The Girl with Braided Hair

by Rasha Adly

  His trip to Konya had not been just a vacation or an experience after which he could go back to the way he was before; it had been the gateway to a new, purer world. The fireplace of faith needed to be stoked, from time to time, with the logs of purification: he sat meditating for hours at a time, alone with only God for company. His rituals of worship were conducted in a corner of his house in a seaside town, with windows all overlooking the sea and the open sky. The more of himself he liberated, the lighter and freer and happier he felt. Sufi tenets preach primarily the liberation from the self’s desires, not repressing those desires, for repression burdens the self, and the heavier the burden on the self, the body correspondingly suffers and with it the soul, which is no way to put an end to the conflict. In the end, evil will release the fetters that tie you down.

  He had grown up in a moderate family, not overly religious. He had only prayed on Fridays, and that because his father made him go to mosque with him. He only fasted in Ramadan because it was impolite to be eating in public in the holy month. He had grown up hearing people saying the same old thing: “Pray or you’ll go to Hell”; “God’s punishment is terrible”; “Hellfire is waiting for you”; “You will bring God’s wrath down on your head.” These are the words that imams, families, siblings, and friends use to exhort others to obey God’s commandments; but these words did not bring him closer to God but quite the opposite. He had found himself unable to worship the Lord out of fear of punishment, but he found it quite easy to worship, speak to, and approach Him out of love. That was why, when that man had whispered in his ear, “Love God and He will love you; come closer to Him and He will come closer to you; He is the best of lovers and the closest of friends,” he had thought hard on these words and worked hard to make them come true, based on the central tenets of Sufism: obedience to God and worship of Him out of divine love, not out of fear of Him and His vengeance. Love opens all doors: it inspires worshipers to purify themselves and liberate themselves from sins and transgressions, and so it was that he found his path in love.

  It was true that he had not gone deep into the Sufi orders, nor had he officially joined any order as such, but he was always reading about and researching Sufism. He was especially drawn to the Mevlevi order founded by the poet Jalal al-Din al-Rumi, better known only as the Rumi. He had written his best work in worship of the Divine Presence, where he had called upon his students and followers to listen to the melodies of a melancholy flute and dance to its tune.

  When Sherif left Yasmine and went home, he found himself pulling on the wide white skirt he had bought in Konya, and putting on the tall felt hat of the dervishes. Then, to the tune of the reed flute, he spun through the kingdom of God, calling and praising the Lord, eyes fixed on the distant horizon.

  16

  A colleague of Yasmine’s who was also a member of the Scientific Institute had secured her an appointment with the secretary-general of the Institute, the contents of which had been devoured by fire on a black, dismal day during the 2011 revolution: all the documents that the invader had been careful to pen; all the information and the discoveries they had collected so assiduously; the treasures they had found and deposited with such care in a safe place; the information that a great number of the most skilled and competent scientists and artists had worked on. How could the people whose homeland it was so casually set fire to it, as if all these priceless treasures were not theirs?

  She was on her way to meet the director at Beit al-Sinnari, a historic house preserved as part of Cairo’s heritage, in the district of Sayyida Zeinab, in a cul-de-sac at the end of a narrow alley named after Gaspard Monge, one of the artists who had worked for the French Campaign. This was the temporary headquarters of the Scientific Institute, and the temporary home for the Institute’s collection, what had survived the fire without damage, until the Institute was rebuilt and the fire-damaged books and manuscripts restored.

  She parked on the street close to the sidewalk, as the lane was too narrow to allow her car to go any further. She found the house without having to ask anyone where it was. It stood there tall and proud, a fortress against the ravages of time. It had a large footprint: the central courtyard around which the rooms were built boasted a great fountain. The house itself was composed of several buildings comprising several wings: Yasmine felt very small standing in the courtyard beneath the towering walls.

