by Ahdaf Soueif
‘I am sorry.’ Ahmad Hilmi wipes his face and straightens his shoulders. ‘It was barbaric,’ he says. ‘Barbaric. The gallows set up in the village, the “bride” next to them, the people herded in to watch. They hang one man, leave him dangling there in front of his family and his people, and tie another to the “bride” and whip him. And again. And again …’
There is silence.
‘And they call themselves civilised,’ he says.
The men do not speak.
‘Yusuf Saleem,’ he says, ‘twenty-two years old. He stood on the platform, turned towards the villagers and shouted, “God’s curse on the unjust!” And then they hanged him.’
Layla’s hand finds Anna’s and the women cling to each other. Ismail Basha Sabri draws his hands across his face.
‘I have filed my report for al-Liwa’ Ahmad Hilmi says. ‘I recorded the bare facts and begged readers to excuse me any further description, for words can only insult today’s events.’
Husni Bey al-Ghamrawi straightens up. ‘This will be the end of Cromer,’ he says.
‘We must make sure it is,’ Sharif Basha says.
‘Do you think that is possible?’ Ismail Basha Sabri asks.
‘Yes,’ Sharif Basha says. ‘L’Egypte is read abroad. The Manchester Guardian has already taken the matter up. The Daily Chronicle on the 20th — before the trial had even begun — carried a telegram saying that Cromer had decided to have the men shot. The Tribune too will probably speak up. I am sending a man to Denshwai and preparing a full account of the case. We shall get it published in England. If the case is publicised enough, people will press for questions to be asked in Parliament and the Irish will take it up. The Foreign Office did not want this to happen. They will be embarrassed. Mustafa Kamel will write in France. If need be we will get the friend who furnished us with that forgery of a letter to find a way to make that public — or to threaten to. We may not end the Occupation, but we will get rid of Cromer.’
‘And who would you have instead,’ Ahmad Hilmi asks bitterly, ‘Kitchener?’
‘Chitty Bey would do,’ Husni Bey says, ‘the director of Customs. He was born here and speaks Arabic. He knows us. He is a good financier. We could work with him.’
‘And what about today?’ Ahmad Hilmi asks. ‘The people were not even allowed to bury their dead. The police carted them away. They are forbidden to open their houses for condolences. They cannot even grieve —’
‘We will open a house for condolence here,’ Sharif Basha says.
The others look at him in surprise.
‘I will open the house in Hilmiyya,’ he says, ‘for three nights, and the Thursdays and the Fortieth Day.’
‘That is dangerous, ya Basha,’ Ismail Sabri says.
‘It is fitting,’ Husni Bey says.
‘We do not need to make an announcement,’ Sharif Basha says. ‘We shall just put word about. We will allow no speeches, no demonstrations. Just the Quran and condolences. They cannot prevent that.’
29 June 1906
When he came up to our apartment last night he found me weeping. He took me in his arms and I said the words that came to me:
‘I am ashamed.’
‘No, Anna, no.’ And when I hid my face in his chest and wept, he held me away and said, ‘Listen. You must not — ever — feel like this. This is not to do with being British. Al-Hilbawi is Egyptian, and so is Ahmad Fathi Zaghloul. And your Mr Barrington and Mr Blunt are British.’
‘I listened,’ I wept, ‘I heard what Ahmad Hilmi said. I cannot bear it. All those people there tonight, in Denshwat. All those mothers and wives and sisters —‘
‘Hush,’ he said. ‘The only way we can bear this is to make it work for us. To make sure it can never happen again. Never. And we shall work for the release of the prisoners. Your friends in London will help us.’
He held me to him so that I could feel the tremor in his chest and he said, ‘Will you come to me? I need us to be together completely tonight.’ When I looked at his face I saw new and deep lines etched at the corners of his mouth and into his brow.
