It had not escaped Aida that the ambassador would be a useful person to get to know. The Embassy was actively engaged in helping local Cairo law enforcement track down any smugglers of antiquities. The British prided themselves on their active involvement in trying to put a stop to the trafficking. If she was to play detective, then Sir Miles was a good place to start. Though Naguib was right, she was a woman alone and would need to tread carefully.
Dada Amina patted the side of Aida’s arm as the young woman enveloped her in a hug. ‘If you go to Cairo and stay at a hotel you’ll be drawn into the social circle there and we won’t see you again. When you return, you’ll find it too quiet and will get fidgety, as when you were a young girl. Whenever Ayoub Bey took you to Cairo, you always found ways of staying longer.’
Aida frowned. She was not entirely convinced that people in Cairo would welcome her with open arms. Unlike Naguib, she was under no illusions that Egyptian society would have forgotten who she was. As soon as the news got out that Aida El Masri had returned home, her old acquaintances might turn their backs with the same scornful disapproval they had shown her when she fled Egypt. Still, if rebelliousness was in the El Masri blood, then so too was determination, and Aida would have to rely on this to carry her through.
‘Maybe,’ she answered pensively, releasing Dada Amina from her embrace. ‘In any case, in those days I used to stay in Gizeh at Kasr El Ghoroub, the Pharaony House. I can’t do that now.’ She looked wistful, remembering all those times with Camelia, to whom she hadn’t spoken since she left Egypt. ‘By the way, how is Camelia? Do you ever hear anything of her?’
‘Meskina Sit Camelia, poor Mrs Camelia, her husband died in a car accident alal tarik el sahrawy, on the desert road between Cairo and Alexandria. They didn’t have time to enjoy their married life.’
‘Oh no!’ Aida was horrified. In these last eight years Camelia had been married and widowed. Naguib had said nothing about it.
‘Poor little one, she mourned the Bey like a turtle dove mourns his mate. Dada Fatma, who brought the Sit up and moved to Mounir Bey’s house when they were married, told me that day and night Camelia’s eyes rained down tears … she grew pale and wan as the young moon in the month of Ramadan.’
Aida loved the theatrical terms and imagery the fellahin sometimes used in their speech. Some of the phrases were so poetic that she had often thought to collect them in a scrapbook.
‘Where is Camelia now?’
‘She lives here at the Sunrise Farm Estate, Esbat El Shorouk, but I think that she often goes to Cairo. Especially when Phares Bey is at the Anglo-American Hospital in Zamalek.’
‘Phares Bey works in Cairo too?’
‘Ommal, of course, as I have told you, da garrah add el dinya.’
‘I’ll get in touch with Camelia. We were good friends. I can’t blame her for what her father did,’ she added, without thinking.
Dada Amina’s eyes widened. ‘Allah! You still carry that idea around with you? Let it go, habibti. Kamel Pasha had nothing to do with your father’s arrest. You are wrong, ya binti. I know that girl Souma filled your head with all this nonsense, but it was all lies, trust me.’
Aida lifted her head sharply. ‘How can you know that? Why would she have lied?’
‘Eblees yaaraf raboh laken yatakhabeth, the devil knows his Lord but still practises evil. Souma is a person who thrives on intrigue. You could never trust her.’
‘Well, she was always pleasant around me. Anyway, if Souma wasn’t telling the truth, I’m going to find out why.’
‘Don’t stir up a hornets’ nest, Sit Aida. No good will come of it. Souma is long gone, and good riddance to her. You will only bring the evil eye closer by meddling.’
‘I can look after myself, Dada, don’t worry,’ answered Aida, folding her arms. The conversation was going down a route she would rather avoid.
Dada Amina shook her head disapprovingly. ‘Mafish fayda, it’s no use … you are so stubborn when you get an idea into your head.’ She hauled herself out of her chair with a sigh. ‘I will not waste my breath trying to convince you. I’d do much better to run you a hot bath so you can have an early night. Maybe when you’re not so tired, you’ll be able to think more rationally.’
