The Girl with Braided Hair

A colleague of Yasmine’s who was also a member of the Scientiﬁc Institute had secured her an appointment with the secretary-general of the Institute, the contents of which had been devoured by ﬁre on a black, dismal day during the 2011 revolution: all the documents that the invader had been careful to pen; all the information and the discoveries they had collected so assiduously; the treasures they had found and deposited with such care in a safe place; the information that a great number of the most skilled and competent scientists and artists had worked on. How could the people whose homeland it was so casually set ﬁre to it, as if all these priceless treasures were not theirs?

She was on her way to meet the director at Beit al-Sinnari, a historic house preserved as part of Cairo’s heritage, in the district of Sayyida Zeinab, in a cul-de-sac at the end of a narrow alley named after Gaspard Monge, one of the artists who had worked for the French Campaign. This was the temporary headquarters of the Scientiﬁc Institute, and the temporary home for the Institute’s collection, what had survived the ﬁre without damage, until the Institute was rebuilt and the ﬁre-damaged books and manuscripts restored.

She parked on the street close to the sidewalk, as the lane was too narrow to allow her car to go any further. She found the house without having to ask anyone where it was. It stood there tall and proud, a fortress against the ravages of time. It had a large footprint: the central courtyard around which the rooms were built boasted a great fountain. The house itself was composed of several buildings comprising several wings: Yasmine felt very small standing in the courtyard beneath the towering walls.

“Welcome, welcome,” the director greeted her. She told him of the reason for her visit brieﬂy and without embellishment, keeping the greatest secret jealously to herself. He adjusted his glasses and said somberly, “Unfortunately, what befell the Institute is a disaster in the truest sense of the word. We are making every effort to restore these things and keep the losses to a minimum. This is a disaster equaled only by the destruction of the Alexandria Library in the Ptolemaic Era.”

“It’s certainly a great loss,” Yasmine commiserated, nodding.

“Egypt will never be able to make up for what has been lost with the burning of the Institute. We had over two hundred thousand documents in its library, manuscripts, ancient books, and rare maps. Only twenty-ﬁve thousand survived. These documents were the memory of Egypt since 1798, including an original copy of the Description of Egypt, which burned along with other treasures. Other losses include most of the documents that were over two hundred years old, rare printed books from Europe of which only a few copies exist in the entire world, the books written by foreign explorers and travelers, and copies of scientiﬁc periodicals since 1920.”

“I knew that manuscripts were lost,” Yasmine said, “but what about the books?”

“We had forty thousand books in the Institute’s library. The most important of them was an atlas of ancient Indian art. There was an atlas of Upper and Lower Egypt drawn in 1952, and a German atlas of Egypt and Ethiopia dating back to 1842. There was Le Sou Atlas, which was once part of the collection of Prince Muhammad Ali Tawﬁq, former crown prince of Egypt. That’s one of the reasons why international museum and library experts had valued the library of the Egyptian Scientiﬁc Institute higher than the Library of Congress.”

“What’s more,” Yasmine cut in, “the chaos in the country at the time of the ﬁre was the same as what happened over two hundred years ago. I see it as one of those crises of culture and civilization when everything falls apart.” She mused, “It wasn’t just a crisis in Egypt, but in the East as a whole. Just like what happened then.”

“When Napoleon came to Egypt,” he said, “he formed a council of consultants composed of Egyptian scientists, aristocrats, and high-ranking imams. A similar type of council was formed after the January 2011 Revolution, and it was during this council’s rule that the Institute burned down. It’s a historical correspondence between rejection of change and welcoming it, suspicion and apathy, which resembles the Egyptian attitude toward the French Campaign and Bonaparte’s presence in Egypt.” Clearly engrossed in his subject, he said, “Abdel-Rahman al-Jabarti, the ancient historian, wrote a detailed note in his diary describing it, which was published in ‘Aja’ib al-athar f-il-tarajim w-al-akhbar, or The Marvelous Compositions of Biographies and Events, describing the Battle of Imbaba, which took place on the seventh of the Islamic month of Safar in ah 1213, between the French Army and the Egyptian Army, which was led by the Mamluk princes. Foreigners sometimes call it the Battle of the Pyramids.”

He continued, “The ﬁghting went on for three-quarters of an hour. Then came defeat. The Egyptian subjects rioted and protested, going off in the direction of the town. They poured into the town in waves, all in deep fear and trepidation, expecting to be killed. The sounds of weeping and wailing rent the air, and prayers to God to spare them the horrors of this terrible day. The women were screaming at the top of their lungs from the houses. On the Tuesday, the tenth of that same month, that is to say, only three days later, the French crossed over to the shores of Egypt, and walked through the marketplaces with no weapons and no aggression; on the contrary, they laughed and joked with the people, and bought their essentials at the highest prices. When the common people saw this, they warmed to them, and came to trust them. They brought sweets out to them, and various types of pastries, eggs, chickens, and sundry foodstuffs.

