The Map of Love

by Ahdaf Soueif

  ‘These have become commonplace,’ Sharif Basha says, ‘and will become more so if there is a war between the Europeans.’

  ‘An Alliance between them would be even worse for us,’ Yaqub Basha says.

  A war is bad and an alliance is worse. And one of them has to happen. This is a race to subjugate the world — each nation using the tools it masters best: France, brute strength; Italy, terror; Britain, perfidy, false promises and double dealing; the Zionists, business schemes, blackmail and stealth. And Egypt? What is Egypt’s strength? Her resilience? Her ability to absorb people and events into the pores of her being? Is that true or is it just a consolation? A shifting of responsibility? And if it is true, how much can she absorb and still remain Egypt? Sharif Basha looks up at Nur’s trees, taller than him now, and sturdy after five short years. His daughter and the light of his eyes. When she hugs him she pats his back as though he were in need of comfort. How he wishes he could protect her! Turn her loose into life as he releases her into this garden: free but lovingly watched over. And what of Ahmad? And Mahrous? Already they are climbing out on the roof of their school to shout ‘el-Dustur ya Efendeena’ at the windows of Abdin Palace. Will they too spend their lives in battle, caught up in events not of their making? Using all their energy, all their intelligence, to ensure that things do not happen? ‘But, my love,’ he hears Anna say, ‘you misrepresent yourself again. Look at all that has been achieved: the university is there. Education for women is moving fast. The School of Fine Art already has one brilliant graduate: Rodin himself has agreed to take young Mukhtar into his studio. Look at the articles you have written, the people you have defended. Look at your people in Tawasi —’

  COULD WE HAVE LIVED OUR lives ignoring politics? The Occupation determined the crops that the fallah planted, it stood in the face of every industrial project, it prevented us from establishing our own financial institutions, it hampered our wishes for education, it censored what could be published, it deprived us of a voice in the Ottoman parliament, it dictated what jobs our men could hold and it held back the emancipation of our women. It put each one of us in the position of a minor and forbade us to grow up. And with every year that passed we saw our place in the train of modern nations receding, the distance we would have to make up growing ever longer and more difficult. It sowed distrust amid our people and pushed the best among them either to fanatical actions or to despair. And in Palestine we saw a clear warning of what the colonialist project could finally do: it could take the land itself from under its inhabitants.

  Could we have ignored all this? And what space would have been left for our lives to occupy? And what man with any dignity would have consented to confine himself to that space and not tried to push at its boundaries? And what woman would not have seen it as her duty to help him? My brother had pushed at boundaries for thirty years with every legal means available to him. He campaigned against repressive laws and defended Egyptians against them. With Anna at his side he met foreign visitors and hoped to influence them. His voice, after the death of Mustafa Kamel, was the only voice from our part of the world to address the powerful West. But in that year, the first year of the second decade of this century, I sensed a growing distance between him and his work — a distance of the emotions.

  Sharif Basha glances up at the haramlek. Behind Anna’s lattice her light is on. She is writing her letters, her journal, waiting for him. He crosses the courtyard towards his father’s shrine. He would like to spend more time with Anna in Tawasi. The weeks they have spent there and in Abu Qir have been among their happiest. In Tawasi you keep hold of the things that matter: the land and the people. And he is lucky to have land. Land that he can leave to Nur and to her children, to keep them rooted and in touch with the things that matter. Land that they can go to when the world gets too much.

  Mirghani is asleep behind the door but his father is not in his bed. Sharif Basha finds him seated by the tomb, leaning his head against the cold marble.

  ‘Kheir, my father?’

  There is no reply.

  ‘Could you not sleep?’ The old man does not answer and his son asks again: ‘Could you not sleep?’

  ‘The time for sleep will come,’ Baroudi Bey says softly.

  Sharif Basha lowers himself to the floor by his father and takes his hand. ‘Are you worried about something?’ he asks.

  ‘God is forgiving and merciful,’ the old man whispers.

  Sharif Basha sits in silence, his father’s frail hand clasped gently in both his own. When his father whispers again, he leans close to catch his words.

