The Map of Love

by Ahdaf Soueif

  ‘ “Is his demand that he should arrive in the night at the stated time, or would he arrive at another moment? God makes him happy who states things openly and clearly. Some say that the time indicated in the Sacred Law is less disadvantageous, so that the principal may enter into the accessory. Is it possible — ” ’

  Shukri Bey starts to laugh. Sharif Basha grins at him and Shukri Bey throws back his head and roars with mirth. Yaqub Basha frowns at him over his glasses.

  ‘Forgive him,’ Sharif Basha says. ‘He is but a foolish Arab and afflicted with lightness of the brains. He comprehends not the words of the sagacious —’

  ‘This is not a laughing matter,’ Yaqub Basha says.

  ‘I really — what rot!’ Shukri Bey says, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief. ‘And that last bit about the principal — did you get that right?’

  ‘Let us have the rest of it,’ Sharif Basha says.

  Yaqub Basha adjusts his spectacles. ‘ “Is it possible for lovers at night to go twice, first giving precedence to their chiefs and then causing others to follow them? Lightness of clothing and food indicates sagacity of mind. He has cast aside the sheet of paper to lighten his steps until he has flung away even his shoes. It is a true saying: (verse) “Why do the camels march so slowly? Are they bearing stone or iron?” ‘

  ‘Ah, the camels — I have been waiting for those!’ Sharif Basha sits up. ‘There had to be camels.’

  ‘Rubbish. Rubbish!’ Shukri Bey says.

  ‘There is more,’ Yaqub Basha says. ‘All in the same vein.’ He scans the rest of the letter. ‘And wait — “If our journey takes place, the divine power having permitted it, the fast will be preferable in the month of Rajeb, the return being in that month —” In Rajab. Something is to happen in Rajab?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Sharif Basha asks seriously. ‘Of the letter?’

  ‘It is a nonsense,’ Yaqub Basha says.

  ‘It could not have been written by an Arab,’ Shukri Bey says. ‘It makes no sense.’

  ‘This is the work of an Englishman,’ Yaqub Artin says. ‘An ignorant Englishman who imagines he knows how Arabs think.’

  ‘The Oriental Secretary,’ Sharif Basha says, ‘Mr Boyle.’

  ‘But why? Why would he write this?’

  ‘Because Cromer has asked for reinforcements of the Army of Occupation and he needs to persuade the Foreign Office of their necessity. So Boyle writes this letter and they send it to London pretending they have got it from one of their spies.’

  ‘I do not think Cromer would do that,’ Yaqub Basha says.

  ‘This letter was sent to the Foreign Office,’ Sharif Basha says. ‘It is supposed to prove that a revolution is being planned.’

  ‘But it can prove nothing. It is a piece of stupidity.’

  ‘But the Foreign Office will not know that. They will read “camels” and “God is generous” and “odours of blessings” and they will say “fanatical Arabs” and send the troops.’

  ‘How did you get this?’ Shukri Bey asks.

  ‘I cannot tell you that.’

  ‘But what can we do with it?’

  There is a silence. Then Yaqub Basha says, ‘We can do nothing. Even if we were to write a — a critique of this, showing how it is not Arabic — I would not have believed Cromer would do such a thing.’

  ‘He probably believes the spirit of it is true,’ Sharif Basha says.

  ‘But he knows the letter is not genuine,’ Shukri Bey says. ‘Unless — do you think Mr Boyle might have not told him?’

  ‘Impossible,’ Yaqub Basha says. ‘Boyle is Cromer’s creature. He would not dream of tricking him.’

  ‘I think,’ Sharif Basha says, ‘the only thing we can do is to try to get someone in London to print this — if it is possible to do so without revealing how they came by it. Then we can be ready with a reply.’

  ‘It would be a very esoteric discussion,’ Yaqub Basha says, ‘points of language, imagery. We would have to imagine what Mr Boyle wished the Arabic to say and then translate it correctly into English. The problem is too subtle. In a court perhaps you could present it, but to the general public, no.’

  ‘What else then?’ Shukri Bey asks.

  ‘We can take it to the Agency and stuff it down Cromer’s throat,’ Sharif Basha says. ‘Bring the revolution forward by a couple of months.’

