The Mistress of Nothing (4 page)

Both men laughed. “What you need, Lady Duff Gordon, is a dragoman,” Mr. Thayer declared.

“A what?” said my Lady.

“An interpreter, a guide, a factotum,” he said, enunciating the last word carefully.

“Oh,” said my Lady, “will that make us feel …”—she looked at me as I set down the coffee tray—“less desperate?”

“Yes,” Mr. Thayer said firmly. “You can’t possible travel in this country without an Egyptian at your side. I know the perfect boy.”

And before my Lady had time to ask herself if she really did need or, indeed, could afford such a thing, he returned to us later the same day, bringing with him a young Egyptian. “Madam,” Mr. Thayer said with a flourish, “Mr. Omar Abu Halaweh. Father of the Sweets.”

“I beg your pardon,” said my Lady, amused. “Sweets?”

Mr. Omar Abu Halaweh looked mildly perplexed, and I wondered how much he understood of what was taking place. He was watching Mr. Thayer and my mistress intently and I took the opportunity to have a good look at him. He was a bit younger than me, perhaps in his mid-twenties, though it’s hard to tell. He was slender: all Egyptian men are slender, except when they are very prosperous and fat. He was neatly dressed, his clothes well cared for and tidy. Like most Egyptians he was clean-shaven and his skin was exceptionally smooth-looking. He reminded me of someone and this feeling nagged at me until I remembered: the man I used to visit in the Museum. My stone Pharaoh. I felt hot suddenly, and my throat tightened, and my heart skipped a beat. I blushed at my foolish whimsy and hoped no one was looking at me.

“Abu Halaweh—Father of the Sweets,” repeated Mr. Thayer, his American accent smooth and rounded, “that’s how his name translates. He’s from a family of pastry cooks in Cairo. And, I’m assured, he himself is a very good cook indeed. I’ll say it again: Mr. Omar Abu Halaweh.”

At that, Mr. Abu Halaweh took a low, neat bow before straightening up and smiling broadly and, from behind his back, producing an elaborately wrapped box of sweetmeats in honey, something that I had longed—but failed—to buy. I’d been struggling to cook for my Lady since our arrival—we mainly survived on fresh dates from the market and flat bread sprinkled with salt and spices that by some unknown command a small child brought to our door every morning, delicious, if not completely satisfying—and the idea of employing a dragoman who could cook made me almost swoon with the hunger I’d been ignoring these past days, missing meals in order to ensure my Lady had enough to eat, pretending I’d already eaten. But then Mr. Omar Abu Halaweh came to our aid and, after that, everything was much simpler.

Their interview was brief and to the point; my Lady invited Mr. Abu Halaweh to sit with her for a while, and they conversed, Mr. Thayer chipping in regularly to translate when necessary and to sing yet more of the dragoman’s praises. I served tea from the Rosses’ larder (when they return from England they will have to do a great deal of replenishing of their stocks, I’m afraid). Mr. Abu Halaweh’s spoken English turned out to be rather good and Mr. Thayer claimed that he was skilled at bargaining, essential in this land where, I’d discovered, absolutely everything was open to negotiation.

And so he was ours. He moved into the Rosses’ flat the next day. And I began my Egyptian education.

“H
ELLO,
”
HE SAYS,
“ES SALAAM AHLAYKUM.”

We are seated together, on the terrace of Shepheard’s Hotel. My Lady has gone upstairs to rest a while before dinner. The evening sun is pink and rosy, full of city dirt and smoke from the open fires. Below us, Cairo is almost quiet.

“Salaam
means peace. A greeting, a way of saying hello.
Es salaam ahlaykum.
But there is also
ahlen.
And to that, you reply
ahlen wa sahlen.”

I make an attempt: in my mouth the words feel full of air and full of earth at the same time. I’d heard these greetings in the market many times, but that didn’t make pronouncing the words myself any easier.

“My name is Miss Naldrett,” Mr. Abu Halaweh says, and I stifle a giggle; he frowns theatrically. “Ana
ismee
Miss Naldrett.”

“That’s simple,” I say, “Ana
ismee.
It’s me!’

“
Weh inti?”
he says.

“Excuse me?”

“Weh
inti?
And you?
Inti
for woman,
inta
for man.
Weh inti?”

I blush, though I know he isn’t actually asking my name; he already knows it. “Ana
ismee
Miss Naldrett. Miss Sally Naldrett,” I reply carefully.

