Tree of Pearls

by Louisa Young

  I left Chrissie cooing at the bathroom fittings, and started to telephone. I had sorted out my plan of action, and it was very simple. I would track down the Turkish dancer who I had seen with Eddie in London, and again ten weeks or so ago, here, at the Semiramis. The girl whose announcement that I (‘Madame Angelina! Not seen in Cairo since eight years!’) was going to get up on stage and dance had made me lose my temper. The one who had been there the night in London when Eddie drugged me. His pet dancer. That one. And I would see if she was around, or where she’d gone, and what she knew. And I would find a useful nugget or two for Oliver, and then I would go up the river and see.

  So I called the Semiramis (it’s a hotel, named after the ancient queen of Babylon, noted for her beauty, power and licentiousness), and asked could I come and see the entertainments manager. I told them all the grand places I had danced before, and dropped a few names. I said I was not sure when I would be free but I would so like to meet him and introduce myself. I said of course they would not be engaging dancers during Ramadan. I would call tomorrow. Not before noon, they said. No problem. Fine. Shukran, masalaamah. Thank you, bye.

  Back upstairs, Chrissie was abluting. She had more accoutrements for her toilette than a tranvestite. (I speak advisedly. I briefly shared a flat with one.) She was steaming up an aromatic storm in the bathroom and I sat on her bed, being amused by the labels. Amused by my amusement, she told me how during one excitable phase she had experimented with applying them randomly: ‘Hair conditioner on my face, moisturizer in my armpits, leg balm on my hands, hand cream in my hair: it worked OK, except the facepack on my bikini line which I did just after waxing … foolish really. I thought I was going to take notes on it all and send them to the laboratories that these people go on about – you know, the manufacturers. Point out to them that it’s not to do with beauty, it’s a mental health issue. If I was the government I would tax beauty care and fashion advertisers, to subsidize the National Health, for paying for treatment for mad, anorexic, bulimic, alcoholic, depressed, paranoid women, most of whom would be just fine if they didn’t have this – this stuff – imposed on them all the time.’

  ‘So why do you use so much of it?’ I wondered. She was slathering herself with an anti-pollution, free-radical-type facial treatment as we spoke.

  ‘Just because I know what’s wrong doesn’t mean I can put it right,’ she said. ‘I’m susceptible, me. And this is a cheaper addiction than many.’ She smiled at me, a woman at home with her weaknesses, strong among her debris, regrowth coming up fine. I distrusted it. It’s too soon. She’s funny and tough and she’s got all kinds of phrases and maybe all kinds of genuine understanding, too, but it’s too soon. Remembering her piling into my bathroom only a couple of months ago, how wild and disconnected she was, I found myself glad that we were in a pretty dry country. Wondering even whether we should perhaps be in a cheaper hotel, where it would be harder to get a drink, should she … fall under pressure. Decided no, there shouldn’t be that much pressure – for her at least. Me, that was another matter. If I hadn’t had a strong pregnancy-induced aversion to liquor of any kind, plus the basic Egyptian thing of not drinking … in many ways, a double Dutch courage would have done me fine.

  There was an ancient tribe – the Lydians? The Lacedaemonians? – who would get formally drunk any time they had an important decision to make. Then the next day they would think about it again, sober. If by some mischance a decision was made sober, everybody would have to get drunk and agree on it again.

  I made Chrissie come out with me, and we walked across to the pyramids, basking under the tiny sliver of silvery hillel moon. It’s good luck to look at the new moon with someone you love. It’s shining on Qurnah, this moon. Maybe he’s looking at it.

  The evening air seeming warm after London although it was not warm. Chrissie gasped quietly as the great tombs slid into view, silver and black in the silver and black night. It was the height of the tourist season, but no one was there, taking the southern air or wondering at the glory of the ancestors. A handful of restless tourist police stared at us, surprised, relieved, to see that there were some khawagaat at least willing to be here, to come out. I found it spooky, strange. The Egypt I knew was safe, familiar and friendly to me. Here another feeling lurked. Those policemen feared for me, feared for me in their land, and took it personally. It made me sad and we wandered back.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. Grabbing that mood and shaking it, I found a cab and took her back into town. I wanted to go down to the Old City and see what was going on. There’d be the Ramadan tables of mercy – free meals laid on by the prosperous for the poor – smells of meat and frankincense, festivities, holy and beautiful goings-on. Singing, sufis, a Zikr, crowds and music and the inversion of night and day … but we were tired and I could see that Chrissie might quite easily get overloaded by the sensation of this city, and have to lie down in a darkened room. Stendhal syndrome: English ladies get it in Florence, and Jerusalem. Collapse of stout party due to too much beauty. Or just too much. Of course this might be a good idea – keep her out of trouble. I considered, briefly, sabotaging her in some way, but a spiked drink (anyway, spiked with what?) seemed too cruel to a recovering alcoholic.

