The Girl with Braided Hair

by Rasha Adly

  “So,” he said. “What have you found out?”

  “Not,” she matched his playful tone, “until you tell me what you’re doing here.”

  “I needed a break. It’s been a hard few months at work.”

  “But why Paris in this miserable weather?”

  His smile was his only answer. She wanted him to throw caution to the winds and tell her straight out, “I had to come, I missed you, I’ve thought only of your face since you left, you’re the only one I think of, you’re the only one in my heart.” He didn’t say a thing, but there were other ways to express these words.

  Their bodies melted together in the soft glow of the lamplight. They sank down together, eyes closed, fingers interlacing, letting go only to clasp again desperately. Their lips met, parted, met again. Whispered words, endearments, moans. The world erupted into bliss. There was nothing more to say: in this moment, a single word would have been too much.

  Afterward, he stood, adjusting his clothing and putting his coat back on. He said, voice still rough, “I’ll wait for you in the hotel lobby. Get dressed and we’ll go to dinner.”

  “Now? I’m tired, I was just going to go to bed.”

  “It’s only ten o’clock, and we’re in Paris.”

  “Why not eat here?” she suggested. “Look out. History and beauty around us everywhere.” She pushed the curtain aside to show him the view: the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, and the winding roads. “Isn’t it enough?”

  “Of course it is,” he said, “or it would be if I were staying indefinitely. Darling, I’m only here for two days. I’ll wait for you downstairs.” He left the room.

  She went through a tumult of emotions after he left: joy, bemusement, shock. Then she remembered that he was waiting for her and that she had to get ready. What to wear? She had never wanted to look beautiful and sexy more than she did at that moment. She reached for a dress she had brought with her to attend the closing ceremony of the conference. It was long and black and completely open at the back, revealing her pale skin. Should she wear her hair up or down? She tried piling it up onto her head and pinning it in place with a rhinestone pin: that looked good. She pulled on glossy tights and a pair of high heels, and made herself up like a woman going on a date with her lover. She put on her black coat, and a perfume that she loved.

  He smiled and his eyes sparkled admiringly when she came down. He put an arm around her and led her into a limousine provided by the hotel that was waiting for them. She sat close to him, engulfed in his energy and surrounded by his scent of perfume and tobacco. She laid her weary head on his shoulder. The rain was falling down in sheets, and her heart was beating out of her chest. She wanted the ride to last forever, or time to stop; but every dream ends with waking.

  Ten o’clock in Paris means that only the main thoroughfares are still busy. The other streets were filled with silence and calm. In a dark, deserted street, the driver stopped outside a bookstore. She looked around: perhaps there was a café or restaurant she hadn’t noticed? But there was nothing. He took her hand and opened the door, leading her bemused into the bookstore. “Sherif, what’s this? It’s a bookstore.”

  “Yes. You like bookstores, don’t you?”

  “I do, but what bookstore is open at this hour? What’s going on?” She added, “I’m not dressed for a bookstore! Who wears a cocktail dress to a. . . . ?” She looked around. “You said we were having dinner out. . . . Are they serving dinner in bookstores now?”

  He stood there, calm and cool, which only made her more agitated. She looked around again, casting about for any clue. Her eyes fell on the cover of a book. It was a new novel by her favorite French author, Patrick Modiano. In spite of herself, she picked it up and distractedly leafed through it.

  He smiled. “Now,” he said, “are you still mad at me for bringing you here?”

  He took the book and replaced it on the shelf. “Let’s go.” Taking her by the hand, he led her down a long corridor ending in another passageway. Along one wall were bookshelves.

  “Wait!” she said. “I wanted to buy that book.”

  Ignoring her, he stopped in front of a shelf, pulled a book toward him, then replaced it. The bookshelves immediately parted; he took her by the hand, they stepped through, and it closed quietly behind them once more.

