The Hidden (3 page)

Hilali bowed and saluted, then said, “Lunch has been ordered, sir. I’ll just go and check to see if it’s ready.”

Issawi went to the window and stared out at the Nile below. The Group of the X did not scare him. He would not be intimidated by a pack of thugs. He would continue to wield his power unhindered.

CHAPTER THREE

Aimee clutched the package to her as she walked quickly through the archways of the university to the main streets of al-Azhar. She stopped for a moment to scan the streets for a tram or a car to take her home. The heat blazed down on her, and she felt stifled in her calf-length English wool skirt and her cream blouse with its innocent collar. Her low feminine shoes, which she’d bought on that trip to London, had been perfectly appropriate at one time for a French bride of Egyptian heritage, but they now felt over-the-top and excruciatingly uncomfortable.

Her charcoal black hair, which she generally wore long and loose or demurely plaited, felt tight and awkward, pinned as it was at the base of her neck. As she breathed in the heat, she was sure she was breathing white, chalky, poisonous dust into her lungs.

The loud Arabic voices, piercing the air with their guttural, impatient cries—a thing of joy to her in the early weeks of marriage—now made her body heavy with grief because the sound reminded her of Azi. He’d loved the Arabic language and had been encouraging her to read the new literature coming out of Egypt. With Azi, she had had the opportunity to embrace the language of her early childhood, which had stirred up memories of her time with her aunt Saiza in Alexandria, before Saiza had sent her to
France. Now those Arab voices mocked her. They spoke of a life alone in a city she didn’t know.

As Aimee stood looking for a car to take her home, she observed the crowded streets. The sour odour of mud and under-earth and spice, vegetable peelings, and dank sewage lingered forever behind her nostrils. The vivid blue sky, the place she looked to for answers, never offered her any. She didn’t know what to do now that Azi was dead. As she so often did, she wished she were older, more experienced. She felt as though the whole world was watching her—inquisitive men, desperate children, self-satisfied European women, soldiers, old Egyptian mothers with sagging, greying skin—and all she could do was stare back timidly at them all.

As she waited for a car to take her home, she stopped in the shadows of the al-Azhar mosque and the elegant stone houses built by the Europeans.

“A ride, Madame?”

A cab driver peered out of the car window at her. She nodded and climbed in, sliding the parcel onto her lap. Sinking low in her seat, she fanned herself against the heat. They drove along wide boulevards, tree-lined streets, and darker filthier harets crammed with people, goats, and donkeys, until at last they came to the Sharia Suleyman Pasha. When the driver stopped, Aimee thrust some coins in his hand and got out. Holding the parcel carefully against her, she walked towards the tiny haret, the alleyway that led to the courtyard at the side of her house. Samir, her neighbour’s thirteen-year-old son, was standing against the door to the courtyard staring at her inquisitively with his huge black saucer eyes. Aimee was fond of him and touched his cheek as she went through the gate, then climbed the steep stone steps to her front door.

On the hall sideboard was a newspaper. The headlines blazed with ominous reports about the war, fatal predictions, and
sensationalistic news. And there was a letter addressed to her. She recognised Saiza’s handwriting. Good. It would be news of her aunt from Alexandria, where she was recuperating from an illness. She picked up the letter and pushed open the sitting-room doors. The balcony doors were open. Amina, her housekeeper, must be somewhere nearby. Aimee sat down in one of the rattan chairs on the balcony and stared at the street below. Men in long jalabas were smoking on street corners, European women were marching purposefully to their club or to some war meeting, and newly arrived uniformed soldiers were getting their bearings. She watched, momentarily entranced by the cacophony of noise and the sunlight. The parcel the professor had given her sat on her lap. She did not want to open it, not yet. Instead, she tore open her aunt’s letter. When she had read it, she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she put the parcel aside, got up, walked to the study, and retrieved the invitation to the literary launch that the professor had mentioned. She examined it. It seemed disrespectful to Azi to go out socially so soon, but he would want her to be happy. And the professor was probably right. No harm could come of going to Zaky Achmed’s literary evening. She would take Sophie, her school friend, with her. She returned to the balcony to retrieve the parcel. The rough string encircling it was begging to be pulled and the brown paper wrapping removed. She burned with curiosity. If there was something sinister in it, perhaps the police ought to know? Any information could help. Anything at all. The dull brown wrapping paper felt soft and cool as she ran her fingers over it.

Then she started to loosen the string excitedly like a child on her birthday. Inside was a notebook with a battered leather cover, the type that could slide easily into a large pocket. Inside the front cover of the notebook was a white label, gone to a decaying shade of yellow with the passing years, with tiny neat words scrawled in
Arabic in an unfamiliar hand. She flicked through the pages, her heart in her throat. It was a journal, but whose?

