The Girl with Braided Hair

by Rasha Adly

  “I’ve been as patient as Job,” she muttered. “These pastries are stone cold.”

  The door screeched and creaked open: the old woman behind it invited her in. Fatima followed the woman into the courtyard of the house, to where a table was placed. The woman was leaning on a wooden stick, wearing a threadbare black gallabiya full of holes and patches. Her shock of wild hair was the blinding white of snow. She was just as Fatima remembered seeing her the last time. Nothing about her had changed a jot; even her house was the same, with the same stench, the pitted and scarred table still there where Fatima had sat with her own mother many years ago. The fortune-teller busied herself with making coffee, roasting the beans first in a small pan, then grinding them with mastic and cardamom, filling the place with their fragrance. Fatima gave her the cone of pastry. “Leave them, thanks,” said the woman, “and we’ll have it with our coffee. How do you take your coffee?”

  In days gone by, Fatima would have refused coffee; drinking coffee was a sin, or so they said. But now she would not say no to a cup. “Medium sugar, please.”

  She poured their coffee into two brass cups. “How are you, Fatima?”

  Fatima was amazed. Was it possible that the woman still remembered her from when she was a little girl? “Do you still remember me,” she asked, “after all this time?”

  “Yes,” said the fortune-teller, “I recognized you by your scent.”

  “My scent?”

  “Everyone who has set foot inside this house I recognize by smell,” said the woman calmly.

  “I don’t remember putting on any perfume today . . . ?”

  The woman laughed aloud, displaying her dark cavern of a mouth, toothless but for a lone canine. “You don’t need to wear perfume for me to recognize you. I recognize you by your body’s smell: every person has a scent unique to themselves alone, that resembles them. I remember your smell very well, as it’s one of the few I’ve smelled like it in my life: a goodly smell, like virgin soil. True, it is mixed with another scent this time, but the scent of untouched earth is still there.” She sniffed the air. “Wait . . .” She kept on sniffing like a bloodhound in search of some thief. “It’s the smell of fear. No—not just fear—it’s a mix of fear and panic and grief. What is the matter, woman?”

  Fatima sighed helplessly. “It’s the Franks. My life is turned upside down. No sooner did they come than it seemed they were only there to invade my own home.” She sighed. “That brute Bonaparte must have cast a spell on my husband and daughter. They’ve changed! They’re not the same people at all.” She took a swallow of her coffee. “My husband—the good, devout man of God—has changed, as if he had never known the Lord God or his Prophet. My pure, innocent daughter! She’s changed and is acting like the belly dancers and prostitutes. How could this have happened in the space of a day and a night, unless he enchanted them?”

  “The evils of one’s self are more wicked than enchantments,” the woman said, “and your daughter and your husband have wickedness in their own selves.”

  “But how? This is my husband whom I have known all my life, and my daughter, raised by my own hands, and I know them better than I know myself!”

  “The wickedness within the self is more powerful than anything, and harder than any enchantment. Spells can be broken and vanquished; the ills of the self grow from deep within, and only go away when the soul leaves the body.”

  “No!” Fatima shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. One doesn’t change completely in a day and a night! What’s happening with them is surely some spell.”

  There was an old silver pan filled with water on the table, in front of the old fortune-teller. There was something odd about the water: even motionless, it was filled with concentric ripples like those raised by a stone thrown into a still pond. No sooner did the ripples dissipate than they came back at once. “Let us see. Did you bring something of theirs?”

  Before coming, Fatima had remembered the fortune-teller asking her mother, long ago when they had first visited, to bring something belonging to the person to examine. She had therefore brought something. From the recesses of her abaya, she took out a burlap purse bound with strong thread. From this she pulled out two handkerchiefs, one silk, which was Zeinab’s, and the other of white cotton, belonging to her husband. The woman took the two handkerchiefs and began to recite incantations in a strange language. Her voice dropped and grew rough, and her features changed. The more she spoke her incantations, the more the water in the dish roiled and bubbled, as though boiling over a flame.

  The woman calmed and laid the handkerchiefs aside: the water ceased its bubbling. “O Auntie, set my mind at rest,” Fatima entreated, “what has happened?”

  “As I told you,” the woman said calmly, “it is no witchcraft nor spell, but the wickedness of the self.” Then she fell silent for a moment. In a voice softer than usual, a kinder expression on her face, she said, “God help you, God help you.”

  Fatima trembled in fear: what had the woman foreseen to change her thus, making her so sad for Fatima, she who was normally so hard-hearted? She could not keep the pleading out of her tone, “Set my mind at rest.”

  “There is nothing you can do,” said the fortune-teller. “Go to the temple of Maimonides at the end of the alley, and call for the mercy of the Lord. Bless yourself with the water of the well there, and take some of it with you, and bathe your daughter and husband in it.” And without warning, she left her, rising with speed surprising for one of her age and walking away, still leaning on her stick. “Close the door behind you.”

  “Auntie! Auntie! Please wait!” Fatima stood too. “Isn’t there anything you can do for us?”

  The woman shook her head as she walked away.