  So we stopped at the river, and walked along by the Nile, gleaming beneath us, streaky and stripey with light shimmering on the black, and I thought, not for the first time, how many colours eau de Nil can be. I looked across to the Corniche on the further side and remembered Sa’id and I having our first – well, our first serious – moment of true difference of understanding. After I had lost my temper with the dancer, I had confronted Eddie – on my own – and had that fight, and Sa’id had understood for the first time how profoundly, immutably independent I was. Which he felt dishonoured him, because he was protecting me, and I had run off from within his protection. So I had unmanned him, which is a bad thing for a woman to do. I think that’s what was going on. And that was the beginning of the end. We had pretended it was not, and gone to Luxor together for a few days of mutual self-deception.

  This river is flowing down from his town. These lights recall the lights of Luxor, seen from the west bank. Gleaming, and undulating over the ripples of black water. Like stripes of coloured silk on a dancer’s black dress, or beacons of hope in a dark future. Nebulous.

  Back at the hotel, I attempted to fob her off by saying that I would ask my old friend Mr Hamadi, entertainments manager of the Semiramis, who knew all about everything in the nightclub world, if anyone of Eddie’s description had been around.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said. As she would. Luckily I had thought of that, and a way round it. ‘You can’t, I’m afraid. Because it’s Ramadan, men can only see women if they have a business reason to do so. Nothing social. And you wouldn’t count as business … it would make it complicated.’ Ridiculous, I know. Luckily she knows nothing of Islam.

  ‘But it is business, in a way,’ she went on.

  ‘But we don’t want to explain that to him,’ I said. ‘Do we? Do we want to explain all our business to him?’

  She thought it was ridiculous, and said so. Coming all this way, and then not even going … I told her she was welcome to go back, but if she wanted my help she must do it my way. And she was nervous in this foreign city, so in the end she accepted it. I was glad, and nervous, because I didn’t want her having another of her flurries of sudden comprehension.

  So we decided that the next morning I would either take her to the Egyptian Museum or leave her by the pool (though it was probably too cold for that) while I went to see Mr Hamadi.

  Who when I walked into his office turned out to be the manager who had arrived in the aftermath of the Eddie/me/Hakim fight which had been the result of my losing my temper with the Turkish girl. How very fortunate that Chrissie was not with me. I didn’t know if he recognized me.

  He squinted at me as if he might. A small plump man, well looked after. I imagined a wife who fussed over him and fed him tiny pastri
es.

  ‘Saba al’khir, Mr Hamadi.’ Good morning, I said, holding out my hand and behaving not at all like a woman who wears a veil and gets in a fight and is taken off in disgrace by her cross husband.

  ‘Madame,’ he said. ‘How are you?’ The formalities rolled on. Then, ‘So, you danced in Cairo before, some years ago? You are the same Angelina?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Ahh …’ He looked worried. ‘Excuse me. Perhaps I make a mistake, you know. But were you here before? Not so long ago?’ Which way to go?

  ‘I was,’ I said, because I liked his eyes. Round, brown, resourceful, patient.

  He sat down, and motioned me to sit.

  ‘Excuse me. This thing. When Hafla says you will dance, and then outside, with Monsieur du Berry. Do you mind that I ask?’

  Well, it wasn’t what I had in mind, but if I answered when he asked perhaps he would be more inclined to answer when I asked. I gestured that I didn’t mind at all.

  ‘So, you are friend of Sa’id el Araby? Or … wife?’ But he said it very doubtfully.

  ‘Friend,’ I said. ‘You know him?’

  ‘All the stone for my hotel bathrooms, all my ashtrays, some bowls, some lights. Not this hotel. Other one. He’s a good man, you know.’ He paused. ‘But he said that day wife.’

  It took me a moment to work out. Why would he mind whether or not I was married to Sa’id? Then I saw that he didn’t, he was upset because Sa’id may have lied to him about it.

