by Louisa Young
‘The big lady makes a big problem,’ he said. He had been on duty since five. It would be getting dark in an hour or so.
I told him that she was getting lots of attention from young men, and was probably terribly happy. He laughed, and sent a policeboy on to the stand at the junction to order tea for all of us. Shay koshari. With fresh mint, in glasses, sweet as can be.
Abu told us that a few months before people had been killed here, and that if the policemen didn’t get us back to Luxor before dark they would be in big trouble. Abu’s son’s name was Ramadan.
The big lady was telling the little policeman that he might as well paint a great big target on her and an arrow saying ‘tourist, shoot here’. The little one turned away, ramrod stiff with self-control. Her skinny friend came and told us what she had said, inviting us to laugh along at her wit and free-spirited cuteness. We declined. Some camels loped by in the distance.
Later, when we were finally able to drive off, and were about to do so, the handsome policeman hesitated as he walked past our car. Pausing a few feet off, and looking at me, he kissed the pad of his thumb, a firm and giving kiss, then stepped up to the car and pressed it, swiped it slowly down the glass of my window. I am more than accustomed to unsolicited attentions from men, but this thumb print placed, and then swooping slowly down, and the glass pane between me and it, at arm’s length, has stayed in my mind.
We got home late. She did see the pigeon castle. No one was shot – that time. I don’t know what happened to the policemen. I mentioned it to Abu Sa’id and he shrugged. Later I ran into the little one; when I asked him about it he shrugged too. I was not to be bothered by it. Strict instructions.
This was years before the Hatshepsut … massacre.
So that time it was all all right, but as we know now it isn’t always.
Lying in bed.
I should ring Hafla. I didn’t want to.
After my day of dreaming I felt somehow prepared and purified for talking to Sa’id.
I pictured them sitting on the green-cushioned divans in the courtyard, the workmen with their dusty feet clearing up the alabaster debris, putting away the iron hooks and files and tools of the trade. Bread and pickles and salty white cheese laid out on the wide tin trays, on the mats, waiting for the cannon. Remembered how he had broken off bread, scooped up meat and fed me from his own hand.
Abu Sa’id is my child’s grandfather. Sarah its grandmother. Oh lord.
There it goes.
Silence falls on the town. On the whole of Egypt, on the Arab world.
Twenty minutes to eat. Ten minutes for tea and a cigarette.
I called at ten to six.
TEN
Ya habibi, oh my darling
‘Hello?’
‘Hello … Is Sa’id there?’
‘Mr Sa’id? OK. You wait. Who is?’
It was one of the boys; one of the workshop boys who helps in the house too. Sa’id is such a pasha at home. Doesn’t even change the TV channel himself.
Pasha is an everyday greeting up here. ‘Ya besha!’ the young men call to each other. Hey, my Prince!
‘Angeline,’ I said. Be still my beating heart. Fuck it, it’s not a joke.
‘Angelina?’ he said. Surprise. Amazement even. ‘Angelina!’
The phone was out of his hand in a second.
‘Hello?’
His voice.
His voice, in my ear, by electricity or however. His voice.
‘Hello,’ I said.
Silence.
It was quite a long silence.
‘Where are you?’ he said.
‘Here.’
An intake of breath. His breath. Sweet Jesus, breathe it out into me.
‘Where?’
‘Winter Palace.’
Silence.
‘Ten minutes,’ he said.
He didn’t sound in the least bit pleased.
I thought I might die.
*
Ten minutes wasn’t long enough for him to come round by the new bridge at Dayyaba. He’d come by boat. I shaved my legs – why? What was I thinking? – and brushed my hair and stuck a note for Chrissie under her door (Gone out, back soon. Eat without me if I’m not – love) and wrapped a cloth around me. Not his big white-on-white Luxori paisley one. I had it with me. But it wouldn’t be right. It was that cloth he wrapped round me in the bazaar when Nippyhead was conceived, and it was that cloth that he wrapped round me for the journey when I left him. Too damn symbolic.
