The Girl with Braided Hair

She arrived at the hotel and turned through the revolving door, just as she had been going in circles since she had set eyes on that painting. The receptionist greeted her with a broad smile. In the glass elevator that gave her a view of the entire hotel, La vie en rose was playing. Was life truly as rose-colored as the great chanteuse made it out to be, she wondered? And if it was, why had her mother so hated it that she had bought a one-way ticket to the next life? Could she have been persuaded to change her mind if she had heard Edith Piaf sing, with all the passion and power in her voice, ringing out to proclaim that life was beautiful? Could Edith have convinced a woman with depression that whatever happened, life was still worth living, and that something might be waiting for her that could turn her life around—something that might be closer than she thought? She might have stumbled across that something on a street corner someday, or perhaps received it in the mail, or on the wind, borne on the wings of fate, in the rain or on the breeze.

Her mother had been a beautiful woman, energetic and full of joy. She used to start her day at six o’clock, opening the windows of her life and her house to the light, watering her plants and feeding her cats. From the kitchen, the smell of her coffee would waft out; she always made a joyous little ritual of drinking it, listening to Fairuz, her favorite singer. Afterward, she would start making breakfast: she baked little pastries stuffed with cheese and vegetables and made omelets. She would always wave Yasmine and her sister Shaza goodbye until the school bus was out of sight. But in the long hours between when they left the house and came home from school . . . what had her mother done then?

She unclipped her earrings with a jerk and placed them on the dressing table. Yasmine looked at herself in the mirror. She moved closer and looked at her reﬂection as though seeing herself for the ﬁrst time. “How many times,” she thought to herself, “will I go over and over these memories?” Yes, it had been years, and time had changed her: the years she had lived showed on her skin. There were ﬁne lines around her eyes and on her forehead. She scrubbed at her face with a wipe to get her makeup off, rubbing as if she also sought to erase the traces of time.

As she brushed her teeth before bed, she noticed under the harsh light of the bathroom mirror that several white strands had crept into her hair. She knew that these signs of age could be concealed: her hair could be dyed and her wrinkles would disappear completely with a shot of Botox. But this was not the issue; it was that time ﬂashed by like lightning.

She brushed harder and harder at her teeth, wondering: how had her mother occupied her time?

She would have cleaned up the breakfast dishes, of course; gone to market to buy groceries for dinner and pick up the things everyone in the house needed. Yasmine couldn’t remember a time when the house had not been full of anything one could possibly have an appetite for, and she had never needed a pen or notebook and not found one in her desk drawer. Her clothes were neatly hung up in her closet with care; often, she had found new dresses, socks, and hair ribbons in there. With all this, her mother had taken care with her appearance, always attractively and smartly dressed. She had had a few friends whom she made a habit of meeting at the sporting club every Thursday: they talked about diets, their children’s schools, cooking, and fashion. She had lived an organized and lady-like life—it had just not been suited to the time she lived in, for she had been more like a perfect 1930s housewife, her husband and children the center of her life, everything revolving around them. Her grandmother had often reproached her mother for not going out to work, “. . . and you a graduate of the American University in Cairo!” She had tried to urge her to ﬁnd a job to prove herself, be independent, and have her own world outside the home, even if she did not necessarily need the money.

Yasmine splashed water on her face, thinking furiously. If this woman had abandoned her outdated ideas and found a job, if she had had her own sense of self, perhaps then her husband’s betrayal would not have driven her to take her own life. Her life would have been ﬁlled with other people and relationships; but was a social support network enough to hold a fragile psyche together? She did not think so. Depression attacks a person whose psychology cannot ﬁght back, and creeps in slowly, painting everything in life with the same drab color.

There was a knock at the door: it was room service bearing coffee with milk. She stood at the window, looking out at the Eiffel Tower, snow piled up on its top, as ﬂurries whirled around it in the wind. Just like these cold memories, she thought, that won’t get out of my head.

