then again, he reminded himself, our General Bonaparte himself is not quite thirty!
Bonaparte, it was known, had read every treatise he could lay his hands on about Egypt’s religion, history, philosophy and science; he had even found the time to pen a novella called The Mask of the Prophet. Never, Conté marvelled, had an enterprise been undertaken in such a lofty spirit, or a campaign so carefully prepared, or a dream cherished for so long.
Now Bonaparte was exhorting his men from the deck of L’Orient: ‘The people among whom we will live are Muhammadans. Their first article of faith is that there is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet. Do not contradict them … Show the same tolerance for the mosques and the rituals of the Koran as you did for the convents and synagogues, for the religions of Moses and Jesus Christ. You will find different customs, you must get used to them. Their way of treating women is different. But in any culture he who rapes is a monster.’
Conté had no doubt they would be welcomed by the Egyptians, to whom they would come as liberators rather than conquerors, bearing the incomparable gift of the Rights of Man. As for the vaunted Mamlukes who oppressed the people of the Nile, favouring English merchants at the expense of the French, the blood had run thin in that warlike race. All they knew was cavalry, and the age belonged to cannon and musket. Foreign-born, strangers in their own land, they lived as parasites on the natives. Nothing should be easier than to turn the people against them.
And what incomparable discoveries awaited the French Scientific Commission! The Sphinx itself would no longer have any secrets for them. Conté chafed with impatience to see the coast of that ancient land appear over the horizon. What a long way he had come from his humble little village of St-Céneri-le-Gérei, Nicolas-Jacques Conté, the self-taught son of peasants, promoted rapidly in the Republican ranks by the sheer merit of his genius, the Director of the first Engineering School in France; and here he was now at forty, launched on the adventure of his lifetime, of all their lifetimes – an expedition for the ages.
‘Land ho!’
Conte’s heart leapt in his chest. Egypt, at last! The great adventure had begun.
For only the second time in her forty years of life, Lady Nafisa the White dreaded the dawn. Sleep had eluded her all night, but she lay quietly in order not to disturb her maids in the adjoining room. They would have risen, bleary and heavy-limbed with sleep, and hovered around her bed, offering to bring mint tea, or to massage her feet.
Nafisa knew where her husband was tonight, and wished it were with another woman.
She glanced at the gold-mounted ormolu clock with the rose faience face that she could not make out in the dark. It had been a present from the French consul, Magallon, in happier times. The irony struck her: how the world had changed! But she did not need a clock to tell the time; she could smell the dawn in the air before the first bird stirred, before the muezzin cleared his throat to chant the call for prayers; long before the watchmen unlocked the heavy wooden gates that secured each neighbourhood for the night against robbery and mischief. She knew the exact order in which the gates to the quarters were drawn back: first the Moroccan quarter, then the Jewellers Lane, then the Nasiriya quarter where most of the European merchants lived, then the Ezbekiah Lake and the Alley of the Syrians, and finally the gates to the Citadel. Cairo was her city; she could take its pulse at any moment.
The first time Nafisa had lain sleepless had been her wedding night – her first wedding night, thirty years ago now, to Ali Bey. Her awe of her husband-to-be had been complete. As a child she had seen his image struck on coins: Ali Bey the Great, sole master of Egypt. She had watched from the latticework shutters of the harem windows as he rode past at the head of his army, on one campaign or another, to Syria and the Sudan and the borders of Egypt. When his choice had fallen on her for his second wife, the honour had been overwhelming.
Her hair had been long and thick like a curtain then, the colour of light molasses where it sprung at the roots, grading down to the clearest honey where it slapped against the back of her knees. The first time she had undressed before Ali Bey, she had shaken her hair about her in a shudder of modesty, cloaking herself with her own tresses. He had thrown his head back and laughed, and her dread had begun to melt around the edges.
She had been little more than a child at the time. Over their long years together she had grown from child-bride to trusted consort, consulted and cultivated by the powerful in Egypt and abroad. Until the day Ali Bey had been betrayed and assassinated. Nafisa tensed and held her breath, listening for the clatter of horses’ hooves, for the night watchmen dragging open the heavy wooden gates that closed off her neighbourhood. But it was only her overwrought imagination, and she lay back, winding a thick strand of hair around her palm. When the muezzin called for dawn prayers she would clap her hands and her maids would bring the mint tea she drank first thing every morning to keep her breath sweet all day. Even when she had gone on the pilgrimage to Mecca, two years ago, one of the camels in her caravan had carried nothing but pots of live herbs: mint, but also caraway for digestion, basil to stimulate appetite, and chamomile to rinse her hair. A cow plodded along, ensuring her diet of fresh milk and cheese. The Prince of the Pilgrimage leading the caravan from Egypt that year had made sure her every whim was accommodated.
Nafisa threw off her bedcovers; she was naked but for her fine silk shift. She was still beautiful, and still desirable. Was she not the same age as Khadija had been when she proposed to the Prophet Muhammad, and he a young man fifteen years her junior? Like Khadija, Nafisa had chosen a husband. A widow as young and wealthy as she could not remain without a husband and protector, and so she had opted for Murad, with his curly red bush of a beard heralding his choleric temperament like a banner. Among the senior Mamlukes, Murad had stood out by his ambition, but it was her status as the widow of Ali that raised him to the rank of co-regent of Egypt.
Today, Murad would be tested as no one could have imagined.
Until a week ago, her world had turned steadily on its axis. Her days were spent supervising the trading operations of her wikala, the caravanserai at Bab Zuweila, and overseeing construction of the charitable waterworks she was erecting nearby on Sugar Street. And along with the rest of Cairo she followed avidly reports of the rise of Elfi Bey’s new palace on the Ezbekiah Lake, and gauged the rise of his ambition as warily as the city leaders watched the peaking of the Nilometer before the summer flood.
Then came the news that English warships had dropped anchor off the port of Alexandria, looking for the French fleet. They had left, not finding their prey, but Egypt held its breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It had not been long in coming. The French fleet landed at the Bay of Alexandria two days later.
Last night her husband had gone to the judge’s house with old Ibrahim Bey and Elfi and the senior Mamluke commanders to devise a strategy. And Nafisa had lain awake, unable to sleep for only the second time in her life.
Nafisa started at the clatter of horses’ hooves followed by a shouted command and the scramble of the night watchmen to unlock and open the gates to the lane as her husband and his retainers approached. The servants bestirred