THE SMALL CRAFT MOVES UP THE NILE. AS WE TRAVEL SOUTH, AWAY
from the Mediterranean, away from all things European, into the heat, I fall in love. Both my Lady and I fall in love. Not with any one person. We fall in love with the river and the country it succors and drowns, the Nile and its people.

There are discomforts. Of course there are, this boat life is so unlike that other life, that previous life, the life of the drawing room, the sickroom, the kitchen and garden. The clothes we wear are not suitable, the high-laced shoes, the gloves, the bonnets, the undergarments, the stays. I sit in my small, low cabin and stare at the things folded neatly in my valise; what can I wear that will not make me suffocate? I think of the children—small boys, thin as Nile reeds—I saw playing at the river’s edge yesterday and I speak to myself in a low voice: “I should like to run about naked!” and I laugh and smile at the thought. But still, I must dress for the day and eventually I choose. Brown muslin, high-necked, in England this dress was one of the best—sturdiest—I have ever owned: my Lady gave it to me. She wore it only once or twice at a time when she was a larger shape than me; it was not like my Lady to be profligate with clothing but she did not like the dress, did not like the color brown, and said, “I don’t know what possessed me,” as she handed it over. Though I am taller than my mistress, I cut the dress down so that it fitted me and, with my dark hair and brown eyes, the color suits me. Now I find myself looking at the garment and wondering if perhaps I should slice vents into the stiff cloth in an attempt to accommodate the heat of my body, the awful heat my body generates. It’s meant to be autumn here, as in England, but it’s not like any autumn I recognize. Mr. Abu Halaweh always looks so cool, I wonder how he does it. It’s not as though he is underdressed, he’s very well turned out; he pays as much attention to his own dress as I do to my Lady’s—his tunic, his wide waistband, his draped trousers, his tidy waistcoat—
sudeyree,
he tells me during one of our language exchanges—and even at first light he is neat, entirely presentable, even as the sun goes down behind the white hills at the end of another long, hot day.

Those white hills, I see them when I close my eyes against the darkness of my cabin; that’s the desert, I tell myself. The desert. The word itself is frightening. That’s where the lush green ends, where the Nile, despite its abundance, cannot reach. Sometimes, as the sun beats down on our boat,
Zint el-Bachreyn
(I roll the words around my mouth again and again), and I look for somewhere to escape to, somewhere I can lie back and rest and not feel as though I am burning, burning—sometimes when I look across the water, across the cultivated land, and see those white hills, I am frightened. The desert, in all its blank enormity; the Egyptian desert, peopled as it is with the dead, with mortuaries, funerary temples, mummies in their tombs, workers in their graves. I have to look away.

But I am safe, for the moment, safe and happy traveling upriver on our
dahabieh, Zint el-Bachreyn,
which Mr. Abu Halaweh hired once we left Alexandria and moved on to Cairo—oh my word, Cairo! What chaos, what light. We needed to hire a boat: Mr. Abu Halaweh secured one for us. We needed supplies: he secured those as well and, what’s more, he allowed me to accompany him on his trips to the markets. He took my Lady and me on excursions, out into the streets of the city, away from Shepheard’s Hotel—dank, overcrowded, and smelling of cabbage like that hotel in the Isle of Wight—through the narrow lanes overhung by the tiered upper floors of the buildings that block out the sun with their wooden lattice window bays, wind-catchers they’re called, built to capture whatever breeze there might be. We saw the great medieval mosque, Ibn Tulun, where we watched our dragoman remove his shoes, wash his feet, and kneel down to pray, and Khan el-Khalili, the enormous bazaar, where my Lady was treated like a visiting dignitary. We took Turkish coffee, sweet and sharp, and my Lady asked many questions, like an overexcited child who wanted to see, hear, taste, and smell everything, and I felt the same. Mr. Abu Halaweh led the way, and in Cairo we caught a glimpse of the true Egypt, the Egypt we had both longed to see, ancient and modern at the same time, cloistered and open-aired, full of noise, heat, growth, and decay. Mr. William Thayer accompanied us on some of our outings and, in his presence, my Lady was truly restored to her good self, vivid and alive. We led her about the place on a hired donkey we called George (“He reminds me of Mr. Meredith,” my Lady claimed) and we acquired a donkey boy called Hassan as well. Poor Hassan quickly became yet another victim of our assault on the Arabic language and after only a single day with us had adopted the habit of continually chanting the Arabic word for absolutely everything he could see. “Maya,” he would say, pointing at my cup of water. “Nahr,” he would repeat, pointing at the Nile.

