A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore

by Mohamed Mansi Qandil

  Aisha gave a cry of joy, and Mukhtar hugged her hard. Nabawiyya al-Mustahiya pouted. “You ought to have hugged me first, dear,” she said.

  All they could do then was laugh.

  Aisha was startled to find the Pasha himself standing before her little desk. From the time of her appointment at al-Liwa, it had normally been she who went to his office, and she never imagined that he even knew the way to hers. But here he stood, a man of middling height, with a sparkle in his eyes as if his body had suddenly recovered from all the illnesses to which it was prey. He wasn’t coughing or breathing hard; he was stroking his moustache with an air of satisfaction.

  “You’re to come with me, Aisha,” he said mildly.

  He walked before her, his carriage erect. Aisha followed him, simultaneously surprised and bedazzled. She had thought he was going to charge her with the translation of some speech or other—she had translated many of the letters and speeches he was always sending to members of the British general assembly or to his friends who worked as writers or journalists. But the Leader did not turn toward his office; he made his way among the desks of the men in the pressroom. He and Aisha went out the door, he headed down the steps, and she followed. This was becoming odder by the minute.

  In front of the building a one-horse carriage, reserved for the Pasha, stood waiting for them, and the driver sat at the ready, grasping the horse’s reins. He made haste to assist the Leader into the carriage, but the Pasha indicated with a gesture that he was quite capable on his own—and, indeed, in a single motion he leapt up from the ground and seated himself in the carriage. Aisha looked at him in amazement, but he merely waved her into the seat across from him.

  He tapped the driver’s seat with his cane. “Take us to Station Square,” he said.

  Feeling the touch of the whip on its back, the horse whinnied, and the carriage set off. Now the Leader turned to Aisha, his features set in a youthful smile. “This is a historic occasion,” he said, “and you are the only one with whom it is fitting for me to share it.”

  The streets were thronged with people all hurrying in the same direction as the carriage. Aisha discovered the secret of the Pasha’s exultant happiness when she read the news item that only al-Liwa had published, featuring it in the headlines. It seemed to her as if the tattoo of the horse’s hooves was the Leader’s heartbeat; his chest rose and fell with his easy breathing, as though everything he needed he obtained from the city air. All at once he had become livelier and more amiable.

  The direct route to the station, however, was blocked off. English soldiers stood behind the barricade with weapons at the ready. The driver redirected their carriage toward the side streets, making for the city center, then Opera Square. From there the way descended into Clot Bey Street. Amidst arcades and colonnades that went on and on there were numerous wine shops and cafés, many of them festooned with decorations and hung with vividly printed signs announcing to customers that women and wine could be had at half-price this night. The crowd grew still more dense, and signs for the railway station appeared. The carriage proceeded with increasing difficulty, until it stopped altogether. Some of the milling crowd, however, recognized the Pasha, and hastened to clear a path for him. Their voices rose as they called out to him, shouting, “Today is your day, oh Leader!”

  He gestured for silence, not wanting this day’s events to become a demonstration or an occasion for a display of schadenfreude. He directed the driver to stop the carriage in one of the streets leading off from the square so that he could watch the main entrance to the station. There were a great many Egyptians amassed in one corner and surrounded by English soldiers. Until this moment they were silent, even though they had come to express their joy, which had been so long suppressed.

  In another corner were the other Europeans, men and women, dressed in their finest attire, chatting in a relaxed fashion. In the middle of it all Aisha recognized Lord Kitchener—“hero of the Sudan,” as he was called—pacing anxiously. He stared with hatred at the mob of Egyptians who had dared to come out and attend this spectacle; perhaps he was just waiting for them to speak out, so he could annihilate them all.

  The Pasha beckoned to Aisha to sit beside him facing the entrance to the station. She heard him speaking as if to himself. “It is a small victory,” he said. “The occupation hasn’t gone anywhere, but here at least is Cromer, on his way out. Will God let me live long enough to see all the British soldiers leave?”

  Lines of British soldiers appeared, headed by an honor guard. They held aloft gleaming swords, and on their heads were caps adorned with feathers. An open carriage came in sight, drawn by eight horses sporting brightly colored feathers and fitted out in lustrous brass ornaments. Lord Cromer sat with his head held haughtily, scarcely seeing all those who stood waiting for him. He had gathered all his energies for the sake of this moment, so that his departure would be a resonant occasion. The Pasha looked on wide-eyed at Cromer’s advancing parade, while the sound of military music rose up from a platform beside the entrance to the station.

  “Why do you hate him so much?” Aisha asked. “Is it on account of what he did at Dinshaway?”

  “That is one of many reasons. This man has humiliated us quite enough. He secured the occupation, made it our destiny. He forbade our children to be educated and informed, barred us from the administration of our own country, and prohibited us from pursuing any craft or industry. His goal was simply to transform us as a people into a mass of ignoramuses, unable to function without their governance.”

