Love on the Wings of War: For the Love of Egypt

By John Livingston

It is 1967 in Egypt when the rebellious daughter of a government minster first notices a handsome American researcher. Desperate to break away from her powerful and conservative Muslim family, Nadia Kemal approaches Mark Adams one afternoon in the university library and changes her life forever.

Nadia and Mark soon fall in love. For a year, their forbidden relationship is fraught with danger and several close calls as they are nearly discovered. As Egypt is defeated in war and the possibility of civil government looms, Nadias father focuses on becoming the new leader. Meanwhile after Nadia and Mark secretly marry, they are preparing to leave the country when her father learns of the affair. With his career aspirations now threatened by his American son-in-law, Nadias father locks her in an asylum until she signs a divorce paper. As Mark battles for his own life, he frantically searches for Nadia while attempting to distinguish between truth and lies. With seemingly the entire world against them, Nadia and Mark are each left wondering if their love is strong enough to survive.

In this historical tale set in 1960s war-torn Egypt, a Muslim girl and an American man begin a journey together driven by forbidden love, danger, and an uncertain future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781491797228

John Livingston

John Livingston earned his BS at MIT and his PhD at Princeton University. He is currently a professor of Islamic History and Civilization and Modern Middle East History at William Paterson University. Dr. Livingston currently resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Love on the Wings of War is his fourth book.

Book preview

Chapter 1

N adia Kemal glanced at him across the student/faculty lounge. As usual, he was reading his Egyptian newspaper, every now and then referring to the big dictionary that he kept with him all the time. A Beatles song was playing. She thought of inviting him to the new film that had just opened, Hard Day’s something or other. But how could she? They hadn’t ever been introduced—well, not properly introduced. She had stopped to speak to him yesterday by the library, but that was on a silly whim of her own making and didn’t count. She had no friends who knew him who could stage a proper introduction. He was too standoffish for Egyptians, too busy, too American arrogant. Did he think himself too good for Egyptians? There were stories about him.

She sipped her turkish coffee and read what she had written in her notebook the night before:

Tradition is tyranny! To rebel or not to rebel? Whether ’tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous tradition, or take up arms against them, and by opposing, end them? That is not the question. It is the torment of deciding to rebel. To rebel is to live! To submit is to slay the spirit, to exist in the lifeless shadow of a zombie in a zombie society. To choose death over life. I choose to live! So I have to do something, something crazy. I have to break out. I have to keep from being smothered.

At first, she thought it would make a good theme for a composition in her freshman English class. And then she decided to act on it, to rebel. She had to. There was no other way. She disliked the way her mother criticized the way she dressed—always complaining, worrying, picking. It was always something. Nadia’s sweater showed the bulge of her breasts too much! As if she were at fault for what nature or God created. And didn’t the miniature Koran hanging from her necklace over her sweater stand for something? No. She got credit for nothing and shame for everything, her mother always picking at her. Her aunts too. They disliked the way she sat and the way she crossed her legs, her skirt barely covering her knees. Oh, we know what such behavior means, they’d said smugly, as if sitting with legs crossed somehow proved loss of virginity. Accusations of shame curdled their pious faces, Nadia’s mother’s worst of all.

And then there was Nadia’s father, who had received a doctorate of law from France and was a former ambassador, a deputy minister, a leading reformer—and he wouldn’t even let her go to her cousin Mona’s birthday party. There would be boys there, maybe alcohol. Dancing. Mona’s parents were too liberal; their daughters, too wild. Well, he was half right. Mona’s parents were too liberal, too liberal for Egypt. Mona’s father was under house arrest for opposing President Nasser’s censorship laws, and her mother was under house arrest for criticizing the government’s conservative restrictions on art and cinema in her women’s magazine, which the government had closed down a year ago. At least they were together under house arrest. But wild, Mona and her sister? They didn’t even smoke!

No, Nadia couldn’t take it anymore. She had to break out. She had to rebel. She could hardly breathe. She would do something crazy. She had a good idea what it would be.

