Читать книгу The Girl with Braided Hair - Rasha Adly - Страница 11

6

The next morning, she headed for the office of her former art history professor, Mahmoud Anwar. A good-looking man in his fifties, he had a smattering of white hairs at his temples and unparalleled expertise in the history of art. He was forever researching and seeking out new knowledge. She told him about the painting, and he promised to help. “I’ll come by the lab after classes,” he promised, “and take a look at it.”

Afterward, she went to the lecture hall to teach a class. “Art history,” she began as she had many times before, “is not only a matter of taking an interest in the piece of art itself or its provenance, its date of creation or the life history of the artist who made it. It is everything that surrounds a work of art: the political, economic, and social factors that eventually led to its production. You can be sure that your research into the history of a painting will lead you down many exciting avenues you had no idea even existed.”

After class, hard at work in the lab, she startled to find Professor Anwar standing right behind her. “Let’s take a look at this priceless treasure of yours,” he said.

With a smile, she rose to show him. He was always like that, with his own way of speaking that sometimes drew the mockery of his students. Carefully, she placed it on the easel.

He slid on his spectacles and crouched close, scrutinizing it first with, then without his glasses. He seemed to be looking for something. Finally, he shrugged. “To tell the truth, I don’t see anything inspiring or absorbing about this painting,” he admitted. “It’s the same as a hundred other paintings of Egyptian female subjects painted in the nineteenth century, the ‘golden age’ of Orientalism. They were mad about drawing women with ‘Oriental’ features and clothing they saw as exotic.”

“Yes,” Yasmine shook her head, “but there’s something different about this one. Look at the girl’s clothes. They’re a mix of Oriental and Western. She’s wearing a gallabiya with vertical stripes, but that thing on her shoulder is a lace scarf. Egyptian women weren’t wearing those kind of fabrics in that era—they were unavailable in Egypt. And there’s no signature or date on it.”

“What’s so odd about that? Maybe the artist wanted to do something unconventional, so he made her clothing a cross between East and West. He could have just imagined the lace scarf.” The professor straightened. “As far as the signature goes, he may have forgotten to sign it. Or perhaps he was unknown and saw no point in signing his work, as it would have gone unrecognized one way or the other.”

Yasmine gestured to the background of the painting of the girl, which depicted several houses with wood-carved meshrabiyeh windows. “You can’t tell what neighborhood this was painted in. Islamic architecture was everywhere in that era, and they used meshrabiyehs as a motif. It could

be anywhere.”

Anwar leaned in again, peering at the image of the girl. “Was she that lovely in real life?” he sighed. “In any case, you can do an infrared examination, it might help.”

It was the same thing Professor Simon had said. Changing the subject, Yasmine began to speak of work and study, after which they made an appointment for the infrared examination.

After Professor Anwar left, Yasmine sat at the painting alone, working, wondering why she was so preoccupied with the girl in the picture. Anwar was right: she was no different from a hundred portraits of Eastern women painted in that era, the product of Orientalists’ boundless fascination with Eastern women and a world they saw as exotic. A dark-skinned girl with kohl-rimmed eyes and long, black braids lying gently across her shoulders: what was so special about her?

She went back to work on the painting, scraping off a fleck of the black of the braids that had faded from damage. Gently, she scraped off the faded area. It was odd: this part was thicker than the others, as though the artist had mixed it with another medium. Suddenly, something strange appeared beneath the color.

She touched it with her fingertips. It felt like human hair.

Yasmine drew in her breath sharply. “What the . . . am I going crazy?” she said aloud. She fumbled for her magnifying glass and peered through it at the exposed fleck. It was indeed real hair.

With exceeding gentleness, she scraped the color off the braid. Then she touched it again. It was human hair, hidden by the artist under a hard layer of something carefully mixed with his black pigment. A smile of renewed confidence formed on her lips as she thought, I knew my feeling was right. From the first glance, she had known there was something unusual about this painting and this girl.

Cairo: July 1798

A girl, slender like a stalk of rattan, her skin an unusual color, not white and not dark, but the color of saffron dust. Lips red as cherries, hair black and thick like a waterfall, a spring in her step like a leaping deer. Her gestures, smooth as a butterfly’s. She wore a gallabiya of vertically striped silk, her hoop earrings echoing the curves of her body, which indicated she was just coming into adulthood. She was in that awkward stage between a child and a woman: too old to run and play with the children, but as yet unwelcome among grown women; she was lost between two worlds, the world of childhood she had not yet left behind, and the world of womanhood she was yet to enter.

