Ahdaf Soueif

About ten years ago, on a previous visit to Egypt, William Golding arrived at ‘a simple truth: that Egypt is a complex country of more-or-less Arab culture and it is outrageous for the uninformed visitor to confine himself to dead Egyptians while the strange life of the valley and the desert goes on all round him.’ This time, therefore, it was going to be different: the Goldings would hire a boat on which they would live, ‘proceeding up and down the Nile, stopping off at such places of interest as Oxyrhynchus and Abydos; and mingling lightheartedly with live Egyptians instead of dead ones’.

The flat was silent except for the steady hiss of the water-heater. It was a sound he was not completely used to yet. Until two months ago, whenever he had wanted to have a bath the primus had had to be lit. Faten had always lit it for him. Every afternoon, after he had woken from his siesta, he would knock at the door of his mother’s room. Her voice, faint, would float out from within: ‘Come in, my son.’ He would enter the darkened room to find her sitting up in her big brass bed, her head bound up in a white kerchief, a braid of still-black hair falling over one shoulder. ‘Sit down, my son,’ the feeble voice would say and he would seat himself on one of the two austere, wooden armchairs under the window to the right of the bed. ‘How are you today, Mother?’ he asked. She always sighed before she answered: ‘Thanks be to God… What can we say?’ In a while, she would ask: ‘How is University, my son?’ And he always answered: ‘Thanks be to God, it is well.’ Some minutes would pass in silence, then the weak voice would call out: ‘Faten, make some tea for Salah.’ Faten would bring the tea in small, gold-rimmed glasses on a round silver tray, engraved with an image of the Holy House in Makkah. She would offer it first to her mother then to her brother. She would place the tray on the little round table by the bed and turn to him: ‘Shall I heat the water for your bath now?’ He would nod. He would hear her lighting the primus, filling the large aluminium urn, and balancing it on the fire. She would check it every once in a while till at last she would come to the door: ‘The water’s ready for your bath.’ Then she would turn away. She always spoke softly, and she always turned away.

Zeina sat on the bed in her room on the roof staring out of the window. The sun had set, but there was still some light left in the pale blue sky. Clouds were gathering, and she could see the clothes hanging out to dry on the neighbours’ rooftop blowing in the rising wind. It was time to call Sa’d in from the street and give him his supper. She sighed. What bent luck, Zeina, she thought. Young and full of youth and pretty with eyelashes black as night even without kohl and a face fair and full of light and hair smooth as silk. What thighs. What legs. The men are always looking at them as you walk down the street, your melaya draped tightly round your body but showing one full straight leg with a dimpled ankle adorned by a thick silver anklet. Like that boy, what’s his name, the greengrocer’s apprentice ogling you till you had to chide him. ‘What’s wrong with you, boy? You’ve never seen a woman before?’ And he said – curse his cheek – he said: ‘I’ve seen women, Set Om Sa’d, but by the life of Seedna Mohammad, the Prophet, I’ve never seen one with legs like yours.’ A crazy boy. Of course you told him off, pulling your melaya across your face to hide your smile. ‘Shut up, boy. You must be mad or something’s gone wrong with your head. Don’t you know what my husband would do to you if he heard what you said? Haven’t you heard that his anger is worse than that of Iblis, the Devil?’