The Map of Love (54 page)

‘Shameless,’ Qasim Amin says.

‘We stopped it in the Council, but let us hope the General Assembly does not pass it next year.’

‘We shall have to talk to each one of them,’ Prince Muhammad Ibrahim says. ‘And Mustafa Kamel will keep the case alive in
al-Liwa.’

‘A carriage,’ Sharif Basha says to the doorman.

‘Your carriage is here, ya Basha. I’ll get the driver —’

‘No. I’m leaving that for the ladies. Just get me a carriage for hire.’

He has had enough. He cannot shake off his restlessness tonight. The letter from Muhammad
Abdu giving him what he wanted,
Urabi among the guests — If he were in Tawasi, or
in the desert, he would gallop it off. If he were in Alexandria or by the Red Sea, he would go into the water. He is possessed by a sudden desire — almost a need — to go swimming. He imagines diving into the cold water, swimming, swimming against a strong current that would blank out his mind and leave him empty. But he is in Cairo, so he climbs into the waiting carriage.

‘Touloun,’ he says to the driver. There is no point in going to the Club; everybody is at the reception. He takes his watch out of his pocket: it will be at least another hour before Anna gets back. They drive past his sister’s house in Hilmiyya and then his own shuttered house, the old horse trotting doggedly, his head held low. He gives the driver the name of the street.

‘Near Beit el-Ingeliziyya?’ the man asks. He is a rough, uncouth fellow, slouching on his box, flicking his whip by his horse’s ears for no reason.

‘What did you say?’

‘Near the house of the Englishwoman?’ the driver repeats.

‘It is called the House of Baroudi, ya hayawan,’ Sharif Basha says, ‘not the House of the Englishwoman.’

‘But there is an Englishwoman living there,’ the man insists. ‘It’s well known: she fell in love with the Basha and married him. It’s a known story.’

‘And is something the matter with that?’ Sharif Basha growls.

‘Not at all. They say she is a good woman and does not go out except veiled even though the Basha did not make her become Muslim. But they say she’s like the moon: what whiteness, what —’

‘Let me off here!’

‘And then it must be good for the Basha. They rule us in any case —’

And what good would it have done to whip him? Sharif Basha leaves his tarbush in the hall and wrenches off his cravat as he walks through the silent house. The man was only saying what everybody must be saying. First Milton Bey greets him
like a friend, then a
arbagi calls his house ‘beit el-ingeUziyya’ …

Hasna gets to her feet as he arrives at his apartment.

‘Go to bed,’ he says.

‘But Setti —’

‘I shall tell her. Go.’

She is a curiosity, he tells himself. If he had bought a giraffe, people would have called his house ‘Beit el-Zarafa’. It has nothing to do with her being English.

In Anna’s room her atmosphere washes over him, laps at his jagged edges. The large wardrobe he persuaded her to have built fits discreetly into one wall, the frames of its mirrored doors echoing the woodwork of the mashrabiyya. The flowers on the low inlaid table pick out the colours of the cushions heaped on the diwan. The mirror above the dressing table reflects the graceful loop of the mosquito net above the bed. Her silk dressing gown, a soft white with a hint of bluish grey, the colour of doves, is draped over the back of a chair. He has only to come in here, even in her absence, and her tranquil spirit gently breathes its way into his own. Her journal lies on her table. She had looked up from her writing when he came into the room and said, ‘You can read English, can you not?’ And he had to admit he could — ‘a little,’ he said. ‘This has no lock,’ she said, her hand on the big green book, ‘I have no secrets from you.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘no. I am content with what you tell me.’

He throws his jacket and waistcoat on a chair and goes back downstairs and into the library. Sometimes it seems to him it could vanish in a breath, this world she has made for him, right here alongside his own — but different. She had looked splendid tonight when she came down to say goodbye, shimmering in violet silk, her hair like a cluster of golden flowers on top of her head.

‘All the ladies wear European dress to parties,’ she had murmured, half apologising, as he looked at her.