  She walked behind him in a state of shock, only coming back to herself when he invited her to sit down. Purple, green, and orange spotlights flashed; house music pounded so loudly she could barely hear him. Waiters came and went with drinks; the dance floor was packed with couples pressed together, some kissing, in a world of their own. The strangest thing was that such a staid and sedate bookshop could conceal such a noisy and vibrant world. “How?” she managed to yell over the music.

  “This is one of the top ten hidden bars in the world!” he yelled back.

  “Why hidden?”

  “It helps keep it mysterious and attract customers,” he explained, moving closer to make himself heard. “It’s a throwback to Prohibition in the US, but of course nowadays they don’t have to fear law enforcement.”

  “We could have gone somewhere quieter,” she yelled. “I never knew you liked cloak-and-dagger stuff!”

  “I figured it would be exciting for a change,” he said. “Instead of a door, you pick up a book, or dial a secret number in a phone booth. The first time I went to a secret bar was in Hong Kong. A friend took me to a bar hidden in a store that sold used umbrellas. You had to open an umbrella to activate the secret door.”

  “Does this place have a name?”

  “Lulu Whitesmith, after an African-American lady who ran a brothel.”

  She looked around her, frankly impressed. “When did you plan all this?”

  “I didn’t plan anything. Fate plans everything.” She was aware that he was an absolute fatalist, and that this was the source of the equanimity with which he took blows and setbacks. “Have you heard about the butterfly effect?”

  “Butterfly effect?” she repeated, shaking her head. “No, I haven’t.”

  “It’s the theory that if a butterfly flaps its wings in one place, it can result in hurricanes and volcanic eruptions on the other side of the globe.”

  She gave him a slightly mocking smile. “Really?”

  “It’s a metaphor for chaos theory. Edward Lorenz made it famous. It basically says that every big event that happens in our lives resulted from some very small thing that happened to us a long time ago.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  He lit a cigarette. “A simple example. I got very high grades when I graduated from school, enough to qualify me for a top college. My dad wouldn’t allow me to let the opportunity go to waste, or that was what he said, and he made me study architecture. I graduated and started working. We have a bunch of consultants in baroque art and architecture that we always use, like Dr. Khalil. One time he couldn’t do the job and recommended you and that was how we met—you remember he introduced us at that conference?”

  She gave him a sly smile. “Of course I do.”

  “Look at the way things lead to other things. If I hadn’t gotten top grades, I wouldn’t have gone to the Faculty of Engineering. I would never have been in this field, so I would never have met Dr. Khalil, and if he’d been available, he wouldn’t have recommended you to us.” She was still mulling over what he had said when he added, “And I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you and not known how to fall back out of love.”

  She was flustered; she was reassured; she was overjoyed. He had confessed his love again. What could she say to him? What was the appropriate thing to say to make up for all the pain and defeat she had put him through? Perhaps, “I love you too, I never stopped loving you.” Would that be enough?

  He smiled; they chatted a while; they laughed; they were filled with joy. The evening passed like a dream, and he said good night at her door with a hug. Embracing him was like having everything in the world she wanted in her arms, filling her with warmth and tend
erness, and what was more, the security she had never had.

  *

  When he turned on his phone the next morning, he found a text from her. Gone to the conference, will call as soon as

  I’m done.

  He was disappointed; he would have loved to have shared the Paris morning with her. He sat in the hotel lobby, drinking his coffee and reading the newspaper. Then he decided to take a walk.

  At noon, Yasmine’s phone rang. “I’m ready to show you the lab results.”

  “They’re out already?”

  “Yes. I just got the report and there are amazing surprises.”

  She raced out of the conference hall and hailed a taxi. On her way there, she called Sherif. “I’m on my way to the Musée de l’Armée. I have an appointment with the director of the Military Archives. He’s had the painting analyzed and I’m going to get the results.”

  “Shall I come with you?” he asked.

  “The man’s an eccentric. He wouldn’t allow you to be there. To him, every conversation is a military secret and classified. If I hadn’t been introduced to him by a close friend of his, he wouldn’t even have agreed to help me.”