For three days, for five Thursdays and on 6 August the house in Hilmiyya and the large marquee set up in its garden filled and emptied with men and women from Cairo, from the towns and villages of the Delta and the Said. Sharif Basha al-Baroudi and Husni Bey al-Ghamrawi and other notables stood at the door, shaking hands, accepting condolences. Cups of black, sugarless coffee were drunk in their thousands. And not a sound was heard save for the melodious chanting of the Quranic message of hope for both the living and the dead.
26
… some of the leaders have been cowardly. One would almost say they have betrayed a country that has been generous to them beyond their wildest dreams. As for me, I shall stay on course till the end; for I believe that the fruit of this defence, if not harvested by the first defender, or the second, will still be harvested by an Egyptian somewhere down the years …
Mustafa Kamel, 1898
17 November, 1997
Tawasi,
Isabel is pregnant.
‘I told you it was meant to be,’ she said on the phone last night. ‘We’ve been seeing each other — but it was the first time that did it. I’m three months gone. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before but I wanted to be absolutely sure. I promised myself I’d tell you at three months.’
‘Isabel, that’s wonderful!’ I said. Then I said, ‘Isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I’m madly happy.’
‘And Omar?’ I asked.
‘Well.’ She hesitated. ‘He — actually, he’s quite upset. He didn’t quite ask if I wanted to keep the baby. He didn’t do that. But he is very concerned at the fact of being fifty-five.’
‘Give him time,’ I said.
‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘And a lot of space. I’ve not suggested either of us moving in. He can take his own time. I wait till he calls me — mostly.’
Trapped, I think. He must be feeling partly trapped, partly proud, partly what shall I tell the kids? His kids are grown up -older than mine. Will they be amused? Or resentful? He cannot have told Isabel about his affair with Jasmine yet; she would have told me. He must have put aside his fears — since he was seeing her anyway. But this will bring them all back. Father and grandfather in one — like Rameses or Akhenatun or any one of the great pharaohs. He would not appreciate that. He is a modern man: an Arab-American. And, I tell myself again, he is not her father.
She says she cannot make plans to come back just yet. She wants me to go over. I say, when I’ve finished. I think I am fairly close. Cromer has resigned and Eldon Gorst has taken over. In the new, more conciliatory atmosphere, four official political parties have sprung into being. The first, naturally, is the pro-British Free National Party with al-Muqattam as its mouthpiece. Its slogan is ‘The Safety of the Fatherland and the Nation lies in Peace with the Reforming Occupiers’, and it is generally despised. Then Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid and some of the notables and high-ranking civil servants form Hizb al-Ummah, the Party of the Nation. They establish al-Garida as its newspaper and call for gradual independence from Britain, ending Turkish rule, investing in education and industry, and government by constitution. Mustafa Kamel then forms the real Nationalist Party, al-Hizb al-Watani, speaking through al-Liwa and calling for immediate independence and a constitutional government within the Ottoman state. Finally the Khedive, acting through Sheikh Ali Yusuf and his al-Muayyad, forms his own party, Hizb al-Islah. Its programme is immediate independence and a constitutional government but it soft-pedals on the Turkish ties and floats the idea of an Arab caliphate with the Khedive as the caliph.
And my husband of course will join none of them. The Palace and the British parties are out of the question. He dislikes al-Watani’s cleaving to the Ottomans, for he sees more and more of a divergence between the interests of Egypt and those of Turkey. The Hizb al-Ummah would have been the most natural place for him, indeed several of his friends are founding member
s, but other Parties will have it that the interests of the Ummah’s members — being among the more wealthy Notables and Civil Servants — are close to those of the British and there is some talk of Cromer having given the Party his blessing before he left. Were it not for the fact that I am his wife — a fact which renders him perhaps excessively anxious to avoid any whisper of a link to the British — I believe he may have joined it. As it is, he remains a free man and publishes his writings where he chooses and works on those projects on which both the Watani and the Ummah are united.