“That’s what Egyptians are like,” he said. Then he smiled. “Yes, they have the kindest hearts in the world. They can welcome even an invader and only later revolt against them. But let’s get back to the subject at hand. To tell the truth, in my tenure at the Institute, I saw no trace of any paintings: the artwork of the artists of the French Campaign are hanging in museums all around the world. What’s more, the Institute has moved to various locations over the years: was the painting transferred with its collection, then, from place to place?”

He got up and went to a bookshelf. “Look what al-Jabarti says about this,” he said, taking down The Marvelous Compositions of Biographies and Events. He opened it and began to read aloud: “And they demolished several princes’ houses, and took their ruins and the marble used therein for their own buildings. They devoted a certain alleyway, Nasiriya Alley, to scientists, astronomers, men of knowledge, mathematicians and their like such as architects, men who understood form, ornamentation, patterns and blueprints, painters and scribes, accountants and builders. The new street and all its houses were placed at their disposal, such as the house of Qasem Bey, the Prince of Hajj known as Abu Youssef, and the houses of Hassan al-Kashef the Circassian, both old and new, and they opened the house of Ibrahim Katkhudha al-Sinnari to a group of the painters who depicted everything, including one who depicted the imams, each standing alone, in a circle, and other important men, and the paintings were hung.”

“By ‘depiction,’ she clariﬁed, “he means ‘painting’?”

“Yes.”

“And this painting he mentions, of the imams of al-Azhar who joined the Majlis Istishari, the council of consultants to Napoleon, is a collection of portraits of Sheikh Suleiman al-Fayumi, Sheikh al-Bakri, Sheikh Sharqawi, the one at the Musée des Archives Nationales in Paris? I’ve seen it there.”

He sat down in a chair and went on speaking. “This is how the location of the Egyptian Scientiﬁc Institute was chosen. It was founded by Napoleon in Egypt to rival the French Scientiﬁc Institute in its collection of elite scientists and thinkers to produce information and research and publications that would assist Napoleon in running the colony. As al-Jabarti tells us, he chose the Sayyida Zeinab area, where a number of luxurious, abandoned Mamluk palaces were located. The most important ones belonged to Hassan al-Kashef Bey, Qasem Abu Youssef Bey, Ali Youssef, and Ibrahim Katkhudha al-Sinnari, which is the one we’re in now.”

Her eyes shone and she looked around the house with renewed interest. “Really? This house?”

“That’s right. After the place was made ready, on 20 August 1798, Bonaparte commanded a number of men to live here: Gaspard Monge, a mathematician and a pioneer of perspective in painting, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Caffarelli du Falga, who specialized in painting Napoleon’s campaigns and conquests—he accompanied him whenever he went to wage war or conquer a country to paint and document them at Napoleon’s command.”

“I’ve seen Caffarelli’s work,” Yasmine nodded. “My favorite was his painting of Napoleon in Jaffa.”

The man stuffed a pipe with fragrant tobacco and lit it. “I don’t usually smoke at work,” he said, “but talking on this subject requires a pipe.” He took a puff and went on. “Napoleon gave orders to found the Egypt Scientiﬁc Institute and select its members. It was divided into four sections: Mathematics, Physics (meaning natural history and medicine), Political Economy, and Arts and Letters. It is noted on the gravestone of Pierre Jacotin, cartographer and surveyor, that he was a member of the Egyptian Scientiﬁc Institute during the time of the French Campaign.”

“That only goes to show how important this work was, and how important the Institute was.”

“Yes, deﬁnitely. The Institute may have been built by the French, but the primary beneﬁciaries of it have always been Egypt and the Egyptians. Even some of the prominent imams of al-Azhar and eminent citizens paid visits to the Institute and used its extensive library, which the French welcomed.” He sighed. “The old seat of the Institute remained abandoned until the British consul in Egypt managed to reestablish the Egyptian Scientiﬁc Institute to play the scientiﬁc role so integral to the Institute’s function. Another British professor, named Henry Abbott, together with the French Orientalist Prisse d’Avennes, founded the Egyptian Literary Association to perform the same cultural role that the Egyptian Scientiﬁc Institute had. And on May 6, 1856, Khedive Muhammad Said Pasha declared the Institute ofﬁcially reestablished in Alexandria.” He puffed out a long plume of pipe smoke and went on. “In 1880, expert archaeologists restored Beit al-Sinnari, the original seat of the Institute, and it came back to this building, resuming its cultural activities.”