  ‘But there is no revolution, is there?’ Yaqub Artin says.

  ‘I do not know of one,’ Sharif Basha says. ‘But with the Army on alert and parading through the country …’ He pauses.

  ‘Of course, anything can happen,’ Shukri Bey says.

  ‘I have spoken to some young men in my office,’ Sharif Basha says, ‘asked them to find out for me. But I do not believe anyone is planning anything. We would have smelled it.’

  14 June 1906

  My husband tells me that his enquiries confirm his belief that no uprising is being planned by any section of the Nationalist Movement. Mustafa Kamel Basha is shortly to leave for Europe, once again hoping to arouse public opinion in support of Egyptian Independence. My husband says there is no reason to expect anything but a quiet summer. Pray God he is right.

  Last night when he came upstairs he found me in Nur’s room. The child sleeps with her back curved in an athletic arch. He regarded her for a moment in the soft lamplight, and — smiling at me — said, ‘Look! She is flying.’

  Am Abu el-Maati comes to see me every few days. He has detailed a young woman from the village to look after me and I asked if she could bring a friend as I was working all day and she would be lonely. So Khadra and Rayyesa come for a few hours each day. They are both newly married and have no children yet. They dust and wash and water the garden. When the meals they prepare sit for days in the fridge, they stop cooking and bring me little dishes of whatever they are eating at home. And Am Abu el-Maati comes to see if I have everything I need, to sip tea with me on the veranda and bring me news of our village and the neighbouring lands. I tell him I am writing a history of my ancestors and he says he remembers my grandmother, for he was a young boy when she died. He brings the Quran from his house and shows me his name and the names of his father and six of his grandfathers, inscribed one after the other on the flyleaf.

  ‘Soon,’ he says, ‘the next time my oldest boy comes back from the sea, I will write his name down, then give it to him.’

  ‘May He lengthen your life, insha Allah,’ I say.

  ‘Lives are in the hand of God,’ he says. ‘I’ve lived and I’ve buried those who were younger than me.’

  ‘God give you good health, ya Am Abu el-Maati,’ I say.

  ‘We do what we can and the rest is with God.’ He coughs and takes out his packet of Cleopatra. We are such good friends now that he offers me a cigarette and I accept. If someone else comes along, I will crush it under my chair and wave away the smoke. We speak of the land and how it should be run. The five faddans, the smallholdings set up first by Kitchener and then by Abd el-Nasser, are no good, he says. ‘At first they seem good and a man thinks he has independence but then he finds himself marching in place. He can’t modernise, bring in big machines. And in the end what can he leave to his children? Divide five faddans between them? In the end, still a man eats up his neighbour’s land and one ends up rich and the other at God’s door.’

  ‘What then?’ I ask. ‘Cooperatives?’

  ‘Maybe.’ He looks doubtful. ‘But people quarrel and each one wants to be boss —’

  ‘So what’s best?’

  ‘Fifty faddans. At least fifty faddans to one owner is a reasonable size. A good owner who lives on the land and lets people share in its returns.’

  ‘So you are a reactionary, ya Am Abu el-Maati?’ I smile.

  ‘Never, ya Sett Hanim,’ he defends himself, ‘but the land is with us in trust. We have to do what’s best for it.’

  ‘I hear,’ I say slowly, ‘I hear there are Israeli firms offering services — agricultural services. I hear they get special con
cessions from the government.’

  ‘I’ve heard that too,’ he says. ‘But up in lands by the Canal, not here.’

  ‘Has no one brought them in here?’

  ‘No, not in the whole governorate.’

  ‘Would you work with them? If they were hired to improve the land?’

  ‘Never. And anyone who brings them in — you’ll excuse me — is a fool. Either a fool or an agent. Isn’t that how they took Palestine? By pretending to show people how to plant their land? And then they’re clever and they take it over. No. We’ve been working our land for thousands of years. We don’t need strangers to show us how to do it.’ He looks at me. ‘You’re not thinking —’

  ‘Never,’ I say. ‘It’s just talk I hear in Cairo and I wanted your opinion.’