  Lord Cromer’s carriage drew nearer. The soldiers raised their weapons and stood at attention. The carriage halted in the middle of the square; Lord Cromer disembarked before a line of officers and commanders, and proceeded to shake their hands. Then the silent Egyptians began to murmur—for a long time they had held their peace, but now their moment of protest had arrived. Lord Cromer turned toward the sound, and noticed the small group of Egyptians. He seemed puzzled by their presence, and by the fact that they had a voice. It seemed to Aisha that he turned his head and looked directly at where she and the Pasha were sitting; he squinted, trying to make out their features. She knew that recently he had spent his days suffering from severe stomach pain, to the point where he couldn’t manage to digest any food, even baby food, but this had had no effect upon his upturned moustache or the look of contempt that shone so coldly from his eyes. For a brief moment the murmuring stopped, and silence fell. Lord Cromer turned to resume his farewell ceremonies, but just then a voice rose from the crowd, shouting, “Down with the murderer of Dinshaway! Down with Lord Cromer the coward!”

  The cry cut through the sounds of pomp and ceremony, all the self-important swagger that had held sway over the square. Now voices rose from hundreds of throats; the space filled with the pulse of angry chants. A tremor ran through the close-packed ranks, but at a resolute nod from Lord Cromer the honor guard stood straight in two rows and raised their swords on high so that he might pass beneath them. Yet he stood hesitating, staring at the people, expecting them to fall silent.

  The chanting continued. The Pasha rested his chin on his cane—it seemed that each was aware of the other’s presence; the pitch of anger rose still further when the crowd saw Lord Cromer hesitate—they reckoned he must be having second thoughts about leaving, and they began to shout, “Get out! Scram! Murderer!”

  Lord Kitchener drew himself up and gestured to the soldiers, who raised their rifles, leveling them at the people’s hearts.

  Starting up in alarm, the Pasha cried, “God have mercy, there’s going to be a massacre!”

  He rose to his feet in the carriage, supporting himself on his cane and struggling to stand erect, despite the slightness of his frame. All eyes turned to him, but most especially those of Lord Cromer, who saw him standing there in his black suit, his red tarbush, and his upturned moustache as if to issue a warning against making any false move. Each regarded the other with suppressed hatred, and the onlookers all held their
breath, watching the two men apprehensively. Lord Cromer’s face grew paler; he seemed to display signs of decrepitude, as well as the symptoms of poor digestion. In the end he decided not to draw out the challenge, and to avoid inciting a massacre at the occasion of his farewell. He turned around and proceeded in between the two lines of the honor guard. Kitchener still stood ready to spring into action, and from a distance could be heard the roar of cannon, resounding from one of the barracks in Shoubra. By the conclusion of the twenty-one-gun salute, Lord Cromer had reached the train, whose whistle sounded, signaling its departure.

  All the people moved off, and in their midst the Pasha’s carriage proceeded in silence. The Pasha was breathing hard—he seemed drained, and in his face were none of the signs of contentment that Aisha had expected to see.

  “Sir,” she said anxiously, “what’s the matter? Are you all right?”

  He smiled faintly. Reaching out, he touched her chin gently with his fingers. “Cromer’s gone,” he said. “Yes indeed . . . but with him has gone a piece of my life. We were twins, he and I, and the contest between us robbed us of our health and shortened our lives. Now that he’s gone, I feel as if my own time has come as well.”

  Unsettled, Aisha said, “God grant you many more years, Pasha. There’s still a long fight ahead.”

  She knew her words were empty. He was frail, his rejuvenation only temporary and already a thing of the past. Life had begun to slip away from his body. Still leaning on his cane, he gazed at the streets, the sidewalks, the passersby, through eyes filled with unshed tears. He was endeavoring to imprint upon his vision all the passing scenes, taking in all the details, before his eyes closed forever. He began to speak, his words mixing with the horse’s hoofbeats, and with the voices from the street, which rose each time someone recognized him.

  “Yes,” he said, “a long fight indeed. It requires my lifetime and those of other men. I started this movement in my own defense, and in defense of those to whom I am connected. Do you know, when I went to study law in Europe, I discovered that they didn’t know anything about us. They knew there was a country called Egypt and that it had been mentioned in the Bible, and that at a certain point the British had invaded it and appropriated it for themselves, that it was inhabited by a nameless, faceless people with no history, a herd of dumb beasts; they were astonished if we spoke French, and if we learned their civil law, this was counted no less than a miracle. All I wanted, Aisha, was to reclaim our names—for them to know that we were human beings, with individual personalities, with our own joys and sorrows. I wished for the Egyptians, as well, to get to know themselves. It is a tragedy, young lady, to look in the mirror and not see your own face, not recognize it. I wanted the Egyptians to be aware of their own presence in the world, and not to keep dying in droves—they died digging the canal, they died in Orabi’s war, they died in the floods, the plagues, and other disasters, and no one cared about them, for they had been transformed from human beings to numbers. Numbers don’t have destinies—there’s no blood price on a number, a number doesn’t even merit a moment’s pause for remembrance or mourning. When Khedive Abbas called on me to form a secret party with the object of liberating Egypt from the British, I couldn’t believe my ears. We thought along different lines: he wanted to free his throne from British dominion, while I wanted to free my people. Even the khedive himself didn’t know we had names—he spoke Arabic haltingly, and got my name and the names of my comrades wrong every time we met. No one who ruled Egypt ever gave a day’s thought to the idea that we might have names, but I didn’t want the khedive to forget, or for Lord Cromer to forget the names of those he killed at Dinshaway. Everyone needs to understand that we are not weeds growing on the banks of the Nile. I simply want them to know that we are human beings with independent minds, individual characters—not mere numbers.”