She drank in his every word, wide-eyed. “It came full circle. This house having been the seat of the Scientiﬁc Institute at its inception, when the Campaign came here, and again when the Institute was moved from Alexandria to Cairo, and then again when the collection came back here after the ﬁre!”

“That’s true.”

She allowed him to speak until he had ﬁnished his historical monologue: ﬁnally, she pulled out her iPad and showed him the painting. He scrutinized it carefully. “I’ve never seen this painting before,” he said. “I don’t think it’s part of our collection.” He added, still looking, “But what makes you so sure that it’s one of ours?”

“The painting came to our lab from the Gezira Museum,” said Yasmine, “one of the damaged paintings that were brought there after the ﬁre at the Scientiﬁc Institute. The odd thing is that the painting is damaged, yes, but deﬁnitely not at all by ﬁre. It was improperly stored in an enclosed, humid place for a long time.”

“I assure you,” he told her, “this painting is not part of our collection. In any case, we would not have let such a distinguished piece of art deteriorate to the state it appears to be in. Although, since you say the damage is due to improper storage, it might have been in the Institute’s storage rooms. You might drop by and have a word with the storage supervisor.”

She took her leave and thanked him warmly for his hospitality. He had been most forthcoming with his information and had not minded her asking questions; on the contrary, he seemed to need no prompting to open up the treasure troves, storehouses, and caverns of the Institute’s memory to place everything in it on display.

The storage supervisor was in a room a little way from the ofﬁce; unlike his boss, he greeted her with a curt nod. When she showed him the painting, he said in a tone that left no room for dissent, “No, this painting wasn’t in our storage. There were no paintings in there.”

Cairo: November 1798

He waited until she was out of sight, the girl whose innocence and childish smile had touched his heart. Then he went on his way, down streets and byways, contemplating the features of the people he had come to paint. All the Egyptians had something in common, he noticed, however different they looked: it was the pure smile that lit up their faces.

The Jewish quarter; the Armenian quarter; churches forbidden to ring their bells, synagogues with squared-off courtyards, churches with high domes, wooden buildings, the ﬁsh market, the caravansaries for rice trading, linen trading, and oil trading, the tailors’ street, the Sudanese alley, the Mosque of Abul-Ela, and the mule stop, a spacious square where men and boys stood with beasts of burden, each occupied with washing and bathing his mount, feeding them, and decorating their saddles with velvet covers, then hanging bells around their necks. The mules preened with a sense of importance, and stood tall and proud.

He stood there for a long time, contemplating this strange world, pondering the special relationship between these carters and their beasts. It was something deeper, he thought, than just a livelihood for them. He asked a carter to take him to his house.

“Where?” the man asked.

“Beit al-Sinnari.”

The man helped him up onto the mule’s velvet-saddled back. With a thick hand, he slapped the animal’s back to urge it into a gallop. “Beit al-Sinnari, the one Napoleon took over with all the men who do odd things inside?” he asked.

Alton chuckled and shook his head. “Odd things?” he repeated.

“Yes, they say that a lot of men live there and do odd things, like summon demons, God help us, to share Napoleon’s conquests and his new lands.” The man, feeling more comfortable with no interruption, went on. “They say he summoned a demon and made him drive the ship that ﬂies in the air. He let them down, and it fell down on everyone’s heads, and, but for the grace of God, would have killed many.”

“Hmm.” Alton smiled, not feeling it worth the effort to undertake changing the man’s mind and disabusing him of these notions, for how could a man who thought like that absorb his explanations?

“I’ve taken a lot of relatives and acquaintances to Beit al-Sinnari. They were a generous household, they always tipped well. What an odd world this is! I wonder where they are now? Ah well, here we are.”

Alton disembarked and handed the man a quarter-bara. The man’s face broke into a broad smile to see the coin, after which he whipped up his mount and trotted away. Alton pushed open the oval wooden door with a friendly greeting to the gardeners inside who took care of the courtyard. He walked in, through the broad corridor ﬂoored with mazut, solid bitumen, and entered a large room where Gaspard Monge and another scientist were engrossed in an experiment. “Good evening,” he said.

“Good evening,” said Alton. The sight of the other Frenchmen calmed him, and he suddenly felt at ease enough to speak of his doubts. “With every day that passes,” Alton said, exasperated, “I ﬁnd myself less and less certain of what on earth Napoleon wants from us.” He ﬂung himself down into a chair, shaking his head, thinking of an innocent girl’s smile. “Why did he bring us here? What was so incomprehensible about this land, so outside the order of creation, that he needed us to explain it to him and set it down in books and reference volumes?”

Gaspard Monge set down his instruments and straightened. “Au contraire. This country is full of treasures as yet undiscovered. There are a great many resources as yet untapped. It’s up to us to ﬁnd them.”

