The Hidden (35 page)

The journal of Hezba Iqbal Sultan Hanim al-Shezira,

Cairo, September 17, 1919

I stumble and fall as I run through the deserted corridors of the palace. I hear glass smashing and then smell the acrid odour of gasoline and fire. Smoke and flames start billowing through the salamlik. The men’s voices are loud and violent. I run faster than I have ever run before in my life with my eyes half-closed and my chest heaving with agony. I fly down the huge central staircase two steps at a time.

I see Alexandre in the shadows of one of the alcoves near the red room on the ground floor. He rushes towards me, his eyes expressing both relief and horror. He throws his arms around me, burying his head in my neck.

I fall against him, clutching at him, sobbing violently. I can’t go on. “Hezba,” he says, “We have to get out of here. Quickly.”

“My papa. They shot my papa. Are they Rebel Corps? Are they?”

I am shaking him, shivering with grief. I want to go back and hold Papa in my arms, but I know if I go to him that I will be killed. Alexandre holds my shoulders firm. His face is bitter, mortified.

“No, Hezba, no. My men would not kill the sultan. I don’t know who—I don’t understand. But right now, we must save ourselves. Quickly, come on.”

He yanks me by the arm and pulls me towards the door that leads to the garden. I hear the thud of boots on the paving stones outside and the tat-a-tat-tat of machine guns. I see my dead papa’s face in my mind’s eye and the look in his eyes when he saw me standing there. He knew in his final moments that I had come back to him, to beg for his forgiveness, to save him. I was the last person he saw, but I couldn’t save him. So I have betrayed him twice, by defying him and by being unable to stop them shooting him. Oh God, forgive me, help me. “I can’t go on,” I sob breathlessly. “You go, leave me here with my papa. I can’t go on, do you hear me?” I slump to the floor.

Alexandre scoops me up in his arms and exits the palace into the gardens. I am choking from the smoke. I splutter against his shoulder. Then the crumbling walls of the Sarai begin crashing to the ground. We are in the gardens. It seems like a thousand British soldiers are standing with machine guns raised at us. I hear Alexandre’s heart thundering in his chest. I can taste the perspiration trickling down my face into my mouth.

“Freeze,” a voice shouts through a loudspeaker.

Alexandre stops dead. He holds me against him, gripping me as though he will never let me go.

“This is the sultan’s daughter,” he shouts.

“Silence,” the general says through the loudspeaker. “Men, upstairs.”

A thousand boots clomp past us. Another thousand gather round us, pointing guns in our faces.

“My father,” I say, “Those criminals murdered him, and you are arresting
us
?” The general comes forward. He is a sturdy-looking fellow with a blond moustache and pale blue eyes.

“You’re coming with us,” he says. We are marched to the front of the palace where I see the full force of the British Army lined up in front, weapons at the ready. Our hands are tied behind our backs, and we are thrown into a police chariot and escorted from the scene.

Alexandre and I sit opposite each other. His eyes are studying the interior of the vehicle, and I know he is planning our escape. My breaking heart cannot take any of this in. I don’t know why I am being arrested. For being at the Sarai? For murdering my husband? I know only that my papa is dead and my Sarai is crumbling under fire. My mouth contorts with sorrow. If only I could have saved him. And now I can’t even save myself.

Alexandre is looking at me now. He whispers a little poem to me under his breath, something the British soldiers seated on both sides of us cannot understand. He is trying to calm me and give me strength.

Hezba Sultan
her name whispered behind closed doors
in the garden
in the misty vapours of the hammam
her name dances with the sounds of harem laughter until it
disappears forever.

Choking back another grief-stricken sob, I raise my head and look into his eyes. The price of freedom, I think to myself, is this nightmare. When we arrive at the police barracks, Alexandre and I are separated. I am taken to a women’s jail. A dour-looking nurse arrives and asks me some questions. I can hardly hear what she is saying, my mind is so consumed with the face of my papa. She raises her voice and tells me to
remove my soldier’s uniform. She hands me a bathing gown. Then she accompanies me to another stark, horrible room. On a table is a large iron bowl filled with water, and a towel beside it.

