by Ahdaf Soueif
An hour later I am still sitting with the book on my knee and, on the table in front of me, the letter Anna had in such agitation given to her husband as he planted the young cypress tree for Nur back in 1906. Oh, how angry I am, and how I wish I could tell him! ‘If people can write to each other across space,’ Isabel had asked, ‘why can they not write across time too?’ But how do you write to the past? Once more I read Clara Boyle’s words, written in 1965:
About 1906 there had been some disagreement between Lord Cromer and the Foreign Office in connection with a point of policy to be followed in Egypt. Lord Cromer had sent a dispatch to London, which had had no effect.
As a last resort Harry then submitted a paper which was to give a true picture of the workings of the oriental mind; it was supposed to be the translation of a letter which had reached him secretly, and as such it was transmitted to the Foreign Office. Only Lord Cromer himself knew the truth — that the original letter was written by Harry Boyle himself. Such a letter might indeed have come into his hands at that time, but as he needed it at that exact psychological moment to make his point, he did not hesitate to use his knowledge of the oriental, for what he meant to say was to the benefit of the Egyptians and towards better understanding.
The original paper, typed by Harry laboriously with two fingers, is still in my possession. As will be seen, there is all the picturesque, flowery language of the East, transposed into equally picturesque English …
This letter was to serve as a warning to the Foreign Office of general dissatisfaction among Egyptian people and notables. It was supposed to convey the plot of a big Nationalist rising, giving all particulars about the time, the strength, the manner of conducting the revolt against British rule. Every single sentence, almost every word, has a double meaning. Harry must have had great pleasure in writing this letter. Although he invented the ‘translation’, he did not invent the spirit of it which served as a graphic illustration of the situation. Lord Cromer was delighted to have this letter at hand to drive home his point, and he sent it to the Foreign Office informing the authorities that it had come to him through one of Harry’s secret contacts.
Again I check the letter quoted in the book against the letter on my table. They match word for word. Tomorrow I guess I shall be triumphant in my find. But now, all I want is to be able to rush back and tell him, show him the book, say, ‘Look! You were right.’
Cairo, 15 August 1998
Sharif is restless and I hold him against me and walk him up and down. Up and down, past the screen, and the bookcase, and the tapestry, and the sideboard, and up to the mirror on the far wall, then back again. I am still thinking about Harry Boyle’s letter. About his wife’s confidence — not in some long-ago forgotten time, but in the Sixties, in the Sixties when I was alive — her confidence that he had put his finger on and had actually expressed ‘the workings of the oriental mind’ -my mind. Up and down I walk the baby, up and down. His weight against my chest soothes me, his breath on my neck comforts me. I wonder if Denshwai would have happened had Enoch not written his letter and his Lord not sent it. I wonder if that is why Cromer left Egypt just before the trial -having tested the gallows before he went. All the British officials in Cairo must have believed an uprising was imminent. Only Boyle and Cromer knew the truth. So Cromer leaves Matchell, de Mansfeld Findlay, Hayter, Bond and Ludlow to deal with what he, knows they will see as the •beginnings of a people’s revolt. He hopes that when his leave is over and he returns to Cairo, the unrest that had shown itself there since the Entente, since Taba, will have been cowed and he can come back once more as the ‘friend of the fellah’. But it had not worked — and he had lost Egypt. Is that why in a two-volume book published in 1908 in which he lists practically every detail of his Egyptian rule, Denshwai is never mentioned?
And as for the Egyptians, Fathi Zaghlul was promoted to undersecretary for Justice after the trial but was booed wherever he went; Ibrahim al-Helbawi spent the rest of his days trying to atone — the portraits of him in later life are portraits of a haunted man. And Boutros Ghali paid with his life.
Sharif is fast asleep against me, but I don’t want to put him down. Does all this matter now? After ninety years of Boyle’s letter and thirty of his widow’s commentary? Anna would have been incandescent.
Isabel comes into the room. She is in a pink towelling robe and is rubbing her hair dry. She hangs the towel round her neck, flings her hair back from her face and sees us.
‘Oh,’ she cries. ‘I want to take a photo of you. Do you know, I have not taken a single photograph of Baby. I left my camera here. But you look so great together, you with your cheek resting against his head like that. Just walk, walk — while I get the camera.’ She runs to her room and comes back with her bag, looking puzzled.
