The Map of Love (21 page)

Layla had been seven at the time of her brother’s marriage and the scandal it had caused when he returned his bride to her family after six months. She had not understood much, but the whole event had had a doomed air, shadowed as it was by the Revolution and then the Occupation, the banishment of her uncle and
Urabi Basha and their friends. Or was that just how it came to seem later? Later, when married herself and knowing more of the needs of men, she had questioned their mother closely. Zeinab Hanim had been able to unburden her heart and speak to her daughter woman to woman. ‘He did the honourable thing,’ she had told her in this very courtyard one moonlit Ramadan night. ‘He took
the blame on himself: he said, “Your daughter is a princess and there is no fault with her. We are just not suited to each other. I cannot make her happy. She will take one who is better than me and God will give her the happiness she deserves.” He paid everything they asked for and more, and within a year the girl was married and God has blessed her with three children. The truth is, I think her family were relieved when he left her. Human, my child, after all: when they took him his father was in power, his uncle was head of the government — and then, in a day and a night, the country had been beaten down and the Army of Occupation was in the streets and all our hopes had been destroyed. And he comes and makes a big speech and gives them back their daughter and a handsome gift of money. A good and a blessing. And the girl had not become pregnant by him so they could hide for a while and hope the world would forget they had ever been in-laws of the al-Baroudi family. Anyway, I took him to my side and I said, “Comfort me, my son, and set my heart at ease: men need that thing which God has lawfully ordained for them. I want to know how it is with you.” And he bent his head and considered and then he opened his heart to me and said, “Ya Ummi, I cannot live my life with a woman who has no key to my mind and who does not share my concerns. She cannot — will not — read anything. She shrugs off the grave problems of the day and asks if I think her new tablecloth is pretty. We are living in difficult times and it is not enough for a person to be interested in his home and his job — in his own personal life. I need my partner to be someone to whom I can turn, confident of her sympathy, believing her when she tells me I’m in the wrong, strengthened when she tells me I’m in the right. I want to love, and be loved back — but what I see is not love or companionship but a sort of transaction of convenience sanctioned by religion and society and I do not want it.” You see the philosophy? I offered to find him a woman, or a girl or two — not slaves, because they had just declared that slavery was against the law, but a couple of good women to live in his hareem and see to his needs, and all I got was
another long and wide lecture about the dignity of human beings. He was twenty-one, tall and broad and handsome as the moon. I said, “Very well, but tell me then, frankly, what will you do?” And he laughed and kissed my hand and said, “Leave this one to me, but be comforted — don’t they say ‘the son of the duck is no mean swimmer’?” and of course he meant your father, and knowing what I knew of
his
merry nights here and there, I was silent.’

Layla considers: she has been so used to thinking of her brother as her brother. The head of the family since ‘82 when her father went into his retreat and her uncle into exile. Her mother’s brother Mustafa Bey, Husni’s father, was there but he was in Minya, on the land. Abeih Sharif had always been the man of the family: running the estates, managing the money, looking after the people, conducting his practice as a lawyer, sitting on the Council, pushing for reform. He had maintained a polite but distant relationship with the Palace —

‘Mama! Mama!’ Ahmad is faltering towards her, upright, arms held high, running before he can walk. Layla throws aside her sewing, rises to her knees, leans forward and catches the small hurtling figure to her breast

‘Ismallah ismallah ya habibi,’ she cries, passing her hand over the soft, black hair, kissing the damp, shining brow. Berthed and petted, Ahmad struggles to be free; Layla faces him round and plants him down on his feet. A few paces away, Anna sinks to the ground ready to receive the returning child. One step, then another, the face a rictus of concentration, and then that involuntary break into a trot and Anna rises to her knees as Ahmad throws himself full into her arms. When she lifts her face from the warm, fragrant neck, Sharif Basha al-Baroudi is standing at the entrance to the courtyard looking at her and frowning.