Her mother bent with a straw broom to sweep the dust off the tiles of her floor, dusting the couch with the wooden arms and replacing the bolsters stuffed with good Egyptian cotton. She wiped the round wooden table and polished the brass tray on top. Finally, she lit incense to perfume the room, then, satisfied that she had prepared the seating area adequately for her husband Sheikh al-Bakri and his friends and fellow Azharite clerics, she went out and closed the door.

Still absorbed in housework, she noticed Zeinab standing in the center of the house, a small mirror in hand, plucking her eyebrows. “What are you doing, girl?” she snapped, startled. “Do you want tongues to wag about you? Would you have people say that the daughter of Sheikh Hassan al-Bakri plucks her brows like a harlot or a belly dancer?”

Zeinab smiled, her small mouth revealing rows of pearly white teeth, her cheeks dimpling charmingly. The smile did little to calm her mother. She grabbed the girl by one of her black braids that were long enough to sit on. “Stop doing that and come and help me with the housework! Girls your age are already married with husbands and children to care for!”

“All you do is sweeping and mopping!” Zeinab huffed. “You could spend the whole day cleaning house, like the only thing you were made for in this life is cleaning!”

“Well, whoever marries you is going to have his hands full, I can tell you that, girl. Quickly, put the firewood in the oven. Your father’s almost home and we haven’t even started the baking yet.”

Zeinab walked away with soft, indolent steps. She watched her mother clean and polish, with every ounce of strength she possessed, the Constantinople mules that her father wore on his feet, laying them carefully on the floor by the couch where he sat. “As if we were only brought into this world to sweep and clean,” she muttered rebelliously.

Around the spacious central courtyard of the house, the rooms were set in rows. There were stalls for cattle and donkeys and others for birds, and a large storehouse for grain and coal: ever since they had first heard of Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, most households had prepared themselves to be self-sufficient. Wells had been dug; chickens were raised; gardens were planted in every home to provide what vegetables were needed, and carpenters had been employed to fit bolts to every wooden door. Zeinab ordered Halima, their black slave, to fill a pot with clean water from their cistern, which the water carrier had filled this morning. Zeinab took up the censer and walked around the space, perfuming the air with incense. “That’s all you’re good for,” her mother snapped.

After the sunset call to prayer, Zeinab heard the sound of horses’ hooves pounding the gravel entrance way, and stopping outside their gate. Finally, her father was permitted to ride a horse, after many years of being forbidden from riding: horseback had been reserved for the upper echelons of Mamluk rulers, while the rest of the populace were restricted to donkeys and mules. Her father had picked out a noble Arabian stallion, and decorated its bridle with gold and silver.

Her father’s horse neighed when Rostom, the groom, put him in the stable, letting everyone know he was home. The regular consternation reigned whenever he arrived at the house: slave women rushing to the kitchen, girls scurrying to their rooms, boys adjusting their turbans on their forcibly clean-shaven heads, thanks to the scorching August heat.

A slave girl placed the dishes on the round brass table: mutton soup with jute-leaf mulukhiya, aseedah creamed wheat, rice, fried duck and stuffed pigeon, and baked oxtail. Murmurs and whispers filled the courtyard as the men walked through it. Zeinab caught a glimpse of them from behind the meshrabiyeh of her room, and realized that something important had happened: the group included several men of great importance, including Sheikh Sharkawi, Suleiman al-Fayumi, al-Sawi, and al-Sirsawi. These men coming together in a single meeting at her father’s house meant something was afoot, and it must be urgent: but what concern was it of hers? The Damascene fabrics that the Levantine saleswoman had brought her today were all she could think about, especially the length of Damascene brocade embroidered with glass beads and pearls. She took to thinking of a new design, something good enough for the fabric, and for her. She was tired of the same old cut that her seamstress always made for her, the same one all the women wore. The meshrabiyeh of one of her friends’ houses overlooked Beit al-Alfi, the house of a nobleman named al-Alfi Bey. Al-Alfi had fled the country as soon as the French Campaign had entered Egypt, and Napoleon Bonaparte had taken over the mansion as his quarters. She had stood at the window one day and watched a ball held in the garden of Beit al-Alfi: the foreign women, with their ravishing ball gowns, puffed up and embroidered with beads that glittered when the light played upon them. How she wished for a dress like one of those.

