Giza estate,’ he said, turning to go.
‘Wait. What about the European merchants? A mob might attack them; people are restless in the streets, and fear makes them dangerous. We should take the Europeans into our houses for protection.’
‘You and your precious Franj! It’s your friend Magallon who has been agitating for this war against us.’ He turned on his heel. ‘Take the Europeans into our houses if you want – you won’t have room for all of them.’
‘I’ll ask Sitt Adila to open her doors to them also; between us we can try to accommodate anyone who seeks refuge.’
‘Do as you please.’ Murad was already at the door, his mind on other matters. ‘May I next see your face in good health.’ He raised his hand in farewell.
As she heard the familiar formula of leave-taking, Nafisa shuddered with a premonition that she would not see his face again. She dismissed it instantly; she was not the type to heed such intuitions and she had much to do.
‘Bilsalama. Go with God, and return safely.’
Outside the window the murmur of the city was turning to a dull roar of alarm.
‘This was the first year of the fierce fights and important incidents, of the multiplication of malice and the acceleration of affairs; of successive sufferings and turning times.’
Abdel Rahman El-Jabarti’s Chronicles of Egypt,
15 June, 1798
‘Are you writing, child?’
Zeinab raised her head from the page and looked up at Shaykh Jabarti. How old was the venerable historian, she wondered. At least as old as her father, Shaykh Bakri, and he was two score years; she herself, at twelve, was her parents’ second youngest child and only unmarried daughter. As she was serving her father pomegranate juice one evening last month, he had suddenly looked at her and turned to her mother. ‘Is she a woman yet?’ he had asked. And her mother had blushed and murmured that she was indeed, had been for four cycles of the moon now.
‘Then we should get her married,’ her father had pronounced, pinching Zeinab’s cheek where it dimpled. ‘Let me think on it.’
Zeinab had wondered whom he might have in mind, and hoped it would not be someone as old as the man her sister had married. But of course her father had not had time to think on it, with the news of the English ships off Alexandria, and now the French advancing to the outskirts of Cairo.
Shaykh Jabarti’s dictation trailed off; he was staring out of the window and stroking his beard, a world away. Zeinab waited quietly, chewing on the end of the ribbon tied around her thick, long black plait. She bent over the silver bowl of rose-water set on the table in front of her and studied her wavering reflection. Like the princesses of fairy tales, her face was as round and white as the full moon, but her eyes were large and dark and her fine black brows arched over them like birds winging over a still pool in moonlight. She blew at the rose petals in the water and the image dissipated.
‘Are you writing, child?’ Shaykh Jabarti said again, absent-mindedly, and she picked up her quill and waited. She had a fine hand, and for that reason, and because he had tired eyes and preferred to dictate his chronicle, Shaykh Jabarti tolerated her presence as his pupil and scribe. It was very unusual for a girl to be so honoured, and in fact it had been her younger brother, originally, who had been sent to learn at Shaykh Jabarti’s feet, but her brother was only interested in spinning a wheel around a stick, as he was doing right now outside the window. It was Zeinab, sent with him as an afterthought, who had proved an apt pupil. She wondered how much longer her father would allow her to receive instruction from Shaykh Jabarti. Once she was married, of course, it would be out of the question.
She had heard that the French had brought a new invention that could make calligraphy and scribes obsolete, a machine that could make many, many copies. As they advanced south towards Cairo, they had distributed countless thousands of copies, in Arabic, of their chief general’s proclamation. Shaykh Jabarti was holding a copy at that very moment and snorting as he parsed the words for hidden meanings and for lapses in Arabic grammar and syntax.
‘Egyptians, they will tell you that I come to destroy your religion; it is a lie, do not believe it. Answer that I have come to restitute your rights, punish the usurpers; that I respect, more than the Mamlukes, God, his prophet Muhammad and the glorious Koran … Tell the people that we are true Muslims.’
‘Who translated this?’ Jabarti grumbled as he peered at the sheet in his hand, and continued reading.
Zeinab ventured a question. ‘My esteemed teacher, do you think these French are Muslim as they say?’
‘They say they agree with every religion in part, and with no religion in the whole, so they are opposed to both Christians and Muslims, and do not hold fast to any religion. In truth some hold their Christian faith hidden in their hearts, and there are some true Jews among them also. But for the most part they are materialists. They say the creed they follow is to make human reason supreme; each of them follows a religion which he contrives by the improvement of his own mind.’
Zeinab was distracted by a sudden swell of noise and ran to the window: a procession of dervishes and men in the robes of the Sufi orders were piping and drumming their way down the street. ‘Look, my teacher, they have brought down the Prophet’s banner from the Citadel!’
‘It is all done to calm the fears of the common people. Many were so alarmed they were prepared to flee, had the amirs not stopped them and rebuked them. The rabble would have attacked the homes of all the foreigners and Christians if the amirs had not prevented them; Sitt Nafisa and Sitt Adila took them into their houses.’
‘Surely the French will not reach Cairo?’ Zeinab was alarmed.
‘God alone knows. Murad Bey has had a heavy iron chain forged; it is stretched across the Nile at the narrowest point, to prevent the French ships from passing, while his own flotilla is moored below the chain. Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey have assembled their troops and now sit in their respective camps across the river from each other, waiting for the French to arrive. Immovable as the Sphinx! Blinded in their arrogance!’ Suddenly aware of her alarm, the old man attempted to reassure her with a verse from the Koran: ‘Yet thy Lord would never destroy the cities unjustly, while as yet their people were putting things right. Amen.’
‘Amen,’ Zeinab repeated under her breath.
* * *
Nicolas Conté squinted in the sun as the Army of the Orient came to a halt along the western bank of the Nile and prepared to engage in the battle for Cairo. Ten thousand Mamlukes faced them on horseback, in full battle regalia, turbaned or helmeted, blazing in the sun with their muskets and lances, their splendid Arabians as richly caparisoned as the riders. The commanders flew back and forth along the lines, turning and wheeling their mounts on a hair, and brandishing their glittering sabres at the heavens.
‘There can be no finer animal than a Mamluke-trained horse,’ Dr Desgenettes observed, reining in his mount abreast with Nicolas.
