When the policeman’s fist slammed into the young man’s stomach, he bent double and cried, Allahu Akbar! God is great!
Scattering in all directions, passers-by cried, Allahu Akbar!
Ailsa’s hands flew to her own stomach, in sympathy. She’d never seen, never imagined such violence. When one is struck, we all are. No man is an island, entire of itself. She whimpered out a cry like a cat’s mew.
‘Are you hurt, Madam?’ Another khaki man held her gently by the top of one arm. The boy gushed blood from nose and mouth. They were searching him, shoving their hands between his legs, lifting his gallabiyya. The boy’s blood spattered Ailsa’s blouse. Two front teeth hung from his lips on strings of bloody mucus. They’d beat him to a pulp in jail, she knew.
We’d beat him rather.
Both her hands reached out to the young man, as to a child. But he shrank back in a way he’d not done from the military policemen. To be touched by a woman. A foreign female without modesty, an infidel. Pollution. Taint. Infection. Defiling his perfect martyr’s moment and blocking the path to heaven. The knowledge flashed through Ailsa in a second that there was no sign she as a woman could offer that she abhorred these injustices, this occupation. For to them she was of no more worth than an army’s impedimenta. Chattel. Breeding stock.
Brakes squealing, more Jeeps arrived, and an army truck. Rifles sprang up everywhere. The young man was lugged away and tossed into a truck, from which another boy in white was gazing out, eyes wide with terror. She glimpsed her boy for a fraction of a moment, before they slammed the doors.
‘Did the bastard molest you?’ asked the tender policeman.
‘Not at all.’
‘Thank goodness.’
‘He’s just a child. He wasn’t armed, was he? What was he supposed to have done?’
The word terrorism was spoken. But anti-British slogans constituted the extent of the schoolboy’s trespass apparently. That was our justice and democracy, Ailsa saw. A bitter taste flooded her mouth. We are thugs. We take our thuggery all round the world, calling it civilisation. But it hurt her to think this. She did not want to think it. We were the civilisers, the educators. Recoiling, Ailsa said she was perfectly all right now; she would walk back alone. When she was ready. Not before. Thanks very much. The policeman wouldn’t take no for an answer. Should they alert her husband? What, to come and round me up too? Certainly not. She would go about her business. Ailsa turned on her heel, head high. But shaking from head to foot. As she turned, a man with a moustache, bowing his head, introduced himself as proprietor of a nearby pavement café: he had seen what had happened. Would Madame care to step inside and rest, take a little refreshment, as his guest?
He was Greek, all crinkly smiles, his hair raven black, oiled close to his head, his moustache a work of art, its ends rolled to points. The café in rue Hussein, beside the Grand Hotel, spilled out on to the pavement, where men in gallabiyyas rested in dusty sunlight with half empty cups and others in shirt sleeves chatted over a board game. As she stepped under the awning and walked through to the back of the shop, Ailsa was aware of the stares. An unaccompanied British woman was fresh meat displaying itself on a butcher’s slab. She held her nerve and her dignity, back straight, head high.
What a relief to sit down in the most private part of the café. The air, blue with smoke, was bitterly fragrant with the scent of coffee. The proprietor brought a silver tray with an elegant silver pot, above a methylated wick-burner. Presently he poured a thick brew into a tiny painted cup and stood back, a white cloth over his arm. Merci, monsieur! C’est très bien. Ailsa held an intense sip in her mouth, savoured its sensuality. Cheeks burning, she settled the delicate cup back in its saucer. Mrs Ailsa Roberts, her compatriots sneered in her mind, is drinking black faecal sludge from the bottom of the Sweet Water Canal.
Thoughts of Mona confused themselves with the violence she’d just witnessed and with which she was stained. As she arranged a silk scarf over the blood-speckled bodice of her blouse, Ailsa again saw the blood gush from the protester’s mouth – and the teeth he’d lost, hanging from strings. It was sad for the young man that he’d had his beautiful milk-white teeth knocked out. As had happened to the little conscript on the Empire Glory, when he stood up to the common-or-garden violence of his pals. The men who shot the dolphins. And Nia had seen the dolphins die. But the boy who’d cried Allahu Akbar! would take pride in his stigma; he’d parade it when we eventually freed him and say: The filthy British imperialists did this to me. He’d have lost them for Allah’s sake.