The specter of her mother appeared before her, making herself a cup of coffee in the kitchen of their home, wearing her white silk robe, her blond hair spilling over her back. Yasmine was standing on tiptoe, trying and failing to reach the glass of water on the kitchen table. Her mother laughed and picked her up, handing her the glass of water with a kiss. She panicked: what if she dropped it? She folded her tiny ﬁngers ﬁercely around it, and found herself just as fiercely gripping the mug of coffee in her hands as though it might slip away. Time seemed to soften and ﬂow. Where was she now? Which of them was she? The little girl who couldn’t reach the table, or the grown woman alone in a room in Paris overlooking the Eiffel Tower? And why had that woman left her and gone away, when Yasmine still needed her?

She rested her head on her mother’s shoulder and fell asleep. Her mother laid her gently on the bed. Her mother’s specter was teasing her: a tall, slim ﬁgure she could feel walking around the room so as not to wake her little girl, then turning off the light and closing the door behind her as she left.

Trying to shake off the past, Yasmine got up off the bed and went to the window, but the memories came thick and fast. She remembered that long-ago winter with the biting cold of its days and nights and perpetually cloudy sky. When her mother had found out that her husband had betrayed her with her best friend, she had started out angry, threatening, screaming. Her father had left the house and gone to stay at a hotel. Then some close friends had intervened and convinced her to take him back, explaining it away as a momentary weakness that most men suffered from. When he came back, she would not share his bed and slept in another room. Day after day, she became a different woman: beaten, weak, and passive. She kept house as usual, but she performed her tasks mechanically, with no joy, and it seemed to take all her energy to do things. She no longer bestowed a smile here, a word there: even the things that used to bother or irritate her, such as walking on the rugs without taking off your shoes, or leaving wet towels on the bed, or leaving dirty glasses on the tables, no longer evoked any reaction. When her housework was done, she would retire to a chaise longue in a remote corner of the hall until the next day. She was absent, as though in another world.

As time passed, she no longer took any care with her appearance: she stopped bathing and doing her hair, and never even changed clothes. Yasmine was sad and bitter because she didn’t know what to do to help her. She tried everything to get a rise out of her: she undid her braids so that her mother would have to rebraid her hair, she asked her to let her help with the housework, or invited her to sit and watch one of her favorite movies together, or told her she needed new clothes and wanted them to go shopping. Her mother would always refuse. A sense of real danger came over Yasmine, and she had talked to her grandmother about how far gone her mother was and how she was acting. The next day, when she came home from school, she found them together, and for the ﬁrst time in weeks, she could hear her mother’s voice in the house. She was screaming hysterically at her grandmother: “Me? See a psychiatrist? Do I look crazy to you? What would I need a psychiatrist for? Leave me alone! I hate you, I hate you all!”

She had wanted to run to her and hug her, and tell her how much she loved her. In a matter of weeks, her mother shriveled up like a dried fruit: her face grew pale and her form fragile and brittle. She ended her life, as the coroner told them, at 9:00 a.m., a little after they had all left the house. She must have planned it the night before. Yasmine remembered exactly how she had been that morning: she had been different from previous days. She had woken early, washed up, ﬁxed her hair, and put on a pretty dress. She had baked pastries and made coffee and turned the radio on to Fairuz. Yasmine had been so delighted to ﬁnd her that way, and a feeling had come over her that perhaps her mother would go back to being her old self, that she had found a way out of her problems and her sufferings, and that they would ﬁnally have a happy home again. She said goodbye to Yasmine and Shaza that day with a big hug, and stood at the window once again to wave them goodbye until the bus was out of sight.

On the way home that day, Yasmine had been eager to see her mother, as if she was back from a long journey: the woman who had lived in their house had not been her mother, but a stranger. When she had placed the key in the lock and turned it, silence had ﬁlled the house. It was a strange silence, tinged with sorrow, fear, and suspicion, as though it concealed a shattering blow.

She went straight to the kitchen. Everything was clean and in order, but she wasn’t there. “Mom? Mom?” she had called. She walked through every room in the house, looking for her. She thought that perhaps her mother had gone to the hairdresser, or shopping, or perhaps to visit her grandmother. She waited another hour and then called her grandmother to ask, “Is Mom there?”

“No, she hasn’t been here today,” her grandmother answered, “and I called the house this morning and no one answered.”

If her mother had been in her regular state of mind, her absence would not have been so concerning: Yasmine sometimes came home to ﬁnd the house empty. For a moment, she thought that perhaps her mother had packed up and left the house entirely. She rushed to the bedroom and ﬂung open the closet, but found everything in its place. She picked up the phone again and asked her father where her mother was, and he had no idea.

