Part 41 (1/2)

I WILL NEVER KNOW How she knew. I heard her cry before I heard the wheels, the shouts, the loud battering at the door. I was in the courtyard. We had been in Nur's room, she and I. Anna still bathed her last thing at night -as the English do. Nur was out of the tub, warm and rosy. She would not put on her pyjamas but kept wrapping herself in the big, white bath towel. We unwrapped her and she wrapped herself up again. It turned into a game. We would pull at the edges of the towel and ask, 'What's this? What's this that we have found? Is it a monkey? Is it a gazelle?' And she would fling off the towel, laughing with delight: 'It's a girl, it's a little girl!' and wrap herself up again. And again. And again. Then she said, 'I want my doll.' We looked for the doll and I remembered she had been playing with it in the courtyard in the afternoon. I called Hasna but she must have been in the kitchen. So I went to look for the doll. And that is why I was in the courtyard. The doll was there, lying by the fountain, and as I picked it up I heard Anna's cry. A great, long cry that rang through the house and sent a s.h.i.+ver through my body and brought Ahmad running from the garden. 'No,' she cried - and it was an English 'no'. I looked up and she had burst out of the house - she was running along the courtyard, stumbling. 'No ... No ...' And then I heard the sounds outside. The wheels, the shouts, the stamping and then the banging at the door. I ran, and she was there - pulling at the heavy door as Fudeil and Mirghani came running out to help - to pull the door open. And then the men's voices saying one thing: 'El-Basha, el-Basha ...'

They carried him in. My brother. Three men carried him in. And there was a small, bent old man limping after them, holding my brother's stick and his tarbush, while the horses stamped and neighed and reared outside with no one to hold them.

They carried him into the salamlek while Anna hung on to him. She had stopped screaming but she was still saying 'no' - holding on to his arm, saying 'no, no' and shaking her head. She was refusing it, turning it away, sending it back, this thing that had come to us.

'Hush,' he said. I heard him and my legs went weak with relief. A turn, a heart attack, a slight stroke, anything, but he was alive. He was alive and saying 'hush', and when they laid him down on the diwan and she fell to her knees beside him, he raised his hand and put it on her neck.

I did not understand it at first. What had happened. Till the men stood back and I saw the stains on their clothes and I went rus.h.i.+ng to him - and Nur came faltering into the room following her mother's scream -still naked, trailing her towel behind her - and saw her father lying on the diwan, his eyes closed, and ran to him. I saw the blood spreading on the diwan under him and caught hold of the child. And Mirghani came to me and said, 'I shall go fetch Husni Bey' and Anna said, 'Get the doctor. Get Milton Bey and Sa'd Bey el-Khadim. Quickly.' And she was on her feet and unb.u.t.toning his s.h.i.+rt: 'Can you turn over, my love? Can we turn you over?' Nur wriggled out of my arms - 'Papa is hurt,' I said, 'he's hurt' - and she was kissing his face and trying to get to the wound: 'Shall I kiss your hurt away?' He opened his eyes. 'Kiss my cheek, ya habibti, and go put your sleeping clothes on.' Fudeil had brought the medicine box and Anna was pulling out bandages and bottles and cotton wool and as they were turning him on his side he saw her holding the lengths of bandages and he said 'Are you going to tie up your hair again?' and closed his eyes. She cut his s.h.i.+rt, and she was speaking to him all the time as she bathed his wound and staunched it with cotton wool and held her hand tight over it. I came close and said 'Abeih?' and he opened his eyes and said 'Layla? They've done it -the dogs -' and I said 'Who ya Abeih? Who?' and he said, 'There are plenty of dogs. Don't be afraid. Send for mother. And put Nur to bed. And see to Sabir.' Sabir's wound was in the shoulder. He had thrown himself over my brother when the shots rang out.

