We discussed the changing nature of Aswan. He said he would be glad to get back to Cairo where he had a new job with the Antiquities Department raising money for specific restoration or reconstruction projects.
We had met at the re-opening of the Cairo Opera House in 1989, which had featured the Houston Opera Company’s Porgy and Bess, but had never become more than casual friends, though we shared many musical tastes and he had an extraordinary knowledge of modern fiction in English. His enthusiasm was for the older writers like Gilchrist or DeLillo, who had been amongst my own favourites at college.
We were brought some wonderfully tasty Grönburgers and I remarked that the cuisine had improved since I was last here. “French management,” he told me. “They have one of the best teams outside of Paris. They all came from Nice after the troubles. Lucky for us. I might almost be tempted to stay! Oh, no! I could not. Even for that! Nubian music is an abomination!”
I told him about my sister, how I was unable to find her and how I was beginning to fear the worst. “The police suggested she was mad.”
Georges was dismissive of this. “A dangerous assumption at any time, Paul, but especially these days. And very difficult for us to define here, in Egypt, just as justice is at once a more brutal and a subtler instrument in our interpretation. We never accepted, thank God, the conventional wisdoms of psychiatry. And madness here, as elsewhere, is defined by the people in power, usually calling themselves the State. Tomorrow those power holders could be overthrown by a fresh dynasty, and what was yesterday simple common sense today becomes irresponsible folly. So I do not like to make hasty judgements or pronounce readily on others’ moral or mental conditions—lest, indeed, we inadvertently condemn ourselves.” He paused. “They say this was not so under the British, that it was fairer, more predictable. Only real troublemakers and criminals went to jail. Now it isn’t as bad as it was when I was a lad. Then anyone was liable to arrest. If it was better under the British, then that is our shame.” And he lowered his lips to his wineglass.
We had slipped, almost automatically, into discussing the old, familiar topics. “It’s sometimes argued,” I said, “that the liberal democracies actually stopped the flow of history. A few hundred years earlier, as feudal states, we would have forcibly Christianised the whole of Islam and changed the entire nature of the planet’s power struggle. Indeed, all the more childish struggles might have been well and truly over by now!”
“Or it might have gone the other way,” Georges suggested dryly, “if the Moors had reconquered France and Northern Europe. After all, Islam did not bring the world to near-ruin. What has the European way achieved except the threat of death for all?”
I could not accept an argument which had already led to massive conversions to Islam amongst the youth of Europe, America and Democratic Africa, representing a sizeable proportion of the vote. This phenomenon had, admittedly, improved the tenor of world politics, but I still deplored it.
“Oh, you’re so thoroughly out of step, my friend.” Georges Abidos smiled and patted my arm. “The world’s changing!”
“It’ll die if we start resorting to mystical Islamic solutions.”
“Possibly.” He seemed unconcerned. I think he believed us unsaveable.
A little drunk, I let him take me back to the Osiris in a calash. He talked affectionately of our good times, of concerts and plays we had seen in the world’s capitals before civilian flight had become so impossibly expensive, of the Gilbert and Sullivan season we had attended in Bangkok, of Wagner in Bayreuth and Britten in Glyndebourne. We hummed a snatch from Iolanthe before we parted.
When I got up to my room all the shutters had been drawn back to give the apartment the best of the light. I recognised the subtle perfume even as my sister came out of the bathroom to laugh aloud at my astonishment.
11 Saw Life to Be a Sea Green Dream
Beatrice had cut her auburn hair short and her skin was paler than I remembered. While her blue eyes and red lips remained striking, she had gained an extra beauty. I was overjoyed. This was the opposite of what I had feared to find.
As if she read my mind, she smiled. “Were you expecting the Mad Woman of Aswan?” She wore a light blue cotton skirt and a darker blue shirt.
“You’ve never looked better.” I spoke the honest truth.
She took both my hands in hers and kissed me. “I’m sorry I didn’t write. It began to seem such as sham. I couldn’t write for a while. I got your letters today, when I went to the post office. What a coincidence, I thought—my first sally into the real world and here comes good old Paul to help me. If anyone understands reality, you do.”
I was flattered and grinned in the way I had always responded to her half-mocking praise. “Well, I’m here to take you back to it, if you want to go. I’ve got a pass for you on the Cairo plane in four days’ time, and from there we can go to Geneva or London or anywhere in the Community.”
