The Map of Love (9 page)

In that same issue of the
Illustrated London News
, there is what we call today ‘an artist’s impression’ of the Triumphal Entry into the Transvaal: lots of little people line a wide, dusty road. Some wave thin sticks fluttering with forked Union Jacks. In the centre of the road a man in uniform rides ahead of his troops. But in the foreground, closest to us, the artist has placed an old bearded man (a Boer?) who turns away from Lord Roberts and his prancing horse. He faces us, the readers, with furious eyes, his left fist clenched and raised to his chest.

Cairo, May 1997
The loud buzz of the intercom sounds through the corridor. I’d been in my bedroom, working, as is usual with me now, on my Anna project, reading on the period, looking at pictures, trying to imagine. I’ve always liked working in bedrooms, moving from the desk to the bed to the dressing table and back to the desk. At one stage of my life it had been necessary; now I ignore the empty rooms and spend my days and nights in this one corner of my flat. I think of the table by the window as ‘Anna’s table’ and it is covered with her papers. I’ve arranged them chronologically as much as I could; the undated sheets I’ve compared to dated ones and matched the paper. They stand in twelve piles, one for each year — some years are more substantial than others. The journals stand alone. I have tried not to read through them, to read only one year at a time. But then I know how the story ends. I don’t think that matters. We always know how the story ends. What we don’t know is what happens along the way.

Anna’s objects I keep wrapped as I found them, in the trunk which now stands by the wall next to my dressing table.

I was expecting Isabel and I had stopped work and was standing at the window, vaguely watching a woman hang out laundry. She must have done a white wash for she hangs out vests, white vests, one after the other: big ones, medium ones, little ones. She bends down and vanishes for a moment behind the wall of her balcony, then straightens up with a vest in her
hand and a clothespeg in her mouth. She shakes out the vest and pegs it by the shoulder next to its brother. When she has finished and picked up the green plastic tub and gone inside, the vests hang in the still air shoulder to shoulder.

And to think that there were times when I grumbled at their washing. But there were also times when I stood still, one wet sock in my hand, struck by a premonition of what it would feel like when there would be no more socks to wash, no more games kits to hang up to dry on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when all my time would be my own to do with as I wished. What do I wish? That I was still with my husband? That my children lived next door? No one lives next door any more. That woman there across the road — who knows where her children will go when they grow up? Canada, Dubai, the moon. Maybe she’ll be lucky and one of them will settle here, in Cairo, close enough to give her grandchildren to hold and talk to in her old age.

I looked down at the trees in the garden below. I wondered, if they were washed, if someone just washed them down with a hose, how long would it take for the dust to settle again? I wondered how old the trees were: were they left over from the time when this part of the city was all green, planted fields? Or had they started their lives as town trees? Unlikely, I think. In this city trees are torn up, not planted. The great avenue of giant eucalyptus at the beginning of the Upper Egypt road in Giza, destroyed. Trees that soared up to sixty metres, reached to the sky, planted by Muhammad ’Ali close to two hundred years ago, torn up by the roots to make a wider road for the cars and trucks heading for Upper Egypt.

When the buzzer went I thought it was Isabel come early. I walked to the door and picked up the handset, and Tahiyya’s voice rang in my ear: ‘Daktora! Ya Daktora!’

‘Aywa,’ I shouted back, ‘yes,’ holding the handset away from my ear.

‘Can I come up to you for two bits?’ she shouts.

‘Of course,’ I say, ‘Itfaddali.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Come.’

Tahiyya is the doorman’s wife — and my friend. She asks after me and sends her children to see if I need the washing-up done or my clothes taken to the ironing shop. Now she comes in smiling, with her littlest — his leg still encased in plaster — on her hip.

‘Please God you weren’t asleep?’

‘No, no,’ I say, crossing the room to close the balcony doors as she puts the child down on the floor. ‘But that thing is so loud; it startles me every time.’

‘Why don’t we get the engineers to turn it down?’ she suggests, looking at it.

‘We could,’ I say, looking at it too.

‘Or they might ruin it,’ she says.

‘Let’s not,’ I say. It’s a new addition, a modernising touch, and she and
Am Madani are very proud of it.

‘We don’t mean to wake you,’ she says.

