‘I must go in,’ she said calmly, as if he hadn’t spoken those passionate words. ‘Goodnight, Phares. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
With that, she hurried from the terrace before she had time to weaken beyond return.
Chapter 10
Aida awoke as dawn was pointing. She slid out of bed and made her way to the window just in time to see Phares’s car disappearing down the drive. Her heart started to beat at an accelerated pace and a soft warmth flowed through her whole body. It didn’t seem to matter how stupid it was, the same thing happened whenever he was in the vicinity. Of late, her body had been affected this way even at the thought of him.
The half-aroused sun was trampling down the lingering shadows, spreading its ruby-tinted tresses over the blooms in the dew-washed garden. A pinkish light appeared in the sky, running in long lines as though marked with a crayon by an unseen hand. Less than a kilometre away, a muezzin would be mounting the tall minaret of his mosque to stand on a circular platform and call the Prophet’s followers from their sleep, for it was El Fagr, the hour of first prayer.
At this early hour in the solitude of her room, as the events of the previous evening returned to her, a sense of foreboding seemed to settle into Aida’s heart. Her mind was filled with Phares and yet she was afraid of trusting her own judgement. For like this dawn she was watching, a new sun was rising slowly, almost warily, over the horizon of her life; and although she strove to turn her eyes away, reluctant to give in to her love when she was uncertain of his, she could not blind herself altogether to this new and cheering warmth.
It was her own feelings that made her afraid … afraid of wanting him … of loving him, of allowing him even deeper into her heart when she knew that all he wanted was her body. And surely, he would tire even of that one day and go looking for greener pastures. But it was too late, an inner voice whispered to her, he was already there. From the way Nairy Paplosian had looked at Phares, Aida knew the model was in love with him, and this only increased Aida’s sense of vulnerability; she was already feeling exposed and in danger. It was why she had held off accepting Phares’s proposal for so long.
The answer stared her in the face. Her whole being wanted to marry Phares, but she would first have to ask him for honesty about his relationship with Nairy.
Aida heard Camelia leave her room and at last came down to earth. She glanced at the clock on her bedside table: almost seven-thirty already? She knew that her friend liked to go for an early walk in the grounds every morning before the sun became too hot. After breakfast, she and Camelia had planned to go together to Chiffons à la Mode, to take a closer view of the dresses that had been shown at the fashion show and maybe buy a dress or two. She wondered if Phares had told Camelia about their lunch meeting and that today, they would finally discuss their marriage.
Picking up the bottle of Nasmet El Aroussa, Fragrance of a Bride from the dressing table, she smeared a little of the delicious heady scent on her wrists and behind her ears and opened the drawer to retrieve the turquoise pendant Phares had bought her. As her eyes lingered dreamily on the necklace her gaze was caught by a flash of colour. There, in the bottom of the drawer, was the talisman that Ghalya the gypsy woman had given her, its flaming orange gemstone winking brightly. She picked it up and held it to the hazy morning light spilling through the window; the heart of the gem seemed to burn a fiery pulsing red.
Unbidden, the dark, kohl-rimmed eyes of the old fortune teller drifted back into her mind, along with a vague memory of the ghazeya’s words. What had she said? Something about the amulet protecting Aida from the dangers ahead. What ‘dangers’ had she meant?
‘Always have it around your neck,’ that’s what Ghalya had said. ‘The day you are separated from it, not even el Jin El-Ahmar can help you.’
Aida frowned and shook her head, returning the amulet to the drawer where it seemed to stare back at her insolently. What superstitious nonsense! Was happiness not just around the corner for her and Phares? It was within her reach and she would grasp it.
Shutting the drawer quickly, Aida hurried downstairs to join Camelia on the terrace.
* * *
An hour later, Aida and Camelia were in town at Chiffons à la Mode. The place was packed with men and women fighting their way through to the grand room where the models were parading, once more showing off their fabulous gowns. The two friends decided to have an iced chocolate at the fashionable Groppi tea shop that lay between The Savoy and the Grand Continental Hotel before Camelia’s appointment at the hairdresser’s, and then meet in the afternoon after lunch. Phares had obviously told Camelia about his lunch date with Aida: it was obvious from the smug smile that played around his sister’s lips which seemed to say, ‘I’m in on the secret, and even though I’m not going to try and influence you, I know what your answer to Phares will be.’
