The Map of Love

by Ahdaf Soueif

  My husband has decided that I should be able to meet foreign visitors, especially English-speaking ones, as they all come wanting to find out about political conditions and what the Egyptians think; he feels that together we can give them a true and sympathetic account of these things and so help to inform public opinion in their countries, as they are mostly people with some influence. This breaks the social custom of segregation and so we only do it in secret and in Hilmiyya so that our household is not affected. We have a few trusted servants in attendance, chief of whom is Sabir, who used to work for James Barrington, and who has become my husband’s eyes and ears in various places as he has kept up his old connections at the Agency and other households.

  I understand that Cromer is still pulling the strings at the Foreign Office with regard to Egypt. Can you tell me if this is true, and what the extent of his influence is? I was most amused at your tale of Lady Cromer turning suffragette in opposition to the Lord. He surely deserves an insurrection in his own castle. It seems hard, though, that women should be jailed in England for their political opinions. They are bound to get the vote one day, so why does the Government not make a gift of it to them now with grace and spare everybody a deal of trouble?

  Tawasi,

  20 November 1997

  I wait till after sunset prayers, then I walk along the edges between field and field, across the mud bridges over the canals and into the village. The women call out greetings and invitations from inside their doors and I reply but make my way to Am ‘Abu el-Maati’s house. We sit opposite each other on the Istambouli settles in his mandarah and I say:

  ‘Praise God for your safety.’

  ‘By the grace of your hand,’ he says, placing his own hand on his heart. He is washed and shaved and is wearing a clean brown woollen galabiyya with his grey shawl round his neck and his cudgel resting by his knee. His ‘imma is white as snow but his eyes are dim. I hardly know what to say to him.

  Am Abu el-Maati,’ I say, ‘I know people in Cairo, a small organisation of progressive lawyers and journalists. Good people. They can raise up a case for us.’

  ‘Against the government?’ he asks.

  ‘Against the police. Unlawful detention, ill-treatment —’

  ‘Ya Sett Hanim, leave it with God.’

  ‘Ya Am Abu el-Maati, what happened was wrong —’

  ‘Yes, it was wrong. But it is over, by your favour.’ He shifts uneasily. He wants me to stop talking about it.

  ‘But how can we guarantee that it doesn’t happen again?’ I ask.

  ‘Nobody can guarantee anything. Can anyone guarantee his own life?’

  ‘Ya Am Abu el-Maati, if each one when he gets home says ‘ “al-hamdu-l-Illah” and then he stays quiet, what will make the government stop treating people in this way?’

  ‘And if I don’t say al-hamdu-l-Illah, I spend what remains of my life running between lawyers — and the government puts its eye on our village and it becomes a vendetta. Like this, the matter is over. And we are neither the first nor the last village to have this happen to it. And this is not the first nor the last government to terrorise the people —’

  The television in the hall speaks of yesterday’s atrocity and as I leave I pause to watch the image of tens of wooden coffins laid out on the sand.

  I walk through a village humming with normal life. The small store spills its bluish light on the dust road, two men sit with their nargiles in front of the counter, children play at the edge of the light. But somewhere out there I know there are men, young men, unresigned, who boil with anger and swear to avenge their villages and their people. When I think of them my blood runs cold and I clench my fists in the pockets of my coat, bow my head and hurry quickly home.

  The telephone is ringing as I open the door and I rush in and get to it before the third ring. An old game I’ve always played: I hear it ring and the thought forms itself in my head: if I don’t get to it before the third ring, something will happen to the children — and I rush forward even as I chide myself for thinking ill near them, for dragging their wellbeing into my stupid games.

  ‘Alo?’

  ‘Sett Amal?’

  Am Madani!’

  ‘How are you, ya Sett? How is your health?’ He is shouting into the mouthpiece. I hold the receiver a little way from my ear.

  ‘El-hamdu-l-Illah. How are you, ya Am Madani? How are the children? And how is their mother?’

  ‘She’s up in safety, el-hamdu-l-Illah. She brought us a girl.’

  ‘Alf mabrouk, ya Am Madani. Girls are good.’

  ‘Girls are tender,’ he says, ‘their hearts are compassionate.’

  ‘It’s known,’ I say. ‘And what have you named her?’

  ‘Hanan,’ he says, and laughs.

  ‘May her arrival bring you good fortune, insha Allah,’ I say.

  27

  Dieu m’est témoin que je n’ai fait que du bien à mon pays.

