said Hassan Kashif, that was allocated to him for his balloonist brigade and their workshops. Here he would recreate the École nationale aérostatique de Meudon! His heart rose in his chest with the thrill of anticipation. He and his confreres would form a true elysium of savants here in the Nasiriya. The secretary of the Institute, Fourier, was lodged in the house of Sennari, Murad Bey’s Sudanese Mamluke. Nearby would be the naturalists St-Hilaire and Savigny, the architects Balzac and Lepère; the geographers, the pharmacists, the mineralogists; and the painters Rigo and Redouté. Nicolas had already designated the perfect spot for their informal gathering place of an evening: the large garden of an adjoining house, that of Qassim Bey, with its gigantic sycamore tree and fragrant acacias.
His reverie was interrupted by the appearance of Dr Desgenettes.
‘Ah, Docteur, welcome! Have you been to inspect the quarters you were allocated for the hospital?’
‘I have indeed, on the Elephant Lake. I am also to set up another hospital in the Citadel. We have just been touring the premises with General Bonaparte. You will never guess what our general is writing urgently to request from the Directoire.’
‘What could that be?’
‘Prostitutes.’
‘Did you say prostitutes?’
‘Precisely. Bonaparte is writing urgently to Paris to request that the Directoire ship out at least a hundred prostitutes on the next available ship. The shortage of women is beginning to pose a serious problem to the health and morale of our troops. After all, with thousands of Frenchmen here, and only a couple of hundred women – and those not even filles publiques but wives – where are our men to seek le repos du guerrier? And in this one crucial instance we cannot hope to live on the land, as the general has warned most sternly against offending local sensibilities, and Muslims are most punctilious in these matters.’
‘Surely there must be local filles de joie?’
‘Few, and those are joyless indeed, with figures flabby from childbearing. And as for hygiene …’ He shrugged. ‘No, it is a serious problem, and Bonaparte has written to the Directoire demanding a hundred prostitutes immediately; we shall see what comes of it.’
Through the open window a chant rose like a plume of smoke, and was echoed from first one, then a dozen minarets around the city, till the sultry sunset air swelled with the chants of the muezzins and the twittering of the birds going to roost in the trees. Nicolas stood before the window, enchanted by the purity and light of the achingly graceful minarets soaring into the hazy mauve sky.
‘Ah, Docteur, if monuments are windows into the soul of a civilization, then these Mamlukes, whatever they are today, must once have been a race that valued beauty and balance above all.’
Zeinab stared out of the mashrabiyya window at two French soldiers in the street below, fascinated by the long, floppy brown hair that hung to their shoulders and the skin-tight white breeches that moulded their legs and outlined their crotches and loins; she had never seen men walking about looking naked before. But what the soldiers were doing worried her. They were tearing down and breaking up the great wood and leather gates that protected the neighbourhood at night, and loading the dismantled doors on carts.
‘My teacher, is it true what Dada says? That the reason the French are tearing down the gates to the neighbourhoods all around the city is so they can murder us all while the men are at Friday prayers?’
‘Your wet-nurse repeats whatever rumours she picks up in the marketplace. No, the French are tearing down the gates so that their carriages and troops can enter the neighbourhoods unhindered in case of an uprising against them. They decree that the streets are not wide enough for the passage of their troops and particularly for their general’s carriage – which requires six horses to draw it – so they intend to demolish anything that extrudes into the street in front of the houses, including the small steps and benches that shopkeepers sit on.’
‘Even the earthenware jars for thirsty passers-by?’
‘Even those must go, no matter what hospitality dictates.’ Shaykh Jabarti shook his head. ‘They do not understand our ways. They tear down the gates, and then they force each householder to keep a lantern lit before his door all night, and fine him if it goes out or if some lout deliberately extinguishes it, as if people had nothing better to do than stay awake all night making sure that their lamps do not go out. Nothing will come of this but ill-feeling.’
It was true, thought Zeinab, a sullen silence reigned in the city. The shops closed early, people kept to their homes. Festivities went uncelebrated, by tacit consent. The heads of the guilds, who would normally be vying at this time to put on the showiest parade for the upcoming festival of the Nile flood – particularly as it coincided this year with the birthday of the Prophet – would have nothing to do with it, in protest at the occupation. And the French would be none the wiser.
‘The enemy is before you and the sea is behind you. You will fight or die. There is no retreat.’
Tariq bin Ziyad, Moorish Conqueror of Spain.
Nicolas Conté looked up from his code book and blinked at the brilliant sky above him. From the ramparts of the white medieval Mamluke fort the bay of Alexandria stretched out before him, reverberating in the blue glare. The sun had begun to set, streaking the sky glorious mauve and orange, and a sweet breeze blew across the bay. Nicolas was glad his mission – to build the optical telegraph that was to relay messages between the city and the fleet – had brought him to the seashore, away from the stifling heat of Cairo in August. His engineers were supervising the building of the wooden rods, painted black, to be mounted as the arms of the semaphore, and training operators to set them at the proper angles to represent 196 symbols. Nicolas himself was concentrating on combining symbols to yield words and phrases; he had already devised two thousand out of a possible eight thousand plus – when a watchman cried the alarm and he looked out to sea. With the sun low in the sky, they saw a fleet of ships over the horizon, black sails deployed to the fullest, and to a man they leapt to their feet, hoping against hope that it was reinforcements from Spain.
But it was Nelson; this time he would not miss the French fleet trapped in Aboukir Bay to the east of the city. A cry of frustration escaped Nicolas: the semaphore would at least have allowed him to warn Admiral Brueys and the other captains on the ships, but the system was not yet up and running. As Nicolas watched in helpless agony from the top of the fort, and the entire city and garrison watched from rooftops and terraces, the English fleet opened fire with fourteen hundred cannons at once. The blare was indescribable, the superiority of English firepower stunning. As the sun set, the flagship of the French fleet, L’Orient, exploded when its gunpowder magazines caught fire. Nicolas knew the terrible sight would be seared in his brain for as long as he lived.
As nightfall turned the bay into a lake of fire, the guns fell mercifully silent. But there was no time to waste; he knew he had to prepare for the eventuality of an attack on the city itself. He set his engineers to work outfitting ovens with reflectors to heat cannonballs and improvising a floating fire pump. All night they laboured at their hellish tasks, dripping sweat, until with the dawn the English resumed firing, to complete the devastation they had started the night before. The pitiable sights that daylight disclosed were unspeakable:
