Mr Impossible

A Note on Spelling

An 1898 edition of
Baedeker's guide toEgyptlaments the difficulties of rendering Arabic
into English spelling. "It is greatly to be wished that the
Arabs would adopt a simpler alphabet," says the author, "with
a regular use of the vowel-signs, and that they would agree to write
the ordinary spoken language." In the ordinary spoken language,
furthermore, he complains, not everyone pronounces vowels the same
way. The consonants are consistent, but some have no equivalent
English sound.

More than a century
later, we still encounter a mad variety of ways for spelling Arabic
and Egyptian words using the English alphabet. I ended up choosing
one approach for place names (familiar modern spellings) and one for
words and phrases (easiest to read). A number of these words and
phrases, like customs—and many monuments— have changed or
disappeared since the early 1800s.

Chapter 1

Outskirts
ofCairo,Egypt,2 April 1821

THANKS
TO HIS MOTHER, RUPERT CARSINGTON had hair and eyes as dark as any
Egyptian’s. This did not mean he blended in with the crowd on
the bridge. In the first place, he was easily the tallest man there.
In the second, both his manner and attire marked him as an
Englishman. The Egyptians and Turks, who judged men by the quality of
their dress, noticed, too, that he was not a man of low birth.

The
locals had the advantage of the Earl of Hargate’s fourth son.

Having
arrived inEgypt
only
six weeks ago, Rupert was not yet able to distinguish among the
numerous tribes and nationalities. Certainly he couldn’t size
up social status at a glance.

He could, however,
recognize an unequal match when he saw one.

The
soldier was large—a few inches shy of Rupert’s six-plus
feet—and armed like a man-of-war. Three knives, a pair of
swords, a pair of pistols, and ammunition protruded or hung from his
wide belt. Oh, yes, he brandished a heavy staff, too—in an
unfriendly way at the moment, at a bruised, limping, filthy fellow in
front of him.

The
poor devil’s crime, as far as Rupert could see, was being too
slow. The soldier roared some foreign threat or curse. Stumbling
away, the terrified peasant fell. The soldier swung his staff at the
man’s legs. The wretch rolled to one side, and the staff struck
the bridge, inches away. Enraged, the soldier raised the weapon and
aimed for the unfortunate’s head.

Rupert
broke through the gathering crowd, shoved the soldier, and yanked the
staff from his hand. The soldier reached for a knife, and Rupert
swung, knocking the blade to the ground. Before his adversary could
draw another weapon from his arsenal, Rupert swung the staff at him.
The man dodged, but the edge of the weapon caught him in the hip, and
over he went. He reached for his pistol as he fell, and Rupert again
swung the staff. His opponent howled in pain, dropping the pistol.

“
Go!”
Rupert told the dirty cripple, who must have understood the
accompanying gesture if not the English word, because he scrambled to
his feet and limped away. The crowd parted to let him through.

Rupert
started after him a moment too late. Soldiers were forcing their way
through the growing mob. In an instant, they’d surrounded him.

NEWS OF THE
altercation, greatly embroidered, traveled swiftly from the bridge to
el-Esbekiya. This quarter ofCairo, about half a mile away, was where
European visitors usually lodged.

During the
inundation, in late summer, the overflowingNileturned the square of
the Esbekiya into a lake where boats plied to and fro. The river
being low at present, the area was merely a stretch of ground
enclosed with buildings.

In one of the
larger houses, a mildly anxious Daphne Pembroke awaited her brother
Miles. The day was fading. If he did not arrive soon, he would not
get in, because the gates were locked after dark. They were also kept
locked during times of plague or insurrection, both regular
occurrences inCairo.

Daphne was only
half-listening for her brother’s arrival, though. She gave the
better part of her attention to the documents in front of her.

Among them was a
lithographic copy of the Rosetta Stone, a recently acquired papyrus,
and a pen-and-ink copy of the latter. She was nearly nine and twenty
years old, and had been trying to solve the mystery of Egyptian
writing for the last ten years.

The first time
she’d seen Egyptian hieroglyphs, Daphne had fallen madly,
desperately, and hopelessly in love with them. All her youthful
studies had aimed at unlocking then-secretive little hearts. She had
become infatuated with and wed a man nearly thrice her age because he
was (a) poetically handsome, (b) a language scholar, and (c) the
owner of a collection of books and documents for which she lusted.

At the time, she’d
believed they were ideally suited.

At the time, she’d
been nineteen years old, her vision obscured by the stars in her
eyes.

She soon learnt,
among other painful lessons, that her brilliant scholar husband,
exactly like stupider men, believed that intellectual endeavors put
too great a strain on the inferior female brain.

Claiming to have
her best interests at heart, Virgil Pembroke forbade her studying
Egyptian writing. He said that even male scholars familiar with
Arabic, Coptic, Greek, Persian, and Hebrew had no hope of deciphering
it in her lifetime. This he deemed no great loss: Egyptian
civilization being primitive—greatly inferior to that of
classicalGreece—decipherment would contribute little to the
store of human knowledge.