  ‘He was no traitor,’ the old man says, and his son knows he speaks of Urabi.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘God have mercy on him.’

  ‘They betrayed him,’ the old man says. ‘De Lesseps betrayed him.’

  ‘God have mercy on him too,’ Sharif Basha says, ‘all this was a long time ago.’

  ‘God forgets nobody,’ Baroudi Bey says. ‘His mercy is vast. And He forgets nobody.’

  ‘Recite “Say He is God, the Only One,” and ease your mind,’ Sharif Basha says. ‘Come, lean on me and I will walk you to bed.’

  The old man leans his head against the tomb and closes his eyes.

  A rustle at the door and Zeinab Hanim hurries in. She is in her dressing gown and carries a spirit lamp in her hand.

  ‘Whatever is the matter?’ she cries, and Mirghani springs to his feet. ‘Why are you both sitting here by the tomb like this?’

  ‘My father could not sleep,’ Sharif Basha says. His father’s hand holds tightly to his.

  ‘Get up, ya Baroudi Bey,’ she says. ‘You will surely get piles sitting on the cold floor like this. You too, ya habibi, get up. Get up.’

  Sharif Basha helps his father to his feet, and with his mother lighting the way, he walks him back to his cell, past Mirghani sitting dazed on his pallet, and sits him down on the bed.

  ‘I’ll get Mabrouka to make you some aniseed tea, to help you sleep,’ Zeinab Hanim says.

  ‘No,’ her husband says, his voice plaintive, ‘I don’t want aniseed. I want something cold.’

  ‘We shall get you some tamarind. ‘ His wife turns to Mirghani.

  ‘Water will do,’ the old man says, and Sharif Basha pours him a glass from the jug on the chest of drawers. When he has drunk it he looks up at his wife. ‘Stay with me, ya Zeinab, don’t leave me.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Whatever you want.’

  ‘Stay with him where?’ Sharif Basha looks at the narrow bed.

  ‘Leave him to me,’ his mother says. ‘You go to your wife now. It is late.’

  When he goes in to Anna, he says, ‘I looked at your loom. It is empty?’

  ‘I have finished the tapestry. It took long enough.’

  ‘Where is it, Anna? Can I see it?’

  ‘Mabrouka and Hasna are stretching it and sewing on the backing. When I have stitched it together I shall exhibit it for you.’

  ‘So what shall you do now?’

  ‘You know what I would really like to do?’ Anna puts her arms around her husband’s neck. ‘What, my love?’

  ‘I should like to paint you. But you never sit still long enough.’

  ‘Khalas ya Setti. I shall sit.’

  ‘Truly?’ Anna looks up at him in surprise. She had not thought it would be so easy.

  ‘Yes. I shall sit in Nur’s garden and watch her play and you can paint to your heart’s content.’

  I DO NOT SAY THAT he was losing heart, rather it was as if he had managed to climb above the mists of our daily concerns and had seen the chart of his life in its just proportions. ‘You are young,’ he said to me, ‘and you have time.’ But for himself, he wanted to slow time down. Ahmad was eleven and Nur was six. I used to look at them and pray that their childish affection, so strongly rooted, would green and flower and last them through their lifetimes.

  ‘If you suck your thumb you’ll have protruding teeth and no one will marry you,’ Hasna says.


  ‘Ahmad will marry me whatever I do.’ Nur takes her thumb out of her mouth for long enough to say the words and puts it back in.

  ‘A girl with a hard head,’ Hasna says.

  ‘Let her be,’ Mabrouka says tenderly. She holds out her arms and Nur comes into them, snuggling, thumb in mouth, against the warm breast, taking in the same scent of orange blossom her father had breathed in half a century before. Mabrouka’s hand cradles the child’s head, strokes her hair. ‘The name of the Prophet guard and protect you,’ she whispers. ‘May He write down happiness for you wherever you go.’

  20 October 1911

  … it is an incomparable blessing and joy to know that I have eased my husband’s burden and that in the darkest moments of these last ten years he has turned to me and he has found comfort.

