The Mistress of Nothing (30 page)

IN EARLY JULY MY LADY AND OMAR TOOK THE TRAIN TO ALEXANDRIA,
where they stayed with Henry Ross, who had not traveled to England with Miss Janet the month before. Booking passage on a ship to Europe proved to be difficult; although we had heard nothing of it in Cairo, a cholera epidemic was sweeping Alexandria and anyone who could afford it was clamoring to leave the city, Ismail Pasha having fled abroad already. Omar had no luck down at the docks and it was only when Henry Ross himself used his network of connections in the port that my Lady was able to find a berth aboard a steamer. Omar sent word to Mabrouka; he would be back in Cairo soon. My Lady had instructed Hekekyan Bey to find him a position while she was away.

“I’ve told Hekekyan Bey that this new post must be temporary. I don’t want anyone stealing you away from me,” my Lady said. He promised to be there to meet her ship when she returned.

On his return to Cairo, Omar moved back into his father’s house. Mid-July, and Cairo hardly moved in the heat. The shutters were kept closed on all the windows, and at dawn every day, Omar’s mother and her servant, Umm Yasin, hauled on ropes and pulleys to draw a great canvas tarpaulin across the gap in the roof above the courtyard. Everyone in the house moved slowly through the gloom. The sun bored through any chinks in the shutters like white-hot rods of iron from the blacksmith’s across the street. The baby and his sister were lethargic, with hardly enough energy to eat or play.

I did not allow Omar’s presence in the house to affect my morning visits to Abdullah. Most days, when I arrived, Omar had left the house already, so I could almost convince myself that nothing had changed. At breakfast we all picked at our food and took turns to fan each other. “He can’t eat that,” Mabrouka said of a piece of cake Yasmina was attempting to stuff in Abdullah’s mouth. “Yes,” the little girl insisted and, indeed, Abdullah took the cake from her and chewed on it with his single tooth for a considerable amount of time. Mabrouka seemed no different to me: she was as keen to gossip and hear the news of the previous day; she bore no signs of the simple fact that her husband was with her once again. It was helpful to me to be able to pretend everything was as it should be. Her direct charm and lack of guile enabled me to carry on with life.

In high summer the pastry shop opened for several hours in the early morning, and then again in the evening, and the kitchen there was an inferno. Omar was working for his father while he waited to hear from Hekekyan Bey. Omar’s mother prepared the meals with Umm Yasin, and Mabrouka told me that after the sun went down they gathered together to eat. Their menu had become simpler; it took a special type of discipline to face going into the oven room more than once or twice each day, although the women still produced bread and beans and stews and salads and, of course, tea. After supper Omar climbed up onto the roof of the house, to lie in the hammock and survey the stars and look out at the city. I knew he had not spent a whole day without my Lady for a very long time and I imagined he felt an unexpected sense of freedom, in his own house, in his own city.

Mabrouka told me that Omar was relieved to be away from Luxor. The news that came down the Nile to Boulak from friends and other travelers was not good; this year the annual floods were much higher than usual and had already caused huge damage, washing away several small settlements in the region and leaving muddy devastation in their wake. As well as that, Ismail Pasha’s forced labor recruitment had snatched more than a third of the male population of Luxor; many of these men, men Omar had come to know well, would never return but would die in service to the Pasha’s schemes. Disease was rampant among the public works crews. Every day brought with it some kind of new tax: every beast, from camels to cows to sheep, drew a heavy tax on its head, and most
fellahin
were unable to pay. In Cairo, Omar was even more powerless to help than he had been in Luxor, where the daily acts of kindness that he carried out alongside my Lady had made a tiny difference to the lives of those who remained—acts of kindness that were returned to them, many times over. In the city the pace of change was so rapid, the Pasha’s building schemes so advanced, that it was impossible to do anything apart from sit back and watch and wonder where it would all lead. To do anything else would be foolhardy. At least in Cairo Omar felt that Lady Duff Gordon had attracted less attention from the Pasha and his cronies, where she was just one of many
Frangi
passing through the hurly-burly of the city.

