The Map of Love (10 page)

‘She was washing down the stairs the last time I was here. Of the whole building.’

‘It must have been Thursday. Do you want — shall I get you a drink?’ It’s just after seven.

‘I thought we might go out,’ says Isabel. ‘Let me take you out to dinner.’

‘I’ve got some stuff here —’

‘Let’s go out. Do you never go out?’

I shrug.

‘There must be some place you like?’

‘Come to New York,’ Isabel says. ‘Come and stay with me.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’

‘You can do your own thing,’ says Isabel. ‘There’s a lot of space. We’ll only meet when you want to.’

I shake my head.

‘You can see your brother.’

‘I’ll see him when he comes to Cairo.’

‘But he doesn’t come often.’

‘I know.’

‘Have you taken a vow or something?’

‘I just decided to come home. I’ve had enough of travelling.’ And would I go to New York without stopping in London? And would I stop in London without seeing my husband?

‘You’ll come one day. I’m sure of it.’

‘Will I?’

‘You’ll come when they’re showing my film.’

‘Sure.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘Isabel. You don’t even know the rest of the story yet. You don’t know how it’ll turn out.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I can see it. The way you describe it, I can see it.’

I shake my head. I seem to be always shaking my head. But it’s brave of me to come even here, just across the river; to this restaurant where we had dined together. Where he had kissed my hands and I had pretended not to notice the stares of the waiters.

‘You want to bet?’ she asks.

‘No.’

‘There you are, you see. You won’t bet.’

‘How are you doing with your work? Your millennium?’

She glances up at me, and we pause as the waiter loads the
table with stuffed vine leaves, houmous with a sprinkling of oil, baba ghanoush, cheese and tomato salad, soft bread and toasted bread. ‘Did I feel a loaded pronoun there?’ she asks gently.

I smile. ‘She looks intelligent,’ Tahiyya had said.

‘Well, it
is
more yours than mine,’ I say.

Isabel helps herself to two vine leaves and some houmous. ‘You know,’ she says, ‘I know there’s an awful lot I don’t know. That’s a start, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry.’ And I am, for I — with my banners of ‘fair-mindedness’, of ‘no prejudgement’ — have been always, primarily, seeing her as ‘the American’.

‘How is it going, though, your paper?’ I ask.

‘I’m not sure. People I’ve spoken to have been very cautious. They talk mainly of technology and I have this feeling they’re not telling me what’s really on their minds.’

‘It’s very difficult.’

‘But why? Why is it so difficult?’

‘Because you’re American.’

‘But I can’t help that.’

‘Of course you can’t. But it makes it difficult to talk to you about some things.’

‘But it shouldn’t. I have an open mind. What kind of things?’

‘It’ll be OK. Listen, we’ll find a way,’ I promise.

‘Anyway,’ Isabel says after a short silence, ‘I’ve gotten interested in so many other things now. I’m not giving up on it — but there are other things I want to do.’

‘But, Isabel, may I ask you this? You — you manage? With all this travelling and everything?’

‘Oh, my dad left me some money. And I’m selling my parents’ apartment. I’m not wealthy, but …’ She smiles and her perfect teeth sparkle in the light of the glass-covered candle on the table.

A candle-shade of opaque glass. Bell-shaped. Frosted. It was Anna’s brush that, dipped in aquamarine ink, traced the
cunning, curving letters: gliding with the stem of an ‘alef’ bursting into flower, following the tail of a ‘ya’ as it erupts into a spray of fireworks that scatter the text with diacritics. She knew enough by then to make out the characters, but she could not yet readily tell where one word ended and another began.

I lift my head and look at Isabel, beautiful in her dusty pink velour top across the table. A dead father and a mother as good — or as bad — as dead. We are both orphans, she and I. A dead brother and an absent brother — I touch the underside of the wooden table quickly, secretly: my brother is absent but alive. A broken marriage — we share that too.

‘You know,’ I say, sounding casual, trying it out, ‘we used to come here, my husband and I, whenever we came to Cairo. It was our favourite restaurant. This is the first time I’ve been here without him.’

‘You’re divorced?’

‘No. But we’ve been separated for a long time.’

But I have sons and she hasn’t. Though my sons are not with me and I try not to spend my days waiting for them — waiting for the phone call: ‘Mama, I thought I might come and see you —’ Isabel’s hair falls glossy and straight to just below her jawline, and around the graceful neck lies a thin silver chain. She is at her beginning and I am close to my end. I smile at her.

‘You know, I’m really glad I got to know you,’ she says.