We are very close now to seeing a School of Fine Art inaugurated. The Khedive has appointed Prince Ahmad Fuad Chairman of the Council for the National University and my husband and Yaqub Artin Basha are working on its Charter. I believe on the whole that the tally for 1907 has been a good one, with the pardon for the Denshwai prisoners coming, as it does, at the end of the year. I wonder if it is any comfort to the widows and orphans of that village that the brutality committed against them has led to the fall of Cromer and has reverberated across the world? The odd thing is that Cromer was by all accounts most surprised and disappointed when he returned to find feeling in all quarters so united against him and he persisted to the end in ascribing this to the schemings of the Khedive rather than to his own actions. But enough! Enough of politics, as Zeinab Hanim constantly says. Poor lady, her life has been completely governed by the politics first of her husband and then of her son. But she is happy enough now with three children running about the house. She looks at me kindly and says, ‘Look at the wisdom of God, my daughter, sending you from far countries to my son after all those barren years.’
How I wish it were possible to say ‘Enough of polities’, truly and forever. I find myself thinking sometimes of life in London, occupied with nothing more than choosing the day’s menu, attending to the children and doing odd things about the house. Perhaps walking in the Park. Perhaps going out in the evening to the theatre or to dinner with friends. And now, in December, I think of Christmas trees and lights and breaking off from shopping to have lunch with a friend. But when I imagine myself in Thurloe Place I see Nur come dancing down the stairs. When I enter the foyer of a theatre it is my husband’s arm on which I lean. When I go into Harrods it is to choose a present for him and another for Zeinab Hanim. And when I stop for lunch it is Layla with whom I compare purchases and lists across the table.
AND IF I INTERPRET ANNA’S presence among us as a sign that He willed good for our house, how then do I interpret those other, later events? Events that perhaps found their roots in that very presence. I do not know. I leave that question to other, wiser minds than mine. We lived our lives together and hardly a day passed but we were in each other’s company for some of its hours.
The University, as everyone knows, was started in 1326/1908. What many people no longer remember is that in its first year it held special classes for ladies on Fridays. Nabawiyya Musa, Malàk Hifni Nasif, Labiba Hashim and I were selected to conduct these classes. And we invited Anna to talk about art and Madame Hussein Rushdi to talk about European history. Anna joked that the hareem had made a working woman of her, for she was constantly occupied in preparing for her classes, writing for the magazine and translating from and into English for my brother. She had information from her friends in Britain and he had a knowledge of Egypt, a clear mind and a gift for logical yet impassioned argument. And then she had a talent for the English style and so each article they published struck a true blow.
Mustafa Kamel Basha’s death was a great setback to the country, but for a while it seemed that his work would be continued by Muhammad Bey Farid. My husband worked with him on the affairs of the workers and during 1908 we succeeded in establishing four trade unions. And with the CUP revolution in Turkey and the declaration of the Turkish Constitution and the Ottoman Parliament, it seemed that change was truly coming. The British Government refused to allow Egypt to have a Representative at the Parliament, and at the Army Parade in November the students and the people burst into spontaneous cries of ‘Vive l’indépendence!’
And our domestic life was happy. My mother was like a hen with a great brood of chicks, my father was content to sit and watch Anna weave her magical tapestry, and though we were only blessed with one child each, the children grew up and with them grew their loving affection for us and for each other.
Nur is on her father’s knee. She has pulled his gold watch out of his pocket and is staring at it thoughtfully. Thoughtfully he regards his daughter. In the silence Layla looks up from her book and reads her brother’s mind:
‘May He preserve you for her, ya Abeih, and you see her a bride. You’ll deliver her with your own hand to Ahmad.’
He pays attention. ‘How do we know they are for each other?’ he asks his sister with a smile. ‘Might they not meet other people and prefer them?’
‘You can see they already adore each other,’ Layla says. ‘They can’t bear to be separated for a day. When they —’
‘Bass ya Sett Layla,’ Mabrouka cuts in. ‘The knowledge of what’s hidden is with God alone.’
