The Map of Love (24 page)

‘Just this one flag?’

‘Isabel! No. Hundreds. This was the one my grandmother must have used.’ She folds it back and tucks it under her arm. ‘You really should have a rest. I’m going to.’

Neither of them mentioned what they had seen on the road.

The sun had set simply and without display, a plain red disc descending through a clear, darkening sky into a silver horizon.

As the light faded, the women had started to arrive: small, black tents moving silently up the path. At the door they took off their shoes. In the hall the black wrappings came off and the room was filled with the bright colours of their satin dresses: pinks and purples and greens resplendent against the dark furniture and plain white upholstery. Each had brought something with her: a dish she had made, a batch of fresh-baked pastry, some eggs, a watermelon, Christmassy, when it was broken open, in its red and green. Some had small children with them who wandered round the room, then out of the open door to the larger world outside.

Amal had been hugged and kissed again and again. ‘And this is my brother’s fiancée,’ she said again and again. And then the welcomes, the blessings, the compliments: ‘The name of God guard and protect her.’ ‘He’s known how to choose.’ ‘She’s brought light to our village.’ ‘And she speaks Arabic?’

‘Shwayya,’ Isabel offered.

‘Khalas, stay with us here and we’ll teach you.’

‘Teach her? You’ll teach her our talk, the talk of the fallaheen?’

‘What else? Shall we teach her the talk of the television?’

‘And what’s wrong with the talk of the fallaheen?’

‘When she goes to Cairo they’ll laugh at her.’

‘She can teach us English. What do you say? Will you teach us English, ya Sett Eesa?’

‘And what will you do with English, ya habibti?’

‘We learn. Put a few words together. It might come in useful —’

‘Yakhti, learn Arabic first. Untangle the writing.’

‘Neither English nor Arabic. They’ve closed it down.’

Isabel pieced it together: the words she understood, the women’s gestures, Amal’s occasional, murmured translations. The tea tray went round. And the little morsels of kunafa and balah el-Sham they had brought with them from Cairo, and glasses of cold water.

‘They’ve closed it down, ya Sett, and we depended on it. Where will the children study?’

‘And the Unit. It was useful for us.’

‘The one of us had just about convinced her husband about this thing of family planning and now they’ve closed the Unit. No loops, no condoms —’

‘Yakhti, have some shame, you and her! Are your tongues loose or what?’

‘Have we said anything? We’re women together. Or is the Sett a stranger?’

‘No stranger but the Devil. We’re all kin —

‘What will you do, ya Sett Amal?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘So who would know? Isn’t it yours through your father and your grandfather before him?’

‘Yes. But —’

‘Talk to the government.’

‘And is talking to the government easy?’

‘No, but they should have some understanding. The village has done nothing.’

‘They’ve put the soldiers at the doors and no one can come near.’

‘They say the teachers were terrorists.’

‘There are no terrorists in our village. And the midwife, is she a terrorist too? Here she is in front of you. Ask her.’

Abu el-Ma
ati’s widowed daughter, a plump woman with a
smooth face and a blue tattoo on her chin, smiled. ‘What can we do? The government has a strong hand.’

‘Strong on the weak.’

‘They don’t want problems.’

‘We didn’t make problems. Each one of us minds their own business —’

‘While we were coming on the road,’ Amal said slowly, ‘we saw three young men being arrested —’

‘No one is bigger than the government. They do what they like. Lock up the people, burn down the sugar cane — they say the terrorists hide in it and they burn it down. The people are weary, ya Sett Amal, weary.’

‘I’ll go see the school tomorrow,’ Amal said.

‘God give you light. But the soldiers hold nothing in their hands. Not even the head of police can do anything. It all depends on the government in Cairo.’

‘May God smooth the path.’

‘And since Sett Eesa is here with us — tell her, ya Sett Amal, tell her to tell her government to lighten its hand on us a little.’