Then I went out to the landing place, and waited.
When he stepped off the boat at the river end of the pontoon I was leaning against the wall under the Corniche. I remembered, suddenly, when I had first seen him in London. I’d been out, and he was waiting for me outside the door of my flat. I’d walked the length of the red-brick London balcony, with him leaning against the wall, watching me. I’d tried to prevent my hips from swaying. He had lounged, as I walked before his gaze.
Now he walked before mine, picking his way among ropes and gangplanks, in harmony with them because harmony is his constant companion.
He stopped a few paces in front of me.
Elegant, is what he is. Too fucking elegant for words. He stands, and it is just exactly as a man should stand. He is the height a man should be. His shoulders cannot help the perfection of the angle at which they hang. His nose is straight and his mouth is pharaonic, this I know, and can see. His eyes are pale, and not happy.
He has a cloth – the colour of dark lapis – folded and wrapped around his head and neck in the Luxori way, against the evening chill, which makes his demeanour more Arab and his face darker. (More Arab than what? Darker than what? Than I remember?)
I remembered wishing, when I first met him, that his voice would be squeaky, so that I would have at least half a chance of not falling completely in love with him. But it wasn’t. And I did. Did I?
Then why did I leave him?
‘Where do you want to go?’ he said. In his far-from-squeaky voice. You never normally notice how incredibly intimate this thing speech is. This sound comes out from within them, inside their body, borne on their breath, and enters into your ear, conveying their thoughts right inside you.
‘Other side,’ I said, without thinking.
He shook his head, and started walking up to the road.
Well, OK. His father would be there, Mariam, Hakim. Maybe I wouldn’t be so welcome. Maybe it wouldn’t be so simple. But I didn’t mean his house necessarily. Just … I like the other side. The emptiness of the dust and the tombs after the conviviality and bustle of the East Bank. It’s like crossing the Styx.
I followed him. He started walking up the Corniche. I hated it, it reminded me of the Night of the First Disagreement, in Cairo. I never want to see him walking away from me under trees and streetlights beside the river. Never never.
‘Grand hotel, or coffee shop? Your choice,’ he said. Still in this cold way.
‘Why are you so angry with me?’ I asked. I couldn’t bear it.
He broke into a grin. For a moment I thought – but it wasn’t his beautiful grin. It was a coyote’s grin. It was horrid.
‘You left me,’ he said. And turned and started walking again.
I stood where I was and called out, ‘You didn’t stop me going.’
‘You’re an Englishwoman, you do what you like,’ he called back.
‘Where are you going?’
He stopped immediately.
‘Oh, sorry. Wherever. Where would you like?’ He was not being polite. He was being sarcastic. I had never seen this. He was being ‘oh, you’re in charge, of course.’
We could go to the bar at the hotel, I thought, because I couldn’t think of anywhere else. The bar is beautiful, in a colonial kind of way. Black marble, brass rails, vodka martinis made very badly, pianist playing ‘Michelle’, ‘Send in the Clowns’ and ‘Für Elise’. Prints of Nubia and mashrabiyya screens from Fatimid Cairo. Of course it’s a ridiculous place
to go with a Luxori – like two Londoners going on the Round London Sightseeing Tour on the open-topped bus.
‘You want me to go to a bar in Ramadan?’ he said.
‘Since when were you so bloody religious?’ I asked. Which was rude of me.
He just stared at me.
At that moment a child of about eight came up, carrying a plastic bucket with roses in it. He wanted to sell one to Sa’id, presumably for him to give to me. I winced at his unfortunate timing. For a moment Sa’id looked at him as one might at a mosquito, then again, on recognizing humanity. He spoke to the boy in swift, soft Luxori Arabic, much gentler than the hard Cairene, with soft Js instead of hard Gs, and a slinkier rhythm. Greeted him by name.
‘Were you at school today?’
‘Aiwa,’ said the boy. Yes.
‘Have you finished your schoolwork?’
‘La-ah.’ No.
Sa’id looked at the flowers, and the boy shrugged. Even I could tell that he could not go home until he had sold them all. Which he could not possibly do, as there were no tourists.
Sa’id looked at me and I turned away. This was not to do with me. He turned his back to me, told the boy to remember him to his father, and bought the whole lot. I turned back the moment he had turned away, in order to see.
It floored me, to tell the truth. His doing it, his slight embarrassment at me seeing him do it, his slight pride too, that the embarrassment wouldn’t stop him doing what he had to do. Some men, you’d know they only did it to impress the girl – but even that wouldn’t matter, because the child would still get home at a decent hour – yes, and his dad would probably send him out with another bucket … though not, I think, when Sa’id had sent his greetings, by name … ah but most of this was probably in my head. He was just doing what he did. I was just floored by it.
He rejoined me.
Does he love me? Will he soften at the sight of me as I do at him?
No.
‘Come on, we’ll go to my flat,’ he said, and turned to stride on, the roses in his hand with their heads hanging down.
‘What flat?’
‘My flat on this side.’
I didn’t know he had a flat on this side.
‘Where I take the tourist girls to fuck them,’ he called, over his shoulder, striding ahead.
Now that was bad. That was really unpleasant for the obvious reasons and because we had talked about this, about how the economic situation makes it hard for people to marry until later than is sexually comfortable, about the hungry tourist women and the desperate Egyptian men, the middle-aged ladies, the camel boys, who is exploiting who, and how, and why, and does it matter, and to whom … what the Luxori women think of it, about the politics and economics of it, about Flaubert on his travels and his interlude with the dancer, Kutchuk Hanem, comparing nineteenth-and twentieth-century sexual tourism, and sentimental exoticism, about all kinds of things. We had never had to mention that that was entirely what we were not.
So his saying that was, exactly, like a slap in the face. Just like they say. Splat. Ow.
So I stopped walking for a moment, to think.
And I thought: my god he must be hurt. To punish so strong.
Which means there’s hope.
Hang on – hope of what?
Of something good coming of this, I told myself. Still not defining what I meant by ‘something good’.
He is being cruel, but he is not dishonest. He knows I know he doesn’t fuck tourist girls.
So I skipped up behind him, and kept up with him though he kept a few paces between us as we crossed some streets and went in from the river. And I skipped through the dusty ill-fitting iron gate when he unlocked it, under the ratty dusty hibiscus, and skipped up the dusty concrete stairs behind him, and into a darkened flat where no one had been for months.
‘Well, clearly you haven’t fucked any recently,’ I said, peering into the gloom, and tripping over an empty Baraka bottle (the Evian of Egypt, though the very name – it means blessing – tells you that clean water in a bottle is something other here than it is in Europe). The flat stank of old ashtrays, and the rugs had fallen off the sofas.
‘Only one,’ he said. ‘She didn’t come here.’
‘Watch it,’ I said. But this was a comforting logic. The nastier he is, the more it means he loves me.
A sick logic too. Along the lines of the old song: he hit me, and it felt like a kiss. But we’re in a moment of crisis here. It’s not as if this is a horrible old rut into which we’ve fallen.
He was picking about in the dark interior of the flat.
‘Why don’t you turn the light on?’ I said.
He coughed. There was a thick layer of dust, and lots more empty bottles on a coffee table. Not alcohol though. I think he hadn’t realized how horrid it was, and now didn’t want to illuminate it.
‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘There haven’t been any tourists.’
‘Don’t use that, Sa’id,’ I said.
‘I don’t tell you what to do, so don’t tell me what to do,’ he said.
I didn’t like it. No one likes punishment. Well, I didn’t like it.
‘Can you stop it now please?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said. But perhaps he said it a little sadly.
‘Please,’ I said.
A moment’s silence.
‘I don’t think I can,’ he said.
‘Do you want to?’
Silence.
‘Do I want to what?’ he said, turning to look at me.
Gradations of subtleties of cruelty. He knows what I mean. He knows I know he knows. He is withholding understanding, our sweetest gift.
‘To stop being unkind,’ I said.
He took out a cigarette, and lit it, then holding it between his teeth he picked up a bottle of Baraka and took the lid off and passed it to me.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Have a drink, and tell me what you’ve come here for.’
I sat, and I had a drink, but I didn’t tell him what I was here for. Some specialized part of me needed us to be friendly before I told him. I wasn’t going to use the child as a bridge. I was sad already: the first my foetus had heard of his father’s voice was in anger and pain.
Did I say his? Or hers. Aisha el Araby Gower. Nippyhead Horus Gower el Araby. Or Omar: Life. Or Tariq: the Path. Amira: Princess. Noor: light. Shagaratt ad Durr: Tree of Pearls. Such beautiful names.
There’s Sa’id, across from me, leaning back on the sofa, wary, angry. A bit of streetlight shone in between the curtains, enough to show the furrow in his brow. He looks older. I want him to be older because he is too young for me. Yes, and he hates me. Never mind.
‘The British police want to find Eddie,’ I said, finally.
‘Him again!’ he said.
I hate this. This sarcasm and coldness. This is so unlike anything I have ever seen in him before. I said nothing.
‘Have they lost him?’ he said. ‘How foolish.’
I said nothing.
‘And, what, so you’ve come to get him? Or to warn him off?’ he said.
‘No,’ I said, defensively, crossly. ‘I mean – he’s not here, so, that’s just the point. I’m just meant to be finding out where he might have gone. That dancer is here, from the Semiramis, and …’ And. There is something else.
‘He is here,’ said Sa’id.
I stared at him.
‘He’s here in Luxor.’
And stared. Shock moving through me, and doubling back, and doubling back.
He watched me, observing my shock.
‘Didn’t you know?’
‘All God’s angels couldn’t drag me to where he was,’ I whispered, beginning to shake. ‘Sa’id, I must leave. Help me.’
His face was changing shape in the darkness.
‘You want my help,’ he said, still leaning back, still unmoving.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Do you want my love?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. Why not say
it, when it’s true?
‘Do you want to marry me and have my babies?’ he said, with a smile beginning to curl one side of his mouth.
And I started to laugh. I remember thinking, ‘I must remember to answer that,’ and then, funnily enough, I fainted.
*
I woke up in another room, on a dusty bed. It was cold – deep night. Sa’id was asleep beside me. One of his black curls was wrapped around my little finger, my hand lying on the pillow. And there was his face. Harsh, even in sleep. Not as it should be.
That’s what Sa’id means. The Happy One.
Last week Harry, on my sofa, chaste but loved. This week Sa’id. My men putting me to bed at moments of stress.
*
A while later I was half woken by hands on my flesh, an arm under my waist and a gentle lifting of my hips. But it didn’t come. I felt him, sensed him. Smelt him, the clean leather smell. Breathed his breath, and lay immobile. I could feel his mouth not kissing me. Hear him listening to my breath, making sure I was all right. But it didn’t come.
*
I woke again to the sound of the musahourati, awaking the faithful to another day of discretion and harmony, of moderation and of prayer, of the non-indulgence of appetites. Of renunciation. Ramadan is not the time to bring a crisis of love on to a Muslim head. Not the time for a passionate reunion, for a terrified flight, hejira from a foreign gangster, for an announcement of pregnancy, the fruits of fornication with a khawageyya. No mind that he’s half English, that there’s no devout bruise on his forehead. Even if you don’t pray, you pray during Ramadan. Ramadan is generous, Ramadan is sweet, Ramadan is universal, cultural as well as religious. And this was Ramadan after a great sin, a great tragedy, which took place almost on his doorstep.