by Robert Irwin
‘I am not trying to trap their souls. I don’t believe that Turkish whores have such things. The soul of an infidel sultan may be damned, and yet he has one, but women have no souls. That is why painting their portraits is so difficult, for there is no inner essence to be caught, only a body to be sketched out. So while the body of a man is the Temple of God on Earth, a woman’s body is in turn only a deformed reflection of the man’s. Believe it. When I painted Bajazet’s harem I hated it (hated them, rather) and their rolls of white flesh, reptilian eyes and shivery enticements. I know that I shall hate these Egyptian ones too; they’ll be too round and blubbery to model satisfactorily in line and shape. You understand, of course, that I have nothing against women as women? Then there is the problem of the bad light inside the houses and the problem of trying to find the right dyes and oils in the market and there is the heat. Everyone is half asleep while I am trying to do my work.’
He tailed off despondently. Balian had been listening with a straight face. Was the man mad? Or simply a homosexual with an amusingly inappropriate job to perform? Balian’s head swam. The heat was rising. The man called Vane emerged from the caravanserai and moved off rapidly down a dark alleyway that led through the markets towards the Citadel. Giancristoforo pointed towards him languidly.
‘That man knows a lot about dyes and oils, and he knows Arabic. One can learn a lot from him, but perhaps it’s better not to. He is an alchemist, and he has close friends at the Mamluke court. Both things make him dangerous. One of these days, I suspect, he will apostatize, which will be a pity, for he knows a lot about things that we should be prepared against.’
Giancristoforo squinted up at the sky as if pondering his next remark. He never made it, for in an instant two Turks with scimitars raised before them emerged from the darkness at the back of the coffee house, smoothly and silently pinioned his arms and, together with a third Turk who joined them in the square, set off with their captive in the direction Vane had already gone, towards the Citadel.
Balian was too shaken to move at first and then properly cautious. He made no attempt to follow them but, picking up the book left behind by Giancristoforo, walked with studied casualness back to the caravanserai. He told the Venetian traders what had happened, and their leader, the consul from Alexandria, said that a protest would be lodged with the Dawadar on Monday when the offices reopened. But what had happened? Clearly the Turks were officials or soldiers. That could be seen from their selective and smoothly efficient way of acting. Had spies been shadowing Giancristoforo from Alexandria? Was it his remarks about Turkish whores? Or about Vane, the Mamluke’s friend? Had he offended against some obscure canon of Arab etiquette? Or had he simply passed the shopkeeper a bad coin at a time when the Mamluke police happened to be passing by?
‘We could all disappear like that, every one of us here, and Christendom neither would nor could lift a finger to save us,’ a Frenchman remarked thoughtfully.
Later that afternoon, when the Europeans set out to attend the day’s festivities, they were still nervous and moved off together under the leadership of the consul, Alvise Trevisano. The hippodrome where the games took place lay at the foot of the Citadel, and it was there that the young Mamluke slaves and their eunuch trainers customarily drilled. Despite his eagerness to see them at manoeuvres, Balian felt too shaken to leave the security of the caravanserai immediately. So he did not accompany the others that afternoon. Instead he climbed up to the roof, taking with him Giancristoforo’s book. For some reason he had not mentioned this book to the others.
The book was unimpressive, a score or so of folio pages loosely threaded together. Balian noted with surprise that the title was on the back of the book in a spider’s scrawl of Arabic. He opened it. The writing inside was in Arabic too, in the same sort of irregular spider’s dance, but in tiny writing between the lines of Arabic someone had attempted a translation into Italian. Frowning with concentration Balian read.
‘He said, ‘Beware of the Ape!’
He said also, ‘Some people say that every skull contains within itself its own sea of dreams and that there are millions upon millions of these tiny oceans. They adduce as proof the fact that if you put your ear against the ear of a friend and listen closely, you may hear the sea beating against the wall of the skull. But how can the finite contain the infinite?’
He said also, ‘When we sleep we are learning to come to terms with death.’