Her grandmother arrived in haste and bombarded her with questions. “Did something happen? Did that man ﬁght with her? Where could she have gone?”

The phone never stopped ringing; neither did the doorbell. Her grandmother had called everyone they knew, family and friends alike, asking after her. She paced in circles in the room, questions circling around her as she did so. “Please, don’t worry so much!” Yasmine had begged her. “It’s okay! This morning she was feeling much better: she was smiling again, she listened to Fairuz, and she hugged me and Shaza when we left for school. She hasn’t done that in forever!”

The words stopped in her throat. Had her mother been saying goodbye because she was getting ready to leave for the last time? Fear chilled her and her heart clenched. She retreated to a far corner, suddenly sensing that something had happened—a disaster so momentous it was inexpressible.

She watched them scurrying around and pacing the hallway, rushing to the phone whenever it rang, running to the door whenever the doorbell chimed, hoping it was her. Only Yasmine knew that she was never coming back. Her eyes never left the wall clock: its hands rotated monotonously, hour after hour, and the air grew heavy with a weight that pressed on the soul, making it groan, only afﬁrming Yasmine’s intuition when her father announced that he was going out to search the hospitals and the police stations for her.

He went into the bedroom to get dressed, then let out a yell that shook the house to its foundations. He had tried to open the door of their en-suite bathroom to wash up, but found the door blocked with something heavy. It was a body, lying on the bathroom ﬂoor, the soul long gone and ﬂitting like a butterﬂy far away. How had no one looked in there before?

Shaza and her grandmother rushed to the scene: Yasmine never stirred. Her feet were rooted to the spot and she felt the room spin. She lost consciousness. It had been a mercy: she never had to see her beloved mother’s body lying in a pool of her own blood on the bathroom ﬂoor.

Her mother had chosen a sharp blade to slash her wrists. Later, the question would not leave her: where had her mother gotten the blade? Her father had not used that type of razor for a long time, having switched to an electric shaver years ago. Had she gone out and bought it specially? Yasmine couldn’t imagine it: someone going out to buy a tool to end their life.

She found herself speaking aloud, alone in the cold room: “Were you hiding in that corner all those weeks and months to plan it? What a damned painful end! Why couldn’t you have chosen something kinder to yourself and to us?” Her voice rang out in the empty room. “Why did you pick that morning to make yourself up, to put on perfume, to wear a nice dress? Did you like the idea of leaving us that much?” Tears were rolling down her face. “Why didn’t you think of us? Of your two little girls who needed you?” She was screaming now. “You never stopped to think it would be a nightmare that would haunt us for the rest of our lives!”

Her mother had slit her wrists in her parents’ bathroom on a grey day in February, and the curtain had fallen on the ﬁnal scene of their marriage. Afterward, their father—whom everyone had blamed for what happened—had left the country, and the girls had gone to be raised by their grandmother. The apartment had been closed up, its grief locked inside it for years, until her grandmother had decided to rent it out, furnished—with all its furniture, bedclothes, photographs and paintings on the walls, and all the memories of the family who had once lived there.

Everyone avoided talking about what had happened, and many neighbors, friends. and family members could or would not realize that the woman who had ended her life in this fashion had not been “a sinner,” as they called her. She had been ill, and her illness had been what had led her to end her life in this manner. In her normal state of mind, she would never have done it: she loved life, and her family, and her husband. The source of her unhappiness was that she had loved too much; if she had loved less, she would not have met such a fate.

Painful memories ﬂooded forth like a waterfall in that hotel room in Paris, as though the gales blustering outside had only stirred them up. “Smile! You are in Paris!” a tourist sign had proclaimed. “Smile,” Yasmine said to herself in the mirror, “you’re in Paris.” She pasted a smile on her face. She had to get herself out of this pit of painful memories. She dialed the numbers of a few friends she had made during her student days in Paris, and made dinner plans.

The next morning, she chose a classic, elegant outﬁt, to match the event she was to attend, and had breakfast at the hotel. She lost count of the cups of coffee she drank to wake herself up, then hurried off to catch the opening session of the conference. The radio announcer at Good Morning Paris rattled off the weather report: sunny with some clouds and rain in the afternoon. The taxi took her to the Paris Hilton, where the conference was being held.