  Boutros Ghali Basha, 20 February 1910

  What sad, sad events we have had here! Poor Boutros Ghali Basha is dead and Ibrahim al-Wardani is sure to hang for it. The most his Defence can hope to establish is that it was Milton Bey’s surgery that killed the Prime Minister rather than Wardani’s bullets, and so get the sentence commuted. But there is very little hope of that. Husni and other gentlemen of al-Hizb al-Watani were arrested and later released. All their houses have been searched. But Wardani is steadfast and insists that he acted alone and for the good of Egypt. He calls Boutros Basha a traitor and cites his signing of the Soudan Convention in ‘98 and his presiding over the Denshwai trials as evidence. He denounces him for the Government’s repressive measures over the last year and again for being behind the plan to extend the Suez Canal lease. All are acts for which the Prime Minister was indeed nominally responsible, but being a man who had chosen public service, working for a government so trammelled and circumscribed — my husband knew him well and is of the certain opinion that he was no traitor. He says his plans for tax reforms put forward in the ‘80s remain a byword for judgement both humane and astute. But he was a peaceable man by nature and overawed by British might, and he was pushed forward at every turn by Cromer and then by Gorst, who will now make a Coptic martyr of him. Wardani did not once mention religion, however, but politics and politics alone. He is a clever and sincere young man: an orphan brought up by his uncle and educated in Lausanne and London, and he was Secretary to the National Congress in Geneva last year. He owns a pharmacy near the police station in Abdin and was very active in the Trade Union Movement. It is a thousand pities for-as my husband says — now the country has lost two men it could ill afford to lose. It is heartbreaking to think of Boutros Basha’s last words — and to believe that he meant them.

  IN FEBRUARY 1910, AFTER THE assassination of Boutros Basha Ghali, Muhammad Said Basha took over the premiership and within days he had invited my brother to call on him. Abeih Sharif declined and suggested instead that a meeting could take place at the Club or at the home of one of their mutual friends. They met at the home of Ismail Basha Sabri and the Prime Minister invited my brother to join the Cabinet, offering him the Ministry of Justice. Abeih Sharif responded that he was honoured but that as long as there was a British Adviser to the Ministry and an Army of Occupation to support the Adviser, he could not accept a post in Government. And my opinion at the time was that he was correct in his refusal, although Husni Bey expressed to me the misgivings of his heart for, he said, a man who stands alone, refusing to belong to any faction, is standing without cover. It became known that Muhammad Farid Bey had in his turn also refused the ministry and the following year he was sentenced to six months in jail for writing the introduction to al-Ghayati’s book of verses and, having completed the term, he was effectively banished from Egypt, never to return.

  But at this time, in the early months of 1910, my brother was working without rest to strengthen the resolve of the Assembly against extending the lease of the Suez Canal, and had it not been for his efforts
and those of Ismail Basha Abaza and Muhammad Farid Bey, the thing would have passed. As it was, the Assembly stood firm and the extension was rejected.

  Demonstrations swept through Cairo and Alexandria and the Provinces expressing support of the Assembly’s decision and we hoped that this triumph would lend weight also to the efforts of the several Coptic and Muslim notables who were working to strengthen our country’s national unity in the face of the assassination of Boutros Basha.

  Eldon Gorst was, naturally, not happy with the Assembly’s decision and it was rumoured that he wished to leave Egypt but that Grey could find no one who would take his place.

  All this gave us hope, and it was in this hesitantly optimistic atmosphere that we heard of the impending visit of Colonel Roosevelt, the former President of the United States of America —

  Cairo

  22 June 1910

  Dear Sir Charles

  We are not at all surprised by your report of Mr Roosevelt’s speech about Egypt at Mansion House. The speech he delivered here in March was similar — but the more offensive for being at our invitation and in the University. There had been high hopes of him, as his Nation stands for Democracy and Liberty and has not (yet, in any case) sullied its hand in a Colonial endeavour. However, some remarks he was said to have made in Khartoum caused Prince Ahmad Fuad Basha, as Chairman of the University Council, to go and visit him at Shepheard’s Hotel and to remind him that the Rules of the University forbade the introduction of political speech or debate within its halls. Mr Roosevelt assured the Prince he had no intention of discussing politics and then proceeded to instruct a packed hall of the Egyptian élite that it would take ‘generations’ before they learned to govern themselves and to admonish them for religious fanaticism!

  You can imagine what a turmoil this threw the country into. Even the Reform and the Journal du Caire, the newspapers of the Foreign Residents — being anxious that Egypt not be represented as in a state of chaos for the harm that would bring to their businesses — were up in arms demanding apologies. The Hizb al — Watani held a large meeting on the same day and some thousand people marched on Shepheard’s Hotel waving the Egyptian flag and crying ‘À bas les hypocrites!’ and ‘Vive la constitution!’ and the next day the Hizb al-Ummah held a meeting in one of the larger cinématographe halb and Ahmad Bey Lutfi el-Sayyid took occasion to remind Mr Roosevelt that Egypt had attained her maturity a few thousand years before America came into being! All in all it is very sad — not so much in itself, but as a new disappointment to the Egyptians and further proof that the Nations of the West hold one system of values dear to themselves while denying it to their fellows in the East. It is a hard lesson to learn for a people who, for the last hundred years, have read our philosophers and admired our institutions and have aspired to a system of government like our own — and it, must necessarily strengthen the hand of those who would turn their faces completely from the West and hark back to the golden days of the Caliphate. You yourself say that Egypt’s best hope now is to cleave to Turkey and hope she is strong enough to withstand the designs of Europe.