As the suffragi brought the bill, Aida asked, ‘What will you be doing while I’m having lunch with your brother?’
Camelia shot her a sheepish look. ‘I’m visiting Sami at a friend’s house. He’s convalescing there at the moment.’ She eyed her friend warmly. ‘I’ll never be able to thank you enough for what you did, habibti. You saved his life.’
Aida hesitated. ‘Is what you’re doing wise?’
‘It might not be wise, but one has to do what one has to do, so let’s not talk about it.’
‘Fine, Camelia, but I do worry about you. The police are everywhere and you know there’s no mercy when they catch these rioters.’
Her friend sighed. ‘Please, habibti, let’s not go into it again. Do you mind a lot if I leave you now? If I hurry, I’m sure Spiro the hairdresser will see me now. His other clients are bound to be busy at Chiffons à la Mode. It’ll mean that I can set off to see Sami a little earlier.’
Aida sat back, resigned. There was no reasoning with Camelia, she could see that. ‘No, I don’t mind, habibti. I’ll go to the bookshop and buy some books to take back with me to Luxor. I can then hop in a taxi to go to Gezireh or I might even surprise Phares at the hospital.’
Camelia beamed. ‘Yes, do that, he’ll be thrilled.’
The two friends separated in front of Groppi’s and Aida went off to browse the shelves in Dar El Kotob, one of the largest bookshops in Cairo. She was surprised to find that all the bestsellers she had read about were available, including Arch of Triumph, the new book by the exiled German writer Erich Maria Remarque, whose previous bestseller, All Quiet on the Western Front, had been such a success. Her interest was immediately piqued: the bittersweet love story set in France on the eve of the war had as its hero a German surgeon who found himself driven to help out two less skilful French physicians.
Delighted with her shopping, Aida glanced at her watch. There was nearly an hour to kill. Time enough to surprise Phares at the hospital. Not only was she curious to see where he worked, but as she hadn’t yet investigated nursing opportunities in Cairo, it made sense to take a look around the place. Perhaps it was somewhere she herself might like to work one day.
She hailed a taxi and directed the driver to the Anglo-American Hospital in Gezireh. The town was crowded at this hour. Policemen in white uniforms and black berets stood atop stepladder towers in the grassy roundabout, channelling long lines of cars, carts and bicycles into the streets radiating from the central medans like the spokes of a wheel.
The taxi crossed the great Kasr El Nil steel bridge, its approach guarded by huge, imposing bronze lions, to Gezireh Island, where a long avenue of lebbek trees led to the Anglo-American Hospital. It drew to a halt at a pair of tall, black wrought-iron gates manned by a Sudanese bawab, and Aida got out, her pulse quickening uneasily. Suddenly she wasn’t sure that turning up uninvited at Phares’s workplace was such a good idea. He was undoubtedly very busy and wouldn’t want to be distracted. Still, she told herself, she’d have a look around without bothering him, then make her own way to the Gezireh Sporting Club, which was only a ten-minute walk away.
The hospital wa
s a typical anglicised villa in the same style as the majority of buildings on the island. Painted white, with tall, green-shuttered windows and a few verandas, it was set in a beautiful English garden with great flame trees, red and white oleander bushes and brightly coloured herbaceous borders. Aida had been born at the ‘Anglo’, as it was commonly known, a small hospital originally set up and funded by British and American companies in Cairo, essentially as a benevolent organisation. During the war, the Anglo had become a British-run military hospital and in 1944 had made world headlines when Lord Moyne, resident British Minister of State, was assassinated and was rushed there, eventually dying from his bullet wounds.
Aida, making her way towards the great arched entrance, suddenly stood quite still, like a rabbit fascinated by a ferret’s glare.
In his white doctor’s coat, Phares’s tall silhouette appeared at the top of the stairs, Nairy Paplosian by his side. The model was smiling provocatively at him, her hand on his sleeve smoothing away an invisible piece of thread. As they came down the steps, Aida had just enough time to throw herself behind an oleander bush before they went right past her.