Daphne was a
clergyman’s daughter. She’d made a sacred vow to love,
honor, and obey her husband, and she did try. But when it became
clear that she must pursue her studies or go mad with boredom and
frustration, she chose to risk perdition and disobey her husband.
Thereafter, she continued her work in secret.

Virgil had died
five years ago. Sadly, prejudice against women scholars did not die
with him. This was why, even now, only her indulgent brother and a
select group of friends knew the secret. Everyone else believed her
brother Miles was the linguistic genius of the family.

Had he been, he
might have known better than to pay two thousand pounds for the
papyrus she was studying. However, a merchant named Vanni Anaz had
claimed it described the final resting place of a young pharaoh, name
unknown—as was the case at present for most Egyptian royalty.
The story was clearly the product of the romantic Eastern
imagination. No educated person could possibly believe it.
Nonetheless, it had apparently captivated Miles, much to her
surprise.

He had even gone
toGizaagain to study the interior of the second pyramid, because, he
said, it would help him understand the thinking of ancient tomb
builders and aid in locating the young king’s tomb and its
treasures.

Though Daphne was
certain the pyramids could tell him nothing, she held her tongue. He
delighted in exploringEgypt’s monuments. Why spoil his fun? She
merely made sure he took sufficient supplies for the overnight stay
he planned.

She declined to
accompany him. She’d gone with him once toGizaand explored the
two pyramids it was possible to enter. Neither contained any
hieroglyphic writing, although various visitors had scratched their
profound thoughts upon the stones, e.g., “Suverinus loves
Claudia.” Equally important, she was not eager for another
squeeze through the pyramids’ long, small, hot, smelly
passageways.

At the moment,
however, the pyramids were far from Daphne’s thoughts. She was
deciding that Dr. Young had incorrectly interpreted the hook and the
three tails signs when her maidservant Leena burst through the door.

“
A
bloodbath!” Leena cried. “Stupid, stupid English hothead!
Now the streets will run with blood!”

She tore off the
head and face veils she despised but must wear in public, revealing
the dark hair and hazel eyes of an older woman of mixed Mediterranean
origins. Daphne had hired her inMalta, after her English maid proved
unequal to the rigors of foreign travel.

Leena not only
spoke English, Greek, Turkish, and Arabic, but could read and write a
little in these languages— unheard-of accomplishments for a
woman in this part of the world. She was, on the other hand, deeply
superstitious and fatalistic, with a tendency to discern the dark
cloud attached to every silver lining.

Accustomed to
Leena’s histrionics, Daphne merely raised her eyebrows and
said, “What Englishman? What has happened?”

“
A crazy
Englishman has been fighting with one of the pasha’s men and
broke the pig’s head. They say it took a hundred soldiers to
capture him. The Turks will cut off the Englishman’s head and
put it on a pike, but that will not be enough. The soldiers will make
war on all the Franks, especially the English.”

Unlike most of
Leena’s Impending Doom announcements, this sounded all too
plausible.

Egypt’s
Ottoman rulers would have been right at home in the Dark Ages.
Beatings, torture, and beheading were their methods of maintaining
order. Egyptian and Turk alike had no great regard for “Franks,”
the despised Europeans. The military—comprising a homicidal
assortment of Egyptians, Turks, and Albanian mercenaries—took a
hostile view of everybody, including at times their leader Muhammad
Ali, Pasha of Egypt. They made Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes
look like giggling schoolgirls.

And Daphne was
alone, but for her servants, all of whom were, most intelligently,
terrified of the soldiery.

She
was aware of alarm stirring within, of a chill and a welter of
thoughts tumbling one over another. Outwardly she remained calm. Her
marriage had taught her how to hide her true feelings.

“
This
is difficult to believe,” she said. “Who would be so
foolish as to fight one of the pasha’s men?”

“
They
say the man is new toCairo,” Leena said. “Only this week
he has come fromAlexandriato work for the English consul general.
They say he is very tall and dark and beautiful. But I think he will
not look so beautiful when they carry his head through the town on a
pike.”

The
revolting image rose in Daphne’s mind. She hastily banished it
and said briskly, “The man must be fatally stupid. Which ought
not surprise us in the least. The consulate has too much to do with
persons of dubious character.” This was because the English
consul general,

Mr. Salt, was here
mainly to collect as many antiquities as he could, and he was not
overscrupulous about how the task was accomplished.

Now,
thanks to his adding a violent imbecile to his staff, the military
had an excuse to run amok. No European inCairowould be safe.

And
Miles
—on
his way back—blond, blue-eyed, tall, and unmistakably
English—was all too tempting a target. As was she, a green-eyed
redhead like their late mother.

She
looked down and saw her hands shaking.
Calm
down
, she commanded herself.
Nothing’s
happened yet. Think
.

She had a brain, a
formidable brain. It must be able to formulate a solution.

She
stared at the lines of Greek characters praising Ptolemy while she
debated what to do.

Sarah,
the wife of the famous explorer Giovanni Bel-zoni, had a few years
earlier donned the dress of an Arab merchant and safely visited a
mosque forbidden to women and infidels. With any luck, Daphne could
escapeCairoin such a disguise and meet her brother en route. Then
they could hire a boat and head upriver, out of danger.