“Treasures?” Alton sighed. “Resources? That’s all very well, my good fellow, but what exactly is required of me? What am I supposed to do?”

Monge ﬁxed him with a proud look. “We are preparing a book on the description of Egypt. That is the volume in which we plan to describe everything in Egypt in words and pictures.” He added, “I don’t believe you have not yet found something that inspires you to draw! Ever since you got here, the only thing you have completed is that painting of the celebration of the ﬂooding of the Nile.”

The words seemed to rattle around in Alton’s head. “Inspires me to draw?” he said aloud, while thinking, What makes him think I haven’t already found my muse, and that the only thing I’ve thought about since I set eyes on her is to paint her?

He left Monge and went to the studio where the artists and sculptors did their work. He took out a fresh piece of paper and spread it out, preparing to paint her: but something made his brush veer away, changing his mind at the last minute. He felt a sudden reluctance to paint her in public, in that room where anyone could see. He wanted to be alone with her. No one should look upon his brush as it painted the intimate details of her. No one should see him painting with his heart instead of his hand.

He would paint her for himself, and himself alone. He would not allow her to become a part of their research. She was not some sort of animal to be caged within the four corners of a painting. He would not allow her to become the laughingstock of the elite Parisian women who went to museums and stood before paintings—her painting—not bothering to hold back their titters as they made fun of the veil around her head or the striped silken gallabiya she wore. They would care nothing for her striking features, nor for the charm and innocence she radiated: he knew such women well, all the women of the bourgeois set, the nouveaux riches of the Revolution.

Alton originally came from an aristocratic family, and had always hated the snobbery and artiﬁce of that class. Still, want and a need to earn a living, coupled with the hard times his family had fallen upon after the Revolution, had kept him in contact with a class he hated. His father had been a courtier in the court of Louis XVI; the Revolution had not only imprisoned him, but conﬁscated all his family’s property, leaving them penniless and out in the cold. His mother had lived for a while on charitable gifts from wealthy members of the family who had fortunately escaped the clutches of the Revolution; however, as time passed, these gifts slowed to a trickle and eventually dried up completely. Alton, a handsome and eligible dandy who had many Parisian beauties chasing after him, of the type who went for walks in the Jardins de Luxembourg at ﬁve every afternoon accompanied by their maids and little white poodles, was obliged to leave his life of luxury behind to earn his living. His only skill was painting: he went out to Montmartre with his canvas and his brushes, and set up his paints, canvases, and easel on a street corner. Fortunately, he was talented, so the faces and scenes in his paintings made people stop and stare, asking him to paint them, or requesting particular scenes that had tickled their fancy. He sold well, and thanks to his gift, he became quite well known within a short time.

He managed to save a bit of money and rented a garret on the rooftop of an old apartment building that he converted into a studio while keeping his old location on the street corner. He became well-known in Parisian high society and aristocratic families requested him by name to paint their family portraits on special occasions and at their extravagant parties. Circumstance forced him not to be choosy; he needed to be able to live within his current more modest lifestyle, but one thing he never abandoned was his smart attire. Now he was ‘the handsome artist,’ ‘the lively young man,’ and so on, and thus still retained the ability to attract young lovelies and women of the world alike. Still, he only had passing ﬂings with them; he would visit this one and accept the invitation of that one with gentlemanly charm, no more, for they always struck him as shallow and vacuous. What was truly strange, even to himself, was that he had left all these beauties behind, traveled all this distance, to meet this ordinary girl and fall in love with her, as though fate had arranged this journey to this land at this particular time only for this purpose, to bring him face to face with her.

He had never planned to visit the Orient. The organizers of the Campaign had not meant to include his name on the roster of its artists. It had all been sheer chance. On a bitingly cold day in February, as the snow was falling outside and the juniper logs were crackling as usual in the ﬁreplace, he heard—as he was placing the ﬁnishing touches on a painting before handing it in for a few francs—a horse-drawn carriage pull up outside his house. The brass knocker sounded insistently against his door. When he opened it, he found Monsieur Lombard himself outside. He was one of the most famous artists in France and a professor at the School of Fine Arts. “Come in, come in,” he had said, stunned, and Lombard had stepped inside. He was a ﬁftyish man with a beard that looked as though it had not been trimmed in years, and a pipe that never left his hand even when he wasn’t smoking it. He could not begin to guess the reason behind this odd visit at such a late hour. Another man was with Lombard, stern-faced and with the air of a military man. He welcomed them both and set out two chairs. “It’s an honor to have you here in my humble studio,” he said.

Grufﬂy and with a supercilious air, Lombard responded as he looked all around the studio as though inspecting it. He blew out smoke from his pipe. “It is humble indeed,” he said, “but your work is quite the reverse.” He raised his eyebrows. “You have a ﬁne hand, and your talent is unparalleled. That is why we are here.”

