The Linguist and the Emperor (14 page)

He reads:         
—Coltsfoot, a sweet, edible plant, growing in clayey soil.

He reads:
—it is a word for which no meaning can be found.

He reads, taking notes, sounding out phrases, compiling growing lists:

—Streaming eye, a disease—which he is happy to connect with closing of the eye, positing them both as synonyms for blindness

—A victor’s (martyr’s?) crown

—A soul passing through closed doors

THE WATCHMEN GET
to know him. They see him, hour after hour, as they make their rounds. Even their dogs, Jean François writes his brother, no longer growl.

This, then, is how the young man spends his nights in Paris.

Chapter Nine

On the Soldier’s Neck

August, 1798. Cairo.

“
I AM YOUR SLAVE,
” the governor of Alexandria said, surrendering the city to Napoleon. Afterward, he secretly sent a messenger to his Mameluke master in Cairo, describing his desperate bravery in attempting to hold the city and informing him of the approaching danger.

Traveling for days through rough desert terrain, this messenger finally arrives in Cairo at dawn, breathless and exhausted. But just before he enters the city, he is fatally seduced by whirling dervishes dancing by the Nile. Despite having been told to “turn neither to the left nor the right, to salute no man nor to return any man’s greetings but to go directly to the Qasr Aini (the Palace of the Fountain),” the messenger dismounts here at the city’s edge for the briefest moment—or so he believes—to receive the blessing of the holy men as they spin with flaring robes to beating drums and trilling flutes. Arms outstretched in prayer, their faces are distorted with ecstasy.

Throwing themselves on the ground, they drag him down with them as the Master of the Order gallops over their prostrate bodies on a black stallion, leaving the messenger together with the writhing holy men, who are beyond all care for the vicissitudes of this world.

Thus it is not the messenger who brings the news of the French invasion, but a humble gatherer of
sebak,
of fertilizer, who happens to be passing by. His cart is filled with the crumbled brick of ancient monuments and the effluvia of disintegrating mummies, human heads and torsos, mummified ibises and bulls and apes to be crushed into powder and spread over the depleted fields. This illiterate peasant takes the messenger’s dispatches to the Qasr al-Aini. The Mameluke leader, Murad bey, reading the letters with astonishment and rage, rewards the
sebak
gatherer for his trouble with death.

And so it comes about that early in the morning on the twentieth of Muharram, as the Arab historian el-Jabarti records, all of Cairo is thrown into an uproar as word spreads: foreigners have invaded. Alexandria, Damietta, and Rosetta have already fallen and the army of infidels, like a swarm of locusts, is now heading for the capital.

Crowds begin to roam the city, their shouts filling the air as they attack any foreigners they can find: Greek and Italian merchants mostly, along with a well-known diplomat: the Venetian consul Rosetti, on his way to appear before Murad bey.

By a hair’s breadth the consul manages to escape, leaving his servants to fend off the attackers. Galloping through twisting back alleys to the centuries-old dungheaps that rise to a hundred feet outside the city gates, he hides amid the refuse all morning. Finally, necessity triumphing over dignity, he exchanges his clothes for those of a beggar picking through the trash. Thus attired, in a tattered robe thrown over rags, he makes his way to the palace.

Here, at the Qasr al-Aini, the grand divan is assembling. The heavy gates have been thrown open and first Abu Bekir
Pasha,
the Turkish sultan’s viceroy, enters; then the learned shayks of the Al-Azhar and their disciples (the historian Jabarti among them). Then, most important of all, the twenty-three Mameluke warlords (or
beys
) arrive one by one. Resplendent in finely wrought armor and mounted on magnificent Arabian horses, their appearance inspires awe. The crowd parts as the warriors ride through the gates, each followed by his trusted henchmen together with hundreds of bodyguards armed to the teeth. For in the violent, treacherous world of Mameluke politics this “news” supposedly from Alexandria—even if it is true, even if invaders have, in fact, arrived—might be nothing more than a ruse, perhaps a pretext for their venerable leader, Murad bey, to gather them together and slaughter them to a man.

