A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore Read online

“They’re mocking me even on stage, then?” he sneered.

  The writer asked the play’s audience to imagine that a group of Chinese had descended on a placid English village and begun shooting its ducks and geese and turkeys on the pretext that as far as they knew these were wildfowl. What sort of feelings could the English villagers possibly have but anger and hatred toward such intruders?

  Lord Cromer lifted his hand. “That will do,” he said. “It’s bad enough already.”

  She stopped reading. He sat silent, as if trying to comprehend all he had heard. In a low voice he said, “This is a strange country. I don’t know why they hate me. I freed them from the arbitrary cruelty of the Turks, but even so no one stands with me, and no one grasps the meaning of my reforms. I built the Aswan Dam for them, and defeated the rebels in Sudan. This land is fit only for the dead!”

  He was speaking to her, trying in his bewilderment to find an answer in her face, as if she represented all the peasants whom he had struggled for so long to understand. He stood up. “This,” he said, “is a squalid and ungrateful place!”

  Leaving her sitting there, he walked slowly away until he vanished into the darkness of the garden.

  Their sessions occurred frequently. It was easier to get along with him than with Lady Katherine: he wasn’t put off by other people’s odors—perhaps he couldn’t even smell them—and his angry tone in response to the newspaper articles softened, but there was always something to remind him of this incident. She began to avoid such topics, and he did not try very hard to press her. He became more at ease in her company. What he wanted to know was how others saw him, and how they saw the world he had undertaken to construct. Aisha had thought him recovered from the reverberations of Dinshaway—but it was not so.

  One night Aisha dreamed of her mother. She saw her features clearly. She wasn’t complaining or aggrieved. She was encircled by a glow of tenderness and longing. Aisha dreamed that she went back and inhaled the fragrance of her body, wandering about her village, and breathing in the smell of mud and crops and manure. But suddenly she felt Omran’s fingers crawling on her flesh: cold, skinny, trembling fingers. She opened her eyes in fright. The little room was dark—illuminated by only a faint light coming from the kitchen. It was enough for her to discern Lord Cromer’s face. She started up and drew back from him in alarm, gathering the covers over her chest. She could smell his breath, a mixture of tobacco and wine. His breathing was labored, as if there was no air in the room, and his eyes glittered as if they were full of tears. Aisha did not cry out—in truth she wasn’t afraid of him, for he was in a pitiable condition.

  Looking at her like a guilty child, he said, “They’re here.”

  Aisha shrank back against the wall. “Who?” she said.

  “Those peasants from Dinshaway,” he said. “I don’t know how they sneaked in past the wall . . . they’re in the garden now—I could smell their sweat, I saw their ghosts through the trees.”

  “There are guards everywhere—how could they sneak in without being seen? Perhaps it was your imagination, sir.”

  “They’ve come to get revenge! I’m not afraid of them, but I don’t know why they’ve come to me. Why don’t they go to the judge who sentenced them, or the lawyer who betrayed them?” He was shaking. He gripped the edge of the little bed, which also began to shake. She was seriously frightened now.

  “Why didn’t you summon the guards?” she said. “Why have you come to me?”

  Trying to master himself, he said, “Go to them. Talk to them. You are the only one here who can do that. I wish to know what it is they want of me.”

  “Perhaps we should just wait until they go away.”

  “They won’t leave before sunrise. Or maybe they won’t leave at all. I can’t have any peace with them in the garden of my house.”

  His tremors were contagious and communicated themselves to Aisha, as did his fear. She was too young to be drawn into Lord Cromer’s private nightmares, but there was nothing for her to do but get up and find her slippers. She clutched her robe about her, and proceeded, while he followed behind. He was like a child who doesn’t want to let his mother out of his sight, but he let her go out, without following her. He stayed behind, taking refuge inside: he did not dare cross the threshold.