‘Everything that happens they say Amreeka wants this: they cancel the peasant cooperatives, Amreeka wants this —’

‘And when you go to the bank for the loan to put in your next crop, they tell you you have to pay so much interest —’

‘What are they saying?’ Isabel had asked and Amal had translated. The women wanted her to translate.

‘They cancel the subsidies on sugar and oil: Amreeka wants this —’

‘The price of medicines has become like fire —’

‘It’s not Amreeka.’ Amal was part embarrassed, part amused. ‘It’s the, like, the World Bank and —’

‘It’s the same thing. Isn’t Amreeka the biggest country now and what she says goes?’

‘Yes, but the matter —’

‘What?’

‘It’s more complicated than that.’

‘Complicated or not complicated, we’re here on the land and the one of us works all day till our backs snap and we still
can’t live. And the young people — they go and get educated and then what? They want to get married, they want a house to shelter them, they want to work and live like humans and life has become very difficult.’

Isabel had sat and listened, trying to make it all out.

Outside in the garden the children were playing at weddings. A little boy and girl sat on the stairs, green branches and palm fronds arranged round them to suggest the kosha, the wedding bower. The little girl had a white cloth on her head and looked down at the ground shyly as the boy reached out to hold her hand. Two girls with scarves drawn tight around what would later become their hips, were dancing in front of them. The rest of the children sat in a circle at their feet. One drummed on a sheet of wood and the others clapped and sang:

My father said Oh pretty dark one

Allah Allah

Don’t ride no more on your donkey

Allah Allah

I’ll up and buy you an aeroplane —

And I want some Pepsi-Cola

For I won’t drink tea

Go get me Pepsi-Cola

No I won’t drink tea

‘Get up, girl, you and her! Get up, you who should be beaten.’

‘Look at the kids in a hurry for themselves.’

‘Kids who can be frightened but not shamed.’

My father said No don’t go out

Allah Allah

You might get black and never be white

Allah Allah

Just keep your whiteness for your groom —

And I want some Pepsi-Cola

No I won’t drink tea

Go get me Pepsi-Cola

For I won’t drink tea

Isabel has never known a silence like this before: a silence that is not merely an absence of sound. ‘Palpable’ — that’s what it was: a silence you could imagine touching, pressing into, as you can imagine pressing into clouds. But here there are no clouds. She throws back the linen sheet and sits up in Layla al-Baroudi’s big brass four-poster. Through the fine gauze of the mosquito netting she can see, on the wall facing her, the portrait of Sharif Basha al-Baroudi. Now she can make it out only dimly, but she has studied it well. From the heavy gilt frame he looks down at her, the fez set squarely above the high forehead, the eyebrows broad and black, almost meeting above the straight nose. The thick moustache covers the upper lip; the lower lip is firm and wide in a strong, square chin. And all the arrogance of the face is perfectly focused in the eyes: proud, aloof and yet, if you look carefully, sad also. A proud man, in control, holding back. And it is in that face, more than in the face of his father out in the hall, that Isabel sees Omar el-Ghamrawi. Sees him and longs for him. How many times had they met? She goes over them again. The dinner at Deborah’s house, the restaurant on Sixth — that was when she had fallen in love: as she watched him cross the room towards her, his hand briefly raised, the smile dawning in his eyes. Then the meeting at college, pausing every three steps to talk to someone, just like Amal on the streets of Cairo. It was there, after he had stopped to speak to a bearded young Arab student, that she had asked, ‘Are you involved with the fundamentalists?’

‘What fundamentalists?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Hamas, or Hizbollah. Or in Egypt.’

‘You should get your fundamentalists sorted —’

‘But is it true?’

‘Do I look like a fundamentalist? Act like a fundamentalist?’

‘No. But that is what they say about you.’

‘Not so long ago, Hillary Clinton would have been called a communist for her views on public health.’

‘So you’re not?’

