sea. He breathed in deeply and let it go in a long, aching sigh. The city was beautiful, uplifting, exciting, and so very far from home. He could hear the sound of the sea, occasional laughter, and a constant background noise like that of crickets in summer grass. It reminded him of childhood summers in the country, but he was too tired to enjoy it. He wished more than he could control and be master of that Charlotte were here, so he could say to her “Look,” or bid her listen to the faraway voices speaking an utterly different language, or share with her the alien, spicy odors of the night.
He turned back to the unfamiliar room, took his clothes off and washed the dust from himself, then opened the soft drapes of the mosquito nets around the bed. He climbed in, carefully closing them again, and went to sleep almost immediately. He woke once in the darkness and for several moments could not think where he was. He missed the movement of the ship. He was oddly dizzy without it. Then realization flooded back to him, and he turned over and sank into oblivion again until late morning.
HE USED THE FIRST TWO DAYS to learn all he could of the city. He began by purchasing suitable clothes for temperatures in the seventies at night and the eighties during the day. He made use of the excellent public transport system of trams, all newly painted, and trains, British built and oddly familiar even in the dazzling sunlight, against which he felt he was permanently squinting. Sometimes he walked the streets listening to the voices, watching the faces, noting the extraordinary mixture of languages and races. As well as Egyptians there were Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Levantines, Arabs, occasionally French, and everywhere English. He saw soldiers in tropical uniform, expatriates seeming much at ease, as if this was now home to them, the heat, the noise, the market haggling, the blistering brightness of everything. There were pale-faced tourists, tired and excited, determined to see everything. He overheard them chattering about moving on to Cairo, and then taking one of many steamers going up the Nile to Karnak and beyond.
One elderly vicar, his white mustache gleaming against his mahogany skin, spoke enthusiastically about his recent trip. He described sitting at breakfast staring across the timeless Nile as if it had been eternity itself, his
“Perfectly splendid!” he said in a voice that might have been ringing across a gentleman’s club in London.
It reminded Pitt sharply of the urgency of his mission, and forced him to begin asking for the Coptic family of Zakhari. Absorbing the millennia of the pharaohs; the centuries of Greece and Rome; the romance of Cleopatra; the coming of the Arabs, the Turks and Mamelukes; the conquest of Napoleon and then Nelson; would all have to wait. It was now the British who ruled, whatever the caliph in Istanbul pretended, and it was the ships of the world that sailed through the Suez Canal to India and the East beyond. It was to English cotton mills in the smoke and darkening winter of Manchester, Burnley, Salford and Blackburn that the harvest of Egypt was sold. And it was from the factories of England that the finished goods were brought back, through Suez and beyond.
There was poverty in these hot streets with the dung and the flies. There was hunger and disease. He saw beggars sitting in the partial shade of sunbaked walls, moving with the shadows, asking for alms, for the love of God. Sometimes their bodies seemed whole, some even at a glance were crippled or pitted with sores, others were blind or maimed. Some faces were scarred by the pox, or disfigured with leprosy, and he found it hard not to look away.
A few times he was spat at, and once he was caught on the elbow by a stone hurled from behind, though when he turned there was no one there.
But there was poverty in England as well, cold and wet, gutters running over, and the diseases of a different climate, the hacking coughs of tuberculosis, and there, as here, the agony of cholera and typhoid. He could not weigh one against the other.
He went back to the main suburb where the Christian Copts lived. Sitting in a small restaurant over a cup of coffee so thick and sweet he could not drink it, he began to ask questions. He used the excuse (which was the truth) that Ayesha was in trouble in London and he was seeking her family, or any friend or relative who might be able to help her. At the very least they should know of her predicament.
It took him nearly two more days before he learned anything beyond rumor and surmise. Finally he agreed to meet with a man whose sister had been a friend of Ayesha’s, and by arrangement, Pitt had ordered dinner at the Casino San Stefano.
Pitt was waiting at the table when an Egyptian man of about thirty-five stopped at the entrance of the dining room. The man was dressed in the traditional robes of the country, but the cloth was rich and the colors those of the warm earth. He gazed about for a moment or two, and then, apparently identifying Pitt among the other European guests, he made his way between the tables and bowed, introducing himself formally. “Good evening, Effendi. My name is Makarios Yacoub, and you are Mr. Pitt, I think, yes?”
Pitt rose to his feet and inclined his head in a slight bow. “How do you do. Yes, I am Thomas Pitt. Thank you very much for coming.” He gestured to the other chair, inviting Yacoub to be seated. “May I offer you dinner? The food is excellent, but I daresay you know that.”
“Are you yourself dining?” Yacoub enquired, accepting the seat.
Pitt had already learned in his few days there to be indirect in his speech. Haste gained nothing but contempt. “It would be pleasant,” he replied.
“Then by all means.” Yacoub nodded. “That is most gracious of you.”
Pitt made a few remarks about his interest in the city, commenting on the beauty of some of the parts he had seen, especially the causeway between the old lighthouse and the city.
“I felt as if, were I to close my eyes, then open them suddenly, I might see the Pharos as it was when it was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world,” he said, then felt self-conscious for voicing aloud such a fancy.
But then he saw instantly that Yacoub understood. His face softened with a warmth and he relaxed a little in his seat. He was an Alexandrian and he loved to hear his city praised.
“The causeway is called the Heptastadion,” he explained. “Built by Dinocrates. To the east is where the old harbor of the Middle Ages was. But there are so many other things you must see. If it is the past that interests you, there is the tomb of Alexander the Great. Some say it is beneath the Mosque of Nabi Daniel, others in the necropolis nearby.” He smiled apologetically. “Forgive me if I say too much. I wish to share my city with everyone who looks at it with the eye of friendship. You must walk along the Mahmudiya Canal to the Antoniadis Gardens, where there is history in every handful of the earth. The poet Callinachus lived there, and taught his students, and in 640 A.D. Pompilius prevented the king of Syria from capturing the city.” He shrugged a little. “And there is a Roman tomb,” he finished with a smile, as the waiter presented himself.
“Are you familiar with our food?” Yacoub enquired.
“Very little,” Pitt admitted, willing to allow him to help, both for practicality and courtesy.
“Then I suggest
“That would be excellent, thank you,” Pitt agreed.
Pitt asked him further questions about the city until the food was served. They were halfway through the soup, which was indeed delicious, when Yacoub at last raised the subject for which they were met.
“You said that Miss Zakhari was in a certain degree of difficulty,” he said, laying his spoon down for a moment and looking more closely at Pitt. His voice was light, as if they were still discussing the city, but there was an intensity in his eyes.
Pitt was aware that there was an excellent telephone service in the city, more reliable at times than that in London, and it was more than possible that Yacoub already knew of her arrest, and the charges. He must not be caught in a misrepresentation, let alone an outright falsehood.
“I am afraid it is serious,” he conceded. “I am not sure whether she will have had the opportunity to inform her family, or perhaps she has not wished to cause them concern. However, if she were my daughter, or sister, I should prefer to know all the details as completely as possible, so that I might know how to help.”
If Yacoub knew anything he kept it from his face. “Of course,” he murmured. “Naturally.” But he did not betray any surprise that Ayesha Zakhari should be in difficulty or danger. Pitt would have expected surprise, even alarm, and there was none. Was that because Yacoub had already been told of her predicament through the news, or was it something not unexpected from his knowledge of Ayesha herself? Pitt remembered Narraway’s warning with a
