The Map of Love (18 page)

‘And why not? Why shouldn’t you talk to them? You’re here in Cairo and the whole world knows who your father was — a thousand mercies and light upon him. Your father was a Basha — even though they abolished titles, the whole world knew he was a Basha and a man of understanding.’

‘Ya
Am Abu el-Ma
ati, I don’t know anyone in the government.’ I see myself going to look for ‘the government’. I wouldn’t know where to begin. There is a big ministry compound in Shari’ el-Sheikh Rihan. I see myself going there
and I am pulled up short by the memory of Mansur. Mansur was my friend and he was the car-park attendant at Shari
el-Sheikh Rihan between the American University and the ministries. For years I went to the American University to attend concerts, to see films, to use the library, to meet friends. As I crossed the intersection with Shari
el-Qasr el-’Ayni, I’d be scanning the street ahead and he would emerge, short and stocky, stockier as the years went by. There he would be, his arm uplifted, his coloured woven cap on his head. ‘Leave it just. Leave it,’ he would say. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘How are you, ya Mansur?’

‘How are you, ya Sett Hanim?’ The keys would change hands. And later, when I came out, there he would be again, with my keys and a few courtly words, pointing out where he had parked the car. Mansur was famous. He acquired two assistants; but he was always the one who had the keys. He was the one who was always there, until one day the bomb the Jama’at meant for el-Alfi, the minister of the Interior they hated, had found Mansur instead. And now all that was left of him was a pale brown stain on the wall of the university. A stain that would not scrub off.

‘I don’t know anyone in the government,’ I say again.

‘If you can’t speak to the government,’
Am Abu el-Ma
ati asks, ‘who can? Me?’

‘You’d be better at it than I would be —’

‘Done,’ he says. ‘My hand in yours. We’ll go to them together.’ His face breaks into a wide, clear smile and I notice the gaps between the big teeth.

‘God give you light,’ Tahiyya cries. ‘By the Prophet, I’ll make Madani go with you. To support you.’

If she lifted her hand to her mouth and trilled out a zaghruda, this would be a scene from
el-Ard.

When
Am Abu el-Ma
ati had gone, Tahiyya and I sat on the floor among the baskets distributing the food: some for her family, some for me, some for the men wielding the heavy irons in the steam of the ironing shop across the road, some for
the policemen — boys, really — who stand all night leaning on their rifles in the shadow of the bank on the corner —

‘Enough, enough, are you going to give it all away?’ she protests.

‘I wouldn’t finish this in a year, ya Tahiyya,’ I say. Time was when I cooked for four and often more. Time was when I chafed and grew fretful and said, ‘I can’t bear this business of having to think of supper every night.’ Time was when I dreamed of all the things I could do, all the lives I could lead if I wasn’t tied down, beset, beleaguered. And time was — I’m glad to say — when the clasp of small arms around my neck and the feel of a soft face against my own stilled the restlessness and made me grateful and glad for the moment.

‘Tomorrow the young Beys will come to visit and fill the house for you again,’ Tahiyya says, reading my thoughts.

‘Inshallah,’ I say.

‘You know you should marry them off here,’ she says. ‘You rejoice in them and they stay near you.’

‘Nobody marries anybody off any more,’ I say.

‘Truly,’ she says. ‘Each one acts with his own head.’

‘Why don’t you come with me to Minya?’ I say when we’ve finished. ‘Smell the air of the countryside?’

‘And the kids, who do I leave them to?’

‘Bring them.’

‘And we leave Madani alone?’

‘Can’t he come too?’

‘And the building? We leave it without a doorman? They’d fire him.’

‘In any case, see. You’re very welcome, all of you.’

‘May you live long, ya Daktora. Another time.’

Isabel, I thought. She’s going away for August. But if I go soon — as I should — she might like to come with me. See the countryside. See what’s left of the old house. I imagine opening up the darkened rooms, washing down the pear tree in the near corner of the garden, sleeping in my mother’s old bed. I imagine treading the old, familiar path through our orchard, into the open fields and to the village. Would it make
problems, taking an American there? No, she’s discreet and sensible. And who would I say she is? If I just say she’s a friend, people will grow suspicious and clam up. But if she is family — we can say she’s my brother’s fiancée. That should amuse her. I jump up and go to the phone.

Egypt, 6 July 1997
‘And so,’ I said to Isabel, as we started along the Upper Egypt road, ‘there they were; on the twelfth of March 1901, asleep on two diwans, facing each other on opposite sides of the haramlek drawing room of the big house of the Baroudis; these women who were to become our grandmothers.’

‘You like telling stories,’ Isabel said.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I suppose I do. I like piecing things together.’

‘Your brother must know you very well,’ she said, pulling down the sun screen, peering into its small mirror to adjust her headscarf.

Yes, I suppose he does. My brother likes piecing things together too, in his own way. On the phone from the States he’d said:

‘Did you like my gift?’

‘It’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘Did you look into it?’

Only a little bit. Enough. I thought you might be interested.’

‘Oh, I’m completely immersed. How much did you look at?’

‘Not much.’

‘But enough?’

‘Enough for what?’

‘Enough to know about Isabel.’

‘Our long-lost cousin. Yes, I worked that out.’

‘But you didn’t tell her?’

‘What was I supposed to do? Lift my head from the box and announce, “And here are some of
my
grandmother’s papers too”? Come on —’

‘Listen,’ I say, ‘did you look at the objects, the things?’