The Map of Love (25 page)

All around her the house sits, solid and serene in its hundred and twenty years. A house that had grown with the family over four generations. At its heart the spacious hall and the hospitable mandarah, the north wing with the two bedrooms and the guestroom built by Mustafa Bey al-Ghamrawi, the storerooms, bathroom and oven-room. Then the veranda, the bedrooms and bathrooms in the south wing added by Husni al-Ghamrawi. The electricity generator, the plumbing and the new kitchen put in by Ahmad al-Ghamrawi. And the garden, planted and watered and tended over the years. Its trees bearing pears, lemons and oranges. Its bushes heavy with jasmine and roses. And he, what had he done to this house? Nothing. He went to Amreeka.

Isabel looks up: Amal has come out on the veranda. She is in a pale, long nightdress, with a light shawl around her shoulders. ‘I had a feeling you were out here,’ she says. ‘Do you particularly want to be alone?’

‘Oh no, not at all,’ Isabel says.

Amal leans against the wooden railings looking out at the garden, breathing in deep. ‘Isn’t it just beautiful?’ she says.

‘Yes,’ says Isabel.

Amal turns to her. ‘Did you spray yourself with the mosquito stuff?’

‘No,’ says Isabel.

‘Do it then. Go on.’

‘But there aren’t any mosquitoes.’

‘There might be. Just one would be enough. Go on. Go and get it. Where is it? I’ll get it for you.’

‘I’ll get it,’ Isabel says, standing up. She comes back with the canister and they both spray their arms and feet. They spray their hands and wipe the liquid on to their faces.

‘Yuk,’ says Isabel.

‘I know. But in a moment you won’t smell it and the mosquitoes will.’

‘There’s no photograph of you on the walls,’ Isabel says.

‘No.’

‘Well there should be.’

‘Why?’

‘For continuity. You and your boys.’

‘My boys have nothing to do with all this. They’ve made their choice.’ Amal keeps her voice light.

‘They’re young. You don’t know what they might do.’

Amal says nothing.

‘In any case,’ Isabel continues, ‘it would be right. Not a snapshot. A formal portrait, like all the others. We must have one done in Cairo.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ Amal says, ‘let’s have one of both of us. We are family, aren’t we?’

‘Did you give me this room on purpose?’ Isabel asks.

‘On purpose? Why?’

‘Because of his picture.’

‘Sharif Basha?’

‘He looks exactly like … your brother.’

‘Does he? I never thought of that,’ Amal says.

In the room they stand in front of the photograph.

‘See?’ says Isabel.

Amal studies the man on the wall. ‘Yes,’ she says slowly. ‘He’s more like him than like our father isn’t he?’

‘It’s the eyes and the chin and — it’s more than that,’ Isabel says, ‘it’s the whole — it’s the energy. And the air of not letting on. Of being more than he’s showing.’

‘Isabel?’

‘Yes,’ says Isabel. ‘Is it terribly obvious?’

‘I don’t know about obvious —’

‘I can’t get him out of my head. I think about him all the time. Whatever I am doing, he is like a current running through my mind —’ The relief of talking about it, letting it out. At last.

‘And he — has he — have you …’

‘No. Nothing has actually happened. I don’t even know if he shares my feelings. I think he likes being with me. We’ve been out together and the chemistry is there and it couldn’t be there if he didn’t feel it too. Maybe he thinks the age difference is a problem. He’s fifty-five. It’s hard to believe. It sounds so old, but if you didn’t know, you’d think he was forty, forty-five, wouldn’t you? I mean, he’s so
young.’

The two women sit side by side on the sofa facing the portrait.

‘Is it making you unhappy?’ Amal asks.

‘No, I’m not unhappy,’ says Isabel. ‘But I just wish he would — God, I just want him so much!’

‘He probably likes you a lot. He probably doesn’t want you to get hurt.’

‘If he was in love with me as I am with him, he wouldn’t care about that.’

‘Come on —’

‘No. He’d think I wouldn’t get hurt. It wouldn’t
occur
to him that I might get hurt. I
wouldn’t
get hurt.’

‘But you’ve been through this before?’ Amal asks after a while.

‘Are you trying —’

‘I just thought —’

‘Why? You know I was married.’

‘I just thought if you’ve been through something like this before, you’ll know that it doesn’t last for ever. I know that sounds —’

‘I’ve not felt like this before — about anyone.’

After a few moments Isabel asks, ‘Has he said anything to you?’

‘No. No, he hasn’t,’ Amal says.

‘But he must have known, the moment he looked through that trunk. He must have known that we’re cousins. That’s why he said to bring it to you.’

‘Yes. He didn’t tell me, though. He left me to find out for myself.’

‘And to tell me.’

‘He must have liked the thought of us here together, working it out.’

‘But it shouldn’t make any difference, should it? Our common ancestry. I mean, it shouldn’t make him not — care for me? If he does.’