The conference hall was thronged with people: association members, artists, journalists, and a large contingent of the general public. She caught sight of Professor Stefan sitting in the audience and sat next to him.

The conference started with an introductory speech by the head of the association, and for two hours, the conference speakers presented their papers. In the break, everyone went to the dining room for coffee, tea, and cakes. She found herself sitting at a round table with Professor Stefan and the director of the association who had received them in his ofﬁce the previous day, and several other men. Suddenly, the director shot to his feet and made a beeline for two men standing in a corner. He interrupted their conversation, addressing himself to one of them, a tall, athletic-looking man with carefully coiffed hair. After a minute, the director gestured to her to come over. “Mademoiselle Yasmine Ghaleb,” he introduced her, “a professor and researcher of art history from Egypt. Monsieur René Andrea, head of the Military History Archives.”

The man eyed her as they shook hands. “She is making preparations to begin an exhaustive research project into Napoleon’s campaign in the East—military, artistic, and scientiﬁc.”

Andrea’s military rigidity unbent, and he smiled, suddenly appearing attractive. “I would be honored to assist you,” he said, “you are more than welcome at any time. You can come by my ofﬁce today after the conference if it is convenient: I will be there until ﬁve.”

“Where is ‘there’?”

“The Musée de l’Armée.” He gave her his business card.

“Thank you,” she smiled and nodded, making her way back to her table, rejoined a few moments later by the director of the Association for Art History.

“You will ﬁnd all the information you need with Monsieur Andrea,” he told her. “His ﬁeld is Bonaparte’s military history. He knows every detail of Napoleon’s campaigns and wars. With a little judicious questioning and a little discretion, I’m sure you will be able to ﬁnd the information you’re looking for.”

His words rang in her ears as she made her way to Andrea’s ofﬁce after the conference. The taxi rattled through the streets and the trees ﬂashed past the window, one after the other, “With a little discretion,” he had said, “you will be able to ﬁnd the information.”

The taxi let her off a few meters from the Musée de l’Armée, which was surrounded by a high wall. Cars were not permitted inside, so she had to walk. In any case, it was two o’clock in the afternoon, and the weather was warmer at this time of day. As she walked through the grounds, she wondered what he had meant by “with a little discretion.”

The museum was guarded by an impressive security presence. She informed the guards at the door that she had an appointment with the head of the museum. She passed through a great many electronic doors until she ﬁnally made her way inside. The building was quiet. There were several exhibition halls displaying the various weaponry used by the military and the uniforms worn by soldiers and ofﬁcers through the ages. There were even special display cases for boots, helmets, and ammunition. On her other side, there were paintings glorifying the wars undertaken by the French Empire throughout its history.

The silence was broken by the click of her heels on the wooden ﬂoors. She stopped at a case bearing a gold necklace with a diamond embedded in it. Underneath it was a plaque: “The Grand Master Medal: The Medal of Honor of Napoleon I.” She took a tour around the entrance, which displayed many military pieces: cannons, pistols, helmets, arrows, and all the instruments of killing that had been used in wars. There was a great cannon in the center of the hall, with a plaque beneath it indicating that it had been used in Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt. I wonder how many Egyptian lives were lost to you? she thought. How many mothers lost their sons, how many children you orphaned?

Having seen enough, she hurried up the stairs to the ﬁrst ﬂoor, where Andrea was waiting for her.

The room was as elegant as its occupant. He welcomed her warmly and invited her to take a seat. He had the window open, and the room felt freezing. Noticing that she had wrapped herself more tightly in her coat, he got up and closed the window. “Right. Fill me in.”

For a moment she lost her concentration, unsure where to start. He noticed and left his desk, heading for the coffeemaker on a side table. He busied himself with making them two cups of espresso, and handed her one. Watching him, she could see that he seemed younger and less formal than his position would seem to indicate. They sipped their coffee and made small talk of the weather, Paris, and his last visit to Cairo. She felt comfortable with him, and forgot her ﬁrst impression of him and Professor Stefan’s words of warning. She began to talk, telling him of everything that had transpired since she had found the painting, and her long journey in search of the artist, that had brought her to his ofﬁce. He listened with what seemed to be rapt attention. “Rest assured,” he said, “I’ll do all I can to help you. I like you.”