The student/faculty lounge was filling. Noon classes had ended. She returned the notebook she had been reading to her leather bag and, raising the cup of tea to her lips, glanced furtively across the lounge. He was getting ready to leave for the library. She knew his routine: having turkish coffee with an olive sandwich at noon while reading his Arabic newspaper, and then going back to the library.

He had a desk on the third floor, where the rare books were kept. A gate closed the area off to all but professors and research students, but it was usually left unlocked during the day. Nadia’s stomach fluttered as she climbed the steps.

She paused at the second floor. With her hand gripping the railing, she bit her lip and stared at the closed door of the music room, which evoked bitter memories, too bitter. I’ll not be treated like a child, she whispered to herself as she mounted the steps to the third floor.

After closing the door behind her, she was engulfed in heavy silence. The high walls of ancient books overwhelmed her, the great learning in those mountains of books towering around her, and ancient knowledge of holy tradition crushing her to insignificance. She could hardly breathe for the weight of them. Quietly, on tiptoe, she proceeded through the suffocating gloom of the rare-books collection.

She saw him at the end of the tunnel of books: a solitary figure hunched over his desk, peering at something through a magnifying glass. She hesitated. He looked so distant, so unapproachable, like a medieval monk cloistered in a cell, totally consumed by his manuscripts. The world could pass away without his noticing it any more than he had noticed her during all those times their paths had crossed on campus. Intimidated by his seriousness, she had an impulse to turn away, leave him in his cozy little world in the gloomy corner of the library, protected and comfortable behind his walls of old books, those same books of medieval Arabic whose living tradition was squeezing the life from her. For him they were just books. He had come all the way from America to study them. She would run as far to escape them.

Yes, he looked terribly serious. But that was what she wanted: seriousness, a relation of mind, a man she could talk with who would treat her as an intelligent human being. She took a deep breath, forced a smile, and headed for his desk at the end of the stacks.

Hi.

When he looked up with what she took to be a frown of annoyance at being disturbed, she grew hot and confused. Blood rushed to her face. She had made a horrible mistake. She wanted to turn and run—to hell with rebellion—but she stood rooted to the spot, mutely looking at him, wondering in humiliation how she could retreat gracefully without appearing foolish. Her confidence returned when she saw his frown change to a smile of surprise. He must have remembered her, the young woman who had stopped him yesterday. With the memory of it flashing through her mind, she wondered where in the world she had gotten the courage to do that and the courage to come see him in the library. Yesterday she had called to him in the courtyard between the library and the student/faculty lounge: Hey, mister! He had turned as she stopped a few feet from him, her face flush, her breasts rising and falling under her wintergreen sweater from having run the length of the path. When he said brusquely that he hadn’t corrected the exams yet, she said she wasn’t his student and he apologized. She had smiled it off, saying, Never mind, all Egyptians must look alike to you. Would you like to buy a ticket?

For what?

She had looked at the booklet of tickets that she had grabbed from the lounge table without knowing what they were for. For a Christian Club lunch.

You’re selling tickets for the Student Christian Club lunch?

She had smiled uncertainly. Why not? She saw his eyes go to her miniature Koran hanging on a gold chain from around her neck. So? We believe in Christ and the Virgin Mary and all that. Anyway, it’s only a lunch. No crucifixion or sacrifice or any of that stuff about drinking blood. The government wouldn’t allow it. You want to go? I invite you. He had shrugged noncommittally and continued on into the library. She had been crushed, but not defeated.

You remember me? she asked.

Christians for lunch?

Probably just chicken salad and kebab. The light exchange slackened the chains of bondage she wanted to tear away. Surveying the somber surroundings, she sighed as though in expression of her resistance to submit to the centuries of hoary learning bearing down on her. So this is where you study.

He drew up a chair next to his desk. She sat in it with her legs crossed, her skirt just above her knees. To tell you the truth, she said, I don’t give a damn about that Christian Club lunch. I just grabbed the tickets when I saw you leave the lounge yesterday. I wanted to have an excuse to talk to you. They say you’re a snob and don’t like Egyptians. Is that true?

They?