She was consumed with curiosity about those women and their appearance: how did they endure such garments in such cruel heat? What need was there for such big hats, adorned with fur, under which the head and neck surely groaned? Could the fans made of feathers they held in their hands cool the heat? Perhaps the glasses carried around on trays by the servants could, or rather, the drink that glittered inside the crystal glasses in their delicate hands. It couldn’t possibly be like the crude liquor her father drank in secret, some mix of burgundy and brandy. She could still taste it in her mouth from the time she was emboldened, and driven by curiosity, to sample the bottle her father hid in his closet. She had found it by accident one day as she was putting his clean clothes inside; opening it, she had smelled a pungent odor, and taken a sip which she quickly spat out. It was bitter as gall.

No, the wine those women drank must surely be different. They drank it down in one gulp, and enjoyed it. She and her friend watched for hours through the tiny openings in the meshrabiyeh, looking out onto a wider world. It was all new to them: different faces, a strange language, bizarre clothes, lights and music and banqueting tables, glasses making the rounds, beautiful women, and handsome gentlemen. One look at that world was enough to realize the misery of their own dismal lot, not even allowed to take off the veils that covered their faces.

“It’s her!” cried one of the girls. “Look! Look!”

The girls pushed up the meshrabiyeh and clustered around it, watching the foreign woman with her puffy dress. She had taken off her hat and removed the pin that held her hair back, and was running her fingers through it to let it flow loose around her shoulders.

“Heavens, what a beauty she is!”

“Her dress is breathtaking!”

“Look at the color of her skin!”

“Her hair is blond!”

“Be quiet!” Zeinab yelled at them. “I don’t see anything pretty about her! She’s pale as the dead and her face is like a loaf of dry bread. She’s built like a boy!” And she furiously undid her braids and pulled her gallabiya taut around her waist. “Look! I’m prettier and more woman than she is!”

The girls exchanged glances, then burst into giggles. “If she was as plain as you say, Bonaparte would not have taken her as his mistress!”

“Bonaparte’s mistress?” Zeinab retorted. “How do you know?”

“Everyone in Egypt is talking about it.”

“I don’t think,” Zeinab tossed her head, “that Bonaparte likes that type of woman.”

The other girls stared at her. “Maybe he likes your type!” one girl said.

“Wake up and take a look at yourself in the mirror,” another jeered, “and look at your color.”

“You’re just jealous,” Zeinab shot back at her, “because you know I’m prettier than you.”

That insult could not go unpunished: soon there was a fight, with much screaming and exchanging of blows. Once the other girls pulled them apart, Zeinab wrapped her scarf around her head haughtily. Covering her face, she turned to leave. “You’ll soon see!” she growled as she stormed off. As she left, the echo of the others’ laughter rang in her ears.

Outside, a cool breeze greeted her, laden with the soft scent of night-blooming jasmine. Several French officers in uniform were walking in the streets, tanned from the relentless sun. They looked at her with lascivious eyes: it was rare to see a girl or woman walking alone in the streets, for they were accustomed to seeing them either on donkey-back or riding by in a cart in a flash of black-clad, a blur from head to toe, like passing ghosts. But now they saw a girl walking slowly, with a sway in her step, bronze anklets jingling and gold bracelets jangling with her every step. They could see her face through the thin chiffon veil: she let it slip, and fixed them with big, black, bold eyes. Delicately, she picked up the edge of her garment from the mud of the path, revealing her slippers, embroidered with gold thread and beads, curved up at the toe in the Moroccan style. One of them approached her and said in French, “What is your name, beautiful girl?”

She stepped back. Another man came up beside him, clearly not a military man although he wore French clothing, and pulled him away. “Leave her alone! You’re frightening her.” With a smile, he gestured to her to continue on her way. “Please accept my apologies for his behavior.”

They were still speaking French, so she had no idea what was being said; but she guessed his meaning and thanked the man who had cleared her path with a smile, which he returned. As she walked on, the men’s raised voices echoed after her, and she realized that she was the reason for their altercation.

In a language Zeinab could not understand, the first man was saying, “Have you lost your mind? Stepping in the path of women in a public street and scaring them? Haven’t we injured them enough?”

“How do you know she’s not a prostitute who would have been happy to talk?”