‘Amal,’ she says, ‘what’s this? Look! It was in my bag.’
Hanging half out of the big holdall is a fat, oblong bundle wrapped in muslin. I’ve seen one like it before. I know what it is before we open it.
I untie the ends awkwardly, working with one hand, while I hold the sleeping baby against me with the other. We roll out the fabric and a hint of orange blossom comes into the room, and there is the infant Horus, small and naked and still with his human head — on which rests the hand of Isis, his mother. Above him, two words: ‘al-hayy min —’. The Living from —
5 November 1911
Sharif Basha’s prayer beads hang from his right hand. With his left he leafs through a pile of sheets on a low bookcase in Ismail Sabri’s study. On each sheet a photograph is pasted.
‘I see you are interested, ya Basha?’ Ismail Basha Sabri is seated in a deep easy chair, a chequered blanket in pale cream and blue spread over his knees.
‘We know so little about them,’ Sharif Basha says. ‘Long ago, in the days of Mariette Basha, I wanted to go on a dig.’ He turns to smile at his friend.
‘Maybe you will yet.’ Ismail Sabri smiles back. ‘I hear you are planning a sort of retreat from public life?’
Sharif Basha, who has turned back to the photographs, stiffens. ‘And where did you hear that?’ he asks lightly, picking up the sheets, rearranging them into a neat pile.
‘Talk travels,’ Ismail Sabri says, his eyes steady on his old friend’s back. ‘Is it true?’
Sharif Basha turns. ‘Do you blame me?’ he asks — and it is a real question.
Isma’il Sabri shakes his head. ‘I would have urged it, but I thought you would not listen. I thought you would say, “He is grown ill and fearful” —’
‘You would have urged it?’ Sharif Basha is surprised. ‘Why?’
Isma’il Sabri makes a small ducking gesture with his head. ‘You have stood too much alone. Particularly in the last few years. I have felt —’
The door swings open and Yaqub Artin Basha hurries in followed by an apologetic sufragi who has not had time to announce him. ‘Look!’ Yaqub Basha waves his newspaper. ‘Unrest in the Balkans, and Turkey needs money to quell it —’
‘Yaqub Basha!’ Ismail Sabri holds out his hand. ‘You will excuse me —’
‘No, no. Your excuse is with you, my brother.’ Yaqub Artin grasps the seated Ismail Sabri’s hand and pumps it, then advances on Sharif Basha. The sufragi leaves the room quietly, closing the door behind him.
‘You have been looking at our ancestors, I see,’ Yaqub Basha says, eyeing the pile of photographs at Sharif Basha’s side. Our friend the poet here has been urging me to get the history of the pharaohs taught in our schools. What do you think?’
‘A good idea,’ Sharif Basha says.
‘We do not know very much about them, though,’ Yaqub Artin says.
‘Enough for schoolchildren,’ Ismail Sabri offers.
‘It would be interesting to find out more,’ Sharif Basha says.
‘Ah! The magic of the past!’ Yaqub Artin sits down heavily in an armchair opposite Ismail Sabri. ‘So much more attractive than this present.’ He throws his newspaper down on the large, marb
le-topped coffee table that stands between him and his host. ‘There will be more massacres by the Turks and more money borrowed from Europe to fund them.’
‘We are heading for war,’ Ismail Basha Sabri says, ‘a big war.’
‘They are heading for war,’ Sharif Basha says from his position by the bookcase. ‘It is not our war.’
‘But we will suffer,’ Ismail Sabri says.
‘We suffer anyway.’
‘True, mon ami,’ Yaqub Basha says. ‘But since when are you so fataliste?’
Sharif Basha shrugs. ‘I am going to go up to Tawasi for a while,’ he says, ‘for the winter. These pictures you have here — I want to see the temples for myself. I want to take my family to Luxor, to the Valley of the Kings.’
‘I wish I could come with you,’ Ismail Sabri sighs.
‘Come,’ Sharif Basha says simply. ‘We will look after you.’