The other man took up the thread. “Your name is on a military list to take part in an exploratory campaign where we shall be in need of several professional artists to draw and paint everything strange and unusual on our journey, and document what is important on our voyage.”

Tongue-tied by surprise, he was obliged to shake himself in order to ﬁnd something to say. “What campaign?” he asked. “To where? How?”

“You are not permitted to ask questions,” the military man said. “This is an imperial command, and you must obey without question. This is not a matter of choice to which you may say yea or nay.”

“But what is the purpose of the expedition?”

“That is classiﬁed information.” He went on to tell Alton that he was not to tell anyone about his upcoming voyage, which was a state secret.

“But what about my family? I’m the only breadwinner.”

“You don’t need to worry on that score. They will receive a sum of money at the start of every month.”

Lombard looked around him at the paintings on the walls and propped up against them on the ﬂoor. “This is a golden opportunity, my boy,” he said while taking his leave at the door. “The artist who should have gone in your stead has fallen ill, and your name was recommended to replace him. You can take your own equipment with you, the things you can’t work without. We will send you a telegram to tell you of the travel date and other details.”

Alton stood rooted to the spot on his doorstep after they left, snow blowing in. Finally, half-frozen, he closed it, still thinking of the man’s words, “This is a golden opportunity.” Was it truly golden? It was a military command that he could not refuse. Sailing into the unknown! That was an exciting prospect that any artist would envy—if he was setting sail of his own free will, to a destination of his own choosing, to draw what his eye desired, not commanded by a military ofﬁcer. But soon enough he convinced himself to set his misgivings aside. The command had been issued, after all, and he could do little else but obey.

A few days later, he received a telegram telling him that the date to set sail would be at dawn that next Monday from Toulon Square. On the telegram was scrawled, “please ensure secrecy.”

Secrecy? That alone piqued his curiosity. A scientiﬁc expedition . . . why would they require secrecy? In any case, he would obey orders; he had no wish to court disaster by disobeying. He made his arrangements and took his leave of his family and friends, telling them that he was going on a brief journey through various cities and towns in France. Only his mother did he tell about his secret: she said goodbye with bitter tears. He promised her that he would write to her. He had resolved not only to write letters to her, but to set down every detail that transpired on his journey from the moment his ship set sail until he set foot on his home soil once more. Perhaps these notes he would write might be important enough to publish later, in book form: many artists and men of letters had written travelogues and published them upon their return.

On 19 May, 1798, at the port of Toulon, two great ships were preparing to cast off. One of them was laden with modern war machines, ammunition, and supplies; the other with laboratory equipment, scientiﬁc apparatus, and printing presses. The ofﬁcers stood in rows to the fore. Behind them were the scientists, and I was among their number. The soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder in the last row: long lines and eyes ﬁlled with wonderment, and confused chattering, for no one knew what this man was planning. The crew was moving around busily in preparation to cast off and set sail.

The sun had not yet risen when Napoleon appeared, the usual smile on his face that never left it, even in the bleakest times. He made a short speech, his breath condensing in puffs of vapor in the freezing air as he spoke. For a moment, I fancied that he was a dragon blowing his smoke into our faces and that he was about to attack. But he wished us a pleasant journey and disappeared into the ship.

The address he made to us was a very short one, a few mysterious words of which we understood nothing. He was careful not to betray anything of his plans to us. In under an hour, the foghorns sounded, indicating the ships were setting sail. Where to? To the Orient! This was all the information we were able to obtain.

I was in the company of great scientists on that ship. Because I never kept up with science or modern discoveries, I did not know any of them. Monsieur Monge arranged a meeting to introduce us all to one another, and asked us to all come up on deck after lunch. Only then did I stand there, speechless, as he called out their names. There was a historian, an archaeologist, an astronomer, a physician, and a geographer—and myself! Whatever had brought me there? What brought me into the company of these eminent men?

I met a great many scientists, craftsmen, and workmen, these last powerless and helpless; they had been perforce torn from their homes and the company of their families, forced to leave everything behind—their sweethearts, their wives, their children, their jobs—and go off into the unknown. They could not show disgruntlement or refuse. I made friends with Leon Pointard, a fortyish man whose profession was betrayed by the ink stains on his ﬁngers: he was responsible for the printing presses and the machines that that department comprised. He took me down into the bowels of the ship, and took it upon himself to show me the machines and how they worked: strangely enough, there was one with Arabic lettering. Pointard told me that the Commander-General had told them to bring it along so that they could print circulars and newspapers in Arabic for the people of those lands.

After several weeks’ sailing in the wide open sea, one foggy day we sighted land, looking like an extension of the sea. I had not yet known that it was a changeable country, swinging between extremes from one day to the next: one day glittering, the next dark; one day light, the next gloom; extending to right and left, wide as her river and old as her pyramids.