The students. I know—I can’t stand their gossip either. But they say you dislike us. They say that because you don’t act friendly. Not with us, you don’t. Why are you unfriendly? Why don’t you like Egyptians? And why are you so stuck-up? You think because you have blue eyes you’re that good-looking? The nonplussed look this brought to his face so tickled her that she broke out in laughter, a bundle of youthful energy bursting in joy. She understood his discomfiture: she comes from nowhere out of the dark tunnels of books like a genie and accuses him of arrogance and vanity, and all he wants is solitude to do his work.

They say you’ve had a tragic life. Is it true?

Mark took her in more closely: luxuriant hair meticulously coiffed with bangs over her forehead and crescent locks hugging her cheeks like inverted commas; large brown eyes made up with kohl in the delicate way of the Egyptians, two pencil-thin lines outlining the upper and lower lids and extending out beyond the corners, converging but never quite meeting; wide almond eyes; straight nose; full lips; long neck; and light coloring indicating the Greek, Roman, Turkish, Circassian, and European ancestry that had over the centuries entered the Egyptian and Arab bloodstream. At the same time, he was struck by how much she resembled those dancing girls and pharaoh queens he had seen on the painted murals of the tombs, and in the temples and palaces, of Upper Egypt. Timeless beauty. Egypt, Umm al-Dunya: Mother of the World. Her miniature Koran was still snuggled in the woolen valley of her plump breasts, rising and falling with her breathing. He caught the fragrance of her perfume as it diffused through the musty corner of the stacks, banishing the fusty odor of ancient dust and parchment. She was like a glow of soft light, a breath of blossoms flowering in this, his pyramid tomb of books.

Is this what you’re working on? She leaned over to examine the Arabic manuscript on his desk, her breast inches from the side of his face. What’s it about?

Her nearness drew the heat up from deep within him, from his loins to his face, driving from his mind all thoughts of work, which now seemed irrelevant. Medieval Egypt, he replied, his senses so electrified by the sight of her knees, the closeness of her breasts, and the smell of her perfume that he could hardly think. Late eighteenth century. One false move and he could lose his job, get thrown out of the university, get thrown out of Egypt, and lose his career and everything he had worked so hard to build, only to face the prospect of putting his life back together.

What’s there to study about eighteenth-century Egypt?

He took a deep breath and then ran his hand through his hair. Nothing exciting. It had been so long since he had been near a female that he had almost succeeded in expunging the existence of the opposite sex from his consciousness. During the time of Catherine the Great there was a Russian–Turkish war. The Turkish Mamluk ruler of Egypt took the occasion to revolt against the Ottoman Empire and asked the Russian Navy, which was in the area, for modern weapons and officers to train his army in their use. The Russian naval commander—he had been one of Catherine’s many lovers—made promises but never came through with the weapons, so Egypt remained part of the Ottoman Empire.

Nadia sighed. Sounds just like what’s happening today with Nasser and the Russians.

Same historical pattern. It sounded so irrelevant, so trite, and so artificial in the presence of this young woman who was so vibrant with life.

I’m going to be an Egyptologist. Nadia’s smile and bright eyes illuminated the place like a burst of sunlight. It’s true, she continued. I love reading about ancient Egypt—when we were a great nation. I’m going to study for my doctorate.

I’m sure you’ll be a good Egyptologist.

You really think so?

Don’t you?

She reflected a moment. Yes. Her smile deepened. I do. I will make an excellent Egyptologist. Her enthusiasm delighted him. Her smile and bright eyes beamed happiness. She was so alive and full of energy and hope.

Do you have many Egyptian friends? she asked.

Several, he replied.

Girls?

No. No girls. That’s not easy in Egypt.

Not even American or European girlfriends? They’re easy.

I’ve never found girls easy.

She asked about the manuscript he was reading. It was about medieval Egypt, he told her, and, only half joking, he added that he had been working on a translation and critical edition of it for two years, a year for every century it was old—and though it was a minor work of an insignificant eighteenth-century Egyptian historian, when it was published the scholarly world would acclaim it as a major contribution to the field. Her vague smile, and then her picking up his magnifying glass from where it lay on the yellowed page of the manuscript and peering through it with one eye closed, moving the glass back and forth between him and her examining eye, made him feel like she thought him to be some strange species of life that had just crawled out from one of the wormholes of the ancient paper.