  The air in the garden struck her, cold and damp, and the stars seemed far away, hiding behind the trees. She didn’t know which way to go, but the wind pierced her through and through, while the grass soaked her feet. She wanted to walk around for a bit, then go back to him and assure him that the garden was empty, that he had been imagining things, but in fact she sensed something hovering in the air, lost and wretched souls. All at once the wind filled with voices and faint murmurs. Her heart quaked, and she felt a kind of overwhelming sorrow. Suddenly she knew which way to go. The voices were coming from behind a stand of small trees. They were there, seated all together on the ground, seeking concealment among the interlacing branches. They were not ghosts. There were three of them, two men and a woman, and they were not peasants, nor were they from Dinshaway. Their black skin, bathed in sweat, shone beneath the light of the stars. They clung to one another, shivering, staring at her with terror in their eyes.

  “Who are you?” said Aisha. “Where have you come from?”

  They continued to stare at her. They had been expecting someone else, not a brown-skinned adolescent girl. One of them spoke. “We are slaves,” he said. “We escaped from the Pasha’s house and came here.”

  “What Pasha?” said Aisha, bewildered.

  “The great Pasha. There is no place in Egypt that will give us asylum from him but here.”

  Aisha couldn’t believe her ears. She looked at their emaciated bodies, their protruding bones. “But how did you manage to sneak past the wall?” she said.

  The woman said, “We are slaves, child. While we live we are constantly hunted. Escaping, leaping over obstacles, stealth—these are skills essential for us to stay alive.”

  Lord Cromer was incredulous when she told him what she had discovered. He was still fearful and hesitant to follow her into the garden. Then the blood returned to his face and the furrows in his brow vanished. He stood up to his full height and reclaimed his self-assurance, crossing the garden behind her. The slaves were in the same place as before, just as frightened and starved. He stood before them and Aisha took up her role as translator.

  No sooner had they pronounced the name of the Pasha from whose palace they had fled than Lord Cromer exclaimed with delight, “Mustafa Fahmi Pasha, the chief minister—what a piece of luck!”

  He was transformed into a little child, irrepressibly animated as he listened to Aisha translating for him the words of the three slaves. The slavers had brought them from the Sudan and taken them on the Forty Days Road—a route across rugged desert and along tracks where no one could offer directions except the camel herders who drove their animals from the south to the north—a journey that took a full forty days. The souls of those who came out alive at the other end were impervious to fear and hunger ever after. The three slaves were passed from hand to hand among the slavers and brokers until they fetched up at the Pasha’s palace. Life within the palace was not too bad, especially for the woman, who more than once found her way into the Pasha’s bed. But they dreamed of freedom, and they had no recourse but this in all of Egypt. Lord Cromer was the only one who could oppose the Pasha and give them this freedom.

  The lights went on all over the palace—even Lady Katherine’s room was lit up. The slaves were transferred to the reception hall. Julia herself undertook to offer them food and water; Harry Buell arrived yawning, but as soon as he realized what was going on he promptly came fully awake. He began composing telegrams to Britain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and sending delegates to all the Egyptian and foreign newspapers. He requested from them, by order of the honorable Lord Cromer, to send journalists and photographers to the administrative palace, starting early in the morning, as there was stunning news aw
aiting them: the most serious violation ever committed by a high-ranking Egyptian authority against the law prohibiting slavery, which had been implemented in every part of the British Empire some hundred years earlier.

  In the morning, the house filled up with packs of journalists, correspondents, and the merely curious. The three slaves were placed in a corner—they did not understand all the commotion, and were alarmed, fearing that they would once again be turned over to the authorities. Cameras milled about in the courtyard, popping and flashing with each picture taken. The journalists would listen briefly to the slaves, then focus their main attention on Lord Cromer and his statements concerning his decision to take the prime minister of Egypt to court. Aisha was standing beside him as his interpreter. He had grown strong, self-assured, no longer fearful of any ghosts, certain that he would answer all those who accused him of savagery and cruelty. He was now once more on the side of civilized values in this barbarous country ruled by barbarians!

  Into the middle of this crowd came Harry Buell. He addressed Lord Cromer in an undertone, but Aisha could hear the words. “It’s al-Liwa,” he said. “We refused any dealings with them, but they sent one of theirs anyway. He’s called Abdel Rahman al-Rafiy.”

  “Let him in, of course,” Lord Cromer replied cheerfully. “This is an unusual opportunity. I was expecting them particularly.”