‘My dear child, no. Of course I’m not. Look, there’s Claudia. What an amazing hat —’

The fourth time had been to see
Scapin
at the Roundabout and dinner afterwards. She couldn’t say he had taken her out for she was the one who’d invited him — but he had been happy to be there. She reruns again the moment in the foyer when she had slipped off her coat and turned to him and he had smiled into her eyes.

‘You look divine.’

The hand at her elbow guiding her to her seat. And when she had driven him to his door, the slight pause — had he been deciding whether to invite her in?

‘Shall I see you before you go?’ he had asked.

‘Yes,’ she’d said, ‘I’ll call you.’ It was better than waiting for him to call. He had leaned towards her, and his quick, dry kiss was over before it had begun.

‘Good night.’

And she had called him, and asked him to come and see her find. She’d made some pasta and a salad, and he looked through the trunk. When she told him that Anna, the woman who had written the journal, was her great-grandmother, he must have put it all together straight away, but he said nothing. Later, when they were having coffee, he said, ‘You know what you should do? Take it to Cairo and show it to my sister. She lives there. She can help you piece it together.’

‘What, the whole thing?’

‘Why not? Put it on the plane. Get someone to carry it for you.’ And she had agreed because it was his sister. Because he was sending her to his sister and that would be a continuing link between them.

‘Do you actually live with her?’ she had asked.

‘Who? Live with who?’

‘Samantha Metcalfe.’

‘No, no, my dear. I don’t live with anyone. Not any more.’

‘How long is it since you’ve been divorced?’ Lightly, making a business of pouring fresh coffee.

‘A long time. Ten years. Why?’

‘I just wondered.’

‘And you? You were married.’

‘Yes. Two. Two years.’

‘Two years married or two years divorced?’

‘Both.’ She had smiled. ‘Two years married and two divorced.’

‘And?’ he asked. ‘Would you do it again? Marry, I mean.’ ‘I don’t know.’ She had looked at him. ‘If I find the right man.’

‘It’s good to have kids,’ he said. ‘Kids are good. I have two. Well, they’re practically grown up now.’

‘I know,’ she had said.

When he got up to go, when he had his coat on, and his scarf, and was at the door, she had walked into his arms. She had raised her face to his and when he kissed her she put her arms round him and would not let go. She had wanted to stay in the warmth and comfort of him for ever and their kiss had deepened and she felt that wonderful rushing melting in her stomach and her breasts and her arms and then he had put her away.

‘Oh, Isabel,’ he said, and shook his head. In his voice there was a note almost of regret. But his hand was still tangled in her hair and he pulled her head back so she had to look up at him as he said, ‘I’m old enough to be your father.’

‘I know,’ she’d said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Yes, it does,’ he said. His hand had caressed her cheek for a moment, his thumb had brushed over her lip. He murmured, ‘Take care,’ and walked out of the door, leaving her with this ache.

This ache that would not go away. Even though she can feel his lips on hers, though in her mind she makes him unfasten her blouse and against the closed lids of her eyes watches his hands move against the white lace of her bra,
fingering it, pulling at it, though she lies with him there on the floor of her apartment and feels his weight on top of her and the hard wood of the floor under her back, though she takes herself to the limit — when it’s over, she still aches for him.

When she lifts her head again, Isabel sees through the netting, through the wire mesh of the screen on the window, the world outside floodlit by the cold, white moon. She pushes aside the gossamer canopy. She opens the mesh screens, closes them behind her, and on weakened legs steps out on the veranda.

All the cushions have been removed in anticipation of the morning dew and Isabel sits on the bare cane of an armchair, her arms drawn tight around her body, and feels the soft night air on her neck and on her face: a pleasant warmth, broken, from time to time, by a breeze bringing with it the scent of the Indian jasmine spiced with a sharp edge of lemon. Out here, the silence is a backdrop to the chirp of the crickets and occasionally, from further away in the depths of the garden, the throaty croak of a frog.