I imagined that Omar worried about me. I had become a problem to solve: what to do about Sally? He could help me find a better job, and hopefully that would pay for a better place for me to live. But the fact of me: there was no getting round how awkward my presence in Cairo was for him. If he’d been willing to defy Lady Duff Gordon and move me into his father’s house, that would have solved many problems. He could have found a way to make it work. But that wasn’t an option. Instead, he was trapped in this situation, a wife at home, another at large, as though I was his mistress, not the mother of his son. I knew he was ashamed of what had happened that day on the
dahabieh:
my confrontation with my Lady, of course, but as well as that, the way he’d abandoned himself, been seduced by the moment. Lowered his guard. He hadn’t wanted two wives. He’d married Mabrouka. Then he’d fallen in love with me. But he was a dutiful man, dutiful to my Lady, to Mabrouka, to his family. He’d find a way. He had to find a way.

I pictured him lying on the roof in his hammock. The call to prayer woke him from his rooftop reverie and he went down to the courtyard to pray with his father, who had risen from his divan specially. Afterwards, he went into his private quarters. Abdullah and Yasmina were both asleep on their mats; Abdullah had outgrown his basket, to everyone’s regret. In the next room, Mabrouka had drawn the curtain around the sleeping area. He slipped his head through a gap and tried to see through the darkness to where his wife lay; her even breathing suggested she was asleep, but Omar knew her well enough to understand that she was awake, waiting. He stripped off his clothes and put on his too-hot nightshirt. Then he got into bed with his wife.

As he had expected, she was not asleep, but she continued to lie absolutely still for some time. Omar lay on his back and tried hard not to think.

Mabrouka began to speak. “I was afraid you would divorce me. You would divorce me and keep Yasmina and make me leave your father’s house, and have this other woman, the mother of Abdullah, as your wife.”

“I would never have done that, Mabrouka.” He turned onto his side to face her. “You should have known I would not divorce you.”

“I know. Your mother and father assured me of that every day after we heard about—after we heard the news. But Sally, she is a
Frangi.”

Omar placed his hand on her stomach. Her nightclothes were damp with the heat, like his. “I will not divorce you. You are the mother of my child.”

I knew about this conversation because Mabrouka told me about it. She didn’t describe what else happened that night, but I was not naive. I saw it happen, in my mind’s eye. Mabrouka moved towards Omar. He took a sharp breath and held it and moved towards her. It had been a long time since they had shared a bed, and longer still since Mabrouka had wanted him close to her. He stroked her black hair: how different from me she smelled, how different she felt, how different it was when she brought her face to his, her lips. He forced himself to stop making these comparisons; Oh yes, he thought, he made himself think, I remember this, I remember how this feels. “I am a lucky man,” he said after a while, his voice throaty with desire. In the dark he felt Mabrouka smile.

I don’t know if this is what happened between them. But I know enough to understand that it probably did happen this way. They were, after all, husband and wife.

HEKEKYAN BEY DID, INDEED, FIND OMAR A POSITION, WITH AN ENGLISHMAN,
Mr. Smith, who was in Cairo to work with Doctor Mariette in the Egyptian Antiquities Service and had decided, unusually, to stay in the city over the long summer. Mr. Smith lived in a new house in the Frankish Quarter on the Nile and wanted Omar to act as valet and factotum. He would be needed during the day most days, and in the evenings only when Mr. Smith entertained, which was not often. Mr. Smith—there was no Mrs.; Mabrouka told me she found it puzzling that so many
Frangi
did not marry—was happy for Omar to continue to live with his own family.

From the first day, Omar’s duties for Mr. Smith included crisscrossing the city on foot to deliver messages; these excursions took him in and out of the new hotels that were opening across the city. Omar began to inquire after employment opportunities for me. I had continued to work for Roberto Magni, but my situation there was deteriorating. Roberto Magni’s clientele seemed to get rougher with each passing month, and Roberto Magni himself was frequently incapacitated with drink. His overtures towards me were becoming more aggressive; he announced to me one night that we’d both be better off if we were married. He said, “It would be cheaper; I would no have to pay you.” To tell the truth, I couldn’t help but laugh at this most unromantic of proposals, and even Roberto Magni saw the humor in it. But I needed to leave. I’d been to visit Umm Mahmoud, who had offered to give me a room and take me on as her cleaner, in lieu of rent, but I knew this arrangement was not feasible as the old couple could ill afford the loss of income. When another paying guest arrived, I would have to move out and sleep on the floor in the small, hot kitchen, just like when I first went into service as a scullery maid in Esher.