  Aisha accompanied the man as he entered. Unlike the other correspondents, he wasn’t a youth. He was of short stature, tending toward corpulence. The expression in his eyes was meditative and sad. He didn’t have a paper and pencil like the rest, nor did he rush as they did to join the throng encircling Lord Cromer. He stood in a corner of the hall studying all that was happening as if committing it to memory. He kept quiet, not wishing to call attention to himself. But Lord Cromer, carried away though he was, began to find the man’s presence unsettling, and kept glancing at him from the corner of his eye, fearful that he might abruptly accost him with questions about Dinshaway. The man did no such thing, but went on listening to the exclamations and admonitions of Lord Cromer, the pitch of whose voice had risen.

  All at once the short, heavyset man spoke up. Without moving from his place, he said, “But why are you doing this to the Pasha, when he’s one of your closest friends, and was among the first and most eager to cooperate with you?”

  Naturally, Lord Cromer had expected no less than this sort of poisonous question from the man. Holding his head up confidently he replied, “Mustafa Fahmi Pasha is still a friend of mine, but the law is my closest friend.”

  The words rang out, and Lord Cromer felt proud and pleased with himself for having given the best possible answer to the newspaper that had been insulting him for so long. Nodding his head, he added, “And now, gentlemen, I have much work to do. The translator will stay with you in case you need to question these unfortunate fugitives.” And with that, he turned and hurried into his office, followed by Harry Buell.

  Aisha stayed behind, lost in the crowd, hoping the event would come to a close. But many of those who had entered this house for the first time were reluctant to leave it so soon, and so they stayed, wandering about, gazing at the portraits hung upon the walls and the statue busts, asking Aisha about whatever came into their heads. She was thinking of slipping away, when she heard his voice calling to her. “What are you doing here?” he said. “Don’t you see what a liar this man is?”

  She turned. It was the man from al-Liwa who was speaking to her. He looked searchingly at her. His name, she recalled, was Rafiy. “I work here,” she said. “I’m merely the translator—the substance of what is said is no concern of mine.”

  But he wasn’t willing to let her get away so easily. “He’s trying to evade the issue of what he did at Dinshaway, and to that end he’s throwing away the most important ally the English have here.”

  “Sir,” said Aisha firmly, “you could have brought this up with Lord Cromer.”

  He shut his lips tightly, having no reply at first, but then he hung his head and said, “You’re right. I’m sorry to have troubled you.”

  He took a step backward, away from her, and she felt remorseful for having dealt so sharply with him, and because despite his anger he had maintained his courteous demeanor. He cast a glance around, looking as if he wanted to talk to the slaves, but it was clear he had no wish to stay long in this place. He turned and left, ahead of all the others.

  As usual, Lord Cromer emerged the victor. When Aisha sat with him in the garden some days later, a pile of newspapers before them, the Dinshaway affair had retreated into the shadows, and in the spotlight was a discussion of the prime minister’s trial: would Lord Cromer pardon him or let him fall prey to the rigors of the law? Aisha was more comfortable translating for him the things that he liked to hear and that confirmed him in his opinions. Their sessions came to be one of the staples of Lord Cromer’s daily labor, far preferable to the humdrum quotidian reports that Harry Buell placed on his desk each day. But Aisha couldn’t feel at ease—the question put to her by the man named Rafiy kept reverberating in her ears: “What are you doing here?” She realized how very much she had distanced herself from her real world, that she was connected only to people outside these walls. She was living under a name not her own, hiding inside a skin that wasn’t hers. She must retrieve all her forgotten history and go to see her mother, if she was still alive—Aisha didn’t even know. She must go to her village and endure some part of what her mother had endured—but when would that moment come? When would she manage to make up her mind?

  Not until she saw Howard Carter for the second time did Aisha know that the moment had in fact arrived.

  She and Lord Cromer were sitting in the garden when she saw him coming toward them. In spite of the dusk, which had begun to settle upon the trees, Aisha recognized him immediately. She saw how he carried himself, noticing that he looked thinner and taller than before. He stopped directly in front of them, and she saw his face clearly, the dusty straw color of his hair, the paleness of his skin, the hollows of his temples. He had lost the sparkle Aisha had seen in him the first time. He was fatigued, his clothes wrinkled, and on his shoulders were remnants of dust he hadn’t stopped to brush off.