Why should they not travel? Take things slowly. Enjoy their time together. Ahmad can come with them. And Mahrous too if he wishes. It will be a good education for the children. His parents will be looked after, Layla and Husni are in Cairo. And his mother can come to Tawasi when she pleases. He will move Sabir and his family into the house. Sabir tells him Kitchener likes him even less than Cromer did, although he has never met the man. Time was when he would have found some satisfaction in that. Now he does not care. Muhammad Abdu is dead and Qasim Amin is dead. Urabi is dead. Even young Mustafa Kamel is dead. Died in agony with cancer eating at his stomach. And what is it all for? A millimetre by millimetre struggle while the world sweeps by like a hurricane.
Sharif Basha paces the garden of the quiet house in Hilmiyya. They have carved out a life, a good and happy life even if overshadowed by larger matters. Perhaps it is time to set that life free. In the summer he can take Anna to Europe. And if he feels distaste at the thought of Italy, of France, he shall school himself not to think of their politics. He and Anna can take pleasure in the music, in the paintings, in the food. They can go to Palestine and visit once again the olive groves of his childhood in ‘in el-Mansi and pray in al-Aqsa: once for himself and once for Muhammad Abdu. They might even go to England. Why should she not have the pleasure of going home just because of his sensitivities? People would stare? Let them stare. He would wear his tarbush in the park and outstare them. Let her have the pleasure of showing him her countryside, her Lake District, her museum with the paintings that had brought her to him. They could call on Blunt, visit Barrington. He might get on well with Sir Charles. She should have the joy of watching Nur play in the places where she played as a child. There is no need to have the whole world poisoned. He pauses under the sycamore that spreads its branches up to his bedroom balcony. Twenty years he lived in this house alone. And now it has become their hiding place. Where they have foreign guests to dinner and entertain together. And when the guests have gone and they are alone, she stands close by him on the balcony and he hears the rustle of the sycamore and remembers the nights he paced here, longing for her — and afraid.
He enters the house and strides through the halls to the street door, where Sabir is waiting for him.
‘I am going home,’ he says.
‘I shall accompany you, ya Basha.’
They step outside and a hire carriage draws up. Sabir tries to pull up the hood but it is stuck. He climbs up on the box by the driver.
Sharif Basha leans back in his seat. He will be in time for Nur’s bath. And then a quiet dinner with Anna. She does not believe that he will be happy with a quiet life. But he will; after almost thirty years of fighting, he is ready. And she? Will she be happy? She had adopted Egypt and adopted his cause. The one woman in all the world who was meant for him -and God had sent her to him. Had her kidnapped and thrown into his house. Sharif Basha smiles to himself as, once again, he sees Anna, in a man’s shirt and trousers, sitting — obstinate and determined — in his mother’s haramlek. What if he took her back to Sinai? Showed her the coral, this time? A whole world beneath the surface — and all you had to do was put your head in the water and open your eyes. She would enjoy that. Would she have been happier in a different life? Useless to wonder. She seems happy with him. But he could have given her more. Not more care or tenderness, but more of the ordinary things of life. She loved so many things: people and trees and painting and music and cooking. A woman who was always busy but carried a great and restful stillness always around her. Sometimes he just entered her and lay with her, not moving, just resting. And he had taken her in joy and in passion and tenderness, in sorrow and in despair. She was his sea to swim in, his desert to gallop in, his fields to plough —
‘Move a bit faster, will you?’ he says to the driver.
15 August 1998
It is evening and I am watching the news on television when Isabel comes into the living room.
‘He is asleep,’ Isabel says.
I smile at her. Another crisis burgeoning between Iraq and the United States. Not between Iraq and the United Nations —
‘Amal,’ Isabel says.
‘Yes?’ I half turn towards her.
‘I know how it came to be in my bag.’
‘How?’ I say.
‘She put it there.’
My heart sinks. ‘Who put it there?’ I ask quietly.
‘The woman in the mosque. Umm Aya. She put it there.’
I look at her and I feel a growing anger. I have no better explanation, but I am angry all the same.
‘You still don’t believe me, do you?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘So what do you think happened?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know, Isabel. But I cannot —’
‘Listen,’ she says, leaning forward, her eyes huge, ‘I’ve been going over it. As I was leaving, I was going to forget this bag. I had put it down somewhere inside. On the bench or on the floor. And it was open, I’m sure of that, because I had been using the camera and I hadn’t closed it. And as I was leaving, she came towards me and handed it to me. She said, ‘Don’t forget your things.’ And she smiled and hugged me. And when she handed it to me the zipper was closed.’