She did not quite understand what “I like you” could possibly mean. Did he mean he liked her as a woman, or that he was interested in her research?

“What’s the name of the artist?” he asked.

“Alton Germain,” she said.

His eyes narrowed and grew unfocused, and he seemed lost in thought. Then he got up and entered the name into his computer, checking their archive. Seconds later, he said, “Yes. That artist was on the boat that took the artists and scientists to Egypt. It set sail from the port of Toulon on July 29, 1798.”

She felt her eyes shine and felt light with relief. With this conﬁdent declaration, she felt certain that this was the painter of the portrait. After a pause, the man said, eyes still on his computer, “Alton Germain was an artist of great skill and compassionate temperament. He never sought any positions of power: he was only on the ship by sheer chance, as his name was not originally on the list of Campaign artists. At the last moment, an artist fell ill, and a replacement was needed: Alton Germain was chosen. He was an opponent of Napoleon’s policies: his paintings did not properly glorify Napoleon, instead depicting the customs and manners of the common people. The few paintings he was compelled to paint depicted Napoleon and his soldiers as cruel and evil invaders, while the Egyptians he portrayed as equal in stature to the French. The greatest disaster was the painting he created of Napoleon’s campaign in the Levant, when he painted the soldiers suffering in the desert, enfeebled and miserable, awaiting death.

“His paintings were in the original ﬁrst edition of The Description of Egypt,” he continued, “and when Napoleon saw them, he ordered that every painting by that artist be expunged from the book and that it be reprinted.”

“That’s why he removed every trace of him,” Yasmine nodded, bursting with excitement, “and he may have imprisoned or killed him!”

“He did erase him without a trace,” said Andrea, “but he didn’t imprison or kill him.” He looked at his watch, indicating an end to their interview.

“Well,” she said, picking up her handbag from the desk, “I have to go now.”

“I’ll expect you tomorrow at two o’clock,” said Andrea, “and we can ﬁnish our conversation. You can bring the painting you think is his: we can take a color sample and run some tests on it to see if the colors match his other work. That way we’ll be certain.”

She nodded, shook his hand, and left.

The weather bureau had been absolutely correct: it was raining and a chilly wind was blowing. Luckily, she had remembered to bring an umbrella. She liked walking in the rain: it made her feel washed clean. Still, it was hard to walk in the rain in three-inch heels. She took a taxi instead. It was a good thing she had, as the heavens had opened up and the taxi driver could barely see for what seemed like buckets of water falling from the sky. The windshield wipers barely managed to wipe the rain away, sweeping back and forth in a dull rhythm.

She mentally replayed the conversation she had just had, pausing at, “The greatest disaster was the painting he created of Napoleon’s campaign in the Levant.”

Between Haifa and Acre: March 1798

Disease was rampant: it spread through the soldiers like wildﬁre. First there were the buboes that sprouted on men’s faces, under their arms, and on their thighs; then they would grow and blacken, followed by vomiting and fever. We used an abandoned monastery between Haifa and Acre to set up a ﬁeld hospital, and moved the afﬂicted soldiers there. Their numbers increased day by day. I volunteered, along with a number of doctors and nurses, to work in the hospital: this was no time to be painting pictures to glorify the emperor, with ruin and devastation around us everywhere we looked.

The beds ﬁlled up with plague-ridden soldiers; the new arrivals we were obliged to place on the ﬂoor so that one could scarcely walk through the hospital. All of them were suffering from fevers, buboes covering their bodies, their cries ﬁlling the halls. I assisted with all the strength I could muster. I did not fear this black plague nor run from it, as many of the Campaign scientists who were with us did— they excused themselves from assisting—or as the ofﬁcers and soldiers did, diverting their path to take them away from the hospital. I know that death and life are fated and not within our purvey to control: the junior ofﬁcer who refused to enter to comfort his soldiers with some word that might bring them peace on their way to the afterlife, we heard was killed that same day in battle. Death awaits us wherever we are: so why fear? All I did was take the necessary precautions: I did not take off my gloves or mask, I disinfected myself, and washed my hands well with vinegar and lime.