  Fatima left more troubled than she had come, dragging her feet and moving with difficulty. What fate had the fortune-teller seen and refused to tell her?

  Outside the house, a group of children were drawing hopscotch squares on the ground with a piece of chalk and playing. She approached them and asked, “Where is the temple of Maimonides?”

  “That’s it,” said a little boy, pointing to a building at the end of the lane. Although she did not know who this Maimonides was, the fortune-teller had told her to go to his temple and be blessed with the waters of his well, so she did. Like a drowning woman, she clutched at any straw.

  With halting steps, she entered the spacious temple. Three separate buildings stood before her: one for men’s prayers, one for women’s, and a third room for blessings and healing. A cold wind sprang up from she knew not where, almost blowing her over. She stood there, hesitant and fearful, not knowing where to go. A student, seeing her, approached, asking her, “What do you need?”

  “I wish to be blessed and take water with me to bathe my sick husband,” she said.

  He pointed to the far end of the courtyard, where she could just see a well. “From this well you can take water,” he said, “and go to the healing chamber, where you can anoint yourself with drops of oil for a blessing.”

  She thanked him and did as he had said. She asked a man whose job it was to help the sick people who came from far-off cities and towns for some oil. “You can spend the night in this room,” he said, “so that Maimonides can come and help you recover.” She quickly invented the excuse of a baby at home. “Where is your pain,” he asked, “that I may anoint it with oil?” She pointed to her heart. It was, in truth, the location of all her pain and trouble. The man dipped a scrap of fabric into a jar full of oil, and handed it to her, asking her to anoint the place where it hurt.

  She returned home with a bottle of water from the well and the piece of fabric dipped in the oil, thinking all the way home: what had the woman foreseen? What disasters awaited her? But then, was there any disaster worse than the one already taking place?

  Upon the low, round table, the slave girl set out the dishes for dinner: the earthenware pot of baked vegetables with meat, the rice, and a plate filled with green stalks of arugula and b
right red radishes. Every hand reached out to eat with good appetite as usual. Fatima was lost in thought. “What’s wrong, woman?” her husband asked, noticing. “Someone die or what? What’s gotten you into such a dark mood?”

  Then he laughed mockingly, and Zeinab laughed along with him. “Mother is always unhappy these days.” The gold necklace at her throat gleamed in a ray of sunlight that filtered in through the openings in the meshrabiyeh. Fatima glanced from one to the other, wondering what Fate had in store for them. What would happen, she wondered, if she told them of the fortune-teller’s prophecy? Would it make them turn back and abandon what they wanted? But she held her peace, knowing that whatever she said, it would be no use. Besides, if her husband learned she had been to the fortune-teller, it would bring the full force of his wrath down upon her, for he did not permit her to leave the house unless it was for an important matter. What would he do if he found out she had gone out without his knowledge to go to a Jewish fortune-teller to look into the future? Would he, a cleric, accept such a thing? She smiled mockingly to herself as she tried to get up, with difficulty.

  The sheikh waited until his wife had left the room and whispered to Zeinab, “Get ready to visit Napoleon tonight. He is waiting impatiently for you. He is utterly captivated by you.”

  A rush of contradictory feelings surged through Zeinab. Before, she would have jumped for joy to know that Napoleon had asked to see her and was expecting her. Now, though, everything had changed. She did not want to accept his invitation, but she couldn’t refuse. Who would dare? “Do you think Napoleon would be in love with me, when he has so many beauties around him?” she asked her father. “Didn’t you hear the rumor about him and Madame Pauline? They say he sent her husband off on a military campaign in the desert so that he could be alone with her.”

  “The heart is one thing,” her father said, “and the desires of the flesh are another. You have captured his heart.”

  She didn’t care about capturing his heart: there was only one person whose heart and mind she wanted, only one and no other.

  17

  Yasmine put down her coffee on the desk and sat at her laptop to resume her research. She had now grasped hold of the thread: the portrait had been painted at the time of the French Campaign in Egypt, and she was confident that the artist had been with the Campaign. All she needed to do was uncover his name, and the mystery would unravel.

  She searched the names of the artists in Napoleon’s French Campaign in Egypt, and read back over the details of the Campaign:

  Napoleon sailed for the East in 1798 with a fleet of twenty-six warships, with thirty thousand soldiers on board, arriving twelve days later in the region of Agami, off Alexandria. The troops disembarked and continued on foot. The Campaign was accompanied by up to 150 scientists and two thousand people including artists, sculptors, carpenters, designers, craftsmen and artisans, and workmen.

  How could she find her artist among all these men? She knew that the most famous among them were Vivant Denon, Antoine Jean-Gros, Théodore Géricault, and Eugène Delacroix. She had seen their paintings in various museums around the world. She was familiar with their styles, and none of them even remotely resembled this painter: she would have recognized him immediately if that had been the case. With long experience, one acquired the ability to identify a painter by merely looking at their work; she was rarely wrong, and her intuition was rarely proved inaccurate. An artist’s brushstrokes were like fingerprints to her, like a writer’s distinctive style, or a poet’s. The way one can identify a singer among a hundred voices, she was able to recognize the style of an artist that set them apart from the rest.