He turns to his sister. ‘I coughed, I banged — has everyone gone deaf?’

‘Welcome, ya Abeih.’ Layla has stood up and is approaching him, smiling. ‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning,’ he says. When he looks down at her he
smiles and raises his hand to her cheek. ‘Khalas ya Setti? Your husband has returned to you in safety?’

‘May God increase the good that comes from you!’ She smiles, catching the hand on her cheek, kissing it lightly. ‘Itfaddal, have you had breakfast?’

‘Al-hamdu-l-Illah,’ he says, sitting down in the low wicker chair near her cushions.

And Anna?

‘When was it?’ Anna asks. ‘When did you know? When did you fall in love with me?’

It is that happy stretch of time when the lovers set to chronicling their passion. When no glance, no tone of voice is so fleeting but it shines with significance. When each moment, each perception is brought out with care, unfolded like a precious gem from its layers of the softest tissue paper and laid in front of the beloved — turned this way and that, examined, considered. And so they sit, and touch, and talk, and breathe, and so they string their moments into a glorious chain, and throw it round each other’s necks, garland each other with it. Invisible to all others, it shines for them, a beacon across a crowded room, across an ocean, across time.

‘When did I know? Well, the first moment — the first moment I saw you was when you sat across the room, in your ridiculous riding costume, your hair tumbling down your back, abducted, imprisoned, unwashed, and said, so coolly, “That will not be necessary, and now if you will kindly saddle my horse —” ’

‘I did not ask you to saddle my horse! Even then I knew better.’

‘You more or less ordered me to saddle your horse. It never even crossed your mind to be afraid.’

‘What was there to be afraid of?’

‘Me. Weren’t you afraid of me? The wicked Pasha who would lock you up in his harem and do terrible things to you?’

‘What terrible things?’

‘You should know. They’re in your English stories. Calling in my black eunuchs to tie you up —’

‘Do you have any?’

‘You bad, bad woman — but what can one expect from an infidel? You dress in men’s clothes, frighten poor Sabir to within an inch of his life, then throw yourself at the neck of the first Arab you meet —’

‘You’re not an Arab anyway. Not properly.’

‘ “Native”, then.’

‘Didn’t you remember me from the Khedive’s ball?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘But our eyes met — I’m sure our eyes met. You were standing by a window —’

‘You were just one of “them”. One of those half-naked women —’

‘Stop it! Don’t act as if you’ve never moved out of Cairo —’

‘Ah, but this was
in
Cairo, you see. And there you were: laughing, dancing —’

‘I did not dance.’

‘I know.’

‘So you did notice me?’ Anna’s laugh is triumphant.

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘Well, maybe a little.’

‘And?’

‘And?’

‘What did you think?’

‘I thought you behaved better than some of the others.’

‘Thank you. And?’

‘And what?’

‘And I was beautiful and my dress was simply ravishing and —’

‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘No. You know, really, the first time I thought you were beautiful?’

‘Yes?’

‘When I came into the courtyard and you were on your knees on the ground, wrapped in my old dressing gown,
holding Ahmad to you. When you lifted your head and looked at me with the sun on your face, I saw your eyes, your amazing violet eyes, and then your face and neck flushed with colour and you looked down and hid yourself in the child and all I could see was your hair. I thought, She is beautiful. Truly beautiful.’

And Anna, who has held on to Ahmad, hidden her face in his neck once more, now allows him to break from her. He calls out to his uncle, and as he starts to toddle forwards she follows him anxiously, stooping, a hand outstretched to catch him, to break the fall if it should come. The other hand holds the dressing gown to her, pulling its folds closer around her neck.

‘Bonjour,’ she says as she comes close. He is leaning forward, opening his arms wide — ‘Lalu! Lalu!’ — gathering his nephew into them, placing him on his knee.

‘Bonjour. I hope you slept well?’ He does not look at her. He is busy with Ahmad, who is now climbing to stand on his knee, leaning against his chest.