Ailsa took another sip of coffee. The shaking calmed. Dangerous to wander off the beaten track. You might bump into reality. The chain reaction might go on forever. But for all her foreboding, it was in Ailsa to wander. She’d do it again. Yes. It wasn’t even a matter of the will. Yes. Seeking Mona now was hardly a choice; it was a compulsion. Oh in some past life you were my sister or my wife. Verboten: the relationship was forbidden – which tempted you to enter a maze of dreaming and poetry. Your hands on her hands … A mirror-world crazy and dark and mystical, where all roads might lead to dead ends. But still you had to try.
Male eyes roved away or challenged hers. The voyeurs taking leisurely drags from Turkish cigarettes were handsome characters many of them, with green or tawny eyes, looking like rotters because of their mustachios. One Adonis lounged with an elbow round the back of his chair, head turned, leering at Ailsa with the frankest lechery.
In his rather splendid English, the hovering proprietor enquired whether Madame was happy with the coffee? The service? Could he offer her some of his home-made sweets or pastries?
Going to shake her head, because she truly was not hungry, Ailsa smiled, yielded and looked at the delicacies on the offered platter. Baklava, he said, and Ma’amoul. She took a tartlet and placed it on her plate.
‘These are works of art,’ she said. ‘Too good to eat.’
‘Madame must try them before she passes judgement. Are you feeling more yourself? May we telephone anyone to come and fetch you?’
She shook her head. Filo pastry, crisp and delicate, ambushed Ailsa’s mouth with almonds, melting on the tongue. Another exploded with dates.
A tall, pale Britisher in shirtsleeves two tables away caught her eye. Officer class – though they didn’t normally visit native cafés, let alone banter with Egyptian companions in what must surely be Arabic, sharing a joke.
Song poured from a loudspeaker. Ailsa sat back and listened to an Arab woman on the radio. Singing, obviously, of sadness. The café stilled. Men swivelled in their chairs towards the loudspeaker, looking up with devout, innocent expressions. It was not a music Ailsa understood. No clear shape, no sense of progression. All melismas and sobbing ornamentations, repetitions with variations of long complaints, so it seemed, expressed with luscious melancholy, in waves that rose and broke upon one another, soaked with desire, until the unseen radio audience cried out in frantic rapture and the men here in the Café Grec joined them, addressing compliments to the loudspeaker. And again they fell into a trance, as the powerful voice took up where it had left off. The unseen Arab woman flaunted her ache. And perhaps she was saying, this is how things stand behind the veil, perpetual longing: how would you like to share it? Heartbroken, abandoned, the voice asserted the sensual desire forbidden by Muslim culture between man and woman. Which all the men in the café heard with unembarrassed ecstasy.
Within half a century, Ailsa thought, I don’t suppose there’ll be any more veils or head scarves in Egypt. Or in the world. Women will be full citizens, they’ll enjoy equal rights just as we do, she inwardly informed the patrons of the café. They’ll walk free and proud as I do, a citizen, the peer of any man. You can’t stop us.
The prow of the coffee pot appeared at her elbow. No, oh no more coffee, thank you! She ought to leave now. Well, just a smidgeon. And why not? The Air Force would do its best to prevent her straying again over the line into the real Egypt, if only in the persons of Joe and Nia,
her beloved policemen. She’d linger just a little while. Nia was spending the whole day at the kindergarten: plenty of time. Ailsa felt, whether rightly or wrongly, that the European proprietor protected her, veiled her, with his impressive, civilised courtesy, against the insolence of the other diners.