  ‘Mr Hamadi,’ I said. ‘I was Sa’id’s guest, and when Monsieur du Berry attacked me Sa’id was embarrassed. He just wanted to take me away, and to have no fuss. It was simpler, with the officials, if I was his wife. I am sorry.’

  He thought about this for a moment.

  ‘I am angry too,’ he said. ‘You were my guest, hena, in my hotel.’ Hena, right here, in his hotel. Such a Cairene usage, such a Cairene (masri, as they say in Cairo) sentiment. Pride and hospitality combined.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You are kind.’

  I noted that he said angry, not embarrassed. Though of course the two are closely related.

  There was another silence.

  ‘So, why did Monsieur du Berry attack you?’ he said finally. A little nervously.

  It’s a long story, I didn’t say. I smiled, and shrugged, and shook my head, and tried to look stoical.

  ‘Where is he now?’ I asked, as if in passing.

  ‘I heard he left. I hope so. I do not like men to attack in the hotel, you know. Someone said he left to Damasc, you know, Syria. Why, you want him?’

  ‘I want to know where he is, so that I don’t go there,’ I said, a little jocular, a little rueful.

  He smiled. ‘Ahh,’ he said. Masri that he is. That Cairo ‘ahh’ that punctuates every conversation.

  ‘Maybe Hafla knows. You want to talk to Hafla?’

  ‘Maybe. Is she here?’

  ‘Now no. She went to Upper Egypt for Ramadan. Maybe Luxor, maybe Aswan. I find out, I can tell you. Everything very quiet now, Ramadan, and …’ Here he fell silent. I knew he was talking – or not talking – about Hatshepsut. About what happened. That thing for which there doesn’t seem to be a name, because it is too terrible, in every way, from every direction.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ I said.

  He was silent.

  ‘Is business very bad?’

  ‘Here not so much – is more business, government. But for the other hotels, for the taximen and so on. There is nothing. Nobody. They were not Egyptian, the men who made this. Not Egyptian.’ He was emphatic. Angry. ‘It will get better. Insha’Allah. Insha’Allah.’

  There is a sadness and a desperation about this. A whole country held to ransom, a people who live with routine poverty knocked about by fanatics who claim the love of God. Just more children with not enough to eat because there’s no one to hire their dad’s felucca. And if the feeling is this strong in Cairo, how will it be in Luxor?

  ‘Malesh,’ he said. Never mind. ‘So, I will find where Hafla stays and I will telephone to you. Where do you stay?’

  I told him, and we exchanged courtesies, and he sent his respects to Sa’id, which reminded me of all the other things I had to say to Sa’id, and as I came down the marble steps and left the hotel trepidation took me by the hand and promised not to leave me.

  *

  Chrissie was in a state of bliss back at the Oberoi, having discovered the hotel masseur (from the Arabic: masaha, massage). Luxury became her. (Luxury, from the Arabic: el qusur, the palaces – like Luxor.) I was glad – I couldn’t continue indefinitely to juggle what she knew and what she couldn’t know with what I was trying to get done. And I couldn’t rely for long on her nerves about being in a new country. Any minute now some of Egypt’s trailing charms would hook her, and she’d be off getting into trouble – or creating it.

  Mr Hamadi rang within the hour. Hafla was staying outside Luxor, at the house of a German couple. She was giving lessons to the wife, and would be there until the end of Ramadan. He gave me the number. I considered ringing. I was going to, but when I picked up the phone I found myself asking instead for the hotel travel agent, and booking us on the next flight to Luxor. I was on the same landmass as my beloved, and the pull was too strong.

  The flights were cut right back because there were no tourists, but there was one tomorrow.

  But he is not my beloved.

  *

  When Osiris was murdered for the second time by his jealous brother Set, Set chopped him into pieces and scattered the bits up and down the Nile. Isis, Osiris’s sister and wife, searched Egypt looking for them, and found them, and brought him back to life, and conceived Horus, the hawk-headed god. This is curious because, in several versions, she found all of him except his penis, which may or may not have been eaten by a Nile crab. But in several other versions she conceived Horus after the first murder. Some even concede that Osiris may have been alive when he fathered his child. I have seen family similarities in this: Harry being blind drunk when Janie conceived Lily, Isis’s sister Nephthys seducing Osiris and bearing a child, Anubis, which she then gave to Isis to bring up … I do identify in various ways with this ancient sacred soap opera.