‘Very well, thank you.’ Anna sits in the other wicker chair, to the side of him, slightly behind him. Her eyes are on Ahmad’s plump feet trampling across his uncle’s light grey lounge suit, the open jacket showing the heavy gold chain of his watch rising in an arch to the pocket of his waistcoat. Layla has once more picked up her sewing, looking up to say ‘Bass ya Ahmad’ as the child reaches for his uncle’s tarbush. Sharif Basha takes off the tarbush and gives it to Ahmad, and holds him steady in the circle of his arm. With his other hand he smooths his own hair back.

‘I was thinking,’ he says to Layla, speaking in French for Anna’s benefit, ‘of how our guest should travel.’

Layla glances up at Anna, who says nothing.

‘Anna is a good rider,’ Layla says. ‘Sabir says so and besides, all Englishwomen are good riders, are they not?’

‘Where is this Sabir? Why was he not at the door?’

‘I gave him leave to go to his family. He will be back immediately. He says he had no chance to tell them he was
going away for a few days and he is afraid they will get worried and enquire at the Agency.’

‘His family?’ Anna asks.

‘His wife and children. He says he intended to send word to them but never got a chance. He did seem very anxious.’

‘I did not know he had a wife,’ Anna says in surprise.

‘Neither does your Mr Barrington, I’m sure,’ Sharif Basha says coldly.

‘But why —’ Anna begins, then stops.

For a while there is a silence.

‘Let me make you a coffee, ya Abeih,’ Layla says. Sharif Basha shakes his head.

‘Come and show me the fountain,’ he says to Ahmad in Arabic, lifting the child up and standing. He walks to the centre of the courtyard, and with his back to the women puts Ahmad down carefully on his feet and crouches down, keeping his arm around the child. Layla and Anna wait silently for his return.

‘Why don’t you come with us?’ Sharif Basha says to his sister as he sits down again. He sounds casual, but Layla glances up, surprised.

‘I can’t,’ she says, a slight motion of her head indicating the wall of the courtyard. ‘Father is not very well, and Mama isn’t here.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he says, ‘of course,’ shifting the child’s feet, lifting him up a little, then putting him down again. He turns slightly to Anna, glances at her for a second, then away.

‘You would not consider travelling in a litter, would you?’

‘I should much prefer to ride,’ Anna says.

‘Of course,’ he says again, lifting his tarbush slightly off Ahmad’s head, adjusting it to show the child’s face.

‘Then you will have to travel as a man. A young man. A very young man.’ He permits himself a wry face as he glances at her again. ‘But not an Englishman. You will have to be something else.’ He pauses. ‘French. You can be the son of an old friend of mine, a Frenchman. We’ll get you some clothes, and you can invent a name for yourself —’

‘Armand,’ says Anna, and he smiles.

‘Armand, then. Armand Demange. We’ll get you some papers and some clothes and I shall tell you about your father as we ride.’

‘I knew it was you at the Costanzi, and that you’d seen me —’

‘When?’

‘When you smiled when I chose the name Armand.’

‘But Armand was not in that opera!’

‘No, but still. It made you think of opera.’

The three candles in their flickering glasses cannot dim the light of the stars which shine down on the cushions and rugs spread out on the spacious roof of the old house. From time to time Anna catches the scent of orange blossom drifting up from the trees in the garden.

‘Anna,’ he says, ‘do you miss it? That life?’

‘No,’ she says immediately. ‘I am here. I would not be anywhere else for the world.’ Her fingers are in the soft, thick hair of the head resting on her knee. With her other hand she traces the line of his mouth, the upper lip hidden under the edge of his moustache.

‘Does it trouble you,’ she asks, ‘that we have to speak in French?’

‘I like French.’

‘But does it trouble you that you cannot speak to me in Arabic?’

‘No. It makes foreigners of us both. It’s good that I should have to come some way to meet you.’ He catches the hand playing around his mouth and puts the tips of the fingers to his lips.