He said also, ‘One honours the spirits of the dream by sleeping with them, even when they are in disguise.’
He said also, ‘Why can we not dream that we are two people? This was a great problem for the Ikhwan al-Safa.’
He said also, ‘Large areas of the brain are empty. They have never been crossed by man.’
He said also, ‘Sleep is man’s most natural state. Long years Adam lay dreaming in the Garden before Eve was drawn from his body and she woke him.’
He said also,’ One should take care to forget unimportant dreams. One throws the sprats back into the sea of the Alam al-Mithal.’ He said also, ‘He who is a coward in his dreams will be one also in his waking life.’
Balian put the book down baffled and irritated. He could not see its purpose. Who had attempted a translation? Giancristoforo? But Giancristoforo claimed to know no Arabic. He drifted on to consider the circumstances of Giancristoforo’s arrest. The thought passed through his mind that Giancristoforo had been arrested by mistake for Balian the spy, but he rapidly dismissed it. He moved on to dimmer, dozier thoughts and from these into a siesta. He awoke in a pool of sweat. The party had returned from the hippodrome and the call to the sunset prayer was being given. He sat for a while, feeling bored; his fear had turned to restlessness.
As he came down into the courtyard, he found that another excursion was being proposed, a visit to the Village of Women. The pilgrims were the most enthusiastic, he noted wryly. It had taken the ship five weeks to reach Alexandria, and it had taken them another three days to reach Cairo, nearly six weeks without a woman. Moreover, it could not be a sin to sleep with a Muslim!
The Village of Women lay, in fact, within the walls of the city, in the Ezbekiyya quarter, close by the caravanserai. The quarter in which they were lodged was also the quarter of the entertainers and criminals. Again it was a Venetian who took the lead in conducting them round the brothel area. They picked their way by torchlight up and down the narrow paths that threaded across the quarter.
It was a sombre voyage of exploration that he thought more likely to turn the soul towards self-mortification than to gratify the senses. The houses were lower than in the merchants’ quarters, being only one or two storeys high. The walls were mostly painted in garish blues and oranges. Frescoes of dancing naked couples, cobras, vine leaves, djinn, heraldic blazons. Very bizarre, a pantheon of Christian and Eastern saints also made their appearance on the walls: St Josaphat casting away money, St Catherine sprawled and broken on the wheel and, everywhere, St Thais and St Pelagia, the patron saints of Egyptian prostitution. Where on the interior ground floor one would have seen rope, camelot, cinnamon or cotton for sale in the merchants’ quarters, here another sort of merchandise was on display: flesh—flesh hideously tattooed with apotropaic emblems, flesh lined and hanging in limp folds, flesh pocked with the marks of pestilence. It sat there on display in the torchlight of the interiors. The women sat there indifferent, making no attempt to tempt some custom. Again Balian was reminded of Giancristoforo’s discourse that morning. Yet, curiously, the party of Europeans was getting smaller as, one by one, they slipped away to find satisfaction in the arms of age, ugliness and disease.
Very soon Balian found himself walking alone, sick with revulsion, oppressed by the poverty and squalor. Suddenly he was jerked out of his misery by a hand that shot between his legs. He found himself drawn up against a woman who was almost as tall as he was and dressed in the Turkish style—headscarf, tight velvet waistcoat and striped skirt. Her face was as uncompromising as her direct man
ner of attracting custom, high cheekbones and the brightness of the eyes emphasized by the swooping lines of kohl around them. A Circassian Turkess? She was remarkably young for the area, in her early thirties, and did not appear to be deformed in any way. She set him free and made suggestive signs with her hands, pointing insistently to her house. In fact, it was hardly a house, for only the corners and the floor were of stone. It was rather a kiosk, a ramshackle construction of fretworked wood. She drew him in and up, behind a blanket that hung from the roof, on to a raised stone platform covered with mats and rugs. Still staring haughtily at him, she threw herself back on these and, pulling up her long skirt, drew up her legs. Roused by her imperious manner and the exotic surroundings, he moved in easily.