A chauffeur-driven green Ford Super Deluxe pulled up in front of the gateway, not far from where Aida was hiding, and the bawab scrambled to his feet to open the gates. Nairy stood on tiptoes, her slim and elegant body leaning passionately against Phares’s, and kissed him.
Straight as a poker, he placed a hand on her arm. ‘I’ll be waiting for you this evening, six o’clock,’ Aida heard him say as he pushed her gently into the car.
Nairy promptly leaned out of the window and called with a coaxing smile, ‘Don’t be late, ya hobi, my love.’
Phares and Nairy were still lovers.
Aida felt as if she had been doused in a bucket of freezing-cold water. Every particle of colour drained from her face, and then her cheeks begun to burn. Hands clenched, she stood paralysed by what she had just seen, her neck rigid with the effort of self-control. Jealousy, primitive and barbaric, possessed her, sending the blood to her head, rendering her unpredictable and frightened of the rage that was welling up in her.
Phares waited until the car had passed through the gates then slowly retraced his steps, looking pensive as he passed inches away from Aida. She nearly sprang out of her hiding place to confront him with what she had just witnessed but her pride wouldn’t allow her to humiliate herself further.
Now she couldn’t wait to get away. She didn’t want to see any more, hear any more. Her mind reeled. Only an hour later and it might have been her in Phares’s arms, celebrating the dawn of a new life together. The pain slashed at her, and she turned, fumbling her way blindly back through the gates of the hospital. At least she’d been spared that, if nothing else.
For a moment she stood on the pavement as if lost, not knowing what to do next, then she hailed a taxi and asked him to go to Kasr El Ghoroub. She would pack her bags and stay the night at a hotel. Tomorrow, she would fly back to Luxor as planned, and maybe after that she would return to England.
How naïve she’d been. Her uncle George always teased her for wanting men to be like the heroes in the books she read. ‘Too many romantic novels, my dear … Men and women are not that way in real life.’ She guessed he was right.
At Kasr El Ghoroub she asked the taxi to wait for her while she packed her bags. Luckily, there was no one at the house to question her, so having gathered all her belongings pell-mell into a suitcase, she then phoned Shepheard’s Hotel to reserve a room for the night. Nothing was available. She then tried other, equally luxurious hotels only to find that they, too, were full, due to the number of guests who had come into town for the fashion show the previous day. Finally, she managed to book a room at the Windsor and before leaving the house, wrote a brief and apologetic note to Camelia, telling her that she had decided to go back to Luxor a day earlier. She would explain everything, she promised, when her friend was next in Upper Egypt.
An hour later, Aida’s taxi stopped in front of the entrance to the hotel whose stone façade and uniformity of windows was a faithful example of Colonial Era Neo-Mamluk architecture. Built at the turn of the century, the building was originally the baths of the Egyptian royal family, and then the Windsor served for many years as a colonial British officers’ club before being bought by a Swiss hotelier, who made it an annexe of the Shepheard’s Hotel, naming it the Hotel Windsor – Maison Suisse. The exterior had always reminded Aida of the interior courtyard façades of the sixteenth-century Wikalet El Ghoury, a caravanserai not far from the Musky.
The lobby was dark, double-height and narrow, with a tall reception desk where two smiling young men were registering new arrivals and dealing with guests. On the back wall was a hive of wooden pigeonholes for room keys, passports and guests’ letters and to the right stood a Bakelite telephone switchboard, studded with rows of jacks and sockets.
After one of the genial young men had entered Aida’s name into a large leatherbound guestbook, she was shown to the wooden carriage lift which took her up to her room on the third floor. The landing and corridor that led to bedrooms were hung with travel posters depicting horses galloping through the snow at St Moritz, Alpine walkers in Zermatt and colourful Swiss meadows carpeted with wild flowers, reminding Aida of the summer holidays she had sometimes spent with her father in Switzerland. The whole ambiance of the place spoke of faded grandeur, and although its understated charm would in usual circumstances have appealed to her, in the mood she was in, she didn’t want to spend more than one night there.
