The Map of Love (42 page)

‘Have you come to marry me?’ he asks.

‘I …’ Isabel falters.

‘Salamu
aleikum,’ a voice rings out in the courtyard and a woman hurries in through the door. She wears the usual loose black smock of the working-class woman, over the usual plump figure, topped by a cheery, round face wrapped loosely in a black tarha.

‘Salamu
aleikum ya Sheikh
Isa,’ she cries again as she hurries up to Isabel. ‘Marhab ya Sett, welcome!’ Isabel scents a whiff of orange blossom as she is folded against the woman’s warm, substantial breast. ‘Welcome and a hundred times welcome,’ she cries again. ‘Sit down, my darling, sit down, lady of them all, why are you standing like this? Shouldn’t you ask your guest to sit down, ya Sheikh
Isa? Never mind, my darling, don’t hold it against him. We don’t get many visitors. Apart from those who come to visit Sidi Haroun —’ waving at the tomb — ‘they come in nations. Of course they don’t come in here, but they bring light for us too as you see. But you have brought us light and honour. Welcome, welcome! Shall I make you some tea, or what would you like? Will you drink tea, ya Sheikh
Isa?’

‘No,’ Sheikh
Isa says, ‘I want something cold. I want Seven-Up.’

‘Very well, my love. I’ll get you a bottle of Seven-Up. And the lady? We’ve not been honoured with your name?’

‘Isabel,’ says Isabel.

‘May the name live long. Your servant Ummu Aya. Well, Sett Isabel — that’s right, sit down, sister, sit down and be comfortable. You see this cloth —’ smoothing out the cover on the settle cushion — ‘it’s full of barakah. Sheikh
Isa himself made it. Will you drink hot or cold, my darling?’

‘Whatever you’ve got,’ Isabel murmurs as she sits down, placing the holdall with her camera, open, on the bench beside her.

‘Everything we’ve got,’ cries Umm Aya, unwinding her tarha from round her head to reveal the white kerchief beneath. She folds the tarha into an untidy bundle and tucks it under her arm. ‘Hot and cold, in a second they’ll be with you. I’ll tell you what: I’ll bring you something cold first, and the tea in a little while. Welcome, welcome. Talk to your guest, Sheikh
Isa. Don’t let her sit and be bored.’

She hurries out and the room is once more silent. The sheikh stares at Isabel.

‘Are you a foreigner?’ he says.

‘Yes,’ she answers.

‘Your hair is yellow,’ he says.

‘My father’s hair was this colour.’

‘And your mother?’

‘My mother’s hair is — was — dark, almost black.’

‘Do you love your mother?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ says Isabel. ‘Yes, I love my mother.’

‘Paradise,’ the sheikh says, ‘is at the feet of mothers. Remember that.’

Isabel fingers the fabric she is sitting on. In this light she cannot quite make out the colours, but she sees strips of varying dark and, at irregular intervals, a gleaming strip of gold.

‘So, you made this?’ she asks.

‘Yes.’

‘What else did you make?’

‘Oh. Many things,’ he says, and his voice is sad. ‘I can only work when my hands are well,’ he says.

‘What is the matter with your hands?’ Isabel asks.

‘Sometimes they hurt,’ he says, ‘sometimes they are wounded.’

He spreads his hands out and looks at them. In the dim light Isabel can just make out a faint mark in the centre of each hand before they are covered by the long, white hands of the woman in the blue robe. She kneels at his feet and in the face looking up at the sheikh Isabel sees a look of melting tenderness.

‘Are they hurting?’ the woman asks.

‘No,’ he answers. ‘No.’

The woman bends her head and places one kiss in the palm of each hand. Then she folds them together and places them in his lap.

Umm Aya hurries in carrying two green bottles on a small brass tray. ‘Salamu
aleikum, Our Lady,’ she says. She puts the tray down on the table and, as the woman rises to her feet, Umm Aya catches her hand and kisses it.

‘Don’t you find him well, the name of God protect him?’ she asks anxiously.

‘Praise be to God,’ the other answers.

‘And now, Sett …’ She turns to Isabel.

‘Isabel,’ says Isabel.

‘Sett Isabel has come —’

‘I — Perhaps I shouldn’t have —’ Isabel begins uncomfortably but Umm Aya interrupts:

‘Why shouldn’t? “And enter the houses by their doors” ’, she quotes; ‘you entered by the door and we gave you welcome.’

‘But still, maybe …’ She makes to stand but the woman in the blue robes turns towards her with a smile of great sweetness.

‘You bring us good company,’ she says. ‘Stay in comfort. The house is your house.’

‘Do us the honour,’ Umm Aya says, wiping the mouth of a bottle with her sleeve and offering it to Isabel. Isabel takes it and Umm Aya gives the other bottle to Sheikh’Isa. ‘Drink, my darling, in happiness and health,’ she says.

The woman in blue is by the door. ‘I leave you in good health,’ she says and vanishes into the sunlit courtyard.

Umm Aya sits on the other settle. ‘So, tell us now, my darling,’ she says, ‘where did you learn Arabic?’

And Amal has made up her mind. When Anna’s story is finished she will close down her flat and move to Tawasi. Not for ever, but for a while. If she has any responsibility now, it is to her land and to the people on it. There is so much there that she can do, so much she can give, so much she can learn. If only she can sort out the business with the list; she cannot ask the fallaheen for a list of names — and she cannot reopen the school without it. As she approaches the end of University Bridge the statue of Nahdet Masr rises before her: the statue at whose feet they had gathered in the days of the demonstrations. When, after the war of ‘67, their whole generation had seemed to sense what that defeat would do to them, how it would stretch its ill shadow over all the years of their lives, and they had spilled into the streets to try to ward it off. In ‘68 when it had seemed that the young would conquer the world and they, the students of Egypt, would be among the conquerors. They had taken Nahdet Masr as their symbol: a fallaha, one hand on the head of a sphinx, rousing him from sleep, the other putting aside her veil; a statue at once ancient and modern, made of the pink granite of Aswan. Designed by Mahmoud Mukhtar, the first graduate of the School of Fine Art, and funded by a great collection to which government and people had contributed. Well, it still stands and the renaissance must surely come. If she can open up the school she’ll whitewash the walls and put bright posters up on them. She’ll record the children’s songs and learn to make bread.
She’ll find some old man who still has an Aragoz and a Sanduq el-Dunya — and a storyteller. There must still be storytellers around —