Aida’s irritation softened. ‘I don’t think so, but thank you, ya Dada, I would love a bath.’
It would be a change not to worry about hot water. In England, everyone had been careful with it as coal was rationed. For all the backward ways of Egypt, at least they still had their luxuries. Aida counted herself lucky that for the time being at least, she would enjoy everything her homeland had to offer.
Her mind returned to Camelia Pharaony. Tomorrow she would explore the estate and perhaps even try to see her friend if she was in Luxor.
* * *
Sheer exhaustion brought sleep to Aida that night. As dawn pointed, she was woken by the musical chant of the muezzin, half a mile away in the centre of Luxor, calling the Prophet’s followers to prayer from the tall minaret of his mosque. She had always found that faraway sound rather romantic, floating like an echo over the countryside at sunrise or at dusk.
Aida sprang from her bed and pattered quickly across the room to the veranda to watch the sun come up. The moment was so short! Like dusk in this part of the world, there was scarcely a dawn – it was night, then day, as suddenly as a cannon’s flash.
The whole of the sky was deeply flushed as the sun appeared low on the horizon, casting slender shadows on the gardens below and the date palms in the cultivated fields beyond. The Nile, the feluccas, the ancient city on the opposite bank were all tinged with colour. The air was like wine and held a thousand scents. Aida loved this hour when the countryside was waking: flocks of turtledoves were rustling round the trees, cocks were crowing, donkeys braying, water-wheels creaking.
She washed and dressed swiftly. Choosing a sleeveless white cotton broderie anglaise dress with a full skirt and a square décolleté, she girded her tiny waist with a wide blue belt. Slipping on a pair of white pumps, she crept noiselessly downstairs, out of the garden and into the fields that bordered the grounds. Today, she wanted to make a pilgrimage to the places she had always loved.
Her heart contracted as she set out on foot along the familiar road, which she had often taken on horseback at her father’s side, at the end of which lay the trees dividing the El Masri land from the Pharaony Estate. As the sun was still gentle, she perched her sunglasses on top of her head to see the countryside in all its glorious colour.
The trees had been planted by an ancestor as an indelible marker between the two properties. In these villages so close to the Nile, when the river overflowed in early summer and flooded the fields, it often washed away any other boundary marks between the plots. In the past, landholders could have great difficulty in ascertaining the outer limits of the land they owned, resulting in family feuds that lasted for generations.
The sandy lane was fringed with date trees. Palm groves and cotton fields stretched afar on either side. The years seemed to roll back as Aida gazed around her, the pungent aroma of the sun-warmed earth and fecund smell of the Nile taking her back to her childhood. The fellahin were already hoeing and planting. The land was being prepared for the new cotton season. In one field a wooden plough was being pulled by two cows. Further away in another, groups of men were using picks to make even furrows in the ground, while others hoed the land between the rows of plants. A few women in long brightly coloured robes were coming and going on the path, carrying baskets on their heads and shoulders. One of them was returning from the river with a heavy pitcher on her head; Aida had always been fascinated by the gracefulness and amazing balance these peasant women had, their carriage that of a queen.
Groups of men by a stretch of canal near the road were hauling up water with a shaduf, an irrigation tool dating from the pharaohs, many of which could be seen up and down the Nile. It was composed of a long pole supported in seesaw fashion on an upright frame, from the end of
which hung a wooden bucket to draw water from the river. Next to it the saqia waterwheel was turning, another irrigation mechanism devised by the Ptolemaic dynasty. Driven by buffalo, Aida had always been fascinated by it, watching for hours as it slowly lifted water and slopped it into irrigation ditches. She found it one of the most beautiful machines invented by man, combining aesthetic grace with bestial energy.
A fellah ambled past, dangling his legs and oscillating on the back of a small donkey. He smiled at the young woman. ‘Sabbah El Kheyr, ya Sit, good morning, my lady,’ he said as he went by. Aida smiled in return and answered his greeting. She had no doubt that everybody at the Esba, and probably around Luxor, knew that the daughter of Ayoub El Masri was back.
