The battle had begun on Tuesday evening. On Thursday Tumanbay went to set himself up in the Shaikhu Mosque in Saliba Street, which he turned into his headquarters. He seemed so much in control of the city that the next day the Friday sermon was once more pronounced in his name from the tops of the pulpits.
But his position was no less precarious. Once they had got over the surprise of the initial attack, the Ottomans had rallied. They had retaken Bulaq, infiltrated into old Cairo as far as the area around my street, and, in their turn gradually recaptured the lost ground step by step. Tumanbay mostly controlled the popular quarters of the centre, to which he had prevented access by hastily-dug trenches or barricades.
Of all the days which Allah has created, it was on that Friday and no other that Nur chose to feel the pains of confinement. I had to creep out and edge my way across my garden to call the neighbourhood midwife, who only agreed to come at the end of an hour’s entreaty, and then for gold: two dinars if it was a girl, four dinars if it was a boy.
When she saw the fragile pink cleft between the baby’s swollen thighs, she called out to me in a vexed tone:
‘Two dinars!’
To which I replied:
‘If everything ends well, you’ll get four all the same!’
Overjoyed at such generosity, she promised to return several days later to perform the excision, which she would do for nothing. I asked her not to do so, explaining that this practice did not exist in my country, at which she seemed surprised and upset.
To me my daughter seemed as beautiful as her mother, and as pale-skinned. I called her Hayat, Life, for whom my dearest wish, as for all my family, was simply to be able to escape alive from the murderous orgy of Cairo, where two empires confronted one another, the one intoxicated by its triumph, the other determined not to die.
In the streets the battle was still raging. The Ottomans, who had regained control of most of the suburbs, tried to push towards the centre, but they only advanced slowly and sustained heavy losses. However, the outcome of the battle was no longer in doubt. Soldiers and militiamen gradually deserted Tumanbay’s camp, while at the head of a handful of faithful followers, some black fusiliers and the Circassians of his personal bodyguard, the Mameluke sultan struggled on through another day. On the Saturday night he decided to leave the city, although without having lost any of his determination. He said that he would soon return with more troops to flush out the invaders.
How can I describe what the Ottomans did when they were able to enter the quarters of Cairo once more? This time it was no longer a question of eliminating the Circassian troops who had opposed them as it had been after their first victory. They now had to punish the entire population of Cairo. The soldiers of the Grand Turk poured into the streets with orders to kill anything that breathed. No one could leave the accursed city, since all the roads were cut; no one could find themselves a refuge, since the cemeteries and the mosques were themselves turned into battlefields. People were forced to crouch in their own homes, hoping that the hurricane would pass. On that day, between dawn and the last quarter of the night, it is said that more than eight thousand were slain. The streets were all covered with corpses, men, women, children, horses and donkeys, mingled together in an endless bloody procession.
The next day, Salim had two flags hauled up outside his camp, one white, the other red, signifying to his men that vengeance had henceforth been taken and that the carnage should stop. It was high time, because if the reprisals had continued for several days with the same intensity, the Grand Turk’s only conquest in this country would have been an enormous charnel-house.
Throughout these bloody days, Nur had not stopped praying for victory for Tumanbay. My own sentiments were scarcely different. Having welcomed the Mameluke sultan under my roof one evening, I admired his bravery even more. Above all, there was Bayazid. Sooner or later, a suspicion, a denunciation, an indiscretion, would hand him over to the Ottomans, with all his family. For the security of the outlawed child, and for our own, Tumanbay had to be victorious. When I realized, in the course of the Sunday, that he had definitely lost the fight, I flared up against him, from suppressed disappointment, fear and rage, declaring that he should never have thrown himself into such a hazardous enterprise, dragging the population in his wake and bringing down the wrath of Salim upon them.
Although she was still very weak, Nur sat up with a start, as if she had been awoken by a bad dream. Only her eyes could be seen in her pallid face, staring at nothing.
‘Remember the pyramids! How many men have died to build them, men who could have passed many more years working, eating and mating! Then they would have died of the plague, leaving no trace behind them. By the will of Pharaoh they have built a monument whose silhouette will perpetuate the memory of their labour for ever, their suffering, their noblest aspirations. Tumanbay has done no different. Are not four days of courage, four days of dignity, of defiance, worth more than four centuries of submission, of resignation and meanness? Tumanbay has offered to Cairo and to its people the finest gift that exists: a sacred flame that will illuminate and kindle the spirit in the long night that is beginning.’
Nur’s words left me only half-convinced, but I did not try to contradict her. I simply put my arms around her gently to put her back to bed. She was speaking the language of her people; I had no other ambition than to survive, with my family, no other ambition than to go away, in order one day to relate on a piece of glazed paper the fall of Cairo, of her empire, of her last hero.
I could not leave the city for several weeks, until Nur was in a position to travel. In the meantime, life in Cairo became increasingly difficult. Provisions became rare. Cheese, butter and fruit could not be found, and the price of cereals rose. It was said that Tumanbay had decided to starve out the Ottoman garrison by preventing the provisioning of the city from the provinces which he still controlled; in addition, he had made agreements with the nomad Arab tribes, who had never submitted to any authority in Egypt, that they should come and lay waste the surroundings of the capital. It was said at the same time that Tumanbay had brought the materials of war, arrows, bows and powder from Alexandria, that he had assembled fresh troops and was preparing to launch a new offensive. In fact clashes multiplied, particularly around Giza, making impassable the road to the pyramids which we needed to take to fetch Bayazid.
Should we, in spite of everything, try to flee, at the risk of being intercepted by an Ottoman patrol, by Mameluke deserters or some band of looters? I hesitated to do so until I learned that Sultan Salim had decided to deport several thousand inhabitants to Constantinople. At first it was the caliph, the Mameluke dignitaries and their families, but the list continued to lengthen: masons, carpenters, monumental masons, pavers, blacksmiths, and all kinds of skilled workers. I soon learned that the Ottoman civil servants were drawing up lists of the names of all Maghribis and Jews in the city with a view to deporting them.
My decision was taken. Promising myself to leave within three days, I was making a last trip to the city to settle various matters when a rumour reached me: Tumanbay had been captured, betrayed by the chief of a bedouin tribe.