I do not have the strength to live through the entire experience again, not even for you, Stone Woman. Some of the memories are so pure and sweet that they would make me weep. I would become weak and love her again and all would be lost. It would be like falling into the abyss, but never hitting the ground — the worst possible nightmare. I am determined, whatever the cost, to avoid such a calamity. For that reason and that alone I will quicken the pace of this narrative.
Hamid Bey’s stay in Cairo was extended beyond a week. Mariam and I would meet every day, but never after sunset. The crone with the cross had expressly forbidden that, and Mariam felt it foolish and unnecessary to defy the restriction. Wherever we were in that large house, I began to feel we were being watched, and Mariam began to feel the same. We were being suffocated. I told her of my secret cove. Her eyes grew large at the thought of an adventure. She would send for Maria, for that is what the crone had been christened, instruct her to make us some coffee and while she was in the kitchen, we would run away from the house like thieves with our French books firmly tucked under our arms. Mariam, too, fell in love with the little cove, where we were completely alone.
We declared our love for each other on that day. She, too, admitted that the sight of me with sand on my hair had touched her greatly though she was sure it must have been the sight of Verlaine that had created the lightning effect. We kissed and caressed each other. We discarded our clothes and swam in the sea. We dried ourselves and read aloud to each other. I delighted in each part of her body described in this verse from Verlaine’s love poem, “Spring”:
Beauteous thighs, upright breasts,
The back, the loins and belly, feast
For the eyes and prying hands
And for the lips and all the senses?
The poem excited us even more, but I did not possess her, even though she was prepared to sacrifice her virginity and I was by now in the grip of a white-hot passion. I ached for her. My testicles were hurting, desperate for the fluid to be released, but I resisted her. Why? Because making love to her would have been a violation of her father’s hospitality. Strange, isn’t it, Stone Woman, how old traditions and habits become so deeply embedded in our minds and how difficult it is to uproot them? She was enraged when I confessed this to her and began to curse all Pashas and Pashadoms and declared herself to be a free citizen in the Republic of Love. She became cruel in her mockery. She also made me laugh a great deal. I had never met anyone like her.
When Hamid Bey returned to Alexandria, and before Maria could pour poison in his ears, I asked for Mariam’s hand in marriage. I told Hamid Bey I wanted nothing else. I was not interested in a dowry. We would be married and live on our own. I had thought he might ask me to wait a year or, at least, six months and in some other city to determine whether my affection was real or transient, but he had no such doubts. “I felt from the first day you lunched with us that Mariam and you were ideally matched. You have my blessing. As you know I am a Copt. I would like the wedding to be in church. When you take her to Istanbul you can have another ceremony.”
My heart was so filled with joy that I laughed. “Hamid Bey, I would marry her anywhere. As you know, I am not a believer. The actual ceremony is of no consequence to me.”
Hamid Bey did not wish to delay the matter any further. I had no desire to inform any member of my family, with the exception of Uncle Kemal. The telegram I despatched to his office was firm on one point. I told him that the news was for him alone. I did not wish to receive messages from anyone in Istanbul. He sent me a telegram of congratulations and wrote that he accepted my request for secrecy, but in return he insisted that the house I was buying must be a joint wedding gift from Hamid Bey and himself. Stone Woman, I accepted their kindness. After all, it was a house they were offering me, not a camel herd. I did, however, firmly turn down the offer of Maria as our housekeeper. Some sacrifices are simply unacceptable.
Within two weeks Mariam and I were together. These were times of real happiness for both of us, but now when I look back even on that early period I remember episodes that at the time seemed insignificant or even childish.
All of us have different aspects to our character, Stone Woman. It would be unnatural if this was not so, but Mariam was a deeply contradictory woman. In a way I think she really would have preferred Hamid Bey to deny us permission to marry. In her eyes that would have been a test of my love. Would I have run away with her to some other part of the world? My affirmative responses had little real effect on her because it was something that could never be proved. At other times she would say: “I hate it when you’re too happy with me. I prefer you when you’re sad.” I never fully understood why and when I questioned her about this later she denied she had ever said anything of the sort.
It was a long time after the festivities that she explained why Hamid Bey had been in such a hurry. He knew that if there had been a long engagement, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to prevent her mother’s attendance.
Her mother, Arabella, was the daughter of an English plantation owner and his Chinese mistress, who lived in the British colony of Malaya. Her father, who was unmarried, recognised her and she had grown up in the plantation house, but without her mother, who saw her once or twice a week. Later she was sent to study in Britain. Mariam loved and hated her mother. The words in which she told me the story reflected this duality.
On her way back home from London Arabella was overcome by an urge to see the pyramids at Giza. The ship’s captain telegraphed Singapore and her father agreed. She disembarked at Alexandria. Her father had friends here and had informed them that his headstrong child was on her way. An old couple (now dead) had arrived at the pier to receive her. She was always a spoilt child and took everything for granted. In her photograph she appears to be an Englishwoman. In real life her complexion was slightly darker, but she never wanted to be mistaken for a hybrid. That’s why what happened in Egypt astonished everyone.
Hamid Bey had sighted her at a private dinner, where she confessed her desire to see the Sphinx. He offered to organise her tour and a chaperone. But he was smitten with her and followed her everywhere. Hamid Bey is still a striking man. Twenty years ago, he must have been irresistible. She was flattered by his attention, amused by his jokes, impressed by his wealth and attracted by his body. He proposed. She accepted. Her father sent numerous telegrams forbidding the match, but she was of age and in a defiant mood. Her hosts told her she could not possibly marry an Egyptian. She walked out of their house, declaring that she was half-Chinese and proud of the fact. Everyone knew, of course, but it was never mentioned since everything about her appeared to be English.
Another small problem arose. Hamid Bey comes from a Copt family which traces its descent back over a thousand years. They were already upset that he was defiling the purity of his family by marrying an Englishwoman, but his mother was close to tears when Hamid Bey proudly told his mother that he, too, would have been doubtful if Arabella had been completely English, but the fact she was half Chinese had greatly reassured him.
For Mariam’s grandmother, the Chinese did not exist except as figures that appeared on the screens she sometimes bought from Italian furniture shops. She probably thought that the whole Chinese race was a comic invention. Hamid Bey got very angry. He screamed at his mother. Then he calmed down and gave her a lecture on Chinese civilisation. They had invented the compass, gunpowder, printing, and so on.