She had been walking for an hour. By now, the sun was blazing down on her from a sky of cloudless blue. Aida loved the sun, although just now she was starting to feel it becoming almost too hot as she’d come out without a hat. The belt of high trees which separated the El Masri land from the Pharaonys’ sugarcane plantation was now in view. She could either turn left down the path that bordered the trees and circle back homewards, or follow the wide side track in front of her, of which she had no recollection. She was not tired; on the contrary, this walk in the countryside, where the air was so pure in comparison to the polluted atmosphere of London, had energised her.
The new path proved delightfully cool after the sunny sandy lane. Soon it ran alongside another narrow canal banked by willow trees, their branches spilling into the water. On the other side of the path tall flame trees shed their mottled shade. The silence was deep; only her footfall could be heard, the hush broken now and again by the chirping of a bird.
On the opposite side of the canal Aida spotted a village where most of the fellahin who laboured on the El Masri land lived. A rabbit warren of low mud huts, they were all connected by the same crumbling walls. Their flat roofs were covered with cotton stalks, and they had no windows, only narrow doorways where a man had to stoop to enter. Black-gowned women sat on the ground, grinding corn or tending little odorous fires, their children in filthy rags staring at her, with matted hair and grime-encrusted faces. In one place a blindfolded ox patiently walked in an endless circle, turning the great flat wheel of a saqia; in front of a tiny whitewashed mosque an aged sheikh was expounding the chapters of the Koran to an attentive group of youths.
There were more paths opening on the right. Lost in thought, Aida turned down one of them, then down a second, until she found herself in an enclosed space where a group of buffalo were standing, one of them being milked by a fellaha. Aida realised that she was probably lost. The peasant woman flashed her a smile of welcome.
‘Sabah El kheyr ya Sit, can I help you?’
‘Sabah El nour, I think I’m lost. Where am I?’
‘You’re at Esbat El Shorouk.’
Aida frowned. ‘The Sunrise Farm Estate? You mean this is Pharaony land?’
‘Aywa ya Sit, yes, my lady.’ The woman got up from her milking stool, dipped a tin cup into the pail of foaming milk and held it out to Aida. ‘It faddally, please have some.’
Aida did not like to drink milk which hadn’t been boiled, but she took the cup so graciously offered. ‘Shukran, thank you.’ She drank it, to the delight of the fellaha, who beamed at her, and thanked the woman again. Then she turned and headed back the way she had come.
She had been walking for almost half an hour when she realised that she must have taken another wrong turning. She found herself on a narrow track bordered by ancient fig trees planted closely together. Their interlacing branches formed a canopy above her head like a natural loggia, barring the entry of sunlight. Only glimpses of the hot blue sky could be seen through small gaps in the broken roof. Bees flew across her path, vanishing with a buzz into the juicy flesh of the ripe fruit that were bursting open from the heat.
Further along, as Aida emerged from the shadowed canopy, the track turned and opened out on to a great clear space with a house and a few carob and date palm trees. Low and built in stone, the house had whitewashed walls and blue wooden shutters, between which the leaded panes of glass of the windows shot forth flames of rose and green, orange and gold. A stream cooed on the side of the house and the long grass around it was dotted with clumps of colourful wild flowers.
She remembered this old cottage of Kasr El Shorouk. How could she forget? How fantastic and beautiful and out of this world it was. Aida stood there on the edge of the sunlight with the dense trees behind her, watching spellbound as the door to the little cottage opened and a figure emerged. Without thinking, she quickly pulled her sunglasses down to cover her eyes.
A man strode forward. He was over six feet tall, with the supple, sinewy body of an athlete, and there was strength in the alert vigour of his movements. The breadth of his shoulders fitted with his height, and thick, unruly hair fell a little over a high forehead. He wore a cream cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and his long, muscular legs clad in a brown pair of riding breeches strode towards her.
