I had been absent from my work for two consecutive days — during which period he suspected that I might have aided the mutineers who had spread civil strife in Alexandria — and requesting that I be investigated.
My investigation by Captain Saeed Effendi didn't take long. Conditions in Cairo were quite different from those I had left behind me in Alexandria. The 'mutineers' of the latter were heroes in Cairo the Protected. A council, formed of all Egypt's communal groups, had commissioned them to defend the country against the invaders.
During the interrogation, I related everything that I had done, starting with the bombardment of the forts, and made a point of mentioning what I'd heard from the Bedouin about the instructions of the governor, Umar Basha Lutfi, on the day of the massacre and during the fleet's shelling of the city. I also put on record what had happened from the time we were fired upon until we handed the captured tribesmen over at the Labban police station. The Italian police chief's telegram had made no mention of these or of their firing at and wounding us. And I presented my testimony regarding all that had befallen Lieutenant Tal'at, who was still being treated in Alexandria.
Captain Saeed recorded my statements and ordered that the investigation be shelved and I return to work. We were, both of us, preoccupied with helping the police maintain order in Cairo during the period of the war. I even neglected to have my deep shoulder wound treated, resulting in a delay in its knitting and mending. With everybody else, I followed with pride and enthusiasm what happened in the fighting at Kafr el Dawwar — the steadfastness of our army, the inability of the British to break through their fortifications there, and their withdrawal in the face of the attacks by our troops.
But the interrogation was reopened two months later, by which time everything had changed.
All the time I ask myself about the betrayal. I asked myself often then, 'Why were the bashas and the great men who had everything traitors? And why did the little people always pay the price, dying in the war and being imprisoned after the defeat, while the great ones remained free, and great?' I asked myself, 'Why were the little people also traitors? Why did the officer Yousif Khunfis betray his country's army at Tell el Kebir and guide the British so that they could make a sneak attack on it and destroy it by night? What was he thinking as he watched the British guns mow down his brothers and the companions-in-arms with whom he had eaten and slept and laughed? Did his eyes happen to fall on his brother officer Mohamed Ebeid as he crouched in the midst of the chaos and defeat, firing at the British till incinerated by the heat of his gun, as we heard? How I and the people all loved him! They refused to believe he was dead, saying that he was only 'absent'. They call him 'Sheikh Ebeid' and say that he has been seen, once in Damascus and once in Upper Egypt, and await his return to resume the war against the British! Despite which he remains a dream, while Yousif Khunfis is the reality we're left with. Why did Sheikh Ebeid depart in the flower of his youth, like a bird that swiftly crosses the sky, while Khunfis lives on, as though he will never die? Why do we betray others? The guide says the desert is treacherous, just because a storm came out of season! Come here, and let me tell you what real treachery is!
4. Catherine
Mahmoud sinks deep within himself. I see him sinking deeper and deeper. Now he's riding his camel, his head bowed as though sleeping and looking at nothing around him. I had thought this desert would bring him out of his shell a little, that he would see how different it is from any place in Egypt we've seen together, but he asks me in amazement, 'What it is that you like about it?' How can he not see? I read everything about this desert and about Siwa before we began the journey — all the books of the travellers and historians that I brought with me from Ireland and everything I could find in the bookshops of Cairo. I thought I'd never find out anything new and that nothing would surprise me. I studied everything written about the route and the wells, the dunes and the storms, but the books didn't tell me about the real desert. I didn't learn from them how the colours change above the sea of sand through the hours of the day, and I didn't find a word in them about the movement of the shadows as they trace a thin grey cowl over the peak of a yellow hill or open up a dark door in its centre, and they didn't teach me how the small high clouds are reflected on the dunes as hurrying flocks of grey birds, and they didn't speak to me of the dawn — above all the dawn — when it shifts from a thin white line on the horizon to a red blush that slowly pushes the darkness aside until, with the first rays of the sun, the sand blazes like a golden sea, at which moment a smell penetrates my nose that I have never known before, of the mixture of the dawn's dew, the sun, and the sand. An erotic smell that not only steals into my nose but to which all the pores of my body open themselves so that I could almost, were it not for shyness, and were it not for the cries of the men of the caravan, who have woken up outside my tent, seize Mahmoud's hand and say, 'Come here, right now! On this damp sand!'
And I ask myself in amazement, 'How can he not also feel what I feel? Why doesn't he embrace me, or kiss me at least?'
At every moment, this desert brings me something new, but it is Mahmoud that takes me by surprise. He says the desert reaches are inside him. Would that were true! How rich this desert is! But I hadn't previously noticed in him any attraction to nature outside the desert. He never stops in front of trees or flowers. He has never said that the sea enchants him, or rivers. And when we visit antiquities, boredom overcomes him in five minutes. He never contemplates the construction of a building, or a painting on a wall.
I don't mean to say that I am more intelligent than he or that I see things he is incapable of seeing. It may be that it is I who am incapable of understanding what interests him, though I have tried and am still trying. This is the man I'm in love with. I encouraged him to take the posting in the hope that the long journey would change him and the danger revive his flagging spirit. Though I'm not being wholly honest when I say that. I too am crossing this desert to carry out a mission! But let us wait now; it's still too early to think about that and you, Mahmoud, right now, are my mission, you are my real work. What was it that made you so delighted with the idea of dying in the sandstorm instead of its driving you to cling on to life, like Ibraheem and like all of them? And did you change your mind suddenly to please me, or was that an example of your switches of mood, which are incomprehensible to me? And among all these moods, where shall I find the true Mahmoud? I shall find you out, no matter how long it takes. And perhaps, along with you, I shall find a real Catherine of whom I'm ignorant. Who knows?
The caravan makes its way over the desert towards the west and day by day draws closer to the oasis. I truly long to reach it. Everything about it is like a myth — the place, the people, the history, the geography. It is, as I have read, part of an ancient sea and even now, in its sands and hills, seashells are to be found. Its inhabitants belong to the west, not the east, to the Zenata tribe of Berbers in Morocco, and they speak a Berber dialect. Despite this, in ancient times they were part of the Egypt of the pharaohs and a centre for the worship of their great god, Amun. And there's the story of the forty men who left the village of Aghurmi with its ancient ruins to build to the west of it, in the midst of the vast desert, and to surround with walls the city where now they live.