One evening there was a loud clamor: we ran to see what was the matter. A large group of afﬂicted soldiers had been brought there from Acre, their comrades bearing them upon stretchers. Among their number was Lautrec, lying upon a stretcher. His face was ruddy and covered with boils, which marred his beautiful features. He had wasted away to nothing, a mere skeleton of a man. Because I had the unwelcome skill of knowing which of the afﬂicted was closest to death, I knew that there were mere hours between him and death. I was greatly pained at the knowledge and could not restrain myself from weeping. It was as though all the tears I had held back since leaving from the port of Toulon had found a suitable excuse to fall now, without stopping.

I approached Lautrec. He tried valiantly to smile. Despite it all, that beautiful smile was unchanged. I removed his clothing and disinfected his body, then bandaged his buboes that had grown huge and burst, oozing pus and blood. I wept in silence throughout. I remembered the night he had told me the story of his life, and that he had always been an unwelcome guest in his own home. Had he come here, I thought, to die?

As he was in his death throes, he gestured weakly to his jacket. I handed it to him. He pulled a letter out of an inside pocket and held it out to me. In tones scarcely audible, he whispered, “Please . . . give it to her.”

He was holding the lock of her hair to his heart. He held it there until his heart stopped beating.

I covered his face with the sheet and grieved for him.

In this manner, the beds emptied, then ﬁlled once more. Death after death brought it home to me how much ruin this rash man had brought down upon the young men of his country to fulﬁll his grandiose dreams, by forcing them into a war whose consequences he had not considered.

News came to us of the resounding defeat our soldiers had suffered at Acre, bringing disappointment to everyone. One morning, there was chaos in the hospital: there was news that Bonaparte was going to pay the hospital a visit on his way to Cairo. It was a good thing, for perhaps it might be good for the troops’ morale. At eleven o’clock in the morning, he strode into the hospital surrounded by his senior ofﬁcers, having practically bathed in disinfectant and covered his face so thoroughly that only his eyes were visible. He hurried through the rows of beds, then rushed outside, with no word of comfort, consolation, or encouragement. I looked into the eyes of the afﬂicted men, seeing grief and disenchantment there: he had led them to their death, and then he had all but ignored them.

That day my colleagues and I—doctors and volunteers—gathered at a table, and I saw deep shame in the eyes of those who had seen Bonaparte as a great hero, and justiﬁed all his deeds hitherto. In a choked voice, Monsieur Shalimar, who had been one of them, said “He has the face of defeat. It is nature that defeated him. His greatest enemies were the desert and the plague.”

“That is not to say,” someone added, “that he did not throw us into the jaws of the lion without an adequate plan for this project. He only cares for his own interests, for acquiring the title of ‘Emperor of East and West.’ For the sake of this, he is prepared to sacriﬁce anything and everything.”

“He rejected the British offer to take his plague-ridden soldiers of Acre on a special ship that would have taken them to France to be treated,” said a doctor, “for his pride would not permit him to owe a single word of thanks to an Englishman.” He exhaled heavily. “He would rather let his soldiers sicken and die than accept their offer.”

“As if that were not enough,” said a volunteer, “out of sheer baseness, he commanded that those with incurable cases of the plague be poisoned, to relieve the burden upon the army.”

The next day, before he left for Egypt, Bonaparte gave a speech. “You have crossed the desert that divides Africa from Asia,” he said, “as fast as any army could. You have vanquished the army that would have come to invade Egypt, taken its commander prisoner, and destroyed their machines of war. There is nothing for us but to face reality and keep what remains of the army, and return to Egypt.”

The joyous cries of the soldiers rang out, glad to hear the news of our return. Caravans set forth one after the other. The ofﬁcers gave orders to start on our way. I and those responsible for the oversight of the ﬁeld hospital refused to leave the sick and dying behind. In ﬂagrant disobedience of orders, we stayed behind. We resolved to divide ourselves into two groups: one to transport the men who were recovering, and one to stay with the dead and dying until they had expired.