‘Where on earth have you come from?’ he demanded. The voice was deep, almost curt. He had addressed her in perfect English. There must be something about her clothes or looks that branded her a foreigner. Aida recognised him immediately. He was as autocratic and arrogant as ever, she decided, and for a dizzy moment her heart stopped beating. However, it seemed that he hadn’t recognised her – her face disguised by her sunglasses – and for the moment, it suited Aida to have the upper hand.
He was even more handsome and charismatic than she remembered, with a strong jaw and an almost golden tint to his tanned face as though he carried the reflection of his family’s wealth and greatness in the very moulding of his features and the hue of his skin. She remembered the last time she had seen him, stern in a navy suit, finely pinstriped, wearing an expression that had unnerved her immeasurably. She took a deep breath and licked her lips, which had suddenly gone dry. A silent curse went through her mind. She hadn’t seen him for eight years and it took no more than the sight of him for her to go weak at the knees.
Phares Pharaony. Phares, meaning knight, the man who had been the knight of her dreams until the day of the tragedy. He stopped in front of her and seemed not to notice how his proximity made her stiffen. His large almond-shaped eyes settled severely on her face, so startling in their density that they made Aida think of coals with a flame at the centre where passions might be quietly smouldering. They were fixing her now with a look that tested her nerves to the utmost limit.
She recalled how that same look from those eyes had made her feel like an irresponsible schoolgirl the day she dared to accuse his father of deceit and treachery. But eight years on, and they had a different effect, making her conscious of herself as a woman, and this strange new feeling was even more alarming.
‘Who are you? And how did you get here?’ The strong and dominant voice was achingly familiar.
‘I’m afraid I’m trespassing,’ she said, tilting her head up to him.
‘You must have been aware of that for some time,’ he observed with a significant glance behind her towards the path by which she had obviously come.
Aida was not going to tell him who she was, and that she had got lost. ‘Maybe, but the countryside is so beautiful around here …’
‘… That you decided to explore the place, even though you knew it was wrong,’ he finished her sentence abruptly. His gaze travelled over her face as if trying to discern her expression behind the sunglasses then dropped to her lips, lingering there and making her heart beat frantically.
‘Well, now I’ll go back again.’
‘Just like that.’
Aida’s chin went up belligerently. ‘Yes, just like that.’
‘I’ve caught you trespassing and you will pay your forfeit, Miss … What’s your name?’
The rebellious teenager of eight years ago would have spluttered that it was none of his business, but Aida had grown more poised and confident since then. She kep
t looking at him, but didn’t answer.
Phares regarded her coolly, a faintly mocking smile hovering about his full mouth. His eyes flickered over her hair. ‘Okay, then … Goldilocks.’ Aida instantly recognised the same, sudden, unexpected flash of humour and tenderness in his smile that could transform his whole expression. Yes, she did feel like the girl who had gone for a walk in the forest and ended up at the three bears’ house, somewhere she shouldn’t have been.
Taking her cue from him, she entered into the game: ‘Goldilocks came to no good.’
‘That I can believe,’ he replied, giving her a steady, appraising look … There was something about the way he spoke, about the brightness and vitality of his gaze, the tanned bronze of his complexion, the crisp waves of his raven-black hair that made him seem twice as vividly alive as most of the men Aida had so far encountered in her life.
They didn’t speak for a few moments. ‘You must have been walking for quite a while to have come in from the back of the house and it’s still early,’ he observed pensively. ‘Adjoining our land is the El Masri Estate. Presumably you crossed that property too. What were you doing out at the crack of dawn?’ Phares glanced down at her disapprovingly. ‘Has no one told you that it is dangerous for a khawagaya, I mean a foreign woman, to walk alone in these villages?’
She concealed her turmoil with an offhand smile. ‘You surprise me. Since my arrival, I have only encountered courtesy here. I was kindly welcomed by one of your farm women.’
‘Welcomed by one of my farm women?’
‘Yes, she was milking, and very hospitably gave me a cup of milk.’
There was a sardonic tilt to his eyebrow. ‘Really? And did you drink it?’
Song of the Nile Page 5