‘I wasn’t asleep,’ I say. ‘Let’s make some tea.’

We go into the kitchen and she says ‘You rest’, so I sit at the table while she fills the kettle. ’Abd el-Rahman follows us, back to crawling now because of his plastered leg. He settles on the floor in front of my father’s tall dresser and opens the lowest drawer. This is where the coloured plastic clothespegs are kept.

‘Look at this for me,’ she says while we wait for the tea leaves to settle. She puts a large brown envelope in front of me. I open it and pull out an X-ray — no, a scan. I read the tiny English writing and look up at her tired, pretty face; the brown eyes lined with kohl, the eyebrows plucked thin, the blue kerchief tight across her forehead:

‘Again?’ I say. ‘Again, ya Tahiyya?’

‘By God, I never wanted to,’ she protests. ‘We said four and we praised God and closed it on that. It’s God’s command, what can we do?’

‘But hadn’t you put the loop? I thought —’

‘Yes, I had put it, but I had blood, blood coming down on me and they took it out and said take a rest for a while — and
you know what men are like. Then God’s command came to pass.’

She tests the tea. It is the colour of burgundy and she pours it into our glasses and spoons in the sugar.

‘There are some biscuits,’ I say, and she brings the plate to the table and hands a biscuit to her son.

‘By the Prophet, I can’t keep up with them all,’ she says. ‘Yesterday the little girl had a temperature and was fretful all day and at night this boy kept me up all night coming and going. The plaster — you’ll excuse me — makes his leg itch. All night I’m carrying him and patting him and calming him down until Madani was about to say to me, “May God help you.” ’

‘That’s good of him,’ I say.

‘What can he do, ya Daktora?’ she asks. ‘All day he’s working, and he’s got diabetes. His health isn’t what it used to be.’

I can hear Isabel: his diabetes didn’t stop him getting her pregnant. When his health was what it used to be, did he wake up and soothe the kids at night? But is it Isabel? Or are these my thoughts in Isabel’s voice? Of course termination doesn’t even come into it. ‘Haraam ya Daktora,’ Tahiyya would say, ‘it’s a soul after all.’

‘How far gone are you?’ I ask.

‘I’m not sure.’

I look at the scan. ‘Eleven weeks,’ I tell her.

‘Look at it for me,’ she says, ‘and read it for me. Tell me everything it says.’

‘It says you’re eleven weeks pregnant and the baby is normal.’

‘Praise God,’ she sighs.

‘What does
Am Madani say?’

‘What will he say? He says “How will we feed them?” and praises God.’

‘God provides,’ I say.

‘It’s known,’ she agrees, and gets up to wash the glasses.

‘Yakhti, laugh,’ I say. ‘What do we take from it all?’

‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘Man is destined for his God.’

‘And they’ll be five in the eye of the enemy —’

The buzzer goes again and I get up to answer it.

Isabel comes in as Tahiyya is collecting the clothespegs and wiping the crumbs from the floor. They smile at each other.

‘Hallo,’ Tahiyya says loudly in English, straightening up and smiling, raising her hand to her head, miming a greeting in case Isabel doesn’t understand.

‘Hello,’ says Isabel. ‘Izzay el-sehha?’

Tahiyya’s eyes widen as she turns to me: ‘She speaks Arabic!’

‘See the cleverness,’ I say.

‘Yakhti brawa
aleiha. She looks intelligent.’ Tahiyya beams her approval. ‘Is she married?’

‘No,’ I say.

‘Like the moon and not married? Why? Don’t they have men in Amreeka?’

‘Maybe she doesn’t want an American,’ I joke.

‘Khalas,’ says Tahiyya. ‘We marry her here. You find her a good bridegroom among your acquaintance and we’ll make her a wedding that shakes the whole country.’ She bends to pick up
Abd el-Rahman. ‘Shall I do anything for you before I go?’

‘Thank you, Tahiyya, there’s nothing.’

‘Then I’ll excuse myself,’ she says. She settles her son on her hip, manoeuvres his plastered leg around the door. ‘Salamu
aleikum.’

‘She’s always so cheerful,’ says Isabel, ‘and she works so hard.’

‘Yes, she does,’ I say.