The Britisher, scraping his chair back, took his leave of his Egyptian companions, who lavished on him many courtesies and insistences that he stay, repaid by promises on his part to return and enjoy their company longer next time, Insh’Allah. You could read it all in the extravagant gestures. She couldn’t help smiling. There was all the time in the world here and friendship between man and man was everything. Ailsa had seen young men walking hand in hand or with arms loosely embracing one another’s shoulders. As he neared Ailsa’s table, the Englishman smiled and paused. ‘Enjoying the coffee? Ah, and I see you’ve been trying the sweets. Frightfully good, aren’t they? What do you think of our Oum Koulsoum?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The singer. She’s a legend here. The voice of Egypt, they call her.‘
‘That is Oum Koulsoum? Isn’t she coming here soon? To the concert?’
‘She’ll be mobbed.’ He perched on the edge of a chair, offered a cigarette. ‘Oum Koulsoum is what the Arabs call asil – the real thing, authentic. Child of the fellaheen – a bint il-riif, daughter of the countryside – that means, true Egyptian, the deep Muslim values of Egypt, singing in the ancient, traditional music. It’s very intricate, technically difficult – no printed score, it’s all improvisation.’
It was a love song, he said: Come here my darling and see what havoc your eyes have wrought. That kind of thing. But more than that. What they were hearing was the slow burn of Egypt’s wrath with the West.
‘How, if it’s just a love song?’
‘Well, I suppose it’s Egypt that’s betrayed and scorned and enslaved.’
‘I thought Egyptian women were supposed to be not seen and not heard in public.’
Oum Koulsoum was the exception that proved the rule, he said. And sat down: ‘Nobby Bowen.’
Joe wouldn’t like this one bit.
Nobby had gone native. He lived in the Greek quarter, in a flat rented from his widowed sister-in-law, Leila, who with her little girl, Heba, occupied the ground floor. He’d married a Cairene, a Coptic Christian. A renegade toff with a social conscience, a yen for adventure and a distaste for protocol, Nobby had insisted on joining the lower ranks when he was called up, learning Arabic and following in the footsteps of his hero, Lawrence of Arabia. He wanted to live amongst real people, in the real Egypt.
She couldn’t help herself. She said, ‘Oh, so do I.’ And immediately regretted it.
He was impressed and showed it.
So men could dodge the system, Ailsa thought, as he talked. A few were prepared to go their own way, in broad daylight, living in two worlds. Men could but not women. A big talker, Nobby hardly needed to be fed with questions. He was pals with several chaps who’d gone native: two older NCOs had been here since the end of the Great War. They’d married sisters – and there was Jim, a Guardsman.
‘But don’t the British authorities object? Doesn’t it breach their protocols?’
‘To tell you the truth, they’ve been jolly decent and fair-minded about it. Basically there’s a hands-off attitude. Of course it would be different for a woman. Unthinkable.’
‘Everything’s different for women. And what about your wife?’
He had six glamorous sisters-in-law. Imagine him stepping out with seven gorgeous ladies on his arm! And all but one in search of a British husband. He had to admit, it was sometimes a pleasure to escape to the RAF and his pals, and then escape back again to his family.
And the food! Out of this world! He advised her to try Melokhia, soup traditionally made by peasants but the Pharaohs had dined on it. The most fragrant bread in the world. Stuffed grape leaves – cold fried fish with anchovy sauce – roast pigeons with cumin and lime. Apricot pudding – samak and sherbert. Simple food made mouth-watering with spices. He mocked the British with their condensed milk and canned peaches. For them food could only be wholesome if it was tasteless. Not that he looked down on his countrymen.
Oh, but you do, Ailsa thought. Especially on the women. You can’t help it. Your public school arrogance. His face was boyishly eager, with china-blue eyes that darted here and there to make sure he missed nothing of the life around him. ‘Yes, well,’ she said primly, ‘we’re conservative because we don’t want dysentery, or worse.’ He caught the mild reproof in her voice. But in her heart Ailsa was thinking she’d go to the market in Ish: sample these luscious foods.
