door. ‘Forgive my intruding on you this way. If the Franj capture me within the city walls they will kill me outright. This disguise was the only way to go unrecognized.’ He seemed more amused than mortified by his ignominious appearance. ‘There are only too many people on the street who would have turned me in for the price on my head.’
He turned away discreetly as Nafisa snatched a Damascus silk shawl off the window seat and wound it around her head and shoulders.
‘It is good to see that you are alive and well, Elfi Bey,’ she said, regaining something of her composure. ‘The rumours have been flying around the city that you have taken refuge with the Bedouin, that you have been seen in the western desert, but also that you raid the French convoys in the east, and then again that you were seen in the north near the Syrian border with Ibrahim Bey. Some reports even had you sighted on foot, with a lion on a leash. One cannot know what to credit and what to dismiss.’
‘It is all true – even the lion. I have been moving around constantly, never spending two nights in one place. But I have established rear camps with the Abaddi in the eastern desert, and another in Kharja oasis in the Libyan desert.’
‘The Bedouin? Surely they are not to be trusted?’
‘We shall see. They have their own sense of honour; when they give a stranger safe conduct, the whole tribe, every man, woman and child – will stand behind their pledge to the death. But no outsider can trust them completely.’
‘And Murad? What news of him?’
‘Murad Bey is headed south, and keeps just a step ahead of the Franj.’
‘Magallon came to see me yesterday – with Rossetti. All smiles and compliments, as if nothing had changed.’ Rossetti, the ex-consul and long a resident of the Venetian quarter of Cairo, had been a confidant of her husband’s and had frequented the house almost as often as Magallon. Before the two men left, she had made a point of handing – with a smile and a regal inclination of her head – the French clock to Magallon as part of the ransom she had been asked to pay. The pained look on his face had been the one fleeting moment of satisfaction she had derived from that humiliating meeting.
‘Rossetti said they were authorized to offer Murad the province of Girgeh up to the first cataract in return for acknowledgement of the suzerainty of the Franj and paying them tax on the land. And he is to keep no more than five hundred cavalry. In other words, he would be a tax farmer under the Franj. I replied that I would have to hear from my husband first.’
‘They would have not heard the news from Alexandria yet. Bonaparte himself has not heard the news, he is in the north chasing Ibrahim Bey.’
‘What news is it you speak of?’
He stopped suddenly and drew the veil across his face, holding up a finger.
She heard her eunuch outside the door. ‘Mistress, you called for me?’
‘No, not yet. I will call you in a few minutes.’
‘I must hurry.’ Elfi lowered the veil. ‘The French fleet was destroyed last night in the bay of Alexandria; without it they are trapped in Egypt. I was with Ibrahim Bey near the Syrian border and we were able to hold off Bonaparte’s cavalry – on horseback they are no match for Mamlukes, so they must rely on their great advantage in infantry and artillery, and that slows them down. Ibrahim Bey was able to escape to Syria with all the booty from the Mecca caravan. He will make for Istanbul and plead with the Sultan for reinforcements. The English are allies of the Porte and if he asks them to come to his aid that will be a sufficient excuse for them to intervene. This is not the time for Murad Bey to accept terms of surrender. That is what I came to warn you. Hold them off any way you can. Make a counter-offer on behalf of Murad Bey, offer monies in exchange for evacuation … I must go now.’
‘But why put yourself in danger by coming here in person? Why did you not send an emissary?’
‘I could have taken that risk on my account, but not on yours. There was no one I could trust not to betray you if he was caught.’
He covered his face and head completely and there stood before Nafisa the veiled Bedouin woman. ‘May I see your face in good health, Sitt Nafisa.’
‘A universal man, with the passion, the knowledge and the genius for the arts, precious in a far away country, capable of turning his hand to anything, of creating the arts of France in the desert of Arabia.’
Napoleon Bonaparte on Nicolas-Jacques Conté
Zeinab took the tiniest lick off the arm of her doll, and the sweetness of the spun sugar titillated her tongue. This would be the last year she would be given a sugar-paste doll for the mulid of the Prophet, she thought with equal regret and satisfaction: after all, as she had grumbled to her mother, she was a girl of marriageable age now, no longer a child. But she had secretly rejoiced in the particularly gorgeous doll with the bold black eyes painted on the almond-paste face, and the pleated, pink tissue skirt fanned out around her.
Only a few days ago it had seemed as though there would be no mulid dolls this year, and no sugar-paste horse for her younger brother, either. No one was in the mood to celebrate with the Franj occupying Cairo, and so many families in the city mourning their dead. But then the Franj had decreed that the mulid would be celebrated as usual, as would the ceremony of the Nile flood; fines would be levied on merchants who did not keep their shops open and festoon them with garlands, and on any guilds that did not organize a parade.
But it was not thoughts of the parades or the musicians, the dervishes or the dancers that excited Zeinab to the point of sleeplessness: it was the prospect of witnessing the Franj’s flying ship. They had posted signs all over town announcing that after the annual ceremony of the Nile flood, and after the mulid parade, they would demonstrate a special flying ship that could fly over the houses and the trees and the city walls and, who knew, perhaps over the Red Sea itself; a flying ship in which people could ride over the clouds like the magic carpets in the stories of the Thousand and One Nights. The French claimed they had used these flying ships in battle to spy on their enemies and defeat them. The soldiers had distributed posters printed on their Arabic press announcing that this great French invention would take off from Ezbekiah Square that Friday.
Zeinab’s excitement had been roused to fever pitch by the sight of preparations on the Ezbekiah esplanade not far from her house, where for several days the French engineers had been seen building a platform and setting up their equipment. She had begged to be allowed to attend the great spectacle, and her father had promised, but she fretted that he might forget all about it or change his mind.
All morning Zeinab looked out of her mashrabiyya window at the mulid procession passing in the street below: the drummers and the shrill pipers, the dancing women swaying their hips, the tumblers, the shrieking monkeys and chained bears, the serpent handlers, the puppeteers with their vulgar cries, the singers and the female poetesses. The street sellers hawked their wares: tamarind, carob and liquorice juice, roasted peanuts and ruby-red watermelon, date-and-nut-filled pancakes. Then the guilds, each in turn, parading with their banners: scissors for the tailors; a net for the fishmongers; bracelets for the jewellers; a gun for the barudis, the gunpowder manufacturers.