“Prostitutes wear revealing clothing and stand in the street without shame, and they’re the ones who make the first move. Didn’t you see how you scared the girl when you walked up to her? Was that the behavior of a prostitute?”

That evening, in a house on the other side of Cairo, Zeinab’s mother, Fatima, was sitting in the central courtyard of the house. It was a beautiful evening, the moon hiding behind wispy clouds only to come out again and light up the night, then hide, then come out again, and so on and so forth. In her hand was an amber rosary, the beads of which she was shoving nervously through her forefinger, middle finger, and thumb, whispering, “Praise the Lord, praise the Lord.” All around was calm and still except for gentle snores from the upper floor, where her boys slept next to one another on a reed mat. The tallow candles cast a soft light.

Her head jerked up at the sound of a distinctive knock on the door, Zeinab’s knock. She leapt up and rushed to the door, almost upsetting the flowerpot. “Why are you so late?” she hissed. “Haven’t you heard about the kidnappings and the murders that are happening everywhere these days?”

“I lost track of time,” said Zeinab, lifting her veil off her sweaty face.

“Well, don’t do it again! I want you home early from now on.”

Zeinab went straight to her room. She stood before the mirror and took off her clothes and undid her braids, then lifted up the edge of the cotton mattress and took out a tin box. She painted her lips with its contents, dried powdered deer’s blood, and reddened her cheeks with it. Then she dipped a pigeon-feather into the silver kohl bottle, and painted her eyes with kohl. She stood admiring herself in the mirror for a long time, turning left and right and smiling confidently. She imagined her girlfriends standing around her gazing enviously at her beauty, and stuck her tongue out at them in the mirror. Then she remembered his smile, and it took her to another world.

Cairo: August 1798

The Nile waters had risen. Everyone went out early to celebrate the flooding of the Nile. For days, preparations had been underway for this day. Every family was standing outdoors in front of their house: the streets had been sprayed down with water to keep down the dust, decorations hung up in the streets, and lamps filled with oil. A week previously, the water-carriers had put on their new clothing and perfumed their gourds of water with flowers and jasmine oil, and walked through the streets and alleyways, giving water to drink to anyone who was thirsty in the street, and to every house, without recompense. They rattled their brass cups against one another with a joyous clang. The women vied with each other to see who could make the best sweets: sadd hanak, basbousa, and luqmat al-qadi, and the children went out laden with trays on their heads, handing out sweets to the passersby in the street. And in a tradition thousands of years old, several strong men gathered at Fom al-Khalig, “the water’s mouth,” to build a dam of sand weak enough for the gushing of the Nile’s waters to demolish. When it fell, that was the signal for everyone to cheer and celebrate.

That day, Zeinab stood at her mirror longer than usual. She painted her eyes with kohl and reddened her cheeks, and let a few locks of her hair hang loose across her forehead. Then she put on her embroidered head veil, and went out with the young girls and children of the neighborhood, all in new clothes, and they cried out, “The waters have risen! The river is full!” beating loudly on drums and tooting horns. She joined the throng and sang and made noise with them.

All along the banks of the Nile, boats were decorated with colorful ribbons, carrying gaudily dressed revelers, floating through the narrow canal that separates Roda Island from the bank of the Nile. Crowds gathered around conjurers performing their acts, while bands of musicians roamed the crowds, playing joyfully. It was as if everyone who lived in Egypt had come out to celebrate. Crowds thronged the banks of the Nile, and some even put up tents. Like a cloying drink, people poured into the streets and every corner of the earth seemed filled to the brim with them, and when the street would not hold them, some climbed trees and stood on the rooftops. There were merchants, fat wallets concealed under ample turbans; women carrying their children on their shoulders and muttering prayers; dervishes with rosaries hung around their necks; beggars with tin plates; and French folk in odd raiment looking all around.

On a high hill, a huge marquee had been erected, its walls made up of khayyamiya, a thick cotton fabric embroidered with colorful Arabesque designs. The inside was covered with brightly colored and embroidered Persian rugs, and dotted around with wooden couches covered in red velvet and large cushions embroidered with gold thread. A long table ran down the middle, covered in plates of delicious-looking fruit and nuts, the Egyptian and French flags erected above it side by side. Bonaparte stood at the center of the assembly in full regalia, medals and decorations glinting at the breast and shoulders of his uniform in the sunshine, surrounded by several of his high-ranking officers. Next to them stood the imams of al-Azhar and the elite of Egypt. At a distance, everyone could see the flamingo feather in Sheikh al-Bakri’s imposing turban, waving in the wind. His shoulders were draped with his golden-yellow cloak. Zeinab saw him and pointed with a finger, saying proudly, “Look! That’s my father sitting at Bonaparte’s side!”