  “Welcome, welcome,” the director greeted her. She told him of the reason for her visit briefly and without embellishment, keeping the greatest secret jealously to herself. He adjusted his glasses and said somberly, “Unfortunately, what befell the Institute is a disaster in the truest sense of the word. We are making every effort to restore these things and keep the losses to a minimum. This is a disaster equaled only by the destruction of the Alexandria Library in the Ptolemaic Era.”

  “It’s certainly a great loss,” Yasmine commiserated, nodding.

  “Egypt will never be able to make up for what has been lost with the burning of the Institute. We had over two hundred thousand documents in its library, manuscripts, ancient books, and rare maps. Only twenty-five thousand survived. These documents were the memory of Egypt since 1798, including an original copy of the Description of Egypt, which burned along with other treasures. Other losses include most of the documents that were over two hundred years old, rare printed books from Europe of which only a few copies exist in the entire world, the books written by foreign explorers and travelers, and copies of scientific periodicals since 1920.”

  “I knew that manuscripts were lost,” Yasmine said, “but what about the books?”

  “We had forty thousand books in the Institute’s library. The most important of them was an atlas of ancient Indian art. There was an atlas of Upper and Lower Egypt drawn in 1952, and a German atlas of Egypt and Ethiopia dating back to 1842. There was Le Sou Atlas, which was once part of the collection of Prince Muhammad Ali Tawfiq, former crown prince of Egypt. That’s one of the reasons why international museum and library experts had valued the library of the Egyptian Scientific Institute higher than the Library of Congress.”

  “What’s more,” Yasmine cut in, “the chaos in the country at the time of the fire was the same as what happened over two hundred years ago. I see it as one of those crises of culture and civilization when everything falls apart.” She mused, “It wasn’t just a crisis in Egypt, but in the East as a whole. Just like what happened then.”

  “When Napoleon came to Egypt,” he said, “he formed a council of consultants composed of Egyptian scientists, aristocrats, and high-ranking imams. A similar type of council was formed after the January 2011 Revolution, and it was during this council’s rule that the Institute burned down. It’s a historical correspondence between rejection of change and welcoming it, suspicion and apathy, which resembles the Egyptian attitude toward the French Campaign and Bonaparte’s presence in Egypt.” Clearly engrossed in his subject, he said, “Abdel-Rahman al-Jabarti, the ancient historian, wrote a detailed note in his diary describing it, which was published in ‘Aja’ib al-athar f-il-tarajim w-al-akhbar, or The Marvelous Compositions of Biographies and Events, describing the Battle of Imbaba, which took place on the seventh of the Islamic month of Safar in ah 1213, between the French Army and the Egyptian Army, which was led by the Mamluk princes. Foreigners sometimes call it the Battle of the Pyramids.”

  He continued, “The fighting went on for three-quarters of an hour. Then came defeat. The Egyptian subjects rioted and protested, going off in the direction of the town. They poured into the town in waves, all in deep fear and trepidation, expecting to be killed. The sounds of weeping and wailing rent the air, and prayers to God to spare them the horrors of this terrible day. The women were screaming at the top of their lungs from the houses. On the Tuesday, the tenth of that same month, that is to say, only three days later, the French crossed over to the shores of Egypt, and walked through the marketplaces with no weapons and no aggression; on the contrary, they laughed and joked with t
he people, and bought their essentials at the highest prices. When the common people saw this, they warmed to them, and came to trust them. They brought sweets out to them, and various types of pastries, eggs, chickens, and sundry foodstuffs.

  “That’s what Egyptians are like,” he said. Then he smiled. “Yes, they have the kindest hearts in the world. They can welcome even an invader and only later revolt against them. But let’s get back to the subject at hand. To tell the truth, in my tenure at the Institute, I saw no trace of any paintings: the artwork of the artists of the French Campaign are hanging in museums all around the world. What’s more, the Institute has moved to various locations over the years: was the painting transferred with its collection, then, from place to place?”

