And yet, as in Alexandria or Paris, there was opulence amid the squalor. The Mamelukes were masters at squeezing taxes from the oppressed peasantry and spending it on monuments to themselves, their palaces exhibiting an Arabic grace missing from the heavier structures of Europe or America. While plain on the outside, the finer houses inside had shady courtyards of orange, palm, pomegranate, and fig, gracefully pointed Moorish arches, tiled fountains, and cool rooms rich with carpets, cushions, carved bookshelves, domed ceilings, and brass and copper tables. Some had intricate balconies and mashrabiyya screened windows that looked over the street, as carefully carved as a Swiss chalet and as concealing as a veil. Bonaparte claimed for himself the recently constructed marble-and-granite home of Mohammed Bey el-Elfi, which boasted baths on every floor, a sauna, and glass windows. Napoleon’s academics were housed in the palace of another bey named Quassim who had fled to Upper Egypt. His harem became the invention workshop for the industrious Conte, and his gardens the seminar room for the savants. The Muslim mosques were even more elegant, their Moorish minarets and soaring domes matching in grace and grandeur the finest Gothic churches in Europe. In the markets the awnings were bright as rainbows, and the oriental carpets draped on balustrades like a garden of flowers. The contrasts of Egypt – heat and shade, wealth and poverty, dung and incense, clay and colour, mud brick and gleaming limestone – were almost overwhelming.
The common soldiers found themselves in surroundings considerably less luxurious than the officers: dark, medieval homes with no conveniences. Many of them promptly proclaimed the city disappointing, its people hideous, the heat enervating, and the food gut-wrenching. France had conquered a country, they wailed, that had no wine, no proper bread, and no available women. Such opinion would moderate as the summer cooled and some females began to form liaisons with the new rulers. In time the troops even grumpily admitted that the aish, or baked flat bread, was actually an agreeable substitute for their own. The dysentery that had plagued the army since landing increased, however, and the French army was beginning to suffer more casualties from disease than bullets. The absence of alcohol had already caused so much grumbling that Bonaparte ordered stills to make a libation from dates, the most plentiful fruit. And while officers were planning the planting of vineyards, their troops quickly discovered the Muslim drug called hashish, sometimes rolled into honeyed balls and spiced with opium. Drinking its brew or smoking its seeds became commonplace, and throughout its occupation of Egypt, the army was never able to get the drug under control.
The general entered his prize city through a main gate at the head of a regiment, bands playing and flags flying. At Ashraf’s direction Astiza, Talma, and I entered a smaller gate and threaded through twisting lanes past bazaars that, two days after the great battle, were half-deserted, their flaws lit by the harsh sun of noon. Boys threw water to hold down the dust. Donkeys with baskets slung on either side forced us into entryways as they squeezed down alleys. Even in the heart of Cairo there were village sounds of barking dogs, snorting camels, crowing roosters, and the call of the muezzins to prayer, which to my ears sounded like cats mating. The shops looked like stables and the poorer houses like unlit caves, their men squatting impassively in their faded blue galabiyyas and smoking from sheesha water pipes. Their children, jaundiced and covered with sores, stared at us with saucer eyes. Their women hid. It was obvious that the majority of the nation lived in abject poverty.
‘Maybe the finer neighborhoods are elsewhere,’ Talma said worriedly.
‘No, this is what you have responsibility for,’ Ashraf said.
The notion of responsibility had been preying on my mind, and I told Ash that if his brother would receive us I’d grant the Mameluke his freedom. I really didn’t want to support another dependent besides Astiza, and in fact the entire idea of servants and slaves had always made me uncomfortable. Franklin had a pair of Negroes once and was so discomfited by their presence that he’d set them free. Slaves were a poor investment, he’d concluded: costly to buy, expensive to maintain, and with no incentive to do good work.
Ashraf seemed less than pleased at my mercy. ‘How am I to eat if you cast me out like a foundling?’
‘Ash, I am not a rich man. I have no means to pay you.’
‘But you do, from the gold you just captured from me!’
‘I’m supposed to pay back what I just won in battle?’
‘Is that not just? Here is what we will do. I will become your guide, Citizen Ash. I know all of Egypt. For this, you will pay me back what you stole. At the end, we will each have what we started with.’
‘That’s a fortune that no guide or servant would ever earn!’
He considered. ‘This is true. So you will hire my brother as well with the money, to investigate your mystery. And pay to stay in his household, a thousand times better than the sties that we are passing. Yes, your victory and your generosity will buy you many friends in Cairo. The gods have smiled on all of us this day, my friend.’
That would teach me to be generous. I tried to take solace in Franklin, who counselled that ‘he who multiplies riches multiplies cares.’ That certainly seemed true of my game winnings. Yet Ben was as obsessed with a dollar as any of us, and drove hard bargains, too. I never could get a raise out of him.
‘No,’ I told Ash. ‘I will pay you a living wage, and your brother too. But only when we’ve discovered what the medallion means will I give you back the remainder.’
‘This is fair,’ said Astiza.
‘And it shows you have the wisdom of the ancients!’ Ashraf said. ‘Agreed! Allah, Jesus, and Horus be with you!’
I was pretty sure such inclusion was blasphemy in at least three religions, but never mind: he might do well as a Freemason. ‘Tell me about your brother.’
‘He is a very strange man, like you; you will like him. Enoch cares nothing for politics but everything for knowledge. He and I are nothing alike, because I am of this world and he is of another. But I love and respect him. He knows eight languages, including yours. He has more books than the sultan in Constantinople has wives.’
‘Is that a lot?’
‘Oh yes.’
And so we came to Enoch’s house. Like all Cairo habitations the outside was plain, a three-story edifice with tiny, slitlike windows and a massive wooden door with a small iron grill. At first Ashraf’s hammering brought no answer. Had Enoch fled with the Mameluke beys? But finally a peephole behind the grill was opened, Ash shouted imprecations in Arabic, and the door cracked open. A gigantic black butler named Mustafa ushered us inside.
The relief from the heat was immediate. We passed through a small open atrium to a courtyard with murmuring fountain and shading orange trees. The home’s architecture seemed to create a gentle breeze. An ornate wooden stair climbed one side of the court to screened rooms above. Beyond was the main living room, floored in intricate Moorish tile and covered at one end with oriental carpets and cushions, where guests could lounge. At the opposite end was a screened balcony where women could listen to the conversation of the men below. The beamed ceiling was ornate, the arches pleasingly peaked, and the sculpted bookcases crammed with volumes. Draperies billowed in puffs of desert air. Talma mopped his face. ‘It’s what I dreamt.’
We didn’t stop here, however. Mustafa led us through a smaller courtyard beyond, bare except for an alabaster pedestal carved with mysterious signs. Above was a square of brilliantly blue sky at the top of towering white walls. The sun illuminated one side like snow and cast the opposite into shadow.