“That’s marvellous,” she said. She looked about my shabby sitting room with its cracked foam cushions, its stained tiles. “Is this the best you get at your rank?”
“This is the best for any rank, these days. Most of us don’t travel at all and certainly not by plane.”
“The schoomers are still going out of Alex, are they?”
“Oh, yes. To Genoa, some of them. Who has the time?”
“That’s what I’d thought of, for me. But here you are! What a bit of luck!”
I was immensely relieved. “Oh, Bea. I thought you might be dead—you know, or worse.”
“I was selfish not to keep you in touch, but for a while, of course, I couldn’t. Then I was out there for so long . . .”
“At your dig, you mean?”
She seemed momentarily surprised, as if she had not expected me to know about the dig. “Yes, where the dig was. That’s right. I can’t remember what I said in my letters.”
“That you’d made a terrific discovery and that I must come out the first chance I got. Well, I did. This really was the first chance. Am I too late? Have they closed down the project completely? Are you out of funds?”
“Yes,” she smiled. “You’re too late, Paul. I’m awfully sorry. You must think I’ve brought you on a wild goose chase.”
“Nonsense. That wasn’t why I really came. Good Lord, Bea, I care a lot for you!” I stopped, a little ashamed. She was probably in a more delicate condition than she permitted me to see. “And, anyway, I had some perks coming. It’s lovely here, still, isn’t it? If you ignore the rubbish tips. You know, and the sewage. And the Nile!” We laughed together.
“And the rain and the air,” she said. “And the sunlight! Oh, Paul! What if this really is the future?”
12 A Man in the Night Flaking Tombstones
She asked if I would like to take a drive with her beside the evening river and I agreed at once. I was her senior by a year but she had always been the leader, the initiator and I admired her as much as ever.
We went up past the ruins of the Best Western and the Ramada Inn, the only casualties of a shelling attack in ’02, when the Green Jihad had attempted to hole the dam and six women had died. We stopped near the abandoned museum and bought a drink from the ice-stall. As I turned, looking out at the river, I saw the full moon, huge and orange, in the cloudless night. A few desultory mosquitoes hung around our heads and were easily fanned away as we continued up the corniche, looking out at the lights from the boats, the flares on the far side, the palms waving in the soft breeze from the north.
“I’m quitting my job,” she said. “I resigned, in fact, months ago. I had a few things to clear up.”
“What will you do? Get something in London?”
“Well, I’ve my money. That was invested very sensibly by Jack before our problems started. Before we split up. And I can do freelance work.” Clearly, she was unwilling to discuss the details. “I could go on living here.”
“Do you want to?”
“No,” she said. “I hate it now. But is th
e rest of the world any better, Paul?”
“Oh, life’s still a bit easier in England. And Italy’s all right. And Scandinavia, of course, but that’s closed off, as far as residency’s concerned. The population’s dropping quite nicely in Western Europe. Not everything’s awful. The winters are easier.”
She nodded slowly as if she were carefully noting each observation. “Well,” she said, “anyway, I don’t know about Aswan. I’m not sure there’s much point in my leaving Egypt. I have a permanent visa, you know.”
“Why stay, Bea?”
“Oh, well,” she said. “I suppose it feels like home. How’s Daddy? Is everything all right in Marrakech?”
“Couldn’t be better, I gather. He’s having a wonderful time. You know how happy he always was there. And with the new government! Well, you can imagine.”
“And Mother?”
“Still in London. She has a house to herself in West Hampstead. Don’t ask me how. She’s installed the latest EE generators and energy storers. She’s got a TV set, a pet option and a gas licence. You know Mother. She’s always had the right contacts. She’ll be glad to know you’re okay.”
“Yes. That’s good, too. I’ve been guilty of some awfully selfish behaviour, haven’t I? Well, I’m putting all that behind me and getting on with my life.”
“You sound as if you’ve seen someone. About whatever it was. Have you been ill, Bea?”
“Oh, no. Not really.” She turned to reassure me with a quick smile and a hand out to mine, just as always. I nearly sang with relief. “Emotional trouble, you know.”
“A boyfriend?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so. Anyway, it’s over.”
“All the hippies told me you’d been abducted by a flying saucer!”
“Did they?”