  He got up and went to a bookshelf. “Look what al-Jabarti says about this,” he said, taking down The Marvelous Compositions of Biographies and Events. He opened it and began to read aloud: “And they demolished several princes’ houses, and took their ruins and the marble used therein for their own buildings. They devoted a certain alleyway, Nasiriya Alley, to scientists, astronomers, men of knowledge, mathematicians and their like such as architects, men who understood form, ornamentation, patterns and blueprints, painters and scribes, accountants and builders. The new street and all its houses were placed at their disposal, such as the house of Qasem Bey, the Prince of Hajj known as Abu Youssef, and the houses of Hassan al-Kashef the Circassian, both old and new, and they opened the house of Ibrahim Katkhudha al-Sinnari to a group of the painters who depicted everything, including one who depicted the imams, each standing alone, in a circle, and other important men, and the paintings were hung.”

  “By ‘depiction,’ she clarified, “he means ‘painting’?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this painting he mentions, of the imams of al-Azhar who joined the Majlis Istishari, the council of consultants to Napoleon, is a collection of portraits of Sheikh Suleiman al-Fayumi, Sheikh al-Bakri, Sheikh Sharqawi, the one at the Musée des Archives Nationales in Paris? I’ve seen it there.”

  He sat down in a chair and went on speaking. “This is how the location of the Egyptian Scientific Institute was chosen. It was founded by Napoleon in Egypt to rival the French Scientific Institute in its collection of elite scientists and thinkers to produce information and research and publications that would assist Napoleon in running the colony. As al-Jabarti tells us, he chose the Sayyida Zeinab area, where a number of luxurious, abandoned Mamluk palaces were located. The most important ones belonged to Hassan al-Kashef Bey, Qasem Abu Youssef Bey, Ali Youssef, and Ibrahim Katkhudha al-Sinnari, which is the one we’re in now.”

  Her eyes shone and she looked around the house with renewed interest. “Really? This house?”

  “That’s right. After the place was made ready, on 20 August 1798, Bonaparte commanded a number of men to live here: Gaspard Monge, a mathematician and a pioneer of perspective in painting, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Caffarelli du Falga, who specialized in painting Napoleon’s campaigns and conquests—he accompanied him whenever he went to wage war or conquer a country to paint and document them at Napoleon’s command.”

  “I’ve seen Caffarelli’s work,” Yasmine nodded. “My favorite was his painting of Napoleon in Jaffa.”

  The man stuffed a pipe with fragrant tobacco and lit it. “I don’t usually smoke at work,” he said, “but talking on this subject requires a pipe.” He took a puff and went on. “Napoleon gave orders to found the Egypt Scientific Institute and select its members. It was divided into four sections: Mathematics, Physics (meaning natural history and medicine), Political Economy, and Arts and Letters. It is noted on the gravestone of Pierre Jacotin, cartographer and surveyor, that he was a member of the Egyptian Scientific Institute during the time of the French Campaign.”

  “That only goes to show how important this work was, and how important the Institute was.”

  “Yes, definitely. The Institute may have been built by the French, but the primary beneficiaries of it have always been Egypt and the Egyptians. Even some of the prominent imams of al-Azhar and eminent citizens paid visits to the Institute and used its extensive library, which the French welcomed.” He sighed. “The old seat of the Institute remained abandoned until the British consul in Egypt managed to reestablish the Egyptian Scientific Institute to play the scientific role so integral to the Institute’s function. Another British professor, named Henry Abbott, together with the French Orientalist Prisse d’Avennes, founded the Egyptian Literary Association to perform the same cultural role that the Egyptian Scientific Institute had. And on May 6, 1856, Khedive Muhammad Said Pasha declared the Institute officially reestablished in Alexandria.” He puffed out a long plume of pipe smoke and went on. “In 1880, expert archaeologists restored Beit al-Sinnari, the original seat of the Institute, and it came back to this building, resuming its cultural activities.”

  She drank in his every word, wide-eyed. “It came full circle. This house having been the seat of the Scientific Institute at its inception, when the Campaign came here, and again when the Institute was moved from Alexandria to Cairo, and then again when the collection came back here after the fire!”

