Her words were level as the stones on which we sat, and the next day I was the fourteen-year-old serving boy who bought al-Mu’allim his bread who no one noticed or cared for. Five days after that, having gathered sufficient information to fulfil the role, I was al-Mu’allim himself, slightly paunchy in my early forties, with a magnificent beard that needed constant attention, lips that tingled just before rain and overly long nails that I trimmed on my first day.
Naturally, upon habitation I set about reordering the household. Some slaves I sold; some servants I traded away. Friends who came to the door whose faces I did not know were politely rejected and informed that I had a fever, and sure enough fear of plague kept even my most loyal associates from knocking on my door, save for one cousin who hoped–who prayed, no doubt–that this was the fever that took his uncle from the world, and his cash from the vault.
Of my two senior wives, one was an absolute harpy. On learning that she had a sister in Medina, I recommended–for her health, both physical and spiritual–a pilgrimage, for which, naturally, I would pay. The middle wife was far more pleasant company, but it took her a few scant days to suspect that I was not myself, and so, to avoid the whispering of my household, I again suggested a pilgrimage–far, far away, preferably by camel with a lame foot.
They both loathed the idea, nearly as much as they loathed each other, but I was the grand man of the household and it was their duty to obey. The night before they were to depart my senior wife came into my room and screamed at me. She tore at my clothes, and when I was unmoved, she tore at her own, dragged her nails down her face, pulled clumps of her hair in thick fistfuls from her head, and screamed, “Monster! Monster! You swore you loved me, you made me think you loved me but you have always been a monster!”
My dear one, I replied, if this is so, would you not be happier away?
At this she pulled her robes wide, revealing a body well kept for its age, nourished but not to excess, loose as a pillow, pale as summer cloud.
“Am I not beautiful?” she cried. “Am I not what you desire?”
She did not look at me in the morning as I bade her farewell.
The majority of my affairs so settled, I moved what remained of my household to a mansion by the waterfront, and invited Ayesha to dine with me. Alas, for the first few weeks I could find nothing of the gentle woman I had met at the bathhouse, and wondered if I had not made a terrible mistake in leaving my wealthy widow. Ayesha would not meet my eye, nor answer in anything other than short affirmations, demonstrating such coldness in her manner that it dampened her veiled beauty too. I wooed gently, as a fresh lover might, and thought I saw no change until one evening, as we picked over fresh dates and cold leaves, she said, “You are very much changed, my husband.”
“Do you like the change?”
She was silent a while, and then replied, “I loved the man I married, and honour him, and pray daily for his soul. But I confess, I love the man who I see before me more, and am glad of his company, for as long as it may last.”
“Why did you marry me, if not for who I was?”
“For money,” she replied simply. “I had a good dowry, but that is not an income. You have income. You have prestige. You have a name. Even if you had not the first part, two together beget the third. My family lacks for any of these. By my union with you, I secure their advancement.”
“I see,” I murmured, unsure of what al-Mu’allim would have said to all this, and choosing, therefore, to say as little as possible.
At my reticence, Ayesha, rather than draw back, smiled. For the first time she raised her eyes to my face, and at that my heart ran fast. Then–a gesture almost unheard of at the dinner table–she reached over to touch my hand. “You do not recall,” she breathed, and there was no accusation in it, merely a statement of understanding, of discovery, “very well.”
For a moment, panic. But she simply sat, her fingers resting in my palm, and when the sun was down we stood together by the water’s edge and I said, “There is something I must tell you. Something you may not understand.”
“Don’t tell me,” she replied, sharp enough to make me flinch. Sensing my withdrawal, she repeated, softer, “Don’t tell me.”
“Why don’t you want to know?”
“I am sworn to you. I am tasked to honour and obey. While I do this in duty, and sincerity, my soul is clean. Only in these last months, however, have I found joy in my duty. Only with… only these last few months. Do not speak the words that might tarnish the joy we have. Do not wipe away this moment.”
So I said nothing. She was my wife, and I was her husband, and that was all that we needed to know.
It lasted six years, in which my wife lived with me in wealth–wheat, cotton and boys being profitable markets at nearly any time, and there the matter may have rested, until the French came to Cairo. When the rage of the Egyptians against their remarkably moderate oppressors grew too great, conspirators came to my door, asking for arms, influence, money–all of which I politely refused.
“Your city is held by the infidel!” they exclaimed. “How long until a Frenchman violates your wife?”
“I really couldn’t say,” I replied. “How long did it take until they violated yours?”
They left, muttering against my impiety, but their comings and their goings were already being watched, and when the revolt began and the cannon fired and the heavens cracked and Napoleon himself gave the order to blast down the walls of the Great Mosque and massacre every man, woman and child who had taken refuge inside, my name was called in the round-up of the living dead amid the thunder-blasted carnage of the Cairo streets.
The teenage boy, now grown to a man, whose body I had first inhabited when I came to inspect the household of al-Mu’allim came running to me. “Master,” he exclaimed, “the French are coming for you!”
My wife stood by, silent and straight. I turned to her, said, “What should I do?” and meant the question, for to become some French officer–the obvious recourse–would in that single breath, that second of transition, end the life I had, all that I had lived to obtain. “What should I do?”
“Al-Mu’allim must not be found in this city,” she replied, and it was the first time in six years that she had looked at me, but spoken my body’s name. “If you remain, the French will take you and kill you. There are boats on the river; you have money. Leave.”
“I could return…”
“Al-Mu’allim must not be found,” she repeated, a flash of anger pushing at her voice. “My husband is too proud and lazy to run.”
It was the closest she had come to admitting my nature, for though her fingers were in mine, her breath mixed with my breath, she spoke of my body as if it were some other place.
“What about you?”
“Bonaparte wants, even now, to prove that he is just. He puts up signs across the city, which proclaim ‘Do not put your hopes in Ibrahim or Muhammad, but put your trust in he who masters empires and creates men.’ ”
“That doesn’t inspire me to believe in anything,” I replied.
“He will not murder a widow. Our servants, wealth and friends will protect me.”
“Or make you a target.”
“I am only in danger while al-Mu’allim remains!” she retorted, the tendons pressing against her neck as she swallowed down a shout. “If you love me–as I think you do–then go.”
“Come with me.”
“Your presence here brings me danger. Your… who you are brings me danger. If you love me, you would not bring me harm.”
“I can protect you.”