Mother Nile

by Warren Adler

  “The fellaheen! All they will gain will be knowledge. Then misery. The land gives them their strength and their meaning. Unfortunately, they will have to bite the bullet. It is the way of evolution. Yet it is sad.”

  “Well, then, why do you advocate the revolution?” Thompson asked. “Why do you work with them? Why do you help us?”

  There was a long pause.

  “You may rail against it. Howl in anger at the moon. Curse whatever god your myth demands. But irreversible entropy carries with it a living horror. Pain. Misery. Nothingness. Who knows that better than the Egyptians. Ruins everywhere!”

  “So, if the king goes, what do you think you’ll gain.”

  “Ferment. Revolution brings ferment. We must shock this country into the twenty-first century.”

  “The twenty-first?”

  “We have already lost more than half of the twentieth.”

  “You’re too cryptic for me, Ezzat. I suggest we just concentrate on the immediate future.”

  “Yes,” Ezzat said. “That is the fatal flaw of you Americans.”

  “Please, Ezzat. Don’t make me defend our mistakes.”

  “I’m sorry. But you people are such a tempting target with your fierce optimism and naïveté. You haven’t had enough blood soaked into your soil. We’ve been bleeding now for five thousand–odd years. The Syrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabians, the Turks, the Marmalukes, the French, the British. They all come and go. They rape this old Egyptian whore. But still she lies there, legs wide, showing them her gaping, depthless, erotic, tantalizing, bottomless allure.”

  “You do get carried away, Ezzat.”

  He laughed drily.

  “Yes. Another Egyptian pestilence. We lose ourselves in rhetoric.”

  Farrah heard the clink of glass and another long silence. She imagined they must be looking at the sparkling lights that lined the bridges over the Nile and speckled the tall buildings as they sipped their drinks.

  “Deception breeds deception, however you look at it,” Ezzat said, ruefully. “The king stinks. The soldiers stink, but slightly less. We will have to suffer them for a while. Perhaps some good will come of it.”

  “First things first,” Thompson said, his words beginning to slur. “Discrediting the king is like taking candy from a baby. Farrah’s story should put a little icing on the cake.”

  “The man is his own worst enemy,” Ezzat said.

  “Every little bit helps,” Thompson said. “Besides, I’m beginning to think he’s deliberately looking for a way out.”

  “Well, then, maybe he is not so stupid, after all.”

  “At least the wife is beautiful. And the girl who will as I said put the icing on the cake. Quite a beauty. He has good taste.”

  Farrah could not contain an errant shiver of pride at the compliment. Inside herself she did not feel beautiful, although others told her so.

  “Maybe we are all looking in the wrong direction,” Ezzat mused. “Perhaps we are all pursuing pleasure in one form or another. It comes in many forms, you know.”

  “You sound envious, Ezzat.”

  “Not really. I think I am getting pleasure from this.”

  There was another long silence. “Well, it’s no pleasure for me. I hate to think what the notoriety will do to that girl.”

  “Why, she’ll be a heroine,” Ezzat said. “A great patriot.”

  “Innocent victim,” Thompson snapped.

  “Like Egypt.”

  Farrah listened, unsure of their meaning. For a while, she lost the thread of their conversation.

  “There are no quick and easy solutions. Not for us. Our destiny, Thompson, is in our geography.”

  “Intellectuals…” Thompson hissed.

  “…we are the geographical lynchpin that holds the world together. Gateway to Africa and the East…”

  “You exaggerate your national importance, Ezzat. To us, you’re just another banana republic on the verge of a revolution, an illiterate swarm, and I’m just a goddamned spook bureaucrat doing his job.” Thompson’s voice had grown husky. The words were getting thicker, slower in coming.

  His voice trailed off, and in the long silence that followed Farrah grew drowsy and her attention drifted.

  Then Ezzat spoke, his voice clear with cunning and rebuke.

  “Your problem, Thompson, is a problem that comes to all who meddle with us… you have become emotionally involved.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Days drifted into weeks and still Farrah’s story did not appear. Thompson worked diligently at his typewriter, but she was not sure whether he was working on her story or something else. They settled into a kind of domestic rhythm. She began to prepare the meals. He bought a perambulator for Isis and they took long walks along the Corniche, spending hours sitting on benches, watching the graceful feluccas moving up and down the Nile.

  Thompson was a moody, inert man, given to long silences. He seemed burdened by a pervasive weariness.

  “When will the story come out?” she would ask.

  “Soon.”

  He confided nothing. Sometimes, he would spend hours just watching her. Actually, she enjoyed his contemplation of her, as if he were trying to see beneath her skin. It seemed protective, and, for the first time in her life, she felt secure.

  He stayed away for two or three nights at a time, offering no explanation. When he was gone, she found she missed him around the apartment. He was especially kind to Isis, and his absences seemed also to be felt by the baby. He bought her toys, bounced her on his lap, and made her giggle by tickling her stomach. Occasionally, he would even diaper her. It seemed odd. She had never seen men in Egypt spend much time with babies.