  The carriage continued on its way. The Pasha insisted upon conducting Aisha himself to Sayyida Zaynab Square. His face was pale and grave when he bade her goodbye, and for a moment she imagined that it was the last time she would see him. Feeling profoundly sad, she entered the saint’s shrine, and began to make the circuit around it. Weeping, she circled it again and again, without stopping.

  She heard the news on a day when the sun scarcely showed itself and a mask of fog lay over the city, obscuring its features. She was taking the stairs at al-Liwa—it wasn’t yet past midday, and the paper was not ready to go out. Her heart had misgiven her all day. She had seen Mukhtar in the morning, although the route they followed had changed, for she was now in the habit of accompanying him to the School of Fine Arts first, before making her way to the paper. She found Abdel Rahman al-Rafiy sitting on the steps. He was crying like a child, his round face shining with the tears that flowed without restraint. In words choked by his sobs he told her, “He’s gone and left us—the Leader, he’s gone and left us orphans . . .”

  Leaning on his shoulder, she began to weep as well. She recalled the Pasha’s last words to her, as if he’d been delivering a eulogy, both for himself and for the world that was collapsing around him. Al-Rafiy patted her shoulder, then got to his feet, preparing to go upstairs. Startled, she asked him, “Won’t you go to the funeral?”

  “I’ll leave that to others,” he said. “I must prepare the front page of the newspaper and give it its black border. Everyone must feel how great a loss we have suffered.”

  She walked by herself, half-blind, scarcely able to distinguish anything in the surrounding streets. Life went on in silence: buying and selling and haggling, tramway cars in the square, the madmen who hung about the shrine, and visitors to the saint, all drifting about like ghosts, as if they were living through the last moments of the world. Shouldn’t everything stop, even if only for a little while? Entering the twisting, narrow lanes, she didn’t hear the voices of the neighborhood’s residents. With all the sorrow she held confined in her heart she hurried, ran down the few stairs to the basement, and began pounding on the door, shouting, “Mukhtar!” with no care for who might be listening. God must have loved her in this moment, for the door opened and she found him standing before her. She flung her arms around his neck and wept. He picked her up in his arms and carried her inside, where she burst out, in broken words, with the news of what had happened. He stared at her, appalled. Tears were pouring down his cheeks as well—in one way he felt guilty, because he hadn’t supported the Pasha as he should have. He hadn’t understood that the man was burning up, that each battle he joined robbed him of a part of his life.

  Mukhtar and Aisha held each other, not speaking, and they did not notice when darkness fell upon the room. He kissed her lips, which were salty, and she clung to his neck. It was her first kiss, and she had waited a long time for it. But her heart was heavy with grief, and did not allow her body to succumb to the trembling sensations of desire. She was clinging to him for support, in the hope that the warmth of their mutual contact might ease her mind a little. He ran his fingers through her hair; she stayed where she was, held unprotesting against his chest. Doubtless Umm Abbas was expecting her back by now, but she did not move from his side.

  “Light a lamp,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

  The gaslight flared, and he brought it close to her face. She undid the buttons on her sleeve, baring her arm before him and revealing the image of the cross tattooed there—pale, just as her skin was pale. He felt it with his fingers, then looked up at her wonderingly. “Are you a Christian?” he asked.

  “I had to pretend I was,” she said.

  She told him everything she could remember of that time, everything she had been keeping inside for all these years. She wanted him to know her more fully and genuinely. She confessed to him all the sorrows she had concealed deep within her. Everyone she had encountered had seen only one side of her life, but here she sat now in his arms, under the pressure of his gaze, which compelled her to make him see her as no one else had. She felt herself made real, with him looking at her in the lam
plight while she revealed to him the various layers of her life. Tears fell from her eyes, especially when she recalled her mother, the greatest deprivation she had suffered, the separation a bitterness that cut into her heart. Finally, still weeping, she cried out in anguish, “All I want at this moment is my mother. I want to tell her how much I love you, and how badly I need her beside me. I don’t want to go back to that little village, which I hate—I want her to be here with me, in this vast city, far from the fear of my uncle and of the others, the ones who threatened her life.”

  “I’ll go to her,” said Mukhtar, moved by her distress, “and bring her to you.”

  She looked at him, astonished and hopeful. “Would you really do this?”

  “I must, so that I can ask her permission to marry you.”

  Her eyes, bright with tears, were fixed upon him. All at once this terrible day had been transformed into her day of good fortune. Mukhtar, the celebrated artist, under whose fingers stone melted, and for whom all the newspapers competed, was asking for her hand in marriage!

  In disbelief, she said, “You really want to marry me?”

  “And what else,” he said, “did you think the outcome of our relationship was to be? Umm Abbas would kill me if for one moment I considered abandoning you, and so would all the saint’s madmen and visitors!”