into walkie-talkies and others are yelling at the crowd. A police officer turns to the man who’d spoken to me and shoves him in the chest:
‘Move away. It’s not a spectacle.’
The man moves a few paces and mutters, ‘Why don’t you do your job properly instead of acting brave on us?’
‘What happened?’ I ask. ‘Was anyone hurt?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘They’ve removed them.’
‘They say some are dead,’ another man says.
‘Tourists?’ I ask.
‘They say Americans.’
‘What a disaster, what a disaster —
‘Of course it’s a disaster. They won’t stop till they’ve ruined the country —’
‘They were Germans,’ a woman says. Her make-up is caked with perspiration under the big headscarf. ‘All from that bus over there — eight dead. And the driver. God have mercy on them. My heart on their children and their people —’
I stand in the burning sun and think of the tourists on holiday, of Mansur and how I’d never known if he had a wife and children, and I listen to the voices asking questions, answering them, speculating, praying for mercy for the souls of the dead.
‘They say it was one man. And they’ve caught him.’
‘They’ve caught one. But it will happen again —’
The asphalt is so hot it feels like marshmallow under my heels as I walk back across the square. The car is still in the sun and the seat burns the back of my legs and the steering wheel stings my hands. The barricades on the Upper Egypt road will be worse than ever today. Somewhere in the world eight families do not yet know of the grief that has struck them.