After leaving the hospital, Aida had performed everything like an automaton, dazed as though in a dream. Now alone in her rather dark hotel room, the reality of what she had seen struck her once again with all the force of a thunderbolt. All she understood was that she wanted to burst into tears, to scream and howl her misery to the four winds.
She should have known: it had been staring her in the face and she hadn’t wanted to see it. She had enjoyed being courted by Phares, her wanton body demanding her to be blind to the truth because she was so in love with him. He was a man like any other and in her mind’s eye she tortured herself with images of him … saw him dancing with Nairy as he had done last night … Nairy the redheaded beauty with flaming hair, gluing her lissom model’s body to his and looking so fair in contrast with his darkness; leading him into desire even as he led her through the rhythms of the dance. Pain twisted in Aida’s stomach; she felt her antagonism towards them both like a bitter taste at the back of her mouth.
She remembered how Phares had kissed her and said those words to her only last night … But then she reminded herself with a shock of revulsion that they had been words of lust, not love. She needed to get out, go for a walk, get some fresh air.
Aida changed into a pair of grey slacks and went out into Alfi Bey Street. The pavement outside the hotel was overrun by the crowded tables of the Parisiana Café, which occupied the ground floor. She was just about to cross the road when she heard someone calling her. She turned around. A large group of expats was seated at a couple of tables outside the hotel, and Alastair Carlisle was walking towards her.
‘Aida, my dear, I saw you coming into the hotel earlier with a suitcase. I thought you were staying at the Pharaonys’.’
‘Hello, Alastair.’ His sudden appearance had interrupted Aida’s dark thoughts and now she struggled to school her features into nonchalance. ‘I was, but they were called away to Luxor. As my plane ticket is for tomorrow morning and Shepheard’s is full, I decided to spend the night here.’
His eyes gave a friendly twinkle. ‘Ah, come and join us then. We’re all very jolly this evening, looking forward to our excursion to Wahat El Nakheel, Prince Shams’ oasis. It’s all rather fascinating.’ He leaned in conspiratorially and lowered his voice. ‘To be honest, I’m using it as an excuse to see what kind of set-up he has. Very useful, if you know what I mean.’
‘You’re going to his oasis?’ repeated Aida, only dimly registering the information.
‘Yes. Each year, the prince invites a different group. This year, I’m one of the happy chosen, which suits me very well indeed. The only man, in fact, among a bevy of ladies.’ He grinned. ‘Nigel, Eve’s husband, was supposed to come too, but the Embassy’s sending him off to England tomorrow.’ He regarded her quizzically. ‘I take it you’re not going?’
‘No, I need to get back to Luxor,’ she said quietly.
‘Will you join us for a drink? They make delicious cocktails at the Parisiana. You know most of the gang.’
Aida looked into Alastair’s good-natured face and her mood shifted slightly. Perhaps a drink and the friendly company of others was what she needed right now. ‘I was going for a walk, but on second thoughts I think I would love one of the Parisiana’s cocktails. I’ve often heard about them, but have never had one. It’s the first time I’ve been here.’
‘An experience not to be missed, trust me. My recommendation would be a pink gin. Did you know,’ he said as they made their way to his table, ‘that the drink was originally created by the Royal Navy? They used Angostura bitters as a medicinal treatment for their sailors, and the gin was added to make it more palatable. Their concoction is very good here,’ he winked. ‘Plenty of gin and not too heavy-handed on the Angostura.’
* * *
The Embassy contingent was an animated lot who, for the most part, had met Aida briefly before at the Gezireh Sporting Club. Alastair introduced her to the ones she didn’t know, some of whom worked at the British Embassy. The Parisiana was the hub of writers, actors and an amalgam of industrious and prosperous elements drawn from the various native-cum-European communities of Cairo, and the atmosphere outside the café was buzzing with life. Soon, having ordered one of the excellent pink gins, Aida was very much at ease, chatting merrily, taking part in the lively conversation, speaking of mutual acquaintances and finding plenty to talk about: it quickly became evident that they had all been, at some time, in the same set.
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