I recognised her brave smile. “What’s wrong? I hadn’t meant to be tactless.”
“You weren’t. There are so many strange things happening around here. You can’t blame people for getting superstitious, can you? After all, we say we’ve identified the causes, yet can do virtually nothing to find a cure.”
“Well, I must admit there’s some truth in that. But there are still things we can do.”
“Of course there are. I didn’t mean to be pessimistic, old Paul.” She punched me on the arm and told the driver to let his horse trot for a bit, to get us some air on our faces, since the wind had dropped so suddenly.
She told me she would come to see me at the same time tomorrow and perhaps after that we might go to her new flat. It was only a temporary place while she made up her mind. Why didn’t I just go to her there? I said. Because, she said, it was in a maze. You couldn’t get a calash through and even the schoolboys would sometimes mislead you by accident. Write it down, I suggested, but she refused with an even broader smile. “You’ll see I’m right. I’ll take you there tomorrow. There’s no mystery. Nothing deliberate.”
I went back into the damp, semi-darkness of the Osiris and climbed through black archways to my rooms.
13 You’ll Find No Mirrors in that Cold Abode
I had meant to ask Beatrice about her experience with the Somali woman and the police, but her mood had swung so radically I had decided to keep the rest of the conversation as casual as possible. I went to bed at once more hopeful and more baffled than I had been before I left Cairo.
In the morning I took a cab to the religious academy, or medrassah, of the famous Sufi, El Haj Sheikh Ibrahim Abu Halil, not because I now needed his help in finding my sister, but because I felt it would have been rude to cancel my visit without explanation. The medrassah was out near the old obelisk quarries. Characteristically Moslem, with a tower and a domed mosque, it was reached on foot or by donkey, up a winding, artificial track that had been there for at least two thousand years. I climbed to the top, feeling a little dizzy as I avoided looking directly down into the ancient quarry and saw that the place was built as a series of stone colonnades around a great courtyard with a fountain in it. The fountain, in accordance with the law, was silent.
The place was larger than I had expected and far more casual. People, many obviously drugged, of every age and race sat in groups or strolled around the cloisters. I asked a pale young woman in an Islamic burqa where I might find Sheikh Abu Halil. She told me to go to the office and led me as far as a glass door through which I saw an ordinary business layout of pens and paper, mechanical typewriters, acoustic calculators and, impressively, an EMARGY console. I felt as if I were prying. My first job, from which I had resigned, was as an Energy Officer. Essentially the work involved too much peeping-tomism and too little real progress.
A young black man in flared Mouwes and an Afghan jerkin signalled for me to enter. I told him my business and he said, “No problem, man.” He asked me to wait in a little room furnished like something still found in any South London dentist’s. Even the magazines looked familiar and I did not intend to waste my battery ration plugging in to one. A few minutes later the young man returned and I was escorted through antiseptic corridors to the Sufi’s inner sanctum.
I had expected some rather austere sort of Holy Roller’s Executive Suite, and was a trifle shocked by the actuality which resembled a scene from The Arabian Nights. The Sufi was clearly not celibate, and was an epicurean rather than ascetic. He was also younger than I had expected. I guessed he was no more than forty-five. Dressed in red silks of a dozen shades, with a massive scarlet turban on his head, he lay on cushions smoking from a silver-and-brass hookah while behind him on rich, spangled divans lolled half a dozen young women, all of them veiled, all looking at me with frank, if discreet, interest. I felt as if I should apologise for intruding on someone’s private sexual fantasy, but the Sufi grinned, beckoned me in, then fell to laughing aloud as he stared into my face. All this, of course, only increased my discomfort. I could see no reason for his amusement.
“You think this a banal piece of play-acting?” He at once became solicitous. “Pardon me, Herr Doktor. I misunderstood your expression for a moment. I thought you were an old friend.” Now he was almost grave. “How can I help you?”
“Originally,” I said, “I was looking for my sister Beatrice. I believe you know her.” Was this my sister’s secret? Had she involved herself with a charismatic charlatan to whom even I felt drawn? But the banality of it all! True madness, like true evil, I had been informed once, was always characterised by its banality.
“That’s it, of course. Bea Porcupine was the name the young ones used. She is a very good friend of mine. Are you looking for her no longer, Dr. Porcupine?”