‘And where have you popped up from all of a sudden?’ Layla asks —
There is a great crying and wailing coming towards the house and I start up from my vision of ninety years ago as a loud hammering shakes my door. I run through the hall and fling open the door. Outside there is Am Abu el-Maati’s daughter, the midwife from the clinic and other women, a swarm of children following behind. The women are bareheaded, their black tarhas hanging round their necks.
‘They’ve taken my father, ya Sett Hanim,’ Am Abu el-Maati’s daughter cries. ‘The soldiers came and they took him and took the men of the village. Help us, ya Sett Hanim! Who can we go to? Who can we speak to? God will avenge us — She sits on the ground weeping, beating her head with her hands.
‘Why?’ I cry. ‘Why? What happened? Where have they taken them?’
‘Because of what happened in Luxor, ya Sett,’ the midwife says. ‘They’ve rounded up the men —’
‘What happened in Luxor?’
‘Don’t you know what’s happening? The world is standing on a leg —’
‘Sett Amal works all day.’ Khadra comes to my side. ‘How can she know?’
‘They killed the tourists at Luxor. Fifty or a hundred, we don’t know. At the temple. And there was a battle and shooting and now the government has turned on the people —’
‘They took my father, they took my father —’
‘What’s our village got to do with this?’
‘They’ve turned on the whole of the Said, not our village alone. War, ya Sett Hanim, war. Seventeen men they’ve taken from our village. And what are people to do? Where can we go?’
‘Where did they take them? The police station?’
‘The central police station, the markaz.’
‘I’ll get dressed and go.’
I run inside and stand in the middle of my room with my heart beating fast. All the things I’ve read — the things I’ve heard about what goes on when people fall into the hands of the police swirl round in my mind: the stripping, the blindfolds, the whipping — I sit on the bed and close my eyes and force myself to calm down. When I open my eyes, my mother is looking at me sadly out of her portrait. I take a deep breath and put on city clothes, stockings, a silk scarf. I brush my hair, put on some lipstick and put pearls in my ears. I pick up my bag, then on an impulse I take my British passport from the dressing-table drawer and put it in the bag next to my Egyptian ID card and driving licence.
All the women want to come with me but one woman knows the way to the police station so I take her and Abu el-Maati’s daughter and Khadra. My hands are shaking and I grip the wheel tight. I can feel myself starting to cry and I force the tears down and hold myself rigid. As we come to the edge of the clearing around the police station, soldiers run at us with their bayonets, forcing us to stop.
‘Halt! Stop! Where are you going?’ they shout.
‘We are goi
ng to see the chief,’ I say.
‘It’s forbidden.’ They surround us. Boys, nervous and angry.
‘What’s forbidden? We want to go into the markaz.’
‘I told you it’s forbidden.’
I open the door and get out of the car. ‘Listen, you and him,’ I say and am amazed at authority in my voice. ‘There’s nothing called forbidden. This is a police station and I am going in to see the chief. And if you don’t make way immediately right now I shall call Muhyi Bey the Governor on the mobile and turn your day black. I’ll have you sent to Tokar.’
‘Ya Sett Hanim, we have orders —’
‘What orders? One of you go in and tell the chief Amal Hanim al-Ghamrawi is coming to see him and I’m coming in right after you.’
‘But cars are forbidden to come near the markaz.’
‘I’ll leave the car here. And if something happens to it I’ll bring you a catastrophe.’
One of the soldiers heads for the markaz and I start to follow. The women open the doors of the car but the soldiers push them back.
‘No natives.’
‘Natives? These people are your people.’
‘Impossible,’ the soldier says. ‘I’ll be shot.’
‘Ma alesh,’ I say to the women. ‘Wait for me. And lock the doors from the inside. And none of you come near them,’ I say to the soldiers.
In his office the Mamur stands to greet me. He is a big man, fortyish, thickset with a black moustache. He looks harassed and is perspiring heavily in the cold November night. Two men in civilian clothes are sitting in armchairs to one side of the room. I shake his hand, say my name and sit down.
‘I have come to Your Excellency regarding some people from our village —’ I begin.
‘Which village?’ one of the civilians asks.