  Andrea received her with a polite smile. He handed her the report to read. She skimmed down to the conclusion:

  The colors in the painting of the Oriental girl match the colors used in the paintings of Alton Germain, and the canvas it is painted on is the same type and characteristics as that used in the artist’s other known works. As in this painting, the artist was not in the habit of signing his work, only initialing it.

  Based on all of the above, this constitutes a positive confirmation that the painting is the work of Alton Germain.

  She felt her shoulders relax and her face melt into a smile. “It is him,” she breathed.

  “Yes,” the man responded, “just as you expected. Your hunch was right. I’d bet the girl he painted was his sweetheart. He painted her and hid her away from everyone’s eyes, not to hang in a museum, but only on the walls of his heart.”

  Her eyes sparkled. “Yes, I think so too. Not only because her face found its way into more than one of his paintings, but because there was something in this portrait that that made me feel he was in love with his subject. It was in his brushstrokes, in the way he painted her.” She paused. “But it was strange, a French artist falling for an ordinary Egyptian girl. What attracted him to her?”

  Andrea gave a sly smile. Getting up from behind his desk, he came around to sit opposite her as he had done before. “The simple, innocent girl you’re referring to is the same girl who was the lover of Napoleon Bonaparte.”

  “Bonaparte’s. . . ?” she stammered, her eyes betraying her shock.

  “Yes. It’s the same girl. Zeinab, daughter of Sheikh al-Bakri, the Azharite imam, the one I told you about earlier.” Watching her staring, he went on, “When Napoleon learned that the girl fell in love with the artist, he was furious. How could the artist have dared to presume to love a woman who belonged to Napoleon? That was one thing. The other thing was, when he saw his works and found that Germain had painted him as a heartless, merciless thug or a cowardly weakling, that was the final straw. He had his paintings expunged from the Description of Egypt, and banned them from being hung in museums.”

  The words fell upon her ears like a thunderbolt. An Egyptian girl, of no particular importance, with two rivals fighting over her, one of them the most powerful man in the world and the other a painter? One with an overabundance of military power and a mind preoccupied with strategy and military maneuvers, and another filled with the sensitivity of a true artist—what could ever bring them together to want the same woman, no, just a girl with her

  braids and striped gallabiya?

  Andrea handed her the painting and the report and they shook hands. She thanked him profusely for his assistance. Before she left, he stopped her and went to his bookshelf. He pulled out a book and handed it to her. “I recommend you read it. I think you’ll learn a lot. It has answers to a lot of your questions about Napoleon’s relationship to the girl.”

  All the way home to the hotel, she was preoccupied with one question: who was Zeinab al-Bakri that she had captivated not one, but two men of such stature?

  28

  Cairo: June 1800

  Kléber’s death at the hands of Suleiman al-Halabi reinvigorated the Egyptian Resistance. The assassination of the supreme French commander gave them hope that they could do even more, that the myth of the invincible French invader was on its way to oblivion. At the same time, the French contingent was weakened and demoralized by the death of their leader. A grand military funeral was held for him. His coffin was draped with the French flag, and a military march played as a carriage drew it slowly through the streets, followed by rows of officers, soldiers, and the men of the Scientific Campaign. The populace turned out in the streets to view the funeral of the French commander on his way to his final resting place, with triumph in their gloating eyes. At the same time that Kléber was being buried to the tune of a military march, his assassin, Suleiman al-Halabi, was impaled on a spear, having been sentenced to this horrible death. His body was strung up in the city’s largest square to be seen by everyone who came and went, and people crowded beneath the body, cheering for him and throwing flowers.