I continued to visit Abdullah every morning and my visits never coincided with Omar’s time at home. I didn’t mind not seeing him, not now; there was no possibility of any privacy, not even for conversation, and besides, we no longer needed privacy. Seeing Abdullah every day was enough to keep me happy; I looked forward to visiting Mabrouka as well, who, it seemed, had taken it upon herself to give me a Cairene education.

“Omar says he’ll be able to find a new position for you, Sally,” she said one day. “He says the new hotels are all after people like you.”

I smiled, unwilling to show Mabrouka my desperation, but I knew that, by now, she was familiar enough with my situation to see through my attempts at bravado. I had told her about Roberto Magni’s proposal and she’d been outraged on my behalf. “Oh!” she said, “How dare he!” Her expression was so vexed and affronted that I began to laugh. “Don’t laugh!” she said, but she started laughing as well until we could no longer contain our hysteria at the idea. Omar’s mother had rushed in to find out why we were making such a racket, but neither of us would tell her.

It had become a source of tension between Mabrouka and Omar, the fact that Mabrouka witnessed, daily, the toll that my precarious circumstances took on me. Now that they were accustomed to living together once again, Mabrouka felt able to raise certain topics when they were alone, in their private quarters. “I’ll wear him down, Sally,” Mabrouka said to me. “You will join our household, you’ll see. We women know how to get our way.” She blushed at this reference to her married life and looked away.

But then one day Mabrouka stopped talking about trying to change Omar’s mind. She just stopped, and the topic was no longer within our range. I wondered what had transpired to make Mabrouka give up on this subject. I felt I could imagine their conversation: late one night, after they had been together, in each other’s arms, she spoke up as Omar was about to fall asleep. Her tone was, perhaps, sharper than she had intended. “I’m asking you once again, Omar Abu Halaweh, why won’t you invite the mother of your son to live in your father’s house?”

Omar was not willing to discuss this subject and made that clear by feigning sleep.

“Omar!” Mabrouka hissed.

He rolled towards her. Neither did he want to make her angry. “This is my decision, Mabrouka. I have my reasons.”

“What? What are they? You will have your wife live by herself in the city? What kind of a husband are you?”

“Many women in your position”—he paused to give his words more weight—“would be pleased—no, relieved—by my decision.”

“Well, I am not. I see her, and I see how she looks, and I am surprised to find the father of my child possessed of such a cold heart, capable of such cruelty. It compromises my honor as well as hers.”

Now he was angry. He sat up.

Mabrouka could see she’d gone too far. “Omar, I—”

“Lady Duff Gordon has decided that Sally Naldrett will not live with my family. If I am to retain my position in her household, I must obey her. There. I’ve said it. I have no choice.”

Mabrouka was shocked. “Father of my child—,” she began to apologize, but Omar cut her off.

“Sally’s an Englishwoman, Mabrouka, and we are Egyptians. Would you rather I shared her bed and not yours?” He got up and left the room, and went to sleep on a mat next to Abdullah.

And that was the end of that particular conversation.

A FEW DAYS LATER WHEN
I
ARRIVED FOR MY VISIT, MABROUKA
rushed across the courtyard. Omar’s inquiry at one of the grandest of the new establishments, the Nile Hotel, had been met with enthusiasm by the head porter the previous day. “An Englishwoman?” he had said. “Speaks Arabic fluently? Well trained? Send her to us, Mr. Abu Halaweh, please!”

“Sally!” Mabrouka said. “You are to be at the Nile Hotel at ten a.m. tomorrow morning!” She was as excited as though she was to accompany me herself.

And so the next day I dressed in my best attempt at proper English attire—boots and petticoat, stays, gloves, and hat, all repaired and carefully ironed (and stained and frayed)—and made my way through the city and up the grand polished marble staircase of the Nile. In the large foyer, with its potted palms and carpets, I was introduced to Mr. Gillespie, the Scottish manager of the British-owned hotel.

“Speak Arab, do you?” Mr. Gillespie inquired.

“Yes, sir.”