She begins to wash me. As she does so, she stares at my belly and my swollen breasts and asks if I am with child. I tell her I am. I cannot write about a child because my last child died. I refuse to say any more. I will talk to no one. I will never speak again as long as I live. She wraps me in the towel and takes me back to my cell. There she dresses me in a sack of a dress. She sees my linen pouch lying next to the discarded soldier’s uniform and asks me what it is. She starts to take it, telling me she will destroy it as I won’t be needing it anymore. She does not know what it contains. Of course, my vow to never speak again is immediately broken.

I snatch it from her and sob violently. “Please don’t take this from me,” I say. “It is the only thing I have left in the world. If it is taken from me, I will go on a hunger strike.”

The nurse stares at me and then takes the pouch gently from me. She peers inside and sees it contains my little notebook and my fine ivory pen. She smiles and hands it back to me, and says she will see it is not taken from me. I close my eyes and nod a thank-you.

She asks me again, “Are you with child?”

I nod. She asks me to lie down on the prison bed and open my legs. She lifts up my dress and pushes her fingers inside me, feeling around deep within. She presses my belly gently and then nods to herself. “I will make a recommendation to the chief of police that you not be kept here,” she says. “Because of your condition, the chief might make allowances for you while the courts assess your case. But don’t expect any favours. You are being charged with the murder of your husband. Pray to your God, child,” she continues. “Inshallah, you are going to need all the heavenly forgiveness your God will allow.” And with those words she leaves.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Nemmat crouched down, put her arm around her mother, and whispered in her ear, “Pack your things, Maman. I know a place where we’ll be safe.” She stroked her mother’s lined face and squeezed her hand.

“What on earth are you mixed up in, child?” her mother said. Nemmat didn’t answer her. She stood up and listened. It wouldn’t be long before Farouk found her and killed her for being in league with Littoni. “Maman, sssh,” she said, holding her mother tighter to her.

Nemmat heard men’s voices outside the apartment door, and her eyes widened with fear. Her mother clutched at her, and Nemmat put her hand gently over her mouth to signal to her to not say a word. Farouk must have found out where she lived. She flinched. Someone outside was trying to force the door by throwing his body against it. The sound was so loud that she judged there must have been three, four men out there.

Nemmat pulled at her mother’s hand, and together they headed out the back door into a small overgrown garden. They scrambled over the broken wall and headed up a haret that led to a wider street.

Nemmat pulled her mother’s chador over her head and face and attended to her own. They could not run. It would attract too much
attention. The only thing to do was to walk calmly, lose themselves in the crowd, and then find a taxi. Though they had left everything they owned behind in their apartment, Nemmat still had her fortune. She had prepared herself for this eventuality and kept her entire savings in a pouch strapped around her waist. As the women walked through the crowds, Nemmat kept looking back. She was glad of the busy streets. “Tell me, child, tell me, what is going on?”

“I’m afraid, Maman,” Nemmat said, bowing her head to the pavement and shooting her mother an apologetic glance. Her mother’s eyes demanded the truth. She could not hold out any longer.

“Tell me, child. You are my daughter. Anything that has happened to you affects me. You must tell me what’s going on.”

“Someone wants to kill me, Maman,” she said. “I’ve been saving money for us to get away. In a few days we can go.”

“Go where, child?”

“To Italy. To Seraphina’s. She will look after us. You want to see your old friend again, don’t you?”

“Seraphina?” she murmured.

“We will be safe with her,” Nemmat said. “We can return to Cairo one day, but for the time being we must leave or risk our lives.”

“Who wants to kill you, Nemmat?”

“A man called Taha Farouk, Maman.”