“Shame on him to sit next to him,” muttered one of her friends.

“Why? Isn’t he here to rid us of the Mamluks’ brutish rule? Didn’t he promise to make things better for our country? It’s enough that he commanded that the houses be cleaned and the refuse removed from the streets and—”

“But he’s an infidel!” the girl interrupted.

“Our Prophet says,” Zeinab challenged, “ ‘You have your religion, and I have mine.’”

The cries of the revelers grew louder, making conversation impossible. The pounding on the tins and drums increased to a deafening pitch. Suddenly, the water burst forth, breaking down the false dam, and the canal filled up until it was on the same level as the river. The mayor threw some shiny bara coins into the water, newly minted specially for the occasion in keeping with the tradition that new money brings the Nile flooding. The young men and boys leapt into the water to catch them. Zeinab, seeing that everyone was preoccupied with cheering for the men and boys and encouraging them to dive for the coins, slipped away from her friends toward the marquee where her father sat with Bonaparte. She crept past the guards watching the commotion and went straight to her father. She bent to kiss his hand, whereupon the guards finally noticed her and crowded around. Sheikh al-Bakri whispered into Napoleon’s ear, “It is only my daughter, Zeinab,” and Napoleon commanded them to let her be.

Her father nodded to her, hinting that she should pay her respects. She bowed her head low, smiling behind her chiffon veil, showing off her dimples. Napoleon, charmed, smiled back.

He was a small man indeed! But he sat proudly, all puffed out, his jacket encrusted with gold medals. She felt small beside him, not in size, but in status. He was fully aware that he ruled over all he surveyed. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him. His face was white, with a few freckles here and there. His eyes were small and the color of honey, full of cunning. His mouth was small, too, and enticing behind his sparse mustache. His features betrayed nothing of his cruel nature: if he took off his regalia and dressed in civilian clothes, she thought, and walked among regular folk, he might be taken for an Azharite sheikh or the scribe who sits outside courthouses to help the illiterate write down their complaints.

At noon, the sun was high in the sky, the day at its hottest. A gentle breeze sprang up, easing the sweltering heat. From the marquee high on the hill, Zeinab was entranced by the sight. She could see the domes of the mosques and churches, and the pyramids seemed small at this distance. A military parade passed by, rows and rows of officers and soldiers, to the tune of a military band. Yells and cries broke out when the traditional ‘Bride of the Nile’ statue was thrown into the water, and several women threw scraps of their clothing or locks of their hair in after her. The boats that had been in a long race since daybreak began to arrive, and Bonaparte himself handed out the medals to the winners. Then he began to give out gifts and largesse of golden baras to the public, and there was a general pushing and shoving to get some. He motioned to Zeinab with the tip of one finger: with shy, hesitant steps she went to him. When she drew level to Bonaparte, he took her small hand and placed several baras into it, then closed her hand firmly around them. With difficulty, she managed to squeak out, “Thank you.” She looked straight up into his eyes. There was something unreadable in them. She ran back, a child running like the wind in joy at the gift of the ‘Emperor of the East.’ She asked herself: had he pressed her hand a little longer than strictly necessary? Or had she only imagined it?

The diamond in Napoleon’s ring glittered as he motioned to an officer, who came running. He whispered something into his ear and the man hurried out. Moments later, he came back, bearing a caftan of pure silk, trimmed with fur and adorned with diamonds. Bonaparte placed the caftan onto the shoulders of Sheikh al-Bakri and announced that he was to be the new Naqib al-Ashraf, the Head of the Prophet’s Descendants, replacing Sheikh Omar Makram, to the cheering and blessings of the crowd. The judges, merchants, and other important men clustered around Sheikh al-Bakri, congratulating him. He returned their congratulations with pride and pleasure. Napoleon took his leave, surrounded by his military procession, but not before telling Sheikh al-Bakri that he would await him the next day to discuss the responsibilities of his new position. What was truly strange, however, was that he asked him to bring his daughter.