‘You look beautiful,’ he had said, and bent to kiss the top of
her arm where the skin glowed between the violet of her dress and the soft black of her long glove.

Now he stands at his desk and surveys the papers spread out before him. The draft for the manifesto of the art school, the draft project for an Egyptian university, the draft for the bylaws of a workers’ union, the text of the speech delivered by the Khedive to Wingate in Khartoum: ‘… it is a source of the greatest joy to me to see you here in this wide land … the British and the Egyptian flags fluttering side by side … ‘ A disgraceful speech, almost certainly written for him by the Agency. And who knows how ‘Abbas Hilmi might have turned out in different circumstances? He had been willing to do good. They might have made a constitutional monarch of him. As it was, he had ascended the throne and each time he made a move Cromer threatened him with his guns. Now all his intelligence had curdled into cunning and all his energy was gone into plotting and making money, and the British could despise him as much as they wished and be right to do so.

Sharif Basha lights a cigarette and moves away from his desk. He sits down in an armchair, leans back and closes his eyes. He wonders what his father would make of
Urabi’s interview in
al-Muqattam
. It is just as well that he will not read it.

When he opens his eyes they meet the heavy wine-red curtains veiling the wooden doors that in spring will stand open once again to lead into the courtyard of his childhood. It has taken weeks to move all his things out of Hilmiyya. Now his books are arranged in the bookcases that line three walls of the library. His desk sits at an angle in the far corner. He had hesitated over moving into what used to be his father’s favourite room, but his mother and his sister had both urged it and the old man had smiled and nodded and looked kindly when he went to ask his permission. The house in Hilmiyya is closed down and no one remains there but the gardener.

Anna had looked doubtful when the cushioned armchairs and the big rosewood desk had been carried in. ‘I’m sorry,’ he had said to her, ‘I have lost the knack.’ And she had blushed as
he read her thoughts, then rallied and said, ‘I suppose you can still be an authentic Egyptian and sit at a desk.’ And when he thought about it he realised that even in Sheikha ‘Aisha’s kuttab in Tawasi he had never learned to sit comfortably cross-legged and work at a wooden floor-desk. But she had had the cushions covered in the plain, coarse kittan from his fields, and the new furniture had merged comfortably with the old room, where he sits and reflects on what it means to have inherited from his father like this while the old man is still alive.

He stubs out his cigarette and leaves the room. He goes out into the cold courtyard and crosses into the smaller one next to it. He pushes open the door of the shrine and Mirghani, who lies sleeping on a wooden pallet inside, sits up.

‘There’s nothing,’ Sharif Basha says. ‘Go to sleep.’

The big room is dark except for the candles that light up the simple tomb. Sharif Basha picks up a candle and, shading it with his free hand, he enters the inner room and stands looking down at his father. The old man lies on his back under some blankets, snoring gently, one thin foot uncovered and almost falling off the edge of the low, narrow bed. His mouth is slightly open and his head is bare. How long has it been since Sharif Basha has seen him without a turban? His pale scalp shows through the thin white hair. He is old. The day is not far off when it will fall to his son to close those eyes, to stop that mouth with cotton wool and wash the thin body and wrap it and carry it down into the family tomb. And how he had loved him! Sharif Basha squats down and holds the candle close to his father’s face, trying to find again the laughing, handsome face he had adored as a child, as a young boy. When he brought home his reports, when he graduated from law school, each step he made, his first thought had been to make his father proud of him. And how proud
he
had been of his father in his army uniform. And prouder yet when he joined
Urabi’s movement with his older brother, Mahmoud Sami. Looking into the sleeping face, Sharif Basha al-Baroudi re-imagines once again the scene twenty years ago with his
father and the other officers behind
Urabi at
Abdin, Auckland Colvin at the Khedive’s side urging him to shoot,
Urabi putting up his sword and Tewfiq hesitant but summoning up a weak-chinned anger: