Dreamers of the Day

by Mary Doria Russell

  “So that’s why Colonel Lawrence said no modern caliph can unite Muslims?” I asked. “It would be like English Protestants deciding to embrace Catholicism again when Bloody Mary took the throne of England.”

  “Or vice versa, when Elizabeth succeeded her,” Karl agreed. “Worship Jesus the wrong way and you risk the rack or the stake.”

  “Drawing and quartering. Heads and hands chopped off.” I shuddered. “Savage, when you think of it.”

  “And quite recent, in the sweep of history. Not England’s most admirable era, although they obtained Shakespeare into the bargain. People forget that much of the Renaissance took place during constant religious warfare.”

  As for the political element, he largely agreed with Lord Cox and Colonel Wilson. “Islam is a bond that unites western and central Asia, but there is no sense of nationalism associated with it, except when outsiders force the issue.”

  I was a little taken aback by that, probably because I had disliked the “toffs” so much. “So Colonel Wilson’s right and that’s why Muslims can never rule themselves?” I asked. “Because they are a feudal people, and they require British rule to lead them out of the dark ages?”

  “Fifty years ago, Germany was a collection of feudal duchies, and Italy not much better. By the logic of Colonel Wilson we must conclude, therefore, that Christians cannot rule themselves! Besides,” he added dismissively, “who are the British to tutor the people of the Middle East? Civilization here was thousands of years old while the British were wearing bearskins and painting themselves blue.”

  “You sound like Lawrence, now.” It was another opening for him, you see: an opportunity to steer the conversation back to things a German spy might want to know.

  Karl merely shrugged. “Foreigners nearly always wish to simplify the Middle East, Agnes. They cannot tolerate to feel ignorant long enough to understand it.”

  “And how did you come to be so patient?” I asked, beginning to relax.

  “My mother was a Persian Jew, from Teheran. My father was with the German embassy there for a few years—that’s how they met. They raised their children in Stuttgart, but my mother took us to Persia every summer to visit her family. My grandfather once befriended a British scholar,” he recalled. “This gentleman studied Persian folktales, which are engaging but naive, as was the gentleman himself. My grandmother said that Persian poetry would have provided him a more accurate picture of the East. It is elegant and sophisticated.” His tone shifted from reverie to judgment. “Here is the trouble for a colonialist in the Middle East: he shall always be the natural victim of ketman.”

  “Ketman?”

  “The art of fakery,” Karl said dryly, “whereby underlings preserve their dignity by fooling authority. In Persia, the practice is combined with a Shi’a concept: takkiya—religious permission to lie when dealing with infidels.”

  It was then that I asked about Lawrence’s friend Feisal and recounted Winston’s odd remark “We’ll take everything but oatmeal off the menu! They’ll choose what we want them to have.”

  For the first time since we met, Karl seemed truly surprised. “He can’t be serious! Churchill said this, yes? Not Lawrence, surely! This is a terrible idea, Agnes!”

  “But why? Is there something wrong with Feisal?”

  “No, not at all! Feisal is, without question, a strikingly attractive leader,” Karl said with much feeling. “He inspires great love, great devotion. He is intelligent, refined. Handsome, soulful. A beautiful man!”

  My heart sank deeper with every adjective. This is embarrassing to admit, but I have tried to be completely honest with you. It was not only Karl’s professional interest in Lawrence that worried me. No, there was something else that Sergeant Thompson’s phrasing might have implied and that I was loath to believe. “He’s the kind who is more likely to be interested in Colonel Lawrence,” Thompson had said, and I’d begun to wonder if he was warning me off Karl for reasons that had nothing to do with politics.

  Mumma was certain she understood what the detective was getting at. I knew he was that kind all along, she claimed. Look at him! He wears a bracelet watch.

  They’re called “wristwatches,” Mildred pointed out. All the soldiers wore them in the war. You can’t pull a pocket watch out in the middle of a battle.

  And all that catty jabber about Miss Bell’s dresses? “Wear the silk charmeuse and show her up!” Mumma mimicked. A real man would never say such a thing. And a real man wouldn’t care about you, Agnes. He’s defective himself or he wouldn’t give you the time of day from that sissy bracelet watch of his.

  I hated to think it, but even I had wondered. Karl was not unaware of male beauty, and he displayed a certain vivacity and expressiveness that I found both pleasing and unusual. I had never met anyone like him, you see, and I simply didn’t know if he was different because he was foreign, or Jewish, or homosexual, or simply…Karl.

  “Churchill is serious about this?” he pressed. “If the British fix an election that will make only Feisal available—Mein Gott, a Sunni Arab to rule Shi’a! I cannot believe Lawrence will agree to this. His love for Feisal is genuine, I think. When the French drove Feisal out of Damascus last year—no doubt, Lawrence felt very much that terrible humiliation. Naturally he wishes to redress such a wrong and to strike back at the French for it, but Feisal has never set foot in Mesopotamia! No, no, no! This is the wrong king for Mesopotamia. And the wrong kingdom for Feisal. Surely Lawrence will see that.”

  Karl fell into a brooding silence that persisted even after we reached our hired car. The driver woke up and rushed from side to side, opening the doors. Karl helped me and Rosie inside. There was some chat with the driver—Yes, we had a lovely time, and so on—but the trip back to the Continental was marked by the thickening of a despond that I’d made worse with my clumsy effort to engage Karl’s interest in Lawrence.

  When we arrived at the hotel entrance, the driver leapt out again and stood at attention by my door. Karl remained in the car, his face tense and still. I, too, stared blankly, unable to rouse myself enough to get out. Rosie was sitting upright in my lap, her little haunches balanced on my thighs, stubby forepaws resting against my chest. She often sensed my mood, and now she watched my face with such intensity and concern! Aware that I was distressing her, I laid my cheek against her own and stroked her long back over and over. “It’s all right, little girl. Everything’s fine,” I murmured. “I’m all right.”

  “You have such beautiful hands,” Karl said softly.

  I looked at him, astonished. He smiled through his melancholy. “I’m sorry, Agnes. I have infected you with my bad mood. Ever since we spoke with Ashour, I have been unable to be cheerful. I can only think of his little bride, crying every day.” Karl looked away, toward the north. “Twelve years old. I have a daughter just that age,” he said. “So young, so young…”

  If you had been there with us, you might have whispered in my ear, Agnes, he has a daughter. He’s married.

  I would have answered, He’s here alone. Perhaps he’s a widower. Perhaps he’s divorced. Perhaps he never married the mother of that girl.

  In truth? I had not a single moment of concern for some unknown German woman who might be dead or discarded, after all.

  I did not ask, “Oh, and does your family live here in Egypt? In Alexandria, perhaps?” I did not say, “And is your daughter an only child?” I did not once think, He is a husband with a family.

  I thought, You see, Mumma? He is not that kind! It wasn’t my fault that he was sad. And he said that I have beautiful hands.

  For the next few days, Karl and I met frequently, sometimes for breakfast, sometimes for dinner. Whenever he had a few open hours, we strolled through parks and visited museums. We ate falafel in flat bread and mahshi—vegetables of all kinds stuffed with spiced rice and tomatoes and onions. We drank cup after cup of sweet, thick coffee and talked and talked while Cairo’s kaleidoscopic populace passed before us. What I remember from that week is
not so much what we did or saw but the warmth of Karl’s presence and the sound of his pleasingly accented voice, rising and falling.

  His world was so much wider than my own, so mostly I just listened, smiling, when he tossed off international observations like “The English are the only people on earth who pay vast sums to private schools designed to cripple their children emotionally. In Germany, we do that at home. Not as efficient, but far less expensive.”

  Or, “In the past twenty years, Egypt has been ruled by a khedive, a sultan, a king, and a constitutional monarch whose parliament has just been spanked and dismissed. Throughout all these, the British have maintained order, but they will receive no thanks for it. And if the radicals succeed in gaining Egypt for the Egyptians? It will be chaos. The Egyptians couldn’t organize a beer festival for themselves.”

  Or, “Agnes, the war had nothing to do with the archduke! It was planned for years. The Prussians told the kaiser, ‘Germany will be at the peak of military power between 1913 and 1915, but France will catch up by 1916.’ When a footrace is to begin, a shot is fired, yes? But the gunshot is not the reason for the race. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was not a reason for the war. It was merely the gunshot that began it.”

  Not everything was serious, for dear little Rosie was always with us, waddling along with a sailor’s rolling swagger. In stores or cafés that catered to Europeans, she was welcome; elsewhere Karl would bluff his way in with her or wait outside while I explored on my own.

  With so much walking, you might have thought that dog would be as slim as six o’clock, but Karl persisted in feeding her from the table, and she got tubbier by the day! She’d stretch up and go pitty-pat on his knee. He’d lean down to put his ear close to her delicate muzzle. “Can you hear, Agnes?” Karl would ask me, his eyes sparkling. “She is saying, Baksheesh! Baksheesh!” And then he’d slip her another bit of pita or a shred of lamb. Once I returned from a museum visit to find Rosie fast asleep in Karl’s arms, flat on her back with her short legs twitching. “She is dreaming of ancient times,” Karl whispered with soft solemnity, “when sausage dogs were tall.” Then he added thoughtfully, “Foolish, isn’t it? Such love we squander on these little dogs…” By the end of the week, it was hard to tell whom the hussy loved better, Karl or me!

  Whether by accident or design, neither of us mentioned our families. I had no interest in learning what I did not wish to know, and Karl did not speak of his daughter again. Then, one afternoon, we were sitting in an outdoor café when a rare pair of pariah dogs slunk by. Rosie tried to pick a fight with them, barking from the high ground of my knees. When the strays had been driven off by the waiters, I said, “She has no idea how small she is! My theory is that dogs believe they are the size of whomever they bark at, which is why small dogs are so fierce and big dogs are often gentle.”

  “That could be true,” Karl replied. “When I was a boy, we had also a big sheepdog. He disliked my Tessa very much but was frightened of her. He would gobble her food but he was a very sloppy eater, and she was able to survive on his jowl droppings. It was a terrible flaw in his plan to starve her.”

  We sipped our coffees, contented in the sunshine, and Karl turned thoughtful. “Dr. Freud observed that dogs love their friends and bite their enemies. In this, he said, they are quite unlike people, who always mix love and hate in their relationships. Tell me, Agnes, what were you like as a child?”

  I tried, but my story turned into Mumma’s: her widowhood, her courage, her labor and generosity. Karl listened with great attention, smiling when I confessed the pride I felt in being the “little mother” who cared for Ernest and Lillian. “Tell me about them,” he urged.

  “And what of your father?” he asked next.

  “Have you noticed?” he asked a few minutes later. “No matter what I ask, the answer is always ‘Mumma.’”

  I laughed and put my face in my hands. “I know, I know! Mumma always told me, ‘Agnes! Do try to keep to the point!’ But one thing always leads me to another, I’m afraid.” And off I went again, in my rattletrap way.

  Karl’s face, ordinarily open, became quite unreadable until I got to the part where Mumma sold the factory so that we girls could go to college. To my surprise, he laughed, his eyes widening in disbelief. “Agnes, your mother did not sell the factory for you and your sister! She sold it because your brother refused to work for her.”

  “Oh, no, it wasn’t that—”

  “But, yes! Don’t you see? Your brother knew he would be under her rule forever, so? He ran from her to the army. When her plans were opposed, she threw the factory away in anger.”

  “Karl, no! It wasn’t like that at all—”

  “And your sister left, just as your brother did! Do you think it is only chance that she moved so far from home?”

  “But that was missionary work! Her husband was—”

  “A man who could take her far from Mumma, and for an irreproachable reason,” Karl said, rendering me speechless. “Your father did just the same. He worked hard because it was his duty, but it was also an honorable way to escape his wife. He could not bring himself to abandon his family. So? He chose to work himself to death.”

  “Well! That was hardly a choice,” I said huffily. “Papa had debts, Karl. He had to make good—”

  “It is remarkable what people choose to do, and then insist they had no choice. You had plans to leave as well, but your Mumma cried. Some tears and paf ! You gave up your dreams.”

  I had no answer for him. I was stunned, astonished that he would turn on me like that.

  “Your mother believed she was harmed when your brother left,” Karl said, “but no! That was disappointment.” He sat back in his chair and waved his pipe in the direction of an imaginary vista. “If your home has a beautiful view of a forest on someone else’s land, you may enjoy the view, but you have no right to it. It does not belong to you. If one day the owner decides to cut down all his trees for lumber, you may be disappointed, but you are not harmed. It is his, not yours, to dispose of as he wishes. Your mother acted as though your lives were hers. When your plans differed from hers, she lost a view of the future that she imagined but had no right to.” He leaned over the table, his eyes as merrily compassionate as his words were harsh. “Agnes, your mother was a tyrant.”

  “Karl!” I gasped. “You don’t—How can—You’re not being fair!”

  He laid his pipe in the ashtray and reached across the table to take my hands in his. “Think!” he commanded with a curious kindly insistence. “Was there ever a time when your mother did not get exactly what she wanted?”

  How often had I imagined that he would take my hands? But not like that, not after saying such awful things about Mumma—about my whole family!

  “The only way to end her tyranny was to leave,” Karl said, “but she cried, and you gave up. Your life is your own, Agnes. You are handsome and accomplished and brave. You must leave your mother behind or you will never become the woman you were meant to be.”

  I pulled away, and when we parted a little while later, I felt lost in a fog of anger. Back in my hotel room, I wept and paced, furious and alone except for Rosie. Karl had no right to say all that. He didn’t know Mumma or Papa, or Ernest or Lillie. He didn’t know me! He had no right to call poor Mumma a tyrant. She never asked for anything for herself. She was good and generous and hardworking. He could ask anyone in Cedar Glen. They’d all tell him that!

  But I’ll bet he’s right, Mildred whispered. Sooner or later, she always got what she wanted, didn’t she? And she had kind of a mean streak.

  Mumma herself was strangely silent.

  Any grade school teacher knows the demonstration. Lay a bar magnet on the table. Sprinkle iron filings evenly across the surface of ordinary white typing paper. Hold the paper taut between your fingers. Carefully move the paper above the magnet, then give it a slight shake to overcome friction’s resistance.

  When you set the particles in motion, the children gasp and cl
ap. As if alive, the iron filings rearrange themselves, fanning out above the positive and negative poles at opposite ends of the magnet, curving inward to form concentric ovals around its shaft.

  “Why did you decide to come to Cairo?” Karl had asked me on our first day together as we strolled, side by side, with Rosie in the vanguard. “It is an unusual choice for someone who has not been abroad before. Most Americans go to Paris or London. Or Rome.”

  I told him how Lillian had urged me to visit her in the Middle East, back before the war. She had even quoted Muhammad: “‘Do not tell me how educated you are,’ the Prophet said. ‘Tell me how far you have traveled.’”

  The explanation seemed to satisfy Karl, but it was not the truth, not if I was honest with myself.

  Why do we travel, really? If we are of a thoughtful nature, we may wish to improve our minds, to examine the manners and customs of others and compare them to our own. For these reasons, we study guidebooks and make lists of the churches, palaces, galleries, and museums we’ll visit. We take photographs and write our impressions in diaries. We might even justify the expense of the trip by planning to share our knowledge with others upon our return.

  But is it really an education that we yearn to acquire when we travel? Or—be honest, now—do we more sincerely desire souvenirs? What tourist returns with lighter bags than those he packed at home? We want something to display, a memento, a “conversation piece” that will silently inform a guest: I have traveled. I have awakened under a fierce foreign sun. We look for a painting, a sculpture, a vase that will whisper: I have shopped in souks and bargained in bazaars, and I have this to show for it.

  In all practicality, of course, one could buy such objects at home. After all, there are importers, antique shops, and art galleries—even in Ohio. Why, then, do we undertake the expense and risk of travel? Why leave the comforts of home for flies and disease, heat and dust, crowds and the risk of theft? Because souvenirs remind even the traveler of his journey: I was not always who and what I seem, sitting in this Ohio parlor. Here is a talisman of a magical time when nothing—not even I—was ordinary.