  If it were possible I would say I love him more now even than I did at the beginning. It is as though my heart and soul grow and expand to make room for this love. Or as though as I perceive each new aspect of him — or as he changes, my love grows to encircle and hold what I see.

  And yet I do not know what to make of his recent mood for I have, of late, seen some intimations that lead me to fear that he may be losing heart. He continues to defend cases vigorously, but he no longer seizes on opportunities to place his cause, the cause of Egypt, before the public. He has said, on two occasions, that he would like to spend more time in Tawasi, or perhaps travel abroad. But I own I cannot imagine him leading the life of a private gentleman. For all the happiness that I would have in private times with him, there would be the sadness of knowing that he has relinquished the one essential purpose of his life —

  Tawasi, 15 July 1998

  The headlines on my computer read: Security Council demands Israel cancel Project Greater Jerusalem — European Parliament rejects report on Islamic Fundamentalism threat — Beirut demonstrations demand release of Arab prisoners from Israeli jails — Algerian journalists in protest demonstrations -Israeli reservists refuse to confront Palestinian civilians — Famine in Sudan — Bomb alert in American embassy ‒ 3 killed in fundamentalist confrontation in Upper Egypt.

  Isabel’s e-mail reads:

  Amal, Hi!

  The doctors say it’s safe to travel with Sharif now so we are coming over on the 17th. He is so adorable I cannot wait for you to see him. Omar is starting his tour but says he might come to Cairo but he will let us know. I shall go to your apartment and call you from there. Don’t worry about me, Tahiyya can sort me out, I’m sure.

  Love,

  Isabel.

  I can’t wait to see you. Omar has given me some fabric to bring to you. He says you know what it is.

  My brother’s e-mail reads:

  Dearest, all’s well that ends well. It hasn’t ended yet though, has it? The baby is fantastic and Isabel is a devoted mother. He has your eyes — our eyes, I suppose. Can you tear yourself away from your fallaheen for me or will I have to come to Tawasi and play the ‘umdah? I’ll let you know when I’m coming over. The kids are delighted with the baby. Relief.

  Much love w’ mit bosa ——

  Khadra comes in pale with morning sickness. She tells me Am Abu el-Maati is not well. In the evening I go to see him. It is the first time I enter beyond the mandarah and into his bedroom, where I find him propped up in a big brass bed.

  ‘It’s a small thing and will pass,’ he tells me, but he has to pause for breath.

  ‘Have you seen a doctor?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, the doctor came and wrote him a medicine and we got it,’ his wife says. She shows me the medicine: a painkiller and an antibiotic.

  ‘What can I do?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing, ya Sett Amal, may He keep you safe. He is not in pain and his breathing is easier now.’

  I sit with him for a while in silence. When I leave I press the gnarled hand lying on the green cotton counterpane. His son insists on walking me home.

  Cairo

  25 October 1911

  Dear James,

  We had your Dr Ginsberg to dine last night at Hilmiyya with Husni and Layla. This is the first time that Layla dines in mixed company in Egypt and her brother and husband are taking some risk by permitting it, but we all got on very well for Dr Ginsberg is indeed a most charming gentleman and you did not exaggerate the breadth of his learning and his grasp of affairs. He and my husband — as you suggested — will write two ‘, each giving a kind of summing-up of the political situation today, from their respective points of view. And if Mr Blunt should write the third and they should all be published together, this conjunction must surely have some effect on the public mind.

  It was not all solemnities, however, for Dr Ginsberg told Jewish jokes and Husni and my husband Egyptian ones, and I heard Sabir as he poured the coffee mutter ‘May God bring this to a good end’ for there is not generally so much mirth round our dinner table.

  My husband speaks — privately — of turning his back on politics and public affairs and leading a private life with me and the children. I do not believe that is possible. I think he would grow restless and weary. And yet there is justice in his view that events have become too large, that almost nothing that can happen within Egypt — short of another assassination — will change how things go for her now. What a small place the world is become and how interlocked its interests!