  Three hours flew by as she was absorbed in her research. Most of the artists that Napoleon had brought with him on his campaign had already been friends of his or at least known to him, and he had been in the habit of bringing them with him on all his previous campaigns. Most of the paintings were depictions of battles or portraits meant to glorify Napoleon and underscore his greatness, particularly those of Denon and Caffarelli.

  At last she found a clue: on a site showing paintings of life in Egypt at that time, paintings that documented habits, customs, and fashions of the era, she found a painting titled The Mule Market in Cairo. She peered closely at it. There was a strong resemblance between the style of this painting—the brushstrokes, the way the light fell, the color composition, the sense of it—and the painting of Zeinab. She was able to zoom into a close-up of the work, which helped her see that the artist had paid attention to the most minute details and depicted clear emotions on the faces of the different carters at the market. It was clear that they were exhausted, although they were smiling. She found another painting by the same artist on that site, titled A Street in Cairo. The painting was full of a great many details: the old houses, the meshrabiyehs that covered the secret world of the women, the giant camels laden with heavy burdens that walked through the narrow alleyways, the two men engrossed in what appeared to be a long discussion, the woman selling oranges in the middle of the road, but most importantly, the work was suffused with a particular feeling: the warmth and bustle of life which made the viewer feel that they were part of the scene, if not actually a partner in creating this depiction of it.

  The paintings were listed under the name of the artist: Alton Germain. She clicked on the artist’s name to see what the site had to say about him: to her surprise, the site only listed his name, date of birth, and date of death, but no other information. Art sites usually provided a fairly exhaustive biography of every artist: their birth, their study, their life, their works, and their death, but this site only had the barest of facts: name, birth, and death, as though the life he had lived had meant nothing to anyone—or had, perhaps, remained a secret.

  She tried to find him on other sites, but came up empty. She went back to the paintings by him. The site refused to let her download them, insisting she register with a foreign bank card. She picked up the phone to call Sherif, who was always buying all manner of things online and had often complained to her that online sites often didn’t ship to Egypt yet, which, he claimed, would save him time and effort.

  “Yasmine,” came his sleepy voice. “Everything okay? What’s the matter?”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, “everything’s all right. I need your help with something.” Without waiting for an answer, she went on enthusiastically. “There’s an art site that’s asking me to become a member so I can see the paintings on it. It won’t accept my card, I think it needs a foreign—”

  He cut her off curtly. “Are you kidding me? You’re calling me at three in the morning to ask me about an art site membership?”

  She blinked. She had been so engrossed in her search that she had not even noticed it was three o’clock in the morning. Mortified, more so at his brusque tone, she stammered, “Three . . . I’m so sorry! I didn’t notice, I lost track of time.”

  “I know you’re crazy about these things, but this is ridiculous!”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Sherif had changed. He had never been so short with her. She remembered waking him up from sleep many times before, and he had made a joke of it, saying that not only was she on his mind during his waking hours, but she even interrupted his sleep. His love had always rolled out the red carpet for her, guaranteeing her VIP treatment; she seethed with jealousy to think that this new girl had pulled the rug out from under her.

  The Mediterranean: May 1798

  I found myself on a boat battling the swells of the sea, heading I knew not where. Too much talk, speculation, and guesswork became tedious after a while. The gist of almost all of them was that the campaign was headed to take over Sardinia or take control of Malta, to ensure control of the Mediterranean, while a stubborn minority insisted that we were on the way to Egypt. We were worried and tense. Finally, Napoleon came out and stood at the prow of the ship, his generals around him. He gave a speech that dispelled a great deal of our worries:

 
May 10, 1798

  From Headquarters at Toulon

  You were a wing of the army that fought Great Britain. You have fought in the mountains and valleys; you have faced siege; there is nothing before you but a naval battle.

  It was a long speech, the goal of which was to raise the soldiers’ morale once more, and in that goal it largely succeeded: no sooner was it read out than everything changed. The soldiers whose faces had been awash with trepidation and disappointment quickly changed to euphoric excitement, and snatches of patriotic songs could be heard interspersed with their shouts of enthusiasm. The sails were unfurled in search of a favorable wind to start moving. At dawn on May 30, the ship set sail, and the circuitous route we sailed confounded all the sailors’ guesses: first we sailed close to shore and they said “It is Genoa,” and then we moved away and they said, “No, we are en route to Sardinia,” but we did not stop at either. We were sailing according to the winds, with Neptune as our guardian. Finally, we approached Malta, which we saw as a long-awaited promised land, the land of legends and stories. We took advantage of the darkness of night to allow a few divisions to disembark to start, and when the Maltese saw our maneuvers, they rained down a volley of fire upon us, while our soldiers amassed easy victories. After 24 hours of fighting, the Maltese surrendered unconditionally, and in a scant few hours, we were the masters of an island that enjoyed a fantastic position in the sea. The beautiful, proud island was transformed in a short while into an island in mourning. The city closed its doors in our faces, and wherever we walked, we were met with gazes of hatred and resentment. The streets were filled with grief and sorrow. The women wore black; the children wailed; the men walked through the streets with their heads bowed.