‘And you didn’t feel that the bag was heavier?’
‘No.’ She pauses. ‘But I always find this bag heavy.’
‘And you never opened it again?’
‘No, I didn’t. I was getting ready to go. I didn’t take any more pictures. And I left it here with you.’
‘I don’t know,’ I say, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, where else would I have got the thing?’ she asks. ‘And why would I lie? I might as well think you put it there. The bag has been here for months.’
‘I didn’t put it there,’ I say.
We sit in silence.
I WILL NEVER KNOW How she knew. I heard her cry before I heard the wheels, the shouts, the loud battering at the door. I was in the courtyard. We had been in Nur’s room, she and I. Anna still bathed her last thing at night -as the English do. Nur was out of the tub, warm and rosy. She would not put on her pyjamas but kept wrapping herself in the big, white bath towel. We unwrapped her and she wrapped herself up again. It turned into a game. We would pull at the edges of the towel and ask, ‘What’s this? What’s this that we have found? Is it a monkey? Is it a gazelle?’ And she would fling off the towel, laughing with delight: ‘It’s a girl, it’s a little girl!’ and wrap herself up again. And again. And again. Then she said, ‘I want my doll.’ We looked for the doll and I remembered she had been playing with it in the courtyard in the afternoon. I called Hasna but she must have been in the kitchen. So I went to look for the doll. And that is why I was in the courtyard. The doll was there, lying by the fountain, and as I picked it up I heard Anna’s cry. A great, long cry that rang through the house and sent a shiver through my body and brought Ahmad running from the garden. ‘No,’ she cried — and it was an English ‘no’. I looked up and she had burst out of the house — she was running along the courtyard, stumbling. ‘No … No …’ And then I
heard the sounds outside. The wheels, the shouts, the stamping and then the banging at the door. I ran, and she was there — pulling at the heavy door as Fudeil and Mirghani came running out to help — to pull the door open. And then the men’s voices saying one thing: ‘El-Basha, el-Basha …’
They carried him in. My brother. Three men carried him in. And there was a small, bent old man limping after them, holding my brother’s stick and his tarbush, while the horses stamped and neighed and reared outside with no one to hold them.
They carried him into the salamlek while Anna hung on to him. She had stopped screaming but she was still saying ‘no’ — holding on to his arm, saying ‘no, no’ and shaking her head. She was refusing it, turning it away, sending it back, this thing that had come to us.
‘Hush,’ he said. I heard him and my legs went weak with relief. A turn, a heart attack, a slight stroke, anything, but he was alive. He was alive and saying ‘hush’, and when they laid him down on the diwan and she fell to her knees beside him, he raised his hand and put it on her neck.
I did not understand it at first. What had happened. Till the men stood back and I saw the stains on their clothes and I went rushing to him — and Nur came faltering into the room following her mother’s scream -still naked, trailing her towel behind her — and saw her father lying on the diwan, his eyes closed, and ran to him. I saw the blood spreading on the diwan under him and caught hold of the child. And Mirghani came to me and said, ‘I shall go fetch Husni Bey’ and Anna said, ‘Get the doctor. Get Milton Bey and Sa’d Bey el-Khadim. Quickly.’ And she was on her feet and unbuttoning his shirt: ‘Can you turn over, my love? Can we turn you over?’ Nur wriggled out of my arms — ‘Papa is hurt,’ I said, ‘he’s hurt’ — and she was kissing his face and trying to get to the wound: ‘Shall I kiss your hurt away?’ He opened his eyes. ‘Kiss my cheek, ya habibti, and go put your sleeping clothes on.’ Fudeil had brought the medicine box and Anna was pulling out bandages and bottles and cotton wool and as they were turning him on his side he saw her holding the lengths of bandages and he said ‘Are you going to tie up your hair again?’ and closed his eyes. She cut his shirt, and she was speaking to him all the time as she bathed his wound and staunched it with cotton wool and held her hand tight over it. I came close and said ‘Abeih?’ and he opened his eyes and said ‘Layla? They’ve done it -the dogs —’ and I said ‘Who ya Abeih? Who?’ and he said, ‘There are plenty of dogs. Don’t be afraid. Send for mother. And put Nur to bed. And see to Sabir.’ Sabir’s wound was in the shoulder. He had thrown himself over my brother when the shots rang out.
