Sunset Oasis

She spoke in a neutral tone and I couldn't understand whether she was praising or criticizing him.

As I rose preparatory to leaving, I said to Catherine, 'Now you'll have someone to talk to about your antiquities.'

Catherine walked with me to the door and whispered in my ear in Arabic before I left that it would be better to bring wasfi to dinner so that Fiona could rest. She also said that her sister had been advised by the doctors in Ireland to live in a warm dry climate for a while as she was suffering from a bad chest.

As I left, I mumbled, 'Then perhaps Upper Egypt would be best for her. You know our situation here now.'

Fiona wasn't wrong. Wasfi conducted himself at dinner like a true gentleman. He knows the etiquette of the dinner table much better than I. He praised Catherine's taste in preparing the food and addressed her and her sister with extreme politeness, delivering witticisms that made them smile or laugh.

After dinner, he became engrossed in a conversation about antiquities with Catherine. They talked about books and mentioned names I don't know. He said he'd read everything about the antiquities of Siwa and intended to visit them all.

At this, Catherine shook her head and said bitterly that he might find great difficulty in doing that as the most important antiquities were situated in the midst of the houses and they didn't allow outsiders to walk around in them. She had tried and failed. Wasfi said confidently, 'We'll find a solution to that, I'm sure.'

I thought in astonishment, 'Have you still not learnt your lesson, Catherine? After all the disasters your visits to the temples have brought about? I had thought that, after the terrible sorrow that overcame you when you heard of Maleeka's death, when you stayed for days locked up in your room, you'd never go back to this perilous hobby. But no.

You never change. I really must get you and your sister out of here quickly. You are a danger to yourself and to others.'

I came back to their conversation to find her asking Wasfi with great interest, choosing her words, for some reason of which I was ignorant, with care, 'Since you've read so much, I'm going to ask you whether there were Greek temples in Siwa, and where you imagine they might be found?'

Wasfi replied, choosing his words with equal care, 'The matter calls for research on the ground. The Bilad el Roum temple — the temple of the Land of the Greeks — might be one of them, though. The name leads one to think that it was a Greek or Roman temple. Certainly it didn't resemble the Ancient Egyptian temples.'

Catherine said, 'I read that the first traveller to see it said of it that it was the most beautiful of the temples of the oasis. However, the temple was destroyed completely after that. There isn't a single column remaining, just some stones scattered in the midst of swamps close to Lake Khameesa. It's been almost completely obliterated.'

In spite of myself, I cried out, 'How fortunate!'

They turned towards me in astonishment so I said, 'It's spared people the trouble of studying it!'

There was a moment of silence that Fiona broke by asking with her by now familiar smile, 'Did I hear you say that this temple was near a lake?'

Catherine said, 'Indeed. Lake Khameesa, to the west of here.'

Fiona said, 'Why should it have been obliterated? It may still be beneath the waters, and they may still say prayers in it!'

Wasfi and I looked at her wonderingly while Catherine smiled and said, 'It's possible. Go on, Fiona!'

Fiona continued, looking at us, 'Don't you know the story of the people who live in a palace under the water? Why shouldn't what happened in the story of King Corc and his daughter in Ireland have happened to your temple? Let me tell you, and then perhaps you'll believe me!' Catherine said enthusiastically,'Yes, Fiona! Do tell!'

So her sister began:

'Once there was a rich king who lived in a beautiful palace in the middle of a broad green valley, but for all his riches his real treasure and the one that he took most pride in was a gushing spring of water in the courtyard of the palace. Ireland knew no waters sweeter or purer than these and people used to come from far and wide to drink of it for its magical properties. As the throngs rushing to the palace increased, though, King Corc grew worried that the water would stop flowing and his peerless source of water run dry, so he considered the matter and surrounded the spring with a high wall and stopped the people from approaching it. And whenever he wanted to drink he would send his beautiful daughter Fior with the key to the door of the spring to fetch some water in a golden bucket that he had made for this purpose alone. He did not like to give the key to any of his servants because he was afraid that they might steal some of the water. Yes indeed, so fearful was he of his wealth deep in the ground. One day he held a great party to which he invited the princes and nobility. The palace glittered with lights, musical airs flowed mellifluously through its quarters, and tables groaning with every sort of food and drink ran its length.'

I followed Fiona's story and watched her, and Ni'ma came immediately to my mind, so I started comparing them. Fiona spoke calmly and simply, as though this palace in Ireland was a well-known place that we would see, albeit at a distance, in the midst of the green meadows of the Irish countryside, should we but open the door. Ni'ma, on the other hand, lived her stories. She fell under their spell and would herself become, amidst her tears, the imprisoned princess, the enchanted king or the abandoned lover, and her face would shine with joy when victory was achieved. Thus she and I would become two inside the story — kings or poor men, lovers or ascetics. Which of the two ways was better?

Here suddenly was Ni'ma's beautiful prince, in the middle of Fiona's story! He enters the king's party and it's love at first sight. He cannot take his eyes off Fior's bewitching face and neither can she drag hers from him and his face afire with love. He invites her to dance, she melts in his arms, and they circle the hall with the grace of two butterflies flapping their wings to the music, while the musicians play their finest and without stopping, as they have never played in their lives before, as though they don't want this ethereal dance to come to an end — though finally the dancers have to sit down to dinner.

I was following Catherine's happy glances and Wasfi's eyes, which hardly stopped darting from side to side in childish eagerness to hear Fiona's story. 'At dinner, the king sent his daughter to fill the bucket from the precious spring and her beautiful prince accompanied her across the courtyard of the palace, but when she bent over to fill the golden bucket she found that it was very heavy and her feet slipped and she fell into the water. The prince tried to save her but to no avail. The waters of the spring started to rise and pour forth, running through the open door and covering the whole courtyard. The prince hurried to seek help from the palace but the waters that remained imprisoned behind the wall burst out in joy at their freedom and kept flooding the courtyard and rising faster and faster until, when the prince reached the hall, the water was up to his neck. In the end, the waters spread till they covered the whole of the green valley in the middle of which stood the king's palace, and that is how the Lough of Cork was formed.'

Fiona fell silent for a moment, looking from one of us to the next. Then she said, 'But the strange thing is that the king and his guests did not drown, as might have happened in such a flood, and nor did the beautiful princess Fior drown, but she returned the following night to resume her dance with her handsome prince under the water. And every night from that time on, the banquet and the dance have been renewed on the floor of the lake, and so it will continue until someone has the luck to snag the sunken golden bucket that was the cause of all that happened.