  “That’s true.”

  She allowed him to speak until he had finished his historical monologue: finally, she pulled out her iPad and showed him the painting. He scrutinized it carefully. “I’ve never seen this painting before,” he said. “I don’t think it’s part of our collection.” He added, still looking, “But what makes you so sure that it’s one of ours?”

  “The painting came to our lab from the Gezira Museum,” said Yasmine, “one of the damaged paintings that were brought there after the fire at the Scientific Institute. The odd thing is that the painting is damaged, yes, but definitely not at all by fire. It was improperly stored in an enclosed, humid place for a long time.”

  “I assure you,” he told her, “this painting is not part of our collection. In any case, we would not have let such a distinguished piece of art deteriorate to the state it appears to be in. Although, since you say the damage is due to improper storage, it might have been in the Institute’s storage rooms. You might drop by and have a word with the storage supervisor.”

  She took her leave and thanked him warmly for his hospitality. He had been most forthcoming with his information and had not minded her asking questions; on the contrary, he seemed to need no prompting to open up the treasure troves, storehouses, and caverns of the Institute’s memory to place everything in it on display.

  The storage supervisor was in a room a little way from the office; unlike his boss, he greeted her with a curt nod. When she showed him the painting, he said in a tone that left no room for dissent, “No, this painting wasn’t in our storage. There were no paintings in there.”

  Cairo: November 1798

  He waited until she was out of sight, the girl whose innocence and childish smile had touched his heart. Then he went on his way, down streets and byways, contemplating the features of the people he had come to paint. All the Egyptians had something in common, he noticed, however different they looked: it was the pure smile that lit up their faces.

  The Jewish quarter; the Armenian quarter; churches forbidden to ring their bells, synagogues with squared-off courtyards, churches with high domes, wooden buildings, the fish market, the caravansaries for rice trading, linen trading, and oil trading, the tailors’ street, the Sudanese alley, the Mosque of Abul-Ela, and the mule stop, a spacious square where men and boys stood with beasts of burden, each occupied with washing and bathing his mount, feeding them, and decorating their saddles with velvet covers, then hanging bells around their necks. The mules preened with a sense of importance, and stood tall and proud.

  He stood there for a long time, contemplating this strange world, pondering the special relationship between these carters and their beasts. It was something deeper, he thought, than just a livelihood for them. He asked a carter to take him to his house.

  “Where?” the man a
sked.

  “Beit al-Sinnari.”

  The man helped him up onto the mule’s velvet-saddled back. With a thick hand, he slapped the animal’s back to urge it into a gallop. “Beit al-Sinnari, the one Napoleon took over with all the men who do odd things inside?” he asked.

  Alton chuckled and shook his head. “Odd things?” he repeated.

  “Yes, they say that a lot of men live there and do odd things, like summon demons, God help us, to share Napoleon’s conquests and his new lands.” The man, feeling more comfortable with no interruption, went on. “They say he summoned a demon and made him drive the ship that flies in the air. He let them down, and it fell down on everyone’s heads, and, but for the grace of God, would have killed many.”

  “Hmm.” Alton smiled, not feeling it worth the effort to undertake changing the man’s mind and disabusing him of these notions, for how could a man who thought like that absorb his explanations?

  “I’ve taken a lot of relatives and acquaintances to Beit al-Sinnari. They were a generous household, they always tipped well. What an odd world this is! I wonder where they are now? Ah well, here we are.”

  Alton disembarked and handed the man a quarter-bara. The man’s face broke into a broad smile to see the coin, after which he whipped up his mount and trotted away. Alton pushed open the oval wooden door with a friendly greeting to the gardeners inside who took care of the courtyard. He walked in, through the broad corridor floored with mazut, solid bitumen, and entered a large room where Gaspard Monge and another scientist were engrossed in an experiment. “Good evening,” he said.