  One day he came home with a basic Arabic school reader and began to teach Farrah to read, patiently pointing out each letter. She had never equated her illiteracy with ignorance. None of her family knew how to read. It had never seemed to matter. Now it became, next to Isis, the most important thing in her life.

  “You are very kind to me,” she told him after she had proudly read an entire page without making a mistake.

  “Not really,” he said as he sighed. “Knowledge doesn’t bring happiness.”

  “Well, I’m happy now.”

  She wondered about his life, but could not muster the courage to ask him about himself. Nor did she ever ask again when the story would appear, fearful that its appearance would mark an ending in their closeness.

  She knew he had to be into his forties. He had graying sideburns and crow’s feet deepening at the edges of his dark, pained eyes. A woman’s picture stood on his night table, a blonde lady, neat and pinched, without softness.

  “Who is that woman?” she asked him one day when she could no longer resist her curiosity.

  “She is my wife,” he said. He offered nothing more.

  Ezzat visited often. He was always polite, very correct, although Farrah could sense an antagonism toward her that seemed to grow with each visit. Obediently, without Thompson’s having to ask, she retired to the study with Isis. Most times she went directly to sleep, but on one particularly hot night, when it was impossible to sleep, she stood near the door and listened.

  “You know, Thompson, what you’re doing is absurd.”

  “What is?”

  “Her.”

  “It’s not time yet.”

  “Not time. It will never be more perfect. What remains of the government is in turmoil. Nasser must be prodded to act. The fat fool has actually been declared a direct descendant of Mohammed. Not bad for a man without a drop of Arab blood. If we don’t encourage events, they will drag on forever.”

  “It will happen without her. Why put her in jeopardy. I mean her life. She’s not that important. The message of the king’s peccadillos has been burned into people’s minds. Why tamper with
her reputation?”

  “Reputation,” Ezzat exclaimed loudly. “She was the king’s whore. That baby is his bastard.”

  “It will happen without this,” Thompson mumbled. “It’s inevitable.”

  “Your job is propaganda,” Ezzat said in rebuke. “The more he is portrayed as a bumbling incompetent lecher, the faster the atmosphere for revolution will be created. That’s your job.”

  “But I’ve planted many discrediting stories already.”

  “More is never enough.”

  She could sense the tension in the tone and pitch of the men’s voices. Another long silence, and Thompson spoke, the words layered with antagonism.

  “And you, Ezzat. What’s your game? A student of Egyptian antiquities, a man from another world. This is not your Egypt. None of the present players gives a rat’s ass about your Egypt. Why, then, should you care? You should be like the fellaheen, indifferent to all this political horseshit. What difference does it make to them? Or you? Millenniums between your world, the fellaheen world, and ours…”

  Thompson’s words trailed off, lost in a thin whisper. “That, Thompson, is the heart of my own dilemma.” She had never heard Ezzat so hesitant and unsure.

  “What, after all, is the fall of another dynasty, considering the thirty-two dynasties of that other world. Why did they fall? We don’t know that answer. Perhaps there were men like me who had decided that their ruling blood had run too thin. Perhaps I am trying to find out how dynasties end…”

  “You’re too abstract for me, Ezzat,” Thompson interrupted. But Ezzat had apparently not finished the thought.

  “Perhaps it is pride in being an Egyptian… in wanting to control our own destiny. We must kick out the British. They are the last invaders. Always in my studies, the fact of our rape fills me with rage. Imagine, there are more obelisks outside of Egypt than inside. British, French, German, Italian museums are filled with our spoils. Mummies have been stolen from their tombs for centuries—”

  “Death worshippers. You are a nation of death worshippers. When you put your wealth in graves, what would you expect? King Tut and all that buried loot…” Thompson’s tone was sarcastic and contemptuous. Ezzat ignored the interruption.

  “Or perhaps it is the desire to prove that we can do it again. Organize ourselves into a great society, the flower of civilization.”

  “Even the modern Romans and the Greeks have lost that dream.”

  “Not the Egyptians.”

  “You are a foolish romantic.”

  “All revolutionaries are foolish romantics,” Ezzat said, finally running out of steam. Thompson returned then to the matter at hand.

  “She is an innocent…” Thompson murmured.

  There was a long silence.

  “You are the innocent, Thompson. Frankly, I never figured you for such a letch.”

  “Damn you, Ezzat…”

  Farrah felt her heart pound.

  “I’m sorry, Ezzat,” Thompson murmured, as she strained to hear him. “I’m afraid in this case she’s more like a daughter. We lost ours, Babs and I. But that’s another story. If you really want to know, I’m scared shitless for her.”

  “Perhaps you should ask for a transfer.”

  Thompson sighed. “No. I always finish what I start. I guess I just needed someone to validate my priorities again.”

  “She’s just caught in the crossfire,” Ezzat said. “One more Egyptian body thrown on the pyre.”

  “Two,” Thompson said. “That’s the hell of it.” Farrah had begun to perspire. She lifted the baby from the perambulator and carried it to bed with her. For a long time she could not stop herself from shivering.