  General Menou was appointed in Kléber’s stead. He was less brutal than those who had gone before him, politically minded and more liberal. In any case, the Campaign was breathing its last. Agreements and treaties were signed between both parties, culminating in the Campaign leaving Egyptian soil. Life returned to Egypt, to its inhabitants, streets and thoroughfares, to its skies, its earth, its Nile. The invader was gathering up the remnants of itself to leave, after two years pressing down on them and cutting off their air. Since he had come into the country, every door had locked its misery in behind it, the streets had darkened, and bodies and severed heads and human remains floated to the surface of the Nile. In the night, in the darkened dungeons of the Citadel, the screams and groans of innocents rang out, imprisoned without charge and forgotten in its depths. It was time for a new day to dawn; it was time for the houses of Egypt to open their doors and windows to the sun. At last, there were no circulars posted on the doors and walls bearing rigid and strict laws and long lists of prohibitions. The printing presses no longer printed French newspapers, their front pages emblazoned with images of people killed and hanged for contravening military decrees. Most importantly, the French soldiers no longer sauntered through the streets in their dismal uniforms.

  The Egyptians celebrated and exchanged congratulations. Trays bearing juices, beverages, rice pudding, and delicacies of all kinds were passed around. Women let out ululations, taking off their black clothing and donning bright colors. The wealthy slaughtered camels and sheep, handing out gifts of meat and holding banquets. Others took to avenging themselves and exacting punishment against those who had supported the Campaign and stood by the French: the merchants who had had dealings with them, the judges who ruled in their favor, the Azharite imams who had failed to condemn them, the rich landowners who had had business dealings with them, the women who had offered themselves to the men of the Campaign—even the café boys were not safe from those who wanted to settle scores.

  And Zeinab was Napoleon’s lover. What would they do to her, an Egyptian girl who made free with her honor and accepted the position of mistress to General Bonaparte? It was she who had gone around proudly in the streets with her face unveiled, as if to say, “I am Napoleon’s mistress: who would dare reproach me?”

  No one cared to find out the truth of her relationship with him, whether or not he had ever touched her. The mere fact that Napoleon’s carriage had stopped outside the home of Sheikh al-Bakri to take Zeinab to his debauched parties was damning evidence of her crimes. Zeinab was not an ordinary Egyptian girl—she was the daughter of Naqib al-Ashraf (the Head of the Prophet’s Descendants) and a high-ranking imam of al-Azhar—and so her crime was multiplied, its
punishment redoubled.

  29

  He was waiting for her in the hotel lobby. His eyes held the expression she recognized when he was upset with her, but his face softened when he found her as thrilled as a little girl who has been given a new dress on her birthday. It was all he needed. She took off her gloves and coat and unwrapped her scarf from around her neck, everything she had discovered bursting out of her. “My hunch was right! It’s the same artist! I found him! And I found out an amazing secret. The girl in the painting, the one he was in love with, she’s the same Zeinab al-Bakri who was Napoleon’s lover!” Seeing a passing waiter, she ordered a coffee. “Imagine, an ordinary girl from Egypt, with two such important men fighting over her.”

  “Well, she was descended from Cleopatra,” he said.

  She gave him a shy smile. Finally, she could relax. It was as if she had been running without pause since she had set eyes on the painting, desperate to uncover its secret.

  He gazed at her admiringly, as though seeing her for the first time. “I’m really impressed by your perseverance. Anyone else wouldn’t have looked so hard into that painting, and I know it wasn’t easy: you kept running into brick walls.”

  “What can I say?” she shrugged. “I love my work.”

  “Now that you’ve found out, what are you going to do with the information?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  His eyebrows went up in astonishment. “So there’s a chance we could have lunch?”

  She laughed. “That’s for sure.”

  They went out and she pulled her coat tightly around her, as they walked together under his umbrella. He put his arm around her, and she felt warmth spread through her. The scene reminded her of Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day. The painting depicted a man and a woman walking together, sheltering from the rain under a large black umbrella, in the same place where they walked.

  He hailed a taxi and directed the cabbie to a restaurant not far from the Luxembourg Gardens. As they drove past the wrought-iron fence, she sighed. “Every time I go by the Luxembourg Gardens, I feel so unhappy. Khedive Ismail had the Ezbekiya Gardens built as an exact copy of them and now hardly any of them remained, paved over and turned into streets and a parking lot. Is the fault in the government, or in us?”