Gradually he started to adjust to me and we lived in uninterrupted nuptial bliss for months. He didn't hold back and I didn't hesitate. I hadn't believed that I'd ever be capable of accepting this understanding of love and life, but I became his utterly willing, utterly happy, partner. Was that because he caused so many delusions to fall away from me, or was I ready from the beginning, and all Mahmoud had to do was rip away the veil of prudery?
With him too I accepted things I never could have imagined I'd accept. After our first months, I became aware that I was not alone in his life. Once, when he was with me in bed, I smelt another woman and her sweat; I felt the ghost of another woman between us. Then, when I found his ardour the same as ever, or even greater, I told myself I was mistaken — but I knew my body was not betraying me; there was someone else who shared him with me. An unbearable jealousy swept over me and I spent a whole day pulling myself together and ordering my thoughts so that I might confront him. But when he returned from his work, all the thoughts I'd carefully assembled left me and I asked him the moment he entered and as we stood in the main room, 'Mahmoud, are you being unfaithful to me?' He responded with a question: 'Do you mean, "Do I have women other than you?"' I nodded and he said calmly, 'Yes.' I burst out, my whole body shaking, 'So be it! And what if I were to have men other than you?' He answered simply, 'I would kill you immediately.' 'So why shouldn't I kill you now?' I screamed. He said nothing for a moment, as though thinking. Then he took his revolver out of its holster and held it out to me, smiling. 'Indeed, that would be just,' he said. 'It's your right too. Take it. I won't stop you.' I pushed his outstretched arm aside and rushed to my room, shouting, 'I can't live with a madman!' and locked myself in and started gathering my clothes and other things in readiness to depart.
I didn't speak to him for four days, and on the fifth we were together again in bed. Holding me to him, he said, 'Lying is the easiest thing to do, but I don't lie. My body is the problem. One woman isn't enough for it and divorce is so easy. You too could leave me at any moment, but you won't. Each of us needs the other and that's why we got married.' I mumbled a question, 'Where is love in all that?' and he rolled on top of me and kissed me.
I have accepted this sort of love and this sort of marriage. Is it a life of utter truth or of utter falsehood? He wasn't mistaken. Each of us needs the other. Why? And for how long? I feel now that even this relationship that we took on jointly has changed. It isn't a matter of women this time, but Mahmoud is withdrawing into himself in a way that has never happened since I have known him. Is it all because of the posting, which he has hated from the moment he heard about it? He made every possible effort to be excused but didn't succeed. I know of the danger that awaits him, but Mahmoud is no coward. He will do his duty there as he has done all his life, whether he liked that duty or hated it. I am sure of that. He ignores even the pain that afflicts him from time to time in the place where the bullet smashed the bones of his arm. The pains are worst in the winter, in the cold, but I discovered that only from the changes on his face when he presses his arm hard with his hand. He never complains, though, and never says a word. I said to him jokingly once that at least he'd never suffer from the cold at the oasis, as it was hot all year round. He shook his head and said, 'I wish the problem was just the heat!'
I am not ignorant of the true problem. I have read everything about the oasis written by the historians and travellers. I know its history, ancient and modern. I may know more about the ancient history but I've also studied everything that happened there since the beginning of this century, when the army of Egypt's governor, Mohamed Ali, took it. The Basha incorporated the oasis into Egypt and put an end to its independence, which had lasted hundreds of years during which Siwa had been subject to no outside state or force. I have read how they resisted Egyptian rule, ceaselessly rebelling and rising up against the soldiers and fighting them, while the Egyptians ceaselessly repressed their uprisings with a savagery that gave birth to new rebellions and new uprisings. And I know, as does Mahmoud, that the district commissioner, who is the ruler of the oasis, will always be a prize trophy for them. At the beginning, they murdered the local mayors that Cairo chose from among the Siwans, their murder being a message to the district commissioners that they were not beyond their reach. In the last two rebellions, however, they murdered the commissioners themselves and the government sent a large army, later withdrawn, to restore calm. Does that calm remain?
I hope so. Long ago, I dreamt of a journey into the desert without imagining that the dream would be realized in this fashion. I dreamt that I saw the oasis whose sands were trodden by the feet of Alexander the Great and where he lived the disturbing events that haunted him till he died. I have other dreams to realize there that I don't even dare to think about right now. Everything in its own good time. The important thing is that we should be there, Mahmoud and I, together and on our own. There will be no danger of another woman competing with me there. The other dangers are not an excessive price to pay to restore our life to the way it was in its first untroubled days.
Mahmoud is very late.
Perhaps he's still at the ministry, or maybe he's saying goodbye to the streets of his city and thinking now the same thoughts as me — making an inventory of his life and working out how it brought him to this moment, that of moving towards an unknown destiny with this Irish woman whom accident threw in his path.
And me too, how many accidents has it taken to lead me to this moment? No, not accidents. I am responsible for everything and I regret nothing. It may have been my father who set me on the path, but it was my own will that brought me this far.
If he were alive now, he'd see a well-deserved punishment in everything that has happened to me with Mahmoud. Being a zealous Catholic, he would never have agreed to this marriage from the outset. All the same, the first thing he taught me was to love the East and be passionate about its antiquities. Indeed, he excited my curiosity specifically over the unknown antiquities left behind by the Greeks and Romans — on condition, of course, that I kept a distance from the living people of the East, who were a mere repository of history. I was always to remember that I was Irish, and a Catholic.
I shall never forget how angry he was when we talked once about religions and were speaking of the Ancient Greeks, his favourite subject. The conversation turned to their gods, and I said to him that the Greeks of those days, like the Ancient Egyptians and for that matter everyone before and after them, worshipped the Creator as they imagined Him, and that given that the Deity was the same at all times and in all places, He must accept the prayers of all who worshipped Him. I was young then, maybe fourteen or fifteen, but my father didn't try to discuss the matter with me or teach me. His face flushed. 'So you'd put those who worship the True God on a par with those who worship a statue or a tree or any other false god? You'd put the believers in the Lord our Saviour on a par with heathens and savages who pray so that their gods may help them in hunting and war?' Despite my fear of his anger at that moment, I answered him back. 'I don't mean that at all, Papa. I mean that everyone looks for the Creator and worships Him out of faith and with good intent, and even if they choose wrongly, He must surely know that their intentions are pure because He knows everything.' My father, however, would not listen to me and insisted that I go to church to confess my sin to the priest and seek absolution. I went, of course, because I too was a loyal Catholic.