It was therefore with some surprise, when it was all over, that he heard the woman say, ‘Well, I did not think much of that!’
‘You speak English!’
‘I learnt the language from your friend.’
‘He taught you very well—but who is my friend?’
She looked pleased. ‘Vane, of course. You came to Cairo with him.’
‘Vane isn’t my friend. We have never spoken to one another. I don’t even know what he does here in Cairo.’
‘Oh, I assumed that he’d brought you back from England to work with him. Forgive my error. But I expect that you will become acquainted with him in time. Most people know Vane; they know his reputation at least.’
‘But you were expecting me, lying in wait for me?’
She began to search for something in a little wooden box that she had beside her. ‘Oh, yes, foreigners are watched all the time.’
‘What did you mean by “I did not think much of that”?’
‘I was just expecting more, that’s all.’
‘What more, in God’s name, did you want?’
She produced a thread from the box and ran it through from one nostril to the other. Balian, thoroughly intimidated, watched her cleaning her nostrils. It was some time before she replied.
‘People like you suck up the energy of others, sitting, listening and asking questions without ever saying anything for themselves. As to your sexual performance, I had assumed, foolishly I suppose, that all Englishmen were like Vane, or, if not that, then that you might have been taught by him. He has a great reputation here in Cairo as a lover. I could teach you some things, I suppose. Imsaak in particular. ’ She looked at him speculatively. There was an odd glint in her eye.
‘What is imsaak?’
‘Imsaak is the art of delaying the climax with as many twists, turns and contortions as possible. It is in this that the real art lies... You look exhausted. God knows how you got to Cairo; I wonder if you will be able to raise the energy to leave. Your penis stands erect, but your eyelids flutter. Your body moves, but the serpent within you sleeps.’
She clutched her hands dramatically to her bosom before continuing. ‘You have a serpent coiled and sleeping at the base of your spine. It must be sung to and lured to rise until its head is between your eyes and you see the world through its eyes, a body of pure sexual energy. In Christendom copulation is very like sleep, but in Egypt and in Sind it is a science. I could also teach you karezza and the rites of sexual exhaustion, but at the moment you are throwing your semen away as if it were water. First we must rouse the serpent. ’
‘How do you rouse the serpent?’
She raised her finger to her lips. The eyes moved from side to side as if searching the room for spies. ‘It cannot be spoken of. It can only be demonstrated. The act of drawing the serpent up the spine is like climbing a rope. He who has understood how to do it and climbed the rope pulls it up after him.
I shall initiate you. It will cost you money, but it will be worth it for you to wake from a sleep which is half a death.’
Balian replied as reasonably as he could. ‘Our faith teaches us that initiation is not to be found between the legs of a woman, nor pearls in a gutter. If you have knowledge you cannot speak about, then do not speak about it. I have been travelling a long time. Of course I am tired, yet I doubt, lady, if perverted intercourse with you is the remedy. Have you no family? How could someone like you descend to the level of the whore?’
Her long thin tongue travelled slowly round her lips as she considered. It was obvious to Balian that she was mad.
‘More of these tiring questions. Oh yes, I have a family. If you are lucky, you will never meet them. But I am no whore.
I am a princess. Indeed, my prince approaches, and you should leave quickly. Go now. Shoo! You must hurry, for the streets become dangerous so late. Remember the way back, and be careful not to sleep alone in this city. Now pay me. Two dinars please.’
Balian paid her.
‘My name is Zuleyka. We shall meet again.’
He turned and rushed out into the street.
2
Another Way into Cairo
If my audience would like to hear of more wonders like the rope trick they shall, but the rope trick itself can never be explained. By the way, as this is a tale designed to be told at night, it seems appropriate that it should have within it a strong sensual element so as to stimulate what I have heard they call in the West wet dreams, but we shall return to these matters later perhaps...