  Your account of Grey’s speech in the Commons, responding to Roosevelt’s, and going back on three and a half years of conciliation in declaring openly that a policy of coercion is now to be used in Egypt, chills me to the heart. And not one word for Egypt from the Radicals. I know Gorst is disappointed — but what did they all expect? Surely the only possible end for a policy of conciliation would be the granting of a Constitution and Representative Government? Gorst knows the feelings of the people here and he led some of them to believe that he was their friend — that he was more sympathetic to their cause than Cromer had been. Naturally they formed political parties, and the Press spoke up — and what everyone demands is an end to the Occupation. And Gorst and the Foreign Office behave as if they have been betrayed — as if they thought that the Egyptians would be happy with the British Government patronising them and allowing them to play at parliaments and are disappointed that they still want them out. It makes me mad. I should not be surprised if there were an agreement between Grey and Roosevelt, that the latter’s speech was set up for Grey to introduce his Indian-style system of detentions and deportations for Egypt. After all, as you have said before, Roosevelt is the only foreign politician Grey takes to, because he can speak to him in English.

  I have put John Dillon’s recommendation before my husband and he approves the wisdom of it and thanks you. He is gone tonight to see Ismail Basha Abaza and will propose to him that the Assembly protest publicly at the coercion laws that are being passed over their heads. It is said also that the Khedive is most angry at the decrees that are being put out in his name — and with the death of the King whom he regarded as his friend, he might yet embrace the National Cause. Dillon and Keir Hardie are now our only hopes in the House.

  We are removing to Abu Qir on the North Coast for the summer. I fear my husband is overworked and hardly spends any time with little Nur, and she minds this terribly even though she has Ahmad (who is grown into a fine boy of ten. He has learned the whole of the Quran by heart and has a clear genius for the piano) —

  Throughout this story, I have not been able to see my father in the child described by Anna and by Layla. Now, suddenly, I recognise him: He has learned the whole of the Quran by heart -and he would recite passages from it in a low voice, simply for his own pleasure, as he worked in the garden, here in Tawasi. But I had never seen him touch the piano that stood in the drawing room in our house in Hilmiyya. And now I see again the look on his face, the pride and the regret in his eyes when Omar played for us on his visits back from the States. And now I look again at his portrait here in the hall, standing behind his mother, looking straight at the camera. How did he, then, imagine his life would turn out?

  — even though she has Ahmad and Mahrous to play with. Sharif Basha minds even more, though, for he is most conscious of the passing of the days and but the other night exacted from me a promise that, were his time to come before Nur is grown up and firmly set on a path of her choosing, I should return to England and take her with me. I said nothing could happen to him, and indeed Baroudi Bey is seventy-five and still well though he has not half his son’s constitution. But he was serious, for he said her life here would be too difficult if he were not near her to smooth her path. I did not argue the point for it was but a theoretical discussion, but I resolved that we would go to our summer house and away from all the politics and the spies and unpleasantness in Cairo. The sea and some good riding and building sandcastles on the beach with Nur should clear this dark mood —

  Connecticut, February 1998

  Isabel raises her eyes. Beyond her table and the window, the garden and the trees are grey in the early morning mist. She shivers. The wrap has fallen from her shoulders. She feels behind her and draws its warm folds up, over her bare arms and across her chest. She shivers again as she pulls it close. She holds it to her with one hand, while with the other she takes off her glasses and pushes the hair back from her face. She lays the glasses down on the table and stands up. From outside the window comes an answering movement: a grey shape unfolds from the wooden deck, shakes itself and lollops softly towards the door.

  ‘It’s OK, Honey. Honey, Honey,’ Isabel croons as she opens the door. She cannot bend easily now, but she crouches, and allows the dog’s wet muzzle to settle into her hand.

  ‘Breakfast, breakfast,’ she whispers as she scratches his ears and pulls his head back. They stare into each other’s eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘yes, I miss him too.’

  Scattered on the table behind her are seven love letters.

  Tawasi, One hour later

  ‘I needed to talk to you,’ she said.

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘ I got the last of my mother’s papers, the ones that were in the bank.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘His letters are here. I’ve read them.’

  ‘Whose letters?’ I ask, even as I
see him seated across the table from me in Zephyrion, hear him say ‘Imploring and arguing, you know the kind of thing …’

  Omar’s letters. To my mother.’

  ‘Oh …’

  ‘He was in love with her.’

  ‘Isabel. You knew that.’

  ‘I know.’ She sounds dull, flat.

  ‘Well then?’ I sound practical, brisk.

  ‘It’s different. When you actually read the letters.’

  ‘They were written thirty-five years ago.’

  ‘She kept them. She was talking about him before she died.’

  Thank goodness he had told her, I am thinking. He could have not told her. And then she would have got the letters —

  ‘It feels spooky being in this place, his place, without him. And with these letters.’

  ‘Leave. There’s no need for you to be there. What’s the time with you now? Heavens! It’s five o’clock in the morning. What are you doing up?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep. I got them yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘Isabel, this isn’t right. You’re pregnant. You need your rest.’

  ‘I know, I know. Listen. How are things with you?’