  ‘And if we do need strangers,’ he says after a moment, ‘the world is full of nations with technology. Why does it have to be the Israelis when we know they have us in their sights?’

  ‘Because they underbid everybody else.’

  ‘Then we should ask ourselves why.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘I wish they could hear you in Cairo.’

  ‘Each one goes with his own head,’ he says, standing up. ‘I shall leave you to work. Don’t you want anything?’

  ‘I want your safety,’ I say.

  13 June 1906

  I was sitting at the piano with Ahmad at my side and Nur on my knee. Nur had discovered the great sound she could make by banging her little hand down on the keys and I was trying to restrict her to the high notes while her cousin sat at the centre and picked out a melody. I was just thinking that the child is ready for better training than I can give him when Hasna came in all agitated and begged to be allowed to bring in Mahmoud Abu-Domah, a kinsman of hers who — having just arrived in Cairo from their village — had come to visit and bring her news of her family. I gave my permission and a pleasant, open-faced young man came in, Mahrous holding him tightly by the hand. He was clearly embarrassed to be shown into my presence, although the sight of the children did somewhat put him at ease. Hasna was plucking at his sleeve and saying ‘Tell my lady, tell her’, and it transpires that as he was waiting for his train at Tantah there had come news of trouble in a village nearby between some British officers and the fellaheen. What he had understood was that the officers, shooting at the fellaheen’s pigeons, had killed a woman and set fire to the storerooms where the wheat is kept, and the fellaheen had attacked the officers with sticks.

  Hasna was much distressed and was all for going there immediately, but both Mahmoud and I persuaded her that such an act would be foolish, especially as — thank God — it was not her village that was in trouble. We have asked the young man to stay with us tonight, for it will please Mahrous and besides I wish my husband to hear his story. What a wicked and senseless business this shooting of pigeons is, and how much harm it does the British in the eyes of the fellaheen!

  Shukri Bey is due to leave us tomorrow and we are all sad to see him go, for he is of such a pleasant and nny disposition that he has been a wonderful guest in our household. He insists that we should go to visit his family in the Holy Land and indeed I should very much like to visit Nazareth and Jerusalem and Bethlehem, which I have sung of so often but never seen. My husband also would like to go, for he has fond childhood memories there. And if Layla and Husni and Ahmad could come too — since Jalila Hanim, Husni’s mother, is from Nazareth — we should make a very pleasant party indeed.

  Layla is much affected by Shukri Bey’s accounts of the settlers. She has started to collect articles about their activities and has asked me to furnish her with anything that I can from English sources.

  14 June 1906

  The newspapers today carried an account of the events at Denshwai and they are worse than we thought: one of the officers was killed and the case has been taken out of the hands of the District Attorney and will be dealt with by Findlay Basha in the Special Court. A cordon has been placed around the village and two hundred and fifty people have been arrested. Mr Matchell has already put out a statement praising the officers and blaming the fellaheen for the events — and this before any investigation has taken place. Of the fellaheen five are wounded and one is dead.

  18 June 1906

  This is what has happened in Denshwai. A miliary force on promenade through the Delta were encamped near Tantah. Some officers wished to go shooting pigeons in the village as they had done the year before. They sent a message to the Umdah but did not wait for his permission as they are supposed by law to do. They commandeered two local carriages and went, accompanied by a local police guard. The choice of Denshwai was due to its having large numbers of pigeons, which constitute an essential part of the people’s livelihood. When the officers arrived at the village, an elder, one Sheikh Mahfouz, came out to meet them and asked that they do their shooting far from the villagers’ homes, as the law says that no shooting may be done within 200 metres of a house. The officers paid no attention and deployed themselves in different positions, but all within 150 metres of the village. At two o’clock in the afternoon they started to shoot, the people the while watching them from their homes and fields in resentment.

  Presently a fire started in one of the rooms in which the just-harvested wheat was stored. Nobody can be certain what started the fire. The fellaheen say it was the shots of one of the officers. Mr Matchell says the fellaheen burned their own wheat as a prearranged signal to attack the officers. But how could such a thing be prearranged when no one knew the officers were coming? The Umdah had been out of the village and indeed only arrived during the incident.