Cairo: November 30, 1798

Since Zeinab had returned home after meeting him in the park, his face had not left her. She was ﬁlled with him, her soul clinging to him. His face, his scent, his voice. Was she in love with him? She must be, for what else but love could be making her only live for the hope of seeing him? What else but love could be making her think of him and only him, day and night?

But what could come of this love? In the eyes of all, he was a Frenchman, here with the Campaign to invade her country. He was one of the inﬁdel invaders, as the Egyptians called him. Even though he was only in the country to paint and not to ﬁght, who would understand that?

But what did she care? The tremor that took her when she laid eyes on him was enough. She had been so close to Napoleon that there had been only a few breaths between him and her; he had touched her cheek and stroked her hair; yet he had stirred nothing within her but a feeling of panic and unease. With Alton, everything was different: she had but to lay eyes on him to dance inside with joy. The whole world meant nothing compared to what she felt for him. What had the world given her but cruelty, rebukes, and envy? A mother who cared for nothing but cooking, sweeping, and polishing, and blind obedience to her husband; a selﬁsh father who could give anything away to make his own dreams come true; friends who were only jealous of her; family and relations who only came to visit when they needed something or to borrow money; neighbors who could hardly wait to see some disaster befall them so as to gloat their ﬁll. Alton was the gift that fate had given her: he had come to free her from the clutches of the world she lived in, and she would let him come to her rescue and sweep her away from this life she lived.

Her mother came into the room; she didn’t even notice, lost as she was in another world. “Hey!” her mother prodded her in the arm. “Aren’t you done dreaming yet? Wake up!” She put her hands on her hips. “Isn’t it enough what you’ve done to us? You’ve made us the butt of everyone’s gossip!”

With wide, bold eyes, Zeinab looked up at her mother. “No, I won’t wake up,” she said ﬁrmly. “Will you not even let me dream?”

“A word of advice,” her mother said. “When you dream, dream a dream your own size. That way you won’t break your neck when you wake up from your dream in seventh heaven!”

“Let it happen,” Zeinab snapped back. “It’s enough to have dreamed.”

“Get up and help me clean the house and make dinner.”

“I’m not cleaning or cooking. The house is full of servants and slaves who can help.”

“Now I see!” her mother cried. “That’s what comes of your father spoiling you!” She stormed out, muttering curses under her breath.

Zeinab knew perfectly well what her mother was talking about: she thought Zeinab was in love with Napoleon. She was right to be fearful and apprehensive: grown men trembled just to hear the great man’s name. No one could presume to know what was going on in his head. If only she could tell her mother that her dream had nothing to do with Bonaparte. If only she could tell her about Alton and her feelings for him. But could her mother even understand what love meant?

Fatima, wife to Sheikh al-Bakri, was deeply worried about her daughter’s well-being. What worried her even more was the fact that she knew nothing about what anyone was thinking—not her husband, not her daughter, not Bonaparte. From behind the meshrabiyeh, she could see dark clouds gathering in the sky and hurrying toward her fate, thunderous storm clouds. She had been unable to sleep for thinking and worrying, turning right and left, looking at her husband to ﬁnd him lying on his back, his fat paunch vibrating to the rhythm of his loud snoring and making her want to prod him, wake him up, and yell, “What’s happened to you? Are you that much of a slave to power and position? Would you sacriﬁce your own family to them, your religion, anything and everything, just to get what you want?” Suddenly, as if he heard the screams she was choking back, he opened one eye and looked at her. He slurred drowsily, “Go to sleep, woman.”

Perhaps before, in another time, she would have gone to sleep, feeling she had no choice since he commanded her to do so; but now was the time to reject his commands, now that they had lost their power. He had fallen in her estimation ever since he had agreed to present his daughter as a gift to Napoleon in exchange for high rank and status. How had he allowed himself to do such a thing? How could he look people in the face, and him a high-ranking Azharite sheikh? She herself could no longer look anyone in the eye. She passed through the streets with her head down, looking at the ground as though she was looking for something she had dropped, while the wagging tongues of those whom she passed by lashed at her back like whips.

She waited until the sun rose, sending its smooth silken threads out to spread light and warmth, then quickly pulled on her burka and slipped out of the house unnoticed. She walked through the streets, head down, taking unaccustomed paths that made her journey longer, so as to avoid meeting other women who she knew would shower her with coarse insults. Through the alleys she went until she arrived at the mule market and cart stop; from there she hired a cart and asked the carter to take her to Harat al-Yahud, the Jewish Quarter, in the district of Moski.