I pointed out that Pappenheim was the family name. The hippies had not made an enormously imaginative leap.
“Oh, the children! Don’t they love to play? They are blessed. Think how few of us in the world are allowed by God to play.”
“Thou art most tolerant indeed, sidhi.” I used my best classical Arabic, at which he gave me a look of considerable approval and addressed me in the same way.
“Doth God not teach us to tolerate, but not to imitate, all the ways of mankind? Are we to judge God, my compatriot?” He had done me the honour, in his own eyes, of addressing me as a co-religionist. When he smiled again his expression was one of benign happiness. “Would you care for some coffee?” he asked in educated English. “Some cakes and so on? Yes, of course.” And he clapped his hands, whispering instructions to the nearest woman who rose and left. I was so thoroughly discomforted by this outrageously old-fashioned sexism which, whatever their private practices, few sophisticated modern Arabs were willing to admit to, that I remained silent.
“And I trust that you in turn will tolerate my stupid self-indulgence,” he said. “It is a whim of mine—and these young women—to lead the life of Haroun-el-Raschid, eh? Or the great chiefs who ruled in the days before the Prophet. We are all nostalgic for that, in Egypt. The past, you know, is our only escape. You don’t begrudge it us, do you?”
I shook my head, although by training and temperame
nt I could find no merit in his argument. “These are changing times,” I said. “Your past is crumbling away. It’s difficult to tell good from evil or right from wrong, let alone shades of intellectual preference.”
“But I can tell you really do still think there are mechanical solutions to our ills.”
“Don’t you, sidhi?”
“I do. I doubt though that they’re much like a medical man’s.”
“I’m an engineer, not a doctor of medicine.”
“Pardon me. It’s my day for gaffs, eh? But we’re all guilty of making the wrong assumptions sometimes. Let us open the shutters and enjoy some fresh air.” Another of the women went to fold back the tall wooden blinds and let shafts of sudden sunlight down upon the maroons, burgundies, dark pinks, bottle-greens and royal blues of that luxurious room. The woman sank into the shadows and only Sheikh Abu Halil remained with half his face in light, the other in shade, puffing on his pipe, his silks rippling as he moved a lazy hand. “We are blessed with a marvellous view.”
From where we sat it was possible to see the Nile, with its white sails and flanking palms, on the far side of an expanse of glaring granite.
“My sister—” I began.
“A remarkable woman. A saint, without doubt. We have tried to help her, you know.”
“I believe you’re responsible for getting her out of police custody, sidhi.”
“God has chosen her and has blessed her with unusual gifts. Dr. Pappenheim, we are merely God’s instruments. She has brought a little relief to the sick, a little consolation to the despairing.”
“She’s coming home with me. In three days.”
“A great loss for Aswan. But perhaps she’s more needed out there. Such sadness, you know. Such deep sadness.” I was not sure if he described my sister or the whole world. “In Islam, you see,” an ironic twitch of the lip, “we share our despair. It is a democracy of misery.” And he chuckled. “This is blasphemy I know, in the West. Especially in America.”
“Well, in parts of the North maybe.” I smiled. My father was from Mississippi and settled first in Morocco, then in England after he came out of the service. He said he missed the old, bitter-sweet character of the U.S. South. The New South, optimistic and, in his view, Yankified, no longer felt like home. He was more in his element in pre-Thatcher Britain. When she, too, began a programme of “Yankification” of her own he retreated into fantasy, leaving my mother and going to live in a working-class street in a run-down north-eastern town where he joined the Communist Party and demonstrated against closures in the mining, fishing and steel industries. My mother hated it when his name appeared in the papers or, worse in her view, when he wrote intemperate letters to the weekly journals or the heavy dailies. But “Jim Pappenheim” was a contributor to Marxism Today and, later, Red is Green during his brief flirtation with Trotskyist Conservationism. He gave that up for anarcho-socialism and disappeared completely into the world of the abstract. He now wrote me letters describing the “Moroccan experiment” as the greatest example of genuinely radical politics in action. I had never completely escaped the tyranny of his impossible ideals. This came back to me, there and then, perhaps because in some strange way I found this sufi as charming as I had once found my father. “We say that misery loves company. Is that the same thing?” I felt I was in some kind of awful contest. “Is that why she wanted to stay with you?”
The Best of Michael Moorcock Page 42