She peered more closely at the flowing script. Then her heart began to beat wildly, and she held the journal to her chest. The words read
The journal of Hezba Iqbal Sultan Hanim al-Shezira, Cairo, 1919.

Maman, she said to herself. Her diary. And Azi had had this in his possession. Why had it been tied up in a parcel, hidden away in his office?

Aimee flicked through the book. What secrets did Maman reveal in this little notebook? How strange to be holding the diary Hezba had written twenty-one years before. Aimee had known vaguely that the journal existed. Aunt Saiza had told her about it, but she had said it had disappeared. All Aimee had of her mother was a single photograph in an ornate frame in her living room.

She looked over at it. There she was, a defiant-looking Hezba wearing silky loose trousers and a little waistcoat. Aimee stepped closer and studied the photograph. What turmoil there was in those soulful black eyes. This burning connection between them was like gossamer on the wind, barely visible but always there, haunting her.

Aunt Saiza had told her little about her mother when Aimee had been a child, but what she knew had stayed with her, harnessing her to her past like the pulsing cord connecting babe to mother. Saiza said that Aimee’s grandfather had called Hezba “Fire,” an apt name since she had been so passionate and determined, as though a permanent fever burned through her. Their father had always favoured Hezba, and Saiza had been jealous of his love for her. Aimee examined the photograph carefully, though she was familiar with every intimate detail of it already. Aunt Saiza had told her that Hezba had had black eyelashes, soft caramel skin, and fleshy legs, and that she could often be seen running frantically to her
papa with arms outstretched. He would dance her on his knee. Papa Sultan had been a formidable man, and Hezba had loved him the most out of all who lived at the sarai, the royal palace near the Nile. Hezba loved his long dark moustache hanging low over his fine jaw, his broad sweep of jet-black hair, his twinkling chocolate-coloured eyes, and his scent, which was a mix of starched cotton and pipes and perfumed kisses.

Hezba had loved pulling his moustache, making him wince and laugh. His other children would form a line to see him. One by one he would pat them, kiss them, and then send them away, but she was always allowed to linger. Saiza had told her all this with bittersweet regret, but Saiza had loved Hezba. Everyone had loved Hezba Sultan.

Aimee stared at the uneven walls of her home and the little sitting room with its European-style furniture. Aunt Saiza had spoken of the palace’s gold couches, marble staircases, and ornate architecture, of the cool, shuttered quarters of the harem, where the eunuchs served coffee to the harem girls in Ethiopian silver coffeepots, and the girls exchanged secrets and laughter, their bare arms jangling with jewelled bracelets as they walked the corridors arm in arm.

She shifted uncomfortably as she recalled the stiff aprons of her convent years and thought about the chasm between her mother’s life and her own. As she flipped through the journal again, a photograph and some folded pages with strange typewritten words slipped out. Her eyes narrowed as she studied them. The photograph drew her attention first. It was of a beautiful woman, an Egyptian, dressed in modern-day clothes, with a cocky half smile on her lips. It wasn’t Hezba. The photograph was recent, new. Aimee didn’t understand. She turned the photograph over, and her stomach lurched when she saw Azi’s handwriting. She recognised his rich penmanship and
the sepia-brown ink he loved to use. And there was a name: Fatima and an exclamation mark and a date, two months previous. Her heart sank. She steadied her breath and stared at the photograph, staring so hard she made herself dizzy, trying to understand, trying to remember. This woman. Who was she? Fatima? She and Azi had known no one called Fatima, and she certainly didn’t recognise her. She turned her attention to the typewritten pages, hoping they would provide clarification, but they were filled with words in a language she didn’t understand And then she started reading her mother’s diary.