Every one of us is in a prison of some sort, she said, holding the lens before her eye. True freedom is when one makes his or her own prison. You made yours in this old manuscript. I want to make my own too.

How are you going to do that?

By rebelling against the prison that I’ve been put in against my will. Freedom is the act of rebelling, she asserted, lowering the glass from her eyes, which were bright with conviction. Then, possibly intimidated by his pensive silence, she asked less assuredly, Isn’t it?

I don’t know. Maybe the price of freedom is the anguish of solitude.

She regarded him curiously. You Americans take freedom for granted. You don’t know much about the world.

We have our prisons too. How are you going to rebel?

Not sure. But I must if I’m going to do anything worthwhile with my life. That’s the way it is here. To do something worthwhile is to rebel.

What would you like to do?

She reflected a moment. Well, I’d really like to be a social reformer. But I’d just be put in prison or under house arrest for that. So I suppose I’ll just become an Egyptologist and help my country rediscover its ancient greatness. I’d like to study in France.

That shouldn’t be difficult.

Nadia shrugged. Some families are very conservative here in Egypt when it comes to daughters.

Yours is?

Sensing by the changing light in her eyes and the dismissing gesture of her hand that this was a subject she cared not to discuss, he let it hang.

"My father is well educated and very Western. He got his doctorat d’état from the Sorbonne in law and philosophy. In fact, he worked with President Nasser against the religious fanatics."

Your father must be pretty high up if he works with President Nasser.

Let’s not talk about politics. She looked around to make sure they were alone. They weren’t. A man in a khaki galabia was slowly approaching while perfunctorily brushing the tops of the books in the stacks with a feather duster. He paused, glanced curiously at Nadia and Mark, and continued on, feather-dusting his way along another stack. Mark noticed his new companion’s nervousness. She was right, politics was a dangerous subject in a police state infested with informers.

So when are you going to rebel? he asked.

She slipped her hand into her handbag. Tonight, she replied, extracting two tickets. Would you like to go to the Drama Club’s Christmas play with me?

Sounds better than a Christian lunch.

"It’s Twelfth Night. Want to come?"

Sound like a good night to start a rebellion. Should I pick you up at your house and start it off right? He smiled at the look of horror that flashed across her face.

Heavens, no! she exclaimed. That would be suicide, not rebellion! I’ll meet you on campus. Imagine, a man coming to the house to pick me up! An American! My father would have me out of the university and you out of the country.

It can’t be that bad.

If only you knew.

So where shall we meet?

It has to be an out-of-the-way place where nobody will see us. She pondered. I know: under the banyan tree, the one in the courtyard of the Oriental Studies building, at eight sharp. Don’t be late. My reputation would be ruined if people saw me standing alone at that hour of night. It would be ruined if I were to be seen with you too. We have to be careful not to be seen.

How do you do that at a play?

By being careful, I guess. She looked at her watch and stood. I have to go now. The driver is waiting to take me home.

The driver?

Our family chauffeur. Imagine! My father doesn’t even want me to walk in the street in the afternoon, and we only live in Garden City, five minutes from the university. You see how it is? She put the two tickets on the desk. Under the banyan tree.

And as suddenly as she had appeared, she was gone, like a genie vanished into the dark recesses of the stacks. Mark stared at the two tickets spread across the faded pages of his manuscript. He brought them to his nose, smelling her perfume, and felt the excitement he had felt when she had been sitting next to him. He looked up. His workplace now looked somehow darker, as if a light had been switched off.

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He felt silly standing in the dark of night under the banyan tree. He felt sillier still when an elderly professor and his wife came out of the Oriental Studies building and, seeing him there half concealed in the umbrella of the hanging branches, stopped dead in their tracks as if about to be assaulted by a ghoul and hurried on out the courtyard. Nadia was late. Maybe she wouldn’t come. He hoped she wouldn’t. No, he wanted to see her. He was torn. It was always like that. Females were a civil war of organs fought in the breast of man.