Nothing is taken for granted by them—except the unquestioning loyalty of the warrior to his bey, to the warlord who bought him as a child or a youth, choosing him for his strength and his intelligence and his youthful, androgynous beauty. For until they mature, the boys are catamites as well as warriors-in-training, adding another motive for discord among the beys. They become rivals in love as well as power. The beauties among the boys are the cause of deadly clashes—abductions, assassinations—struggles that respect no boundaries, leaving a trail of blood running through mosque and palace alike.

Over this violent brotherhood the Turkish sultan rules—in name, at least. His one demand is money, tribute extorted from the toiling
fellahin
or the rich merchants who are beaten on the soles of their feet or covered with honey and exposed to the sun—one way or another every hidden gold
para
is found.

The pasha, the sultan’s viceroy, comes next in the line of command, but he is a mere figurehead. The real power rests with the man who, by force and guile, has come to command the Mamelukes, a role played for the time being by Murad bey. He will lead the warriors into battle against the French. Like the perfume he favors—a pure essence, a distillation of crushed black narcissus and jasmine—Murad bey is a pure essence of the Mameluke way of life.

He began life as a captured slave boy and is given to bragging about the high price, the thousand gold dinars he had cost. At forty-seven, Murad is a survivor of countless struggles and intrigues. He had achieved power quickly in his youth, after which he had then been taken off guard by a sudden coup and had just barely escaped death. Fleeing to the desert with a small band, he eluded capture for years, raiding, plundering, keeping up an incessant pressure. Then the day he fought for finally arrived; he returned from the barren wastes to rule in triumph.

His luxurious gardens were laid out in the desert just beyond the city, their vine-covered paths cooled by splashing fountains and redolent with jasmine and myrtle and myrrh. On pleasure boats on the Nile, he held feasts in the grand style, his Spartan figure quickly running to fat. With a library extensive even by Mameluke standards, whose libraries are second in magnificence only to their tombs, Murad is read to by a troop of sweet-voiced boys, since he himself cannot read.

Wily and boastful, known to be cruelest when he appears most mild, most dangerous when his voice becomes soft and caressing, like water running over pebbles, the fleshy Murad bey presents a complete contrast to the one rival he has not been able to subdue and with whom he has formed an uneasy partnership: the dour, ascetic Ibrahim bey. Older than Murad by some twenty years, Ibrahim is as silent as Murad is expansive, as stingy as his counterpart is extravagant. Punctilious about fast days and prayers, he is a man whom it is deadly to cross, having cast his net—an army of spies and assassins—over the land.

On important occasions, such as the grand divan that has now assembled, Murad defers to his partner in public, elaborately showing Ibrahim respect and courtesy. In fact, Murad is the one with the greater power and the one who has the final say. Still, with a dissimulation second nature in the Mameluke world, Murad allows his rival pride of place: Ibrahim is the one who speaks first and who calls himself by the loftier title,
Shayk el Balad,
Ruler of the Land, while Murad is merely
Emir el Haj,
Ruler of the Pilgrimage.

Tall and thin, hollow-cheeked from fasting, Ibrahim speaks briefly and in a voice which barely rises above a whisper. Until one of his bodyguards repeats his words, they can not be heard in the great hall. And when they
are
heard—“The walls of Cairo are high and thick. Let us await the French behind them”—pandemonium breaks loose. The beys reject such caution with scorn and laughter.

Accusations follow: the pasha is charged with having connived with the foreigners for his own reasons. After all, could the French have landed in Egypt without the Turkish sultan’s knowledge? The pasha denies such complicity, blaming the beys for the poor showing at Alexandria. Nothing less than treason, he claims. Recriminations fly thick and fast, it is all the historian Jabarti can do to record a part of them. One after the other, each of the beys and shayks has his say.

“. . . until finally, the shayk [Mukru’um Sa’ad] arose and cried: ‘All this is a result of negligence in managing the ports and lettings things come to such a pass that the enemy could occupy it.’

“Hearing which, Murad bey exclaimed: ‘What can we do? For whenever I want to rebuild and fortify you claim:
Their intention
[at Alexandria and Rosetta]
is rebellion.
And this is what has prevented me from acting.’