The carter stopped at the gate to the Jewish quarter, telling her that the cart would not ﬁt inside: “The camels, you see, are loading up a bride’s trousseau, and we won’t be able to get past through that narrow path.”

She threw him a quarter-bara and went on foot through the alley, stumbling hesitantly and dragging her feet. She saw a woman frying zalabya pastry balls, sprinkling them with sugar and placing them in paper cones for sale. She bought one, then walked to the end of the alley. Taking hold of a rusty wooden door knocker, she knocked on an old, cracked wooden door with a Star of David carved into it. She knocked again and again; she waited, and then, when no one answered, decided to turn back the way she had come. Just then, she heard a creaky voice coming from behind the door: “Patience! Patience! Patience is a virtue!”

“I’ve been as patient as Job,” she muttered. “These pastries are stone cold.”

The door screeched and creaked open: the old woman behind it invited her in. Fatima followed the woman into the courtyard of the house, to where a table was placed. The woman was leaning on a wooden stick, wearing a threadbare black gallabiya full of holes and patches. Her shock of wild hair was the blinding white of snow. She was just as Fatima remembered seeing her the last time. Nothing about her had changed a jot; even her house was the same, with the same stench, the pitted and scarred table still there where Fatima had sat with her own mother many years ago. The fortune-teller busied herself with making coffee, roasting the beans ﬁrst in a small pan, then grinding them with mastic and cardamom, ﬁlling the place with their fragrance. Fatima gave her the cone of pastry. “Leave them, thanks,” said the woman, “and we’ll have it with our coffee. How do you take your coffee?”

In days gone by, Fatima would have refused coffee; drinking coffee was a sin, or so they said. But now she would not say no to a cup. “Medium sugar, please.”

She poured their coffee into two brass cups. “How are you, Fatima?”

Fatima was amazed. Was it possible that the woman still remembered her from when she was a little girl? “Do you still remember me,” she asked, “after all this time?”

“Yes,” said the fortune-teller, “I recognized you by your scent.”

“My scent?”

“Everyone who has set foot inside this house I recognize by smell,” said the woman calmly.

“I don’t remember putting on any perfume today . . . ?”

The woman laughed aloud, displaying her dark cavern of a mouth, toothless but for a lone canine. “You don’t need to wear perfume for me to recognize you. I recognize you by your body’s smell: every person has a scent unique to themselves alone, that resembles them. I remember your smell very well, as it’s one of the few I’ve smelled like it in my life: a goodly smell, like virgin soil. True, it is mixed with another scent this time, but the scent of untouched earth is still there.” She sniffed the air. “Wait . . .” She kept on snifﬁng like a bloodhound in search of some thief. “It’s the smell of fear. No—not just fear—it’s a mix of fear and panic and grief. What is the matter, woman?”

Fatima sighed helplessly. “It’s the Franks. My life is turned upside down. No sooner did they come than it seemed they were only there to invade my own home.” She sighed. “That brute Bonaparte must have cast a spell on my husband and daughter. They’ve changed! They’re not the same people at all.” She took a swallow of her coffee. “My husband—the good, devout man of God—has changed, as if he had never known the Lord God or his Prophet. My pure, innocent daughter! She’s changed and is acting like the belly dancers and prostitutes. How could this have happened in the space of a day and a night, unless he enchanted them?”

“The evils of one’s self are more wicked than enchantments,” the woman said, “and your daughter and your husband have wickedness in their own selves.”

“But how? This is my husband whom I have known all my life, and my daughter, raised by my own hands, and I know them better than I know myself!”

“The wickedness within the self is more powerful than anything, and harder than any enchantment. Spells can be broken and vanquished; the ills of the self grow from deep within, and only go away when the soul leaves the body.”

“No!” Fatima shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. One doesn’t change completely in a day and a night! What’s happening with them is surely some spell.”

There was an old silver pan ﬁlled with water on the table, in front of the old fortune-teller. There was something odd about the water: even motionless, it was ﬁlled with concentric ripples like those raised by a stone thrown into a still pond. No sooner did the ripples dissipate than they came back at once. “Let us see. Did you bring something of theirs?”

Before coming, Fatima had remembered the fortune-teller asking her mother, long ago when they had ﬁrst visited, to bring something belonging to the person to examine. She had therefore brought something. From the recesses of her abaya, she took out a burlap purse bound with strong thread. From this she pulled out two handkerchiefs, one silk, which was Zeinab’s, and the other of white cotton, belonging to her husband. The woman took the two handkerchiefs and began to recite incantations in a strange language. Her voice dropped and grew rough, and her features changed. The more she spoke her incantations, the more the water in the dish roiled and bubbled, as though boiling over a ﬂame.

The woman calmed and laid the handkerchiefs aside: the water ceased its bubbling. “O Auntie, set my mind at rest,” Fatima entreated, “what has happened?”