They spoke of the boy demonstrator. The British would be chased out sooner rather than later for we’d made common cause with the Pashas who bled the fellaheen dry, Nobby said. Bevin counted on the Egyptian factions cancelling each other out – the Wafd government and the Islamic Egyptian brotherhood, the Commies and army officers and the pashas. But the writing was on the wall. And the reason for that – the precipitant – was Israel. Wave after wave of upheaval had hit the Arab world with the creation of Israel. It was reinforced by the Palestinian refugees flooding the Middle East. They made the injustice impossible to ignore. Nobby had a friend in Ish, a remarkable woman, who’d made it her business to find jobs and digs for them. These exiles had nothing. They’d been driven out of Haifa and Jaffa and from hundreds of villages liquidated by the Israeli army. Their families had been murdered or dispersed. The refugees spoke to their brother Arabs without need of words. At the same time, the British were keeping bloodsuckers in feudal power in Egypt – those same leeches who’d profiteered from the war against Israel and ensured that the army had useless out-of-date weapons. The treaty Britain had forced on Egypt would be torn up. If not this year, next.
Ailsa told him what Nia called the Treaty Road: the Cheaty Road. He laughed aloud.
‘Well well,’ he said, ‘it’s good to meet a free spirit, Mrs Roberts. I hope we meet again. Bukra fil mish-mish. Have you met that phrase? Mish-mish means apricot. Or apricot-tree. When the apricot comes into flower. Which it never does, of course. So: tomorrow never comes. A relaxed attitude to time is taken here. Europeans need to adjust. But I’d best be on my way even so.’
Ailsa let Nobby escort her to the French Square, where he met his sister-in-law and her daughter, about the same age as Nia. No time to speak to them. No time to ask Nobby, Do you know Mona Jacobs? Ailsa caught the next bus back to El-Marah by the skin of her teeth.
Irene came haring out of her house. There’d been an incident, she said, taking Ailsa’s arm. They’d been so worried. Had Ailsa been caught up in it?
She shook her head; smiled.
Irene yelped: ‘What’s that blood on your blouse? Have you hurt yourself?’
‘No, I’m fine. Just a tiny graze on my finger but it kind-of got everywhere. Would you mind picking up Nia, Irene, when you fetch Christopher from kindergarten? I need to … wash my blouse. And would you mind perhaps not mentioning to Joe that I went off by myself? He’d only worry, quite needlessly.’
Irene smelt a rat, of course she did. Luckily Chalkie had gone off to the camp as soon as he’d put Irene and Hedwig on the bus, so he’d have no idea how long Ailsa had been absent without leave. Irene knew far more than she let on and one felt her disapproval though her face maintained its politely neutral expression. Disapproval, or was it fearfulness? Irene had never misbehaved in her life, not out of integrity, Ailsa thought, for the woman was an awful coward, but from fear of consequences. But she surprised Ailsa by saying, just before she went off with Tim in his pushchair, to fetch the other children, ‘Did you catch up with the lady? Was it the person you thought?’ There was some itch in Irene that made her curious to know about deviancy. A gossipy streak that gave her insight.
‘It wasn’t Mrs Jacobs, was it?’ she said. ‘No, I thought not.’
The first thing Ailsa did when she escaped was to pull off the blouse. The boy’s b
lood had dried brown. The armpits were drenched in sweat. Ailsa stood in her petticoat and washed the garment out, rubbing and rinsing till the stains didn’t show. She hung it on the line, where in the furnace heat of mid-afternoon it would dry in ten minutes. All the while she cudgeled her brain for ways to get to the concert either with or without Joe’s knowledge and permission. Why not just come out with it straight; take him along? Tell him the Websters were going: make it a foursome? Joe had a passionate reverence for classical music. She could explain that it was for the music that she was going, not for the musician. I’ll see you, Mona, she said aloud, and that’s that.
9
Nia sat beneath a sunshade in the lido, a glass covered area with tables and chairs on bare wooden decking at the top of the ship. A combo played old-time melodies on a raised area – a silver-haired Perry Como look-alike slackening the passion in songs that had always struck Nia as scintillating: ‘Under my Skin’, ‘Making Whoopee’. Poppy, with a tranquil, dreamy expression, swam round a small pool sunk in the deck. A kitschy green statue of a mournful nymph drooped over the water.
Poppy looked up: ‘What time is she coming? Should I be getting out?’
‘Oh, not for ages. Go on basking.’
Into Suez Page 12