We moved the recovering men on stretchers. The soldiers carried them on the return journey, which I privately entitled “The Journey through Hell” for all the hardships and privations we endured. It was as though everything conspired against us: the return was tragedy incarnate. We were all of us exhausted and weak, barely able to carry our own selves, let alone stretchers laden with plague-ridden soldiers, leaving aside the risk of contagion. Each pair of men bore a stretcher, one to the fore and the other to the rear, and thus we dragged our feet through the heavy and burning desert sand step after painful step, beneath the scorching sun. We had not sufﬁcient water and were obliged to ration what we did have.

Hundreds of thirsting soldiers, wounded men, and plague sufferers lay motionless in the desert. Many shot themselves to be rid of their unrelenting torment. Exhaustion sapped the strength of those who had volunteered to carry their comrades, and they were unable to continue. Some tipped the sick men off the stretchers, then threw the stretchers themselves aside, and staggered on their way half-mad with weeping and shouting, and I could not blame them: they were scarce able to move under their own weight. The cries of the wounded men we left behind split the burning desert, echoing through the boundless cruel silence, crying, “Do not abandon us! Please take us with you! Save us! We would not die here alone!” But circumstance overpowered us all.

I thought amid all this suffering that it might be punishment for some sin we had committed: perhaps some bereft mother, widowed wife, or orphaned child had cursed us after the French army had killed their sons, husbands, or fathers; perhaps all the defeat and death we endured was divine retribution. I dragged myself on, drained and enfeebled, and we dragged our defeat along with us. The idea took shape in my head of painting this scene, a moment of inspiration in my darkest hour. Death’s raucous presence and merciless tyranny loomed over us all.

In the night, beneath the moon I could almost touch—my only company in my loneliness in the night—I would take out my brushes and palette and paint the men’s suffering faces and dying bodies. I painted sand dunes paved with corpses and carrion-eating birds. I painted ravening wolves, while overhead the owls and ravens ﬁlled the desert night with their cries. I painted shame and the betrayal of those who had allowed this thing to befall us. The painting cried aloud with all this pain: I would not obey the orders of a mad general and paint him as he wished. I would not paint the false victories of which he made empty boasts. True victory is over an enemy capable of ﬁghting back, not an unarmed victim.

I was afﬂicted with fever: I burned. It was then I knew that the disease had struck me as well. My body had borne the contagion through my time in the ﬁeld hospital, and now the symptoms had begun to make themselves known to me. A high fever; enfeeblement as my body failed me; and other sensations that I longed to dismiss as sunstroke or mere exhaustion. But when the ﬁrst boil appeared on my face, I knew: it was the plague.

Day after day, my condition worsened, until I was but a breath from dying. Still, I refused to surrender to my illness. I took up my brush, now heavy in my hand, and fought my illness by painting.

The physician examined me and said that my case was serious. He said nothing, merely giving me a pitying look that told me I was well on my way. I prayed to Heaven that I might not expire here in this pitiless desert, to be devoured by wolves. At least let me have a grave and a headstone of marble proclaiming, “Here lies Alton Germain,” even if no one sees it.

When we reached the outskirts of the city, I was quarantined along with all the other men afﬂicted with the plague. I lay on a humble bed, surrounded by a great number of sick men. I was in the last stages of the disease, delirium and hallucinations and phases of unconsciousness, repeated over and over again. In my moments of consciousness, there was one name on my lips: Zeinab.

I delivered the painting I had completed depicting Bonaparte’s campaign in the Levant to one of the doctors, with instructions to deliver it to my artist colleagues in the Campaign. I remembered the soldier Lautrec, and the letter he had pressed into my hand to deliver to his sweetheart, laughing at the irony of fate: here I was, facing the same end, and I dipped my quill in ink to write to her. I did not know what language to write in, I who knew no Arabic, so I wrote down one phrase, meaning everything: I love you.

If I had not ﬁnished her portrait, scant days before going out on the expedition to the Levant, I would have grieved. It was the only painting that I had painted, not with my tools, but with my heart. I secreted it in one of the house’s hidden passageways, used only for storage. It was nailed to the underside of a wooden table, hidden from prying eyes and grasping hands. This portrait I painted for myself alone, so that I might see it on my wall wherever I went. I had concealed locks of her hair under a layer of black paint: no one who saw it could tell it was there. I had done it to allow her braids to rest softly on her shoulders, as she always wished.