“As I told you,” the woman said calmly, “it is no witchcraft nor spell, but the wickedness of the self.” Then she fell silent for a moment. In a voice softer than usual, a kinder expression on her face, she said, “God help you, God help you.”

Fatima trembled in fear: what had the woman foreseen to change her thus, making her so sad for Fatima, she who was normally so hard-hearted? She could not keep the pleading out of her tone, “Set my mind at rest.”

“There is nothing you can do,” said the fortune-teller. “Go to the temple of Maimonides at the end of the alley, and call for the mercy of the Lord. Bless yourself with the water of the well there, and take some of it with you, and bathe your daughter and husband in it.” And without warning, she left her, rising with speed surprising for one of her age and walking away, still leaning on her stick. “Close the door behind you.”

“Auntie! Auntie! Please wait!” Fatima stood too. “Isn’t there anything you can do for us?”

The woman shook her head as she walked away.

Fatima left more troubled than she had come, dragging her feet and moving with difﬁculty. What fate had the fortune-teller seen and refused to tell her?

Outside the house, a group of children were drawing hopscotch squares on the ground with a piece of chalk and playing. She approached them and asked, “Where is the temple of Maimonides?”

“That’s it,” said a little boy, pointing to a building at the end of the lane. Although she did not know who this Maimonides was, the fortune-teller had told her to go to his temple and be blessed with the waters of his well, so she did. Like a drowning woman, she clutched at any straw.

With halting steps, she entered the spacious temple. Three separate buildings stood before her: one for men’s prayers, one for women’s, and a third room for blessings and healing. A cold wind sprang up from she knew not where, almost blowing her over. She stood there, hesitant and fearful, not knowing where to go. A student, seeing her, approached, asking her, “What do you need?”

“I wish to be blessed and take water with me to bathe my sick husband,” she said.

He pointed to the far end of the courtyard, where she could just see a well. “From this well you can take water,” he said, “and go to the healing chamber, where you can anoint yourself with drops of oil for a blessing.”

She thanked him and did as he had said. She asked a man whose job it was to help the sick people who came from far-off cities and towns for some oil. “You can spend the night in this room,” he said, “so that Maimonides can come and help you recover.” She quickly invented the excuse of a baby at home. “Where is your pain,” he asked, “that I may anoint it with oil?” She pointed to her heart. It was, in truth, the location of all her pain and trouble. The man dipped a scrap of fabric into a jar full of oil, and handed it to her, asking her to anoint the place where it hurt.

She returned home with a bottle of water from the well and the piece of fabric dipped in the oil, thinking all the way home: what had the woman foreseen? What disasters awaited her? But then, was there any disaster worse than the one already taking place?

Upon the low, round table, the slave girl set out the dishes for dinner: the earthenware pot of baked vegetables with meat, the rice, and a plate ﬁlled with green stalks of arugula and bright red radishes. Every hand reached out to eat with good appetite as usual. Fatima was lost in thought. “What’s wrong, woman?” her husband asked, noticing. “Someone die or what? What’s gotten you into such a dark mood?”

Then he laughed mockingly, and Zeinab laughed along with him. “Mother is always unhappy these days.” The gold necklace at her throat gleamed in a ray of sunlight that ﬁltered in through the openings in the meshrabiyeh. Fatima glanced from one to the other, wondering what Fate had in store for them. What would happen, she wondered, if she told them of the fortune-teller’s prophecy? Would it make them turn back and abandon what they wanted? But she held her peace, knowing that whatever she said, it would be no use. Besides, if her husband learned she had been to the fortune-teller, it would bring the full force of his wrath down upon her, for he did not permit her to leave the house unless it was for an important matter. What would he do if he found out she had gone out without his knowledge to go to a Jewish fortune-teller to look into the future? Would he, a cleric, accept such a thing? She smiled mockingly to herself as she tried to get up, with difﬁculty.

The sheikh waited until his wife had left the room and whispered to Zeinab, “Get ready to visit Napoleon tonight. He is waiting impatiently for you. He is utterly captivated by you.”

A rush of contradictory feelings surged through Zeinab. Before, she would have jumped for joy to know that Napoleon had asked to see her and was expecting her. Now, though, everything had changed. She did not want to accept his invitation, but she couldn’t refuse. Who would dare? “Do you think Napoleon would be in love with me, when he has so many beauties around him?” she asked her father. “Didn’t you hear the rumor about him and Madame Pauline? They say he sent her husband off on a military campaign in the desert so that he could be alone with her.”

“The heart is one thing,” her father said, “and the desires of the ﬂesh are another. You have captured his heart.”

She didn’t care about capturing his heart: there was only one person whose heart and mind she wanted, only one and no other.