“Such were his excuses,” Jabarti sighs, “as frail as a spider’s web, for since the time of Ali bey, not only did he not pay sufficient attention to the ports but even removed what weapons and cannons were already there! Furthermore, he stopped the flow of ammunition, and furthermore . . .” etc., etc. Murad, distrustful of his own people, has left them unprepared for an attack.

Spies arrive to report on what they have seen: The French cavalry is practically nonexistent, they say. The invaders are struggling to cross the desert
on foot—
news which leads to more scorn and laughter. Is it not obvious that foot soldiers have no chance against the Mameluke cavalry? The foreigners are doomed, that is clear to see, and the argument becomes who will have the honor of being first to ride out and “greet” them.

And in the midst of the tumult and debate, a single voice is raised in agreement with Ibrahim’s caution, the voice of a hated foreigner who has spent the morning hiding in a dungheap! While the Venetian consul has, of course, washed and changed, word of his indignity makes the beys greet him with derision. But when the consul begins to describe this Bonaparte as a dangerous warrior, an invincible leader who has already proved his valor, laughter changes to sullen silence. Finally his words go beyond what Murad can bear. He cuts him short with curses and boasts echoed by those of the other beys who make the palace resound with their shouts.

The debate proceeds, shouts slowly dying into discrete and whispered conversations until finally, bit by bit, they piece together a plan of action. Despite their mutual distrust and internecine quarrels, they in advance divvy up the loot and the glory and the slaves which will soon be theirs.

It is late by the time that they have settled the fate of the French to their satisfaction. The capture of “Bunbarte,” the general, Murad bey claims for his own. Having finished their work, the divan is adjourned and the solemn procession rides forth from the palace: the pasha, the learned shayks, and the tall, swaggering, luxury-loving, tomb-designing, book-collecting beys together with their bodyguards, armed to the teeth, and their beautiful pages, blue-eyed and blond and fair—boys with much the same looks their masters had when kidnapped from the Caucasus a decade or two before.

The gold and silver of their armor shine in the bonfires lit at the palace gates. And then they are gone and the fires are extinguished, leaving behind a reflective witness. The historian Jabarti notes everything, remembers everything, and is filled with foreboding as “the raven of darkness spread its black wings over the Palace of the Fountain . . .”

And over Cairo . . . and over the path that lay ahead.

FOR MANY OF
the Frenchmen crossing the desert, Jabarti’s “raven” descends suddenly and during the day. The darkness begins as a sensation: a burning under the eyelids.

After which, the fierce glare of the sun becomes dimmer. The soldier experiences the blessed relief of shade as he marches through the barren land. The blindness that follows means certain death for him at this stage of the campaign. He is alone in the vast desert, his comrades have no way of helping him.

It is all they can do to keep going themselves. Marching over rocks and sand in temperatures in the 120s, their small allotment of water is used up right away by men too thirsty to restrain themselves. Many perish within the first hours of the forced march, struck down by the blistering heat and exhaustion. An officer, Belliard, will recall: “. . . a melancholy settled over us as we came to Birket [a mere twenty miles from Alexandria] for the numbers of those dying from thirst increased . . . soldiers tumbling onto the sand dunes never to rise again.”

With terrible suffering, the French crawl over the short space of earth separating Alexandria from Birket, a town which, it turns out, is nothing more than a name given to sand and rocks surrounding a dry canal. If the seasonal flood of the Nile had been higher, the troops would have found some respite.

But the Nile is low and the men are forced to march on, many soldiers leaving their provisions and ammunition behind in a desperate attempt to lighten their burdens. After all, even if they were able to eat it, hard, dry biscuit would only increase their thirst. And why should men too weary to hold a gun continue to carry loads of ammunition?

“The scorching air parched our throats,” another officer remembers, “and it was with difficulty that we moved our arms or legs or even drew breath . . .”

Yet, as the men begin their first night in the desert, General Desaix begins to speak to the disheartened men as Napoleon would: of glory. Like Napoleon, Desaix had his beginnings in the revolutionary army as a young, talented soldier with nothing to support him but his enthusiasm. From the first, he had recognized Napoleon’s superiority, recording early on in his diary, “I am persuaded that Bonaparte will achieve so immense a glory that it will reflect on his lieutenants . . . He is proud, hidden, never forgives. And he vows to follow his enemy to the end of the world.”