I reach out for a moment and pat the hand lying on the table between us. ‘You amazed Tahiyya with your Arabic,’ I say.

‘I’ve learned the alphabet and they’re giving me lists of words,’ she says, ‘but …’

‘But?’

‘I haven’t got a handle on it. How it works.’

‘Listen,’ I say, ‘you know the alphabet and you’ve got a dictionary. Everything stems from a root. And the root is mostly made up of three consonants — or two. And then the
word takes different forms. Look —’ The old teacher in me comes to life as I hunt in my handbag for paper and a biro. ‘Take the root q-l-b, qalb. You see, you can read this?’

‘Yes.’

‘Qalb: the heart, the heart that beats, the heart at the heart of things. Yes?’

She nods, looking intently at the marks on the paper.

‘Then there’s a set number of forms — a template almost — that any root can take. So in the case of “qalb” you get “qalab”: to overturn, overthrow, turn upside down, make into the opposite; hence “maqlab”: a dirty trick, a turning of the tables and also a rubbish dump. “Maqloub”: upside-down; “mutaqallib”: changeable; and “inqilab”: a coup …’

So at the heart of all things is the germ of their overthrow; the closer you are to the heart, the closer to the reversal. Nowhere to go but down. You reach the core and then you’re blown away —

‘Is there a book that tells you all this?’ Isabel asks.

‘I don’t know. There must be. I kind of worked it out.’

‘That’s really useful.’

‘I think so. It gives you a handle.’

‘So every time you use a word, it brings with it all the other forms that come from the same root.’

Yes, they come swimming along in a cluster, like ovae: the queen in the centre, and all the other eggs, big and little, who will not, this time, be fertilised …

‘Yes. Vaguely. Yes. Always look for the root: the three consonants. Or two.’

‘I’m going to work on this,’ she says.

‘Tell me what you come up with.’

Isabel folds the paper and puts in her handbag — her ‘purse’, she would say.

Outside the plate-glass windows night has fallen and along Maspero the cars are fewer and the trees no longer look dusty. The lights of the Bateau Omar Khayyam and el-Basha gleam on the river. The odd small boat drifts quietly along, and by
the railings couples linger; the men in short-sleeved shirts, the girls in big headscarves. Single young men walking by turn their heads to stare.

When we leave the restaurant we walk in single file along the narrow pavement to where the car is parked by the Rameses Hilton. I decline Isabel’s offer of a drink. I’ve laid enough ghosts for one day. I want to get back to my flat, to my room.

We do a U-turn in front of the television building, still barricaded with sandbags since ‘67, and head back towards Qasr el-Nil bridge.

‘How’s Anna doing?’ Isabel asks.

‘You’re out of touch,’ I say.

‘I am not. You said she’d gone to Egypt — come to Egypt. I’ve read the Alexandria bit.’

‘Well, she’s in Cairo now, and she’s very much with the English set. The Agency and all that. The British embassy. She wants to learn Arabic’

‘Who’s she going to get to teach her?’

‘I don’t know yet. James Barrington knows Arabic.’

‘Has she found what she’s looking for — the Lewis stuff?’

‘Only a little bit; in the Bazaar. But not really, no.’

‘Will she? Find it?’

‘I don’t know. I hope so. But she stays a long time, so she must have.’

‘So there’s a scene in the Bazaar?’

‘Yes, complete with donkeys, and little old artisans and street cries and a frightened, disapproving lady’s maid and urchins yelling for baksheesh —’

‘You’re making fun of me.’

‘Only a little. And nicely.’

‘You know, you’re terribly like your brother.’

Ah. I’d wondered when we would get back to him. My brother.

The Mu
allaqah. Once on a school trip, many, many years ago, I too experimented with the Virgin’s eyes. I wanted them to follow me, but I couldn’t really say they did. I remember the guide that day telling us that the wooden rafters of the ceiling symbolised Noah’s Ark and the eight columns Noah’s family. He said that the thirteen marble columns supporting the pulpit were for Christ and the twelve disciples, and the one black column in their midst was Judas Iscariot. I felt then that I understood the building better. Now I am not sure how accurate he was, but it was a starting point. Against the warnings of our teachers we climbed down the uncertain iron staircase to the damp keep below, and we saw how the bottom had filled with stagnant water encrusted with thick green slime. Then a dark creature fluttered past our faces and someone yelled that there were bats down here and we backed off and hurried up the staircase. And what a relief it was to pass through the red velvet curtains and enter the dim comfort of the church and from there emerge once again into the light of day.