Samia Serageldin - The Naqib’s Daughter

‘What manner of woman is it?’

‘I do not know, mistress. She is cloaked from head to toe, and insists on speaking to you herself; she will not uncover her face or so much as her eyes. She will not disclose her business and I do not trust her. There is something threatening about her manner. Should I try to dismiss her?’ said Barquq, the head eunuch, looking flustered.

Nafisa hesitated. The fact that the eunuch had not yet dismissed the stranger meant that he had been intimidated or his palm had been greased, and that indicated that the woman was not here for charity. Her curiosity was piqued. ‘Send her to me.’

She sat back down on the window seat and let her maid continue to brush her hair. Her eyes were drawn to the corner of the room where the French clock had once taken pride of place; it was empty now.

The eunuch reappeared with a black-cloaked figure close on his heels. The woman was unusually tall, and her coarse style of dress, her bearing, and what could be surmised from her build and the size of her feet under the long robes, suggested that this was not a lady, and probably not a woman from the city at all. The silver coins sewn on to her veil, and the style of the veil itself – opaque, black, and covering the entire face – was characteristic of the Bedouin of the eastern desert, except that Bedouin women tended to be small and thin. Nafisa had never seen a woman of this build, apart from the rare African tribeswomen from the upper reaches of the Nile. The woman inclined her head and stood by the stairs, silent.

‘Come, mother,’ Nafisa beckoned with some impatience, ‘you are among women now and may unveil. What is your business?’

The woman bowed again and made a gesture in the direction of the maids and the eunuch, indicating that she wished to speak with Nafisa alone.

‘Now really, you go too far,’ Nafisa sighed. She flicked her fingers, dismissing her attendants. ‘All right, then, but be brief, I have little time.’

The woman took a step forward, and whispered in a strange, high voice: ‘What I have to say is for your ears alone. I bring you news from your husband.’

‘You?’ Nafisa snorted. ‘Who are you?’

‘I will tell you, by and by. Have the French approached you with terms for Murad Bey?’ The high voice cracked, like a falsetto.

Nafisa stiffened and ice water ran in her veins. ‘You will tell me who you are, this minute, or I will call out, and you know my eunuchs are behind the door.’

The woman raised her hand, palm up, in a gesture to stop her, then approached. ‘I will uncover, but pray do not cry out. I mean you no harm.’ It was no longer the high falsetto voice. The veil and shawl were cast off to reveal a blond beard flecked with grey and hard blue eyes in a sunburned face.

Nafisa’s shock and alarm gave way to astonishment as she recognized the man before her. ‘Elfi Bey?’

‘Hush.’ He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the 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.’

FIVE

‘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.