‘Cairo.’ The guide pointed ahead, a skinny bronzed hand shooting out of his robes. The city grew larger and larger. Balian, who was riding beside the guide, lowered his hood, unable to stare directly into the sun until they came in under the shadow of the walls. Then they passed in through the gate, and now Balian was puzzling at the many unexpected features of the city he saw on every side—the rugs spread out to display the little brass idols of Mahound, Apollyon and Tergavent, the twisted candy-columned doorways, the storks that nested in towers and minarets and drifted across the sky from one to another, the broad staircases that shot up steeply from the main highway closely lined with statues of elephants and men. Children stood on the roofs waving at them.
But where are all the women? thought Balian. Oh yes. Of course, their husbands have hidden them away. I was expected.
Some streets were boarded off, against what it was not clear.
‘There have been few Christians who have crossed over to Egypt this year.’
A vivid memory came to mind of the sea this summer, its green surface coated thick with dust. Cobwebs hung from waves which had risen but not broken, and when the occasional wave did fall, sending dirt and discoloured foam splashing upwards, a swarm of buzzing insects rose with it too. The whole horizon had been obscured by the dust that hung in the air.
The children waved but did not say anything. The sound of hooves was muffled on sand. It was very quiet. They rode further into the entrails of the city. The guide and he dismounted. It was difficult to see the guide’s face; he might have been veiled. The guide showed him a book and Balian read in it:
He said, ‘There are some who hold that talking about it, even thinking about it, is enough to attract it and stimulate its attacks. For this reason we do not name it. But even this may not be enough. Therefore I advised that no one should read this book unless he is already aware of what it is, and let those who know forget if they can.
Balian put the book down on the ground and rose to confront the indistinct figure before him. ‘Who are you?’
The reply came easily enough. ‘I am here to satisfy your doubts. I mean to satisfy you that you are not me.’
A flash of teeth. Things seemed to shimmer a little in the limp air. Was it all quite real? The silence was deeper yet. Balian and his companion stood motionless in the middle of a great open space. The silence intensified until, paradoxically, it became a buzzing in the ears. Flies and other insects spiralled upwards. Balian’s vision had become very fluid. The ground shook slightly. Then he saw that it was life that pulsed in the earth, the bricks and the trees and forced its way upwards in great roaring flames of energy that lengthened into tongues of umber, black and green. The whole universe was burning up arou
nd him in ecstasy.
The roaring was inside his head. And blood. He awoke and it came jetting out of his nostrils. His mouth was full of blood too, some of it overflowing in thin driblets down his chin. He was on the roof of the caravanserai, and a circle of Italians were squatting anxiously around him. He had been talking in his sleep, shouting rather, and clawing the air. Was he ill? Balian indeed did not feel well; his dreams more normally ran on the themes of flashing swords, noble and appealing ladies, ‘a message for the Duke’ and so forth. He was ill, then, and needed a doctor. The Italians were summoning the other Englishman, Vane, from across the caravanserai. Vane began to pick his way slowly over recumbent bodies. It was early morning.
Vane stripped Balian to the waist, probing and pummelling him, and he questioned him also on his sleep, especially on the details of his dreams. ‘I have never seen this before, but it is clear that you have one of the night sicknesses. I am certain that there is nothing wrong with your body; it’s not your lungs or your stomach, but it is a disease of sleep that has made you bleed, and it is likely that it will come back again.’
Vane’s brows furrowed. ‘It is fairly serious. It could be one of the forms that the lamiae take. Yes, that is likely when one considers the number of unconsecrated burial grounds in Egypt.’ He paused, conscious of the mystery he was creating. Then, ‘At least it is not the Arabian Nightmare. I don’t think that I can do anything for you on my own. I have some knowledge of physic, especially of the night diseases, but I would not venture an unadvised opinion. But you ought not to spend another night without seeing a physician. There is a master of night medicine, a good one, in the Bulaq quarter of the city. If you will allow me, I will conduct you to him immediately, for I don’t think that you have lost much blood and, wherever it is coming from, it seems to have stopped.’