  When the fire started, the owner of the house (who happened to be the village muezzin) and his wife ran out and started to beat the two officers closest to their house and to try to disarm them. Captain Porter’s gun went off and the woman, Ummu Muhammad, fell. Her husband and the villagers — thinking she was dead — attacked the officers with sticks and tried to wrench away their guns. The other officers, hearing the noise, came to help their companions and all fired shots low into the people. Five people fell, among them the head of the local police, so the police joined the people in beating the officers. Two of the officers ran to fetch help from their encampment, which was some six kilometres away. The others were disarmed and held by the fellaheen, who, when they found that Ummu Muhammad was wounded, not dead, grew calmer, so that some of their elders intervened and protected the officers and returned them safely with their guns to the encampment.

  Meanwhile, of the two officers who had run for help, one, Captain Bull, unable to withstand the heat of the June sun, fell by the roadside by the market village of Sirsina. The other jumped into the Baguriyyah canal and swam to the encampment. A man from Sirsina by the name of Sayyid Ahmad Sa’d came upon Captain Bull fainted on the road and, with the help of some villagers and Muhammad Hussein, the market police man, carried him into the shade of the small market hall and gave him water. When the English force came into sight, the villagers scattered and hid. Sayyid Ahmad Sa’d hid in the millhouse nearby, where he was found by the British soldiers. Believing he was the cause of Captain Bull’s condition, they beat him to death with the butts of their bayonets.

  Captain Bull died later in the day and the villagers were to be tried for murder. But he was exhumed and it was found that he had died of sunstroke.

  The investigation has ended today and the whole of Egypt waits to see what will happen.

  I fear that this will be represented as the beginning of that insurrection promised in that false and wicked letter and will have widespread repercussions.

  My husband has volunteered to defend the case but has been turned down by Matchell.

  Hasna is going around weeping and little Mahrous is very silent, for although they are from Kamshish they have friends and kin in all the sunounding villages and the whole area is engulfed by the troubles.

  20 June 1906

  Cromer left yesterday for England on his annual leave.
But al-Mu’ayyad publishes a report that the gallows were tested out the day before in the prison store. The Councillor, Charles de Mansfield Findlay, will be acting for him. I pray and pray that justice will prevail in the Court.

  The Court will consist of Boutros Basha Ghali, the Prime Minister; Mr Bond, Vice-President of the Courts; Mr Hayter, acting Judicial Adviser; Colonel Ludlow, Judge Advocate for the Army of Occupation; and Ahmad Bey Fathi Zaghloul, President of the Native Courts. The Prosecution will be conducted by Ibrahim Bey al-Hilbawi, and the Defence by Muhammad Bey Yusuf, Ismacil Bey ‘Asim and Ahmad Bey Lutfi al-Sayyid.

  My husband says that Boutros Ghali is in a difficult position, as he is acting for the Minister of Justice who is absent. For al-Hilbawi and Fathi Zaghloul he is surprised, but he says al-Hilbawi has never been any man’s friend but his own and Zaghloul considers he has been Head of the Preliminary Court for too long and Bond has been obstructing his promotion to the Court of Appeals. And yet, he says, he would not have thought this of them.

  27 June 1906

  The sentences have been announced. Four men, Hasan Mah-fouz, Yusuf Saleem, Sayyid Salim and Muhammad Zahran, are to hang. Two, Ahmad Mahfuz and Muhammad Abd el-Nabi, the muezzin, are to get Life with hard labour. Ahmad al-Sisi gets fifteen years with hard labour. Seven years with labour for six more men and fifty lashes for eight men. The sentences are to be carried out in Denshwai.

  28 June 1906

  In the salamlek Ahmad Hilmi’s hands cover his face. His shoulders shake and a muffled choking sound rises from behind his hands. Sharif Basha al-Baroudi puts a hand on his shoulder. Husni Bey al-Ghamrawi sits forward, his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. Ismail Basha Sabri holds his prayer beads still in his hands. The three men sit in silence. Above, behind the mashrabiyya, Layla and Anna kneel side by side on the hard banquette. They make no effort to wipe away the tears that fall silently down their faces.