  ***

  The story appeared in early July in Cairo’s leading daily and, simultaneously, in many other publications throughout the world. Earlier, Thompson had arranged for a photographer to come up to the apartment and take pictures of Farrah and the baby.

  He paid her in cash, American dollars, which he counted out on the study table. She rolled the bills in a little cloth sack and attached it to the gold chain she wore with the coin around her neck.

  “Gift of the USA,” he said. “Guard it well.”

  To her joy and surprise, the appearance of the article had not meant an end to their arrangement, and life went on as before.

  “You must not leave the apartment, Farrah,” he warned. “When I am out, lock the door… Open it for no one. No one.” Offering no protestations, she obeyed. He had a cleaning maid who came twice a week. He discontinued her services, and Farrah contentedly filled the gap.

  He spent more time than usual in the apartment, using the telephone frequently, talking in hushed tones. Once, when he was out briefly, she looked through his papers, curious to see the story for which she was so well paid. Not a copy could be found in the apartment.

  “You wouldn’t want to see it,” he said when she had continued to press him. “People will forget. Besides, the dam has broken. The man’s become a paranoid and is sinking in quicksand.”

  “What will happen?”

  “Things will get worse. It will be very dangerous as he is pushed to the wall. He will react. Things will get bloody. Then will come the coup, a military coup. A revolution. More bloodshed. It goes on and on.”

  It was obvious that he was not sleeping well. His world-weariness deepened, etching deeper shadows under his eyes, carving new lines in his temple. Yet he still found the patience to continue her lessons, and she was beginning to move to more complicated books.

  “You’re doing great, Farrah,” he said, patting her hair. She welcomed the fatherly affection, and his interest in the baby.

  “Would you like to come with me to America?” he asked one day. It was July, and they sat framed by an open window, trying to coax the tiniest breeze from the sweltering air.

  “Of course,” she said. She studied his face. Perhaps now was the time, she thought.

  “But what of your wife?”

  “Babs.” A frown passed over his face. He had told her very little about his wife and their dead daughter. He shrugged. “Who knows, it may bring us together. Ready-made family. People to love.” Then he stood, as if the gesture was required to dismiss the thought.

  Ezzat came one night, puffing and sweating. The elevator was not working, and he’d had to walk the five stories. Farrah went into the kitchen to mix him an iced drink.

  “Next week,” he said excitedly. “All is set for next week.” He no longer seemed inhibited by Farrah’s presence, and he raised his glass to her.

  “You have done well, my little lady,” he said. Then, turning to Thompson: “He is wriggling like a python, and has sent a note to Heidar, the army chief, to get rid of conspiring officers. And they, in turn, have drawn up a liquidation list. It will be a miracle if the surgery can be completed without bloodshed.”

  She went into the study, but did not listen to them talk. They continued on into the night. Finally, she went to bed, but slept fitfully. When she opened her eyes, the edge of dawn was on the horizon. She could still hear their voices. She went to the door and opened it a crack. Ezzat was standing near the outer door.

  “It wasn’t your responsibility,” he said. “And you can’t guarantee her safety. Unfortunately, she is a marked woman for either side, a symbol of the king’s excesses. To the king, she is a betrayer. To the others, a collaborating whore. Take your pick. Toss a coin.”

  “Don’t be so damned casual about it.”

  “You are a fool, Thompson, disobeying the caveat of your profession. Send her away.”

  “Never,” Thompson mumbled.

  “Idiot.”

  Ezzat squeezed Thompson’s arm, then opened the door, cautiously. She could hear his footsteps as they descended the stairs.

  Thompson came into the study, surprised to see her sitting on the bed.
r />   “I don’t want you out of my sight,” he said.

  They moved into his room that night. He gave her his bed, and he slept on a mattress on the floor, awakening at every sound, pacing the room, moving restlessly from mattress to chair. She noted, too, that he had a gun holster strapped to his chest.

  She felt no danger, more protected than ever, and she liked the new arrangement. Perhaps, she mused, she had found a new father. Perhaps, she fantasized, he would take her to America. The idea gave her renewed hope for the future for her and the baby.

  He used the telephone sparingly, talking briefly. He would leave the apartment only after giving her elaborate instructions.

  “When I close the door, I must hear you draw the bolt and the chain lock,” he told her. She would make certain that it made a loud enough sound for him to hear.

  Despite all the warnings and precautions, she did not sense any danger. When the furtive knocking began, she was more curious than alarmed. But obeying Thompson’s instructions, she did not respond. Then she heard her name.

  “Farrah, open up.”

  She recognized the voice instantly. Fear, moist and hot, gripped her insides. It was Zakki.

  “You must open,” the voice entreated. “I am not going to hurt you. It’s for your own good. And the baby. Please. You must open this door.”

  She did not respond. Her breath came in gasps, and she could not quiet her shaking limbs and chattering teeth. “I can easily break in the door. I know you’re in there. There isn’t much time.”

  She listened, hearing his breathing through the door.

  “It is finished with Farouk. I am here to protect you,” he whispered.

  She was confused. She needed Thompson to tell her what to do. To compound her confusion, the baby began to whimper in the bedroom.