‘No. I don’t see why it should.’

‘Amal. Do you think it was meant? It seems so strange. That I should meet him like that, and then find the trunk and then it turns out we’re cousins?’

‘But you might not have met. If you hadn’t gone to that dinner party or if —’

‘Yes, but we
did
meet.’

‘Yes.’

‘Amal. He’s your brother. Tell me what to do.’

‘Ya habibti, he’s old enough to be your father.’

‘Please — just don’t say that.’

‘It’s the obvious thing.’

‘But it doesn’t
matter.’

Amal is silent.

‘I’m going to do something about him,’ Isabel says. ‘This time. When I go back.’

 *   *   *   

‘Any success?’ Isabel asks.

Amal kicks off her shoes at the door and sighs as she puts her bare feet down on the cool tiles. ‘No,’ she says, ‘not really. God, it’s hot out there!’

‘Come and sit down,’ Isabel says. ‘Let me get you a cold drink.’ It seems so natural to her now, on just the second day here, she is the one playing the hostess, getting the drinks, looking after Amal, staying in the background when people come to talk.

‘We couldn’t go in,’ Amal says, holding the cold glass to her cheek, to her forehead. ‘They were perfectly civil. But we couldn’t go inside.’

‘What would you have gained anyway, by going in?’

‘I don’t know,’ Amal says. ‘It just seemed a place to start.’ She leans back and tilts her face up to the old wooden ceiling-fan. ‘The place looks practically derelict. They won’t even let them sweep the courtyard.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. I thought of going to see the Chief of Police, but I don’t think that’d be much use.’

On the wall, Husni al-Ghamrawi stands, pleasant and open-faced, his moustache clipped short, his fez straight on his head. His hand rests lightly on the shoulder of his seated wife. Layla al-Baroudi’s black hair is curled and piled on top of her head. Her cloak, fastened by a glittering brooch, falls to the floor about her seat and her dark eyes look straight at the camera. Behind her stands her son, Ahmad al-Ghamrawi. Although he has no moustache yet, he is already as tall as his father. He wears his fez at a slight angle and on his face there is the hopeful confidence of the young.

‘What would your father have done?’ Isabel asks.

‘I don’t know. Go see the Governor, I suppose.’

‘Then that’s what you must do.’

‘There’s somebody — the son of an old friend of my father’s. They own land around here too. I’ll go and see him. See what he says.’

For a few minutes the two women sit silently together on
the old Assiuti chairs. The only movement in the room is that of the ceiling-fan revolving above them.

‘I’m going to have a shower, then lie down for a bit.’ Amal scoops up her long black hair into a makeshift knot and turns to Isabel. ‘Are you all right? You’re rather cooped up here, aren’t you?’

Isabel smiles. ‘I’m just fine. I feel so amazingly at home in this house.’

‘Good. I’m very glad,’ Amal says, but her smile is tired.

‘They tell me horrid things,’ Amal says after the siesta. ‘They say they just round people up in the mornings. Ordinary people going to work. They have their IDs and everything but they round them up anyway. And you can spend five days in the hold till they decide you’re not the one they want. And it’s not a holiday in there: they beat them and they … They say if the police go looking for someone and they don’t find him, they take his women: his wife, his sister, his mother, whatever. And they hold them till he gives himself up. And the men won’t stand for that and what starts out as one case ends up being a vendetta between the police and the whole village.’

Isabel has nothing to say. Arrest warrants. You have the right to remain silent — nothing of what she knows holds here.

‘It’s all going wrong,’ Amal says. ‘Someone robbed a jeweller’s shop and the jeweller was a Copt and they say the Islamic militants say it’s all right to rob a Copt to fund the Jihad, and so the whole thing turns into a “sectarian” issue. But people — ordinary people — don’t believe it’s OK to rob a Copt, but then the Americans — I’m sorry —’

‘It’s OK,’ Isabel says. ‘Tell me.’

‘Well, they’re trying to pass some bill through Congress about their duty to protect the Christian minority in Egypt, and of course that’s the game the British played a hundred years ago and people know that. It just stirs up bad feeling.’

‘Do they feel persecuted, the Copts?’

‘Even if they do, they don’t want it sorted by some foreign
Intervention. Everyone knows what that means. Anba She-nuda has written to Congress saying thanks but no thanks —’

‘Who?’

‘Anba Shenuda, he’s the Patriarch, the head of the Coptic Church, Pope Shenuda the Third. He’s really impressive. You know he was exiled by Sadat from ’81 to ’85 —’

There is a sound of footsteps outside and a knock on the door. Isabel opens and stands aside. Abu el-Ma
ati and some other men are outside the door. Abu el-Ma
ati has a gun on his shoulder.

‘Kheir ya
Am Abu el-Ma
ati, itfaddal,’ Amal calls, standing up. He comes in but the others stay outside. Amal ushers him to the sofa. ‘Kheir? What’s happening?’