  The picture you send of your mama and her garden is exquisite —

  Cairo, 2 August 1998

  In Tawasi we sat on the veranda as we had done a year ago — old friends now, and sisters. The doors were open into Isabel’s room, where her baby lay on my grandmother’s bed, barricaded with pillows, protected by the mosquito netting and watched over by Sharif Basha. He touches me to the heart. I had forgotten how downy their heads are, how delicate their ears, how soft their skins. I had forgotten their scent.

  I had not been able to go to Cairo, for Am Abu el-Maati died on the day of Isabel’s arrival. He died quietly and easily, with his forefinger outstretched, with his children and grandchildren around him, with his wife moistening his lips with wet cotton wool and his son’s name inscribed on the flyleaf of his Quran. God was generous to him, for he died in the morning and so he was washed and prayed over and buried before the sun set. And in the evening the people of all the villages surrounding us came to Tawasi to shake his sons’ hands and sit with his wife and daughters and speak of his life and invoke God’s mercy on him while the chant of the Quran washed over the houses and the planted fields and the still canals.

  And Isabel had not been able to wait, for it was a Friday, and I said I would have to stay in Tawasi till the first Thursday; so I turned, once again, to Tareq Atiyya, for I could not see her on the train or braving the barricades in the back of a Peugeot taxi with her baby. And Tareq had sent a car and a driver and she and I had hugged on my doorstep and even though the village could not rejoice, with Am Abu el-Maati dead just the day before, the women still came round in the afternoon before they went to his house for the Second Day to congratulate her and to see the baby and bring him gifts, and every one of them said, ‘And where’s the Basha? He lets you travel like this alone with the child on your arm?’ And I wondered how many times, over the coming years, she would hear this phrase.

  ‘They’ll really let him have it when he comes, won’t they?’ Isabel said. She is happy and appears settled. She is still in love but no longer in pain. She has him now — in part, anyway.

  We sat on the veranda and she told me, once again, of Jasmine’s death and we wept a little, together, for both our mothers, and then for our fathers too. And I told her Anna’s story so far and we wondered over the distance that had been placed between the two branches of our family when Anna and Layla had been like sisters and Nur and Ahmad had loved each other so much. And she told me of Omar and how he had never yet said he loved her but everything showed that he did. And he had come with her to the hospital but could not bear the delivery so paced outside the room like an expectant father in an old movie. And when he had
come in he had held her tight and whispered, ‘I was so afraid for you.’ But when the nurse gave him the baby and he held it and looked into its eyes, she had seen a completely new look come over his face and she knew he belonged to little Sharif for ever.

  I packed my computer and Anna’s papers. Isabel came with me to the Thursday, and on Friday morning we put everything in the car. We agreed that she would sit in the back seat and hold Sharif since I did not yet have a baby-seat. We kissed Khadra and Rayessa and said we would be back soon and try to bring the Basha with us, and I remembered I had not packed Anna’s green flag. So I ran back in and fetched it, which was just as well since after the third barricade the temperature gauge teetered towards the red, and we decided we would not wait for the car to start smoking, but we would stop and let her cool down, then fill the radiator from the massive firkin of water we had brought with us, for we were women who learned from our mistakes. Once again we spread out our rug and sat by the roadside — but this time we had the baby. So I rooted in the car and found the flag and we pushed three sticks into the earth and spread the flag over them, and the baby lay on the rug with his mother on one side of him and me on the other and above his head the green and white flag of national unity.

  And as we sat there, Isabel told me she wanted to make sure my brother knew that she understood his work and what it meant to him — not just the music, but the writing too. She had created a home page for him and linked it with several information sites, and now his articles went across the world and into cyberspace the moment they appeared in the paper.

  Cairo, 26 October 1911

  «Put simply, the East holds two attractions for Europe:

  1. An Economic attraction: Europe needs materials for its industries, markets for its products and jobs for its men. In the Arab lands it has found all three.

  2. A Religious, Historical, Romantic attraction to the land of the Scriptures, of the Ancients, and of Fable.