  Isis found Osiris’s head at Abydos, where Seti built one of the most beautiful of temples. The carvings there are the sweetest: hardly any smiting of enemies, as is the pharaonic norm, just people in fine muslin skirts (you can see their legs through the cloth, even though it’s all carved in stone) laying their hands tenderly on each others’ shoulders, patting each other, and offering each other eggs, and incense, and the ankh, the breath of life. Lying in my gorgeous bed that night, cool and clean on cotton sheets, it occured to me that Chrissie and I were a pair of northern Isises, searching for their men up and down the Nile. Hers previously dead, and now come back to life. Mine … I didn’t know. Alive, but alive to me? Or maybe as dead as only the past can be. And Horus already conceived. I dreamt of hawks over the desert. (From the Arabic, dsrt. Meaning desert. Actually it’s not, it’s from the Latin, desertus, left waste. An early example of Orientalism: a western/northern judgment on a southern/eastern thing. There’s nothing left or wasted about the desert to the Bedouin. Or there wasn’t, for thousands of years. I’m thinking of Palestine, Israel, land rights – don’t let me start.)

  On the plane I gave Chrissie a simple account of Sa’id. That he lived there, and that I would need to spend some time with him. She seemed to assume that he was some hunky illiterate camel-driver (she asked me, god forgive her, whether he was clean, whether I was, you know, worried. God knows I’ve never met a cleaner man in my life), and was keen for a full girly chat about the situation. I wasn’t.

  NINE

  The palaces

  We arrived at dusk, just as the blue sky turns to stripes of green and gold, pink and amber, and the golden desert turns indigo. As we came out into the car park, the warmth of the south slipping up my skirt and round the back of my neck, there was a muffled explos
ion, and Chrissie looked at me, eyes wild. I calmed her: no terrorism, just the cannon announcing Iftar. All around men pulled out cigarettes and started smoking like – well, like Egyptians.

  It was the colour of the palm trees that rattled my heart. The silvery turquoise in the last rays of the departed sun, gleaming in the dusk. Sa’id’s eyes are that colour.

  Well they are. I didn’t design him.

  Abu was waiting for us. Abu was the man who had first taken Nadia and me to Abu Sa’id’s shop, ten years ago. He had taken us to Dendara, to Abydos, to wherever we wanted. He was calm and quiet and clever. He had two children now, alhamdulilleh. My driver in Luxor. Last time I hadn’t seen him. I’d been a guest, why would I need a driver? (I’d had Sa’id, Hakim and the old dusty powder-blue Mercedes with its box of cassettes: Khaled, Umm Khalthoum, Edith Piaf and Satie. Sa’id had driven like a shark through the dark nights, gliding down wide, empty roads, sand blowing up from the desert. The road seems nearer at night, rising up on the strange dips and looms of rock desert. Dogs roaming about. People only put on their headlamps once they’ve seen you.)

  Along the roadside into town, men were cooking over small fires, and starting to eat, beckoning to Abu to join them. He wouldn’t stop: he had brought a small paper package of dates, and offered them. Melt-in-the-mouth sweetness. Chrissie looked horrified. I think it was the Arabic writing on the newspaper they were wrapped in that did it for her. But I was pleased with her; she was being quiet, and doing as she was told.

  By the time we arrived at the Old Winter Palace the sun was gone and it was cold. The Corniche was so beautiful with its extra Ramadan fairy lights, twining the tree trunks so densely, arranged on the trunks in shapes of flowers and leaves and arabesques. The tall palms had as many rings as the giraffe-necked women of Borneo, pink and yellow, green and blue, powered by the cheap electricity which is the gift of the High Dam. The new moon lay on its back to the east. A few late calèches waited for custom, their ponies’ heads hanging low, their fancy bridles and the carriages’ ornamented hoods muted in the dusk. The drivers sat with their feet up, smoking and calling half-heartedly to the even fewer passers-by. And there was the Nile, dim and immutable. Beyond it, between me and the gold and green remnant stripes of sunset, on the other side, was the sand and scrabble village of Qurnah, among the tombs, and there, over the traffic lights, past the colossi of Memnon, go right at the fork towards the Valley of the Kings and up and it’s on the left, is the El Amr el Misri (Full Moon of Egypt) Alabaster Factory, and there on one of the divans in the courtyard, eating bread and salty cheese and green and crimson pickles from communal plates on huge tin trays, or perhaps in his empty marble-floored sitting room above the showroom, maybe doing the accounts, maybe reading, or half watching an absurd soap called The Woman of Garden City (for which Hakim has a weakness) was the father of my child.