The journal of Hezba Iqbal Sultan Hanim al-Shezira,

Cairo, August 1, 1919

The beatings are getting worse, but Habrid’s brutality serves no purpose. I won’t be stopped. He can beat me raw, but he will never crush me. I am a seventeen-year-old woman, not a child, yet he treats me like one. He has no right. After his latest beating, I immediately defied him, marching straight into Papa’s library, and stole a new journal for myself, the one I am writing in now. I am ecstatic that I have these beautiful new scented and blank pages to write on. I went there, unaccompanied, of course, because even Rachid would not be a party to my deception. I stole the blank journal openly, hoping to be caught. I want the whole palace to know that Habrid, the head eunuch, is an animal who deserves to be strung up like the lowest, commonest criminal, and that he has reduced me to stealing. He told me he had orders to keep an eye on me, that Maman wants me beaten, as a lesson. Papa would never order such a thing, but he is away, busy with government affairs, and chaos has once again descended on the palace. Habrid ripped the pages from my last journal, shredded them in front of me, and then ordered the shreds burned. After that, he took me to the solitary room
and thrashed me twenty times with a wet rolled-up cotton sheet. I’m convinced Habrid is in league with my husband, al-Shezira. With great lacerations on my skin from the thrashing, I am no longer attractive. This is how they want me, scarred, unloveable, and beaten into submission. Al-Shezira and Maman think that if Habrid beats me, I’ll grow tired of speaking my mind and I’ll repent and become a good servile wife. Al-Shezira is a fool. They want me to be true as a woman. But I will always disappoint them. I know I am being watched. I feel their eyes on me. I hear the whispering among the eunuchs and servant girls. I can hear Maman’s words, can see her face as she shames me, but she does not see what I see. Her world is jewels and low couches and delicious food and excursions. She thinks I am a shameful girl for looking at her with questioning eyes, for wanting to read the works of modern Egyptian writers, for the rumours she hears about me, rumours I cannot stop.

“What would a young girl want a notebook for?” Maman asked me yesterday. I can’t believe she asked me that. She looked at me contemptuously as she spoke to me, her mouth frozen in a crooked half smile.

“Intelligence, curiosity, and distracting pastimes must be strictly controlled. Do not ask questions, Daughter. Don’t question those whose place it is to guide and direct you. Don’t question Allah’s way, nor the look in my eyes when I tell you these things. Your father would not have chosen me for his bride if he sensed I was dreaming of books.”

Maman doesn’t know, nor will I ever tell her, that I want to start a school one day and educate girls so they can live useful lives, not be simply slaves at men’s service. Girls are ignored and sold into slavery and subservience, or if they are from wealthy backgrounds, they are married off to the first good strategic match the parents can find.

Maman would not understand. She has served Papa since they were married, as his wife, as the bearer of his children.

Maman adjusted the silk covering her legs as she spoke. Then she snapped her fingers in the vague direction of her eunuch. I looked at her with pity and fear, secretly dreaming of a night at the theatre to alleviate my boredom. I wished Maman loved me. But she does not. It is so obvious that she has no interest in me or my education. She just wants me back with al-Shezira. It’s Papa I really love truly, but I don’t see him much anymore now that he is so often away on government business in Minya. Still, my mind is on fire and I confess I’m in love. It’s a type of love I have never felt before. I think only of Alexandre. Thinking of him keeps me buoyant as I perform the mundane duties of the day. When I think of him, I can laugh and smile and be the happy girl I know I am. He’s the most handsome man I have ever seen. He is Virginie’s brother, an adventurer, a free spirit like me. Lucky for me, he is based in Cairo, though his travels have recently taken him to India and Persia. He has dark hair, a beautiful mouth, alluring eyes, and an aristocratic air. But it is difficult for me to see him. Our meetings are very few and far between, but we have arranged a secret message system. Virginie brings me letters. I read them, and then I destroy them because I hate to think what would happen if they were found. I would be sent away. I would be thrashed. Even more importantly, I would die inside.

Alexandre treats me as his equal. This was evident from the first moment we met, in a way that was totally haram, when he burst into the room where I was having tea with Virginie. Papa has allowed me to visit Virginie at her house, in another suburb of Cairo, providing I am escorted and chaperoned by two of my eunuchs. Papa trusts Virginie because of his connection with Virginie’s husband. Virginie respects that which is haram or forbidden and had placed her servant at the door to bar entry by any other party. We were drinking tea and discussing little bits of gossip when the door was flung open. A man, tall and handsome, stood there. He stammered his apologies. I did not have time to cover my face with my veil. It was too late. Destiny had thrown us together,
and from that day on, Alexandre has been a part of my life. He wants a better Egypt for our countrymen and women—and that includes a better future for me as well. He wants me to join him in this fight. I don’t know how I can, but for the moment I live to see him. When I’m with him, I feel free. To my husband I am nothing but a source of money—the sultan’s money—and an ornament. He has despised me since I was given to him at age eleven, but he has put up with me because of my papa. To my sisters in the harem, this is the way things are, but I can’t accept things this way. Do they not see that our country is being destroyed by the political will of the British? Do we not have the right to forge our own destiny? Alexandre and I—in our rare meetings—talk about the political situation. It’s getting dangerously out of control. Is it acceptable for the Sarai and its occupants to sit on gold cushions while our men and women are being tortured and killed in the desert? I wish I were a man so I could be a lawyer, a doctor, an academic. Why can’t I be one? Is it my sex that is to blame for such inequality? I believe it is.