The Map of Love (34 page)

My great-uncle Sharif Basha al-Baroudi made his move, as this letter in front of me testifies, but he did not make it without misgiving. For five weeks — no, seven (for the two weeks in the Sinai should be counted as well) — he pulled away from the impulse that drew him towards Anna. He had distrusted impulse for so long now — oh, he had thrown it the odd, appeasing crumb: a purchase here, a trip abroad there, but on the main road of his life, as it were, he had held himself in check. His friend Sheikh Muhammad
Abdu had done the same and had grown into a staid, measured man whose pronouncements showed wisdom not uncoloured by diplomacy. What was left of that fiery, black-eyed young Azhari who had been prepared to consider assassinating Tewfiq for the cause of Egypt’s freedom? Time was when it had seemed that courage was all you needed: the belief that what you wanted was yours by right — and the courage to take it. They had been taught that that was not true. They had seen lives ended on the scaffold, cut down on the battlefield, destroyed by exile and by retreat. Caution and calculation became a habit.

But in the Sinai, in the garden of the monastery of St Catherine, Anna — and his feelings — had taken him by surprise. And even though next day he withdrew into formal politeness, away from the desert, when she was no longer at his side, she took root in his mind and would not be shaken.

Tawasi, 7 April 1901

Sharif Basha crumbles the rich black soil thoughtfully in his hand. He sits back on his haunches and looks around at his fields. The cries of the children playing by the canal reach him from a distance. When he was last here, in the month of Toubah, the sugar cane had just been harvested and the land set ablaze to burn away the stubble. Bare and charred and desolate it was then. And yet now, less than three months
later, in Baramhat, the old roots, vigorous in the earth, are pushing the new crop through. Sharif Basha stands up, stamps his feet, stretches. Here he is away, away from thoughts of her. He wipes his hands on his cotton trousers. Beyond the sugar cane, the last rays of the setting sun catch the fields of kittan and burnish them into a sea of purple, blue and gold. Two, three, four thousand years ago, men stood as he is standing now and looked at this same scene, these same colours, felt this same light gust of breeze that brushes the heads of the flowers and sends a slow wave rippling from end to end of the shining field. To his mind, the magic of this scene equals that of the desert. Perhaps surpasses it. Would she be moved by it as he is? She has land in her own country, he knows. But is it farms or forests or meadows? He does not know. In the middle distance a young girl untethers an ox from the water wheel, removes the blindfold from its eyes, and child and beast start ambling slowly towards home. He walks over to the water wheel, takes off his shoes and socks and starts to wash.

In the village mosque, the men make room for him in the front row and when the sunset prayers are over he walks with the
Umdah through the darkening lanes. They sit in the
Umdah’s mandarah with the door open to the road. Men come and men go, the tea tray goes round and round again, and always, in the distance, there are the sounds of children playing. Landlord and
Umdah talk of the new school Sharif Basha and his uncle Ghamrawi Bey are putting up in the village. The children will still have to go to the kuttab of course, the sheikh need not worry about that. But in the new school they will learn to add and subtract. They will learn the geography of the whole world and the history of their country. The fallaheen will be persuaded to spare their children (boys
and
girls, Sharif Basha repeats) from the fields for two hours every day that they might learn. Not that they should become afandiyyah, but that they should be educated citizens more able to look after their own interests.

‘You are right, ya Basha.’ The
Umdah sighs. ‘Nobody knows what the days will bring.’

‘All good, Insha
Allah, ya
Umdah. But we should do what we can.’

‘Every day there’s something new. First it was the wine shop and we put our hands on our hearts and said may God protect us, but people were wise and it was only the bad lot who went there anyway. Now it’s the moneylenders and it’s not enough for them that they set up shop in the town, they have to come to the villages and try to hook people —’

‘We’ve talked about this and you said our people here are comfortable?’

‘Comfortable, yes, ya Basha, al-hamdu-l-Illah, but a man gets cornered, he wants to get his daughter married, he has sudden circumstances — and they charge a lot for their money. Greeks, all Greek —’

‘Tell them to come to me. To come to Hasib Efendi, my agent. I’ll speak to him. We’ll forward the money, in an emergency, with one per cent interest and the crop as surety.’

‘May God give you light, ya Basha. The village will rejoice.’

‘Tell them.’

‘I’ll tell them on Friday. Will you pray with us?’

‘If I’m still here.’

They should set up a cooperative, Sharif Basha thinks. If each man puts by a little money, after the harvest, they can draw on it when they need to. Other villages have started to do that. Hasib Efendi can look after it. Bank it for them. He’ll speak to him — and promise him a pay rise to make up for the extra work. Sharif Basha walks from the village to his house, exchanging easy greetings with the men he meets on the way. It’s simple living on the land. The Ibrahimiyyah gives them water all the year round and he has persuaded the fallaheen not to shift wholesale into cotton as Cromer would have them do and put themselves at the mercy of a market over which they have no control. Some cotton, yes, but they still plant their beans and their peas, their wheat and barley. Their watermelons, each now lying like a queen in her bed of yellow flowers. The worst that can happen is misguided
British officers following a fox. Here on his land the problems are problems he can solve.

He washes and changes, then rides out to the house of his uncle Mustafa Bey al-Ghamrawi for dinner. Here, a man could forget about Cairo, about the Occupation, about the world. And yet, for him, it had never been an option. He loves the land, but he loves the city too: the lights, the noise, the speed and action of it. Living on the land is too much like retiring — giving up.

Sharif Basha sees a horseman cantering towards him from the direction of his uncle’s house. As he draws near, the greeting rings out in a familiar voice: ‘Ya misa’ al-khairat!’

Shukri al-
Asali, the nephew of his uncle’s wife, and his childhood friend. The two men leap from their horses and embrace. Back in the Sixties and the Seventies there had been long visits between their two households. The children spent the winter months together here on the land in Tawasi and the summer months there on the land in ‘Ein el-Mansi between al-Nasirah and Jenin. They still write to each other, and when they visit from time to time they find their old friendship still strong in their hearts.