My mother was at the wedding of Mustafa Pasha Fahmi's youngest daughter. I sent for her. I put Nur to bed and made Hasna stay with her. She was no use downstairs and kept calling, 'Sidi! Sidi el-Basha!' I told Nur her father was fine and her mother was looking after him and he just needed to sleep. Coming down the stairs I leaned on Ahmad, but my heart had been wrenched loose and was stumbling and banging itself against the walls of my chest. I could only draw my breath in short, shallow pulls. I was whispering 'ya Rabb, ya Rabb' continuously. I put water to boil and I said to Ahmad, 'It is a wound, just a wound, Khalu is strong and the doctors are on the way', but fear was a tight band round my chest and my heart kept banging into it.

As I went downstairs I heard the galloping outside. All night the horses were galloping to and from our house, and as I went into the salamlek Milton Bey hurried in, already opening his bag.

Three bullets. Two in his stomach and one in his back. Milton Bey and Sa'd Bey said they would have to take them out and Mirghani went upstairs to bring the boiling water and Husni came and they lit a spirit lamp and they said Fudeil and Mirghani and Sabir should stay and we should leave. Ahmad would not leave his uncle's side. Anna and I went outside into the courtyard and stood close by the wall. And we prayed and prayed and his first clenched cry of pain threw Anna into my arms and we held on to each other crouched by that wall until Husni came and said, 'They've done everything they can. They will wait outside if you want to go in.'

Milton Bey and Sa'd Bey stayed all night with us. At first he was not conscious, then he came to and spoke with Husni. Then he spoke with me and he told me - he told me what a good and gallant brother tells the sister he knows would give her life for him.

Then he spoke to Anna, who was kneeling on the floor at his side.

'Anna, listen to me.'

'I love you.'

'Anna, listen. You have made me -' He stops.

'Please don't talk. Please, please, don't talk.'

'Be quiet. Be quiet and listen. We have been good together. Yes?'

'Yes,' she whispers, 'yes.' The word catches in her throat. 'I have been so happy with you. So happy.' She is kissing his hands, rubbing her forehead into his arm, rubbing herself into him.

'I want you to live your life -'

'I love you, I love you -'

'I know. Hush. You have to be brave now. For Nur. Remember your promise.'

'This is my home.'

'This was your home. Because of me. I don't want her to have to fight so hard.'

'I want to stay.'

'No. Anna. It won't do. It only worked because of me.'

'You are so arrogant -'

Sharif Basha raises an eyebrow and gives her a look and she puts her hands in his hair. 'Oh, please,' she begs, 'please, try -'

'Bring her up - like you.'

'My love,' she says, 'Oh, my love, my love ...'

OUR MOTHER CAME INTO THE room and he lifted his eyes to her. 'Mama?'

She bent over him, reached for his hand. 'Sharif. Habibi. Ibni. What happened?'

He raised her hand to his mouth. 'Pray for me, ya Ummi', and his sigh was like when he sat down in the entrance hall and took off his boots after a long ride on a hot summer's day. My mother put her other hand over his eyes and said the shahada for him before her legs gave way - Dawn breaks and the sun comes up on a house of keening women. Their voices rise from the salamlek, loud with anguish, tailing off into despair: ya habibi, ya habibi, ya ibni ya habibi, my son, my brother, my beloved, ya habibi.

AND AS FOR ME, A hundred - a thousand times a day I think of him. I think I'll ask Abeih this, or Abeih will laugh so when he hears that. I wait for his step when I hear the sound of wheels on the gravel. When the coffee runs low I think we had better get - then I remember. I see him in a turn of Ahmad's head, in the look he has started to give me - and I catch my son to me and hug him and kiss him and turn him away before he can see me weep. He has grieved for his uncle and taken the parting from Nur very hard and asks whether he might not go to study in England.

Anna writes to us often. With news of Nur. For herself she has no news, she says, only news of Nur. She paints. And she looks after her old kinsman - Sir Charles. And her garden.

My father is in his shrine. We do not know whether he understands what has happened. My mother is grown very quiet. She prays a great deal. But Ahmad and Mahrous can still make her smile.