The journal of Hezba Iqbal Sultan Hanim al-Shezira,

Cairo, late September 1919

The days pass. I lie here waiting. I have counted three sunrises, three sunsets, and countless calls to prayer from the muezzins in the mosque nearby. I don’t know exactly where I am, but I think by the spires I can see from my cell window that I am near the Mosque al-Hakim, north
of Cairo. I eat little and drink even less. I can feel my baby fluttering inside me, begging me to eat. For her, I will take a mouthful here and there. I try as hard as I can, but I am just not hungry. Then on the fourth day, the nurse arrives. She throws some clothes at me and orders me to get dressed. She tells me to veil myself. “You are to appear in court,” she says. “A lawyer has been appointed for you.”

My heart starts to beat nervously for the first time since my arrest. I try to read her face, but it gives nothing away.

Once I am dressed in the thick black chador and veiled, I am marched out of my cell. I hear some of the other women laugh as I walk past their cells. They are street workers, deviants, murderers, and I am one of them. Two armed guards meet the nurse at the jail door and accompany us to a carriage that takes us to the courthouse. As we ride through the streets, I see that calm has returned to Cairo, but I still hear occasional gunfire and smell the charred scent of burning buildings. People are sweeping up outside their shops. The cafés are full, the shops bustling, and the hotel terraces crammed with tourists. Camels and donkeys block the way as usual. Men are arguing in the streets, and women are selling fruit in the markets. The odour of mud and spice and donkey droppings is as wonderful to me as the sight of the blistering sky. Every little detail is precious, because it is life.

I watch the scene unfolding outside as though I am a visitor from another world. But this is my world, the world I wanted to leave behind.

How torn I feel, cut in half by my desire to be with Alexandre and my desire to be with my papa and my family. And then I remember that my papa is dead, and my body spasms with sadness. Tears start to roll down my cheeks.

We arrive at the courthouse and are ushered inside. I am made to stand in front of the qadi, the judge. I am completely shrouded. Through my veil I see an ocean of faces around me, all staring at me.

I am made to place my hand on the Qur’an and swear that I will not be deceitful. The qadi asks me a series of questions as though I am an idiot.

“What is your name?”

“Hezba Iqbal Sultan Hanim al-Shezira,” I say, trying to steady my voice.

“What is your address?”

“I have none.”

“What is your age?”

“I am not sure exactly, seventeen I think.”

“Do you know why you are here?”

I stare at him and shake my head slowly.

“You are charged with the murder of your husband, Khalil al-Shezira Pasha.”

I blink and don’t dare move an inch.

“Do you understand the charge?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Is it true you are carrying a child?”

“Yes,” I say.

The qadi runs his eyes over me in disgust as though the sight of me in my black robes with my swelling pregnant girth is enough to put him off his lunch. He is an ugly man, with an arrogant bearing and a cruel curl to his mouth.

“It has been recommended that you be moved to more comfortable accommodations for the time being. I will order to have your condition checked by one of our court doctors. If your condition is confirmed, you will be placed under house arrest and will await summons to attend the court again where your lawyer will present your case and your sentence will be delivered.”

I stand with my head held high, even though my heart is still breaking and my tears flow easily underneath my veil. The qadi calls one of
the lawyers standing nearby and confers with him. After glancing at me, they refer to some pieces of papers in a dossier that the judge shuffles between his fingers. The qadi addresses the room.

“Is the prisoner to be privately represented?”

A man I do not recognise steps forward. “I will be organising the representation of the woman, Qadi. We will be awaiting your instructions with regard to her internment and where she will await her summons for her trial.”

The qadi nods and refers to his dossier again. “The Sayyida Virginie al-Fatuh, a close friend of the woman’s family, has offered her residence as a suitable place for someone in her condition of disability.”

I flinch when he says the word “disability.” He looks at me as though my very sex is a disability. I touch my belly softly. My child is my only ally now. And then I realise what the qadi has said. I am going to be allowed to go to Virginie’s house. It will give me a moment of reprieve. Surely nothing will happen to me there. I hope and pray I will see Virginie, that she is alive and well. I think of Alexandre and hope for news of him.

“Court adjourned,” a man says, and everyone in the room stands up.