  He inclined his head toward them without a word, making no attempt to excuse himself for his abrupt arrival. Lord Cromer turned and studied him for a while, as if trying to remember who he was. He could see at once that he was looking at an exhausted man who was struggling to maintain his composure. For all that, Carter turned to Aisha and dipped his head, a faint smile on his lips. Lord Cromer took this as an opportunity to say sarcastically, “Mr. Carter—you surprise me with this visit. Do the gods still reveal themselves to you?”

  In a subdued voice, Carter replied, “No indeed, your Lordship. I see nothing anymore but nightmares.”

  “What a pity,” said Lord Cromer. “You ought to consult the doctor.”

  “I know what my malady is, sir.”

  He fell silent. He didn’t know whether he ought to speak in front of Aisha, or whether he should wait until she withdrew. She did in fact rise to her feet, but Lord Cromer gestured to her to stay, and cast a cold eye upon Carter, not inviting him to sit. Carter’s was a losing proposition from the outset, but he couldn’t hold back from speaking his mind.

  “I have been torn from my world, sir, and what I came to Egypt for has been lost. I’ve been moved from the Valley of the Kings to Tanta, where there’s nothing but a handful of mosques and cramped neighborhoods and weary peasants. You’ve punished me, although I’m innocent—punished me merely for having preserved the relics of which I was in charge, and protected the people who worked under my authority.”

  “You damaged my work,” said Lord Cromer coldly. “Your conduct was implicated in an international incident between us and France, whose consul general you insulted, and then you refused to apologize. I don’t take such errors lightly, Mr. Carter. I did not dismiss you from your work, although that is what you deserved. I let it
go at transferring you to a different site.”

  “You transferred me to a void, a backwater—you’ve ruined my career.”

  “Mind how you go, then. This country has plenty of trackless desert—I could move you to a place still more remote.”

  “You can do no such thing, sir.”

  Aisha was following this exchanged openmouthed—it would never have occurred to her that she might witness such a heated clash of wills in which neither party stopped addressing the other with formal titles or even raised his voice against the other.

  Howard reached into his pocket and drew from it a folded paper. He advanced until he could place it upon the table right before Lord Cromer’s eyes. “Here is my resignation, sir,” he said. “You won’t be able to move me anywhere now.”

  Lord Cromer sat unmoving, not even extending his hand to take the paper. Carter turned to Aisha, dipped his head slightly, then turned and took his leave, disappearing among the shadows of the trees. Aisha got to her feet. She felt that she could remain silent no longer. It struck her suddenly that this place, too, was exile, and that it would strip her of the power to do or say anything, change her into a dead thing.

  Lord Cromer looked at her in disbelief. “I haven’t yet given you permission to leave,” he said.

  In a strangled voice she said, “I want to talk to him.”

  “He is worthless. There is no point in talking to him.”

  But she had already begun to walk away from Lord Cromer, and soon she, too, disappeared into the shadows of the trees.

  5The Valley of Thebes

  TIME MARCHES FORWARD, and the dream does not last. And so here I stand, my princess, at the edge of the void, a stranger with no safe place to go. My arid paradise was lost to me; little had I known there was a snake watching from behind its rocks. It was my paradise, or so I thought, there in the desolate wastes of the western shore of the Nile. Luxor was this strange, ancient city, burning like hell, stifling like thwarted hopes. When I first set foot upon its other bank, I was engulfed by the accumulation of the ages, and the spirits that could find for themselves no resting place. The Valley of the Kings was full of boulders, black caverns, dusty columns, broken statues, and fathomless abysses. Although it revealed none of its buried secrets, its name didn’t suit it—or so it seemed to me at that moment. Its rocks glowered, tumbled against one another along the Nile and yet rising in the shape of a pyramid, leaning forward and forming a stony peak tilted toward the surface of the river as if suffering from unquenchable thirst. To this valley I came, my princess, where the bodies of the ancient kings lay awaiting eternal glory. But they were plundered and rent asunder before they could achieve the moment of immortality or the blessing of redemption.