In the evenings we retired to the hotel, where my Lady spent her time writing up the events of the day in her letters home to England. She wrote to both Sir Alick and her mother every day, as well as to her friends, not bothering to wait for a reply before starting afresh. “A reply could take weeks to arrive,” she’d say. “I can’t bear to wait that long before telling them what we have seen.” It was as though writing these letters at the end of the day was as important as the day itself had been, if not more so, as though these letters home had become her work, replacing all the other writing she had done in her life.

Mr. Hekekyan Bey invited my Lady to dinner at his Cairo house, a compound just outside the city, surrounded by fields. In the dim and cool salon where antiquities—pieces of carved frieze, small statuary, sculpted stone heads—were stacked up against the walls like old bricks, I watched as Mr. Hekekyan Bey’s wife demonstrated to my Lady the Egyptian way of eating, sitting on the floor cross-legged round a large communal tray. She held up her right hand only. “This hand,” she said, “no implements,” and she proceeded to use the flat bread as a kind of scoop. I could see how this manner of taking a meal—intimate and relaxed, exotic yet practical—would appeal to my Lady; she laughed and said, “How very efficient,” and proceeded to eat with great gusto, as though eating itself was a novelty.

She thrived on the company and the adventure but even so, during the carriage ride back to Cairo from Mr. Hekekyan Bey’s house, her cough worsened once again. The last few days had grown a little cooler. “We need to travel south,” she said, “to Upper Egypt, where the air will be pure and hot and dry.”

“Mr. Abu Halaweh will help me prepare,” I replied. “We can leave within a few days.”

My Lady nodded her consent and closed her eyes.

And so we left Cairo. We had not seen the pyramids at Giza yet; that would have to wait until our return, despite my impatience, though I was compensated by the knowledge of what we would see en route. In Egypt everything is so utterly unfamiliar, even the moon and stars look altered, strange, as though my Lady and I have swapped planets, not countries.

AND FOR NOW—YES—HERE WE ARE ON THE
DAHABIEH,
TRAVELING
up the River Nile.

The language the boatmen speak is full of smooth melodies. In the early morning before I am fully awake, I hear the men singing as they pass the door of my cabin—what a sound to wake up to—and the water slapping outside my tiny window. Later, the men call to each other from stern to prow, from one vessel to another, and I listen. My Lady and I both scrabble for words; we are equal in this. We listen hard, we soak it up and attempt to imitate the men. We learn a few new words every day:
shey
—tea;
ahowah
—coffee, which is similar to but slightly different from
aywa
—yes: words breathed in and sent flying from the back of the throat, and we mouth them to each other, correcting each other’s accent, emphasis, matching these words eagerly to Mr. Omar Abu Halaweh’s English.
Es salaam ahlaykum. Shukran. Insha allah. Alhamdulillah.
When we are sitting together one afternoon, watching the Nile—my domestic duties on the boat have been lightened considerably by the presence of our dragoman and I feel a kind of freedom that is new and startling—I ask him to teach me the alphabet. “Oh, but Miss Naldrett,” he says mildly, “I cannot read or write.” I try not to show my surprise, reminding myself that many men in similar positions to his at home in England would not be able to read and write either, and that I am lucky to have these skills, passed on to me, like books themselves, by my Lady.

And so we continue together, exchanging words like glances. Life has become one enormous vocabulary lesson. I am pleased and exhausted by it.

I AM NOT ACCUSTOMED TO WORKING SO CLOSELY WITH A MAN.
Washing, cooking, cleaning, attending to my Lady: I am not accustomed to a man having skills so close to my own. It should have been a large adjustment, one set of difficulties, how to cope here in Egypt, replaced by another, no longer having my Lady to myself. He pays no heed to any notion of men’s work, women’s work; for him a task is a task, to be completed. It occurs to me that, if I chose to, I could sit back and have him attend me as well as my Lady, but that is not in my nature. Instead, to my surprise, I find I enjoy the companionship. I instruct Mr. Abu Halaweh in the ways of our household as Mr. Abu Halaweh instructs me in the ways of Eygpt. I will always be my mistress’s maid, there will always be things I can do that Mr. Abu Halaweh cannot, but here in Egypt, on a boat on the Nile, we could not get by without him at our side. Our time in Alexandria and Cairo made this clear to us both: without Mr. Abu Halaweh, we would not survive. We would starve to death, or die of loneliness, whichever calamity overtook us first.