Someone entered the courtyard. Mark recognized the figure outlined in the night: the bushy hair, the full, round chest and waist, and the lurching unsteady gait that broadcast Shaughnessy in his cups. He was coming directly down the path toward the banyan tree. Mark turned toward the trunk of the tree, trying not to be seen. Gadzooks! Is that someone hiding in that jungle, or do I need another drink? The words bellowed out mellifluously. Mark didn’t reply. Come forth. I see you. Pray, are you spirit or human—or a figuration of my dead father done most mischievously in?

For Christ’s sake, Shaughnessy, go away! And be careful drinking on campus!

Aha! I recognize the voice. Merciful God, for a second I thought I was imagining things. What the hell are you doing in there, Adams?

What does it look like? I’m waiting.

Aha! And so Godot has come. Mind if I join you? I’ve often considered waiting with someone in the embrace of this marvelous tree in the moonlight.

Go away. I’m waiting for someone.

Of course. Who waits for no one? Who are you waiting for?

Someone. We’re going to the play.

To see me perform? Shaughnessy spread his plump arms and made an ungainly bow. I am sorry. I am only the director.

I know. You’re going to be late.

No. It’s the world that’s early. You’re up to something clandestine, aren’t you, Adams? He stepped closer to the tree. Tell me, who are you waiting for?

Someone you don’t know.

How could you know that? I know everyone in this little university. I know! A woman. A secret rendezvous. He poked his round head between the hanging branches and, with a lascivious grin, licked his full lips. You’ll do it here in this wild thicket, in the moonlight?

Get to your play, Shaughnessy. She won’t come if she sees you.

Ha! She’ll come once you get your lecherous hands on her.

I’ll buy you a drink if you go.

One?

Two. Just go.

I’m already gone. Wait for me after the play and we’ll both have a go. Shaughnessy clumsily waved his arms and then pranced off like a dancing bear toward the theater.

A minute later, as though having materialized out of the night air, Nadia appeared and joined Mark under the banyan tree, standing close at his side, their arms touching. He smelled her perfume. His stomach tightened in desire. She asked if he had been waiting long.

About twenty minutes.

I’m sorry.

Don’t apologize. Twenty minutes is normal for Egyptians.

I was late getting out of the house. She explained no further.

They stood side by side, peering through the lacework of hanging branches and vines like inmates looking through the bars of their prison cell. Was that Professor Shaughnessy talking to you?

You know him?

He’s my English professor. He’s so funny, I never know if he’s joking or not. They say he’s an alcoholic.

No, he just needs to drink a lot to get through life.

Oh. You never know if he’s drunk or sober.

It makes no difference with him. He’s always the same. Shall we go in?

Let’s wait until the play begins.

I think that happened some time ago.

She took a deep breath for courage and then stepped out from the veil of the tree. We must sit in the very back and pretend we’re not together.

Is it so dangerous to be seen with me?

Best to be careful.

Nadia turned silent. As they walked the short way to the Theater Arts building, she reflected on how despicable it was of her to have to pretend and lie all the time, to live in fear and hide in shadows, behind trees, sneaking like a thief in the night to go to a school play with an educated man. It pained her to have Mark think she was a frightened child. She detested having to act like this, pretending, hiding, fearing, lying to her mother, and being so late to meet Mark because she’d had to wait until her father left the house—for an evening meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as he had said, but probably to meet his mistress. She had smiled inwardly at the unintended irony of foreign affairs as it related to her and her father. And then she had had to persuade her mother to let her go to the play with her friends. Her mother, a nervous jumble of a woman condemned to perpetual worry, had given in when Nadia promised to come straight home after the play, promising that she would be back before her father. Her life was becoming a stuffed squash of lying, hiding, and playacting.

Mark and Nadia were sitting in the last row. Just before intermission, they left and stood a distance outside so not to be seen, and then they returned after everyone had gone back inside. She felt weak, stupid. Worse, she feared he might be thinking the same of her. When the play was over and they were walking along the river in the general direction of Nadia’s home in Garden City, he suggested a drink on the Isis riverboat anchored in front of the Nile Hilton. Again, having to decline, she despised her condition for the timidity it imposed upon her. I’m sorry. Another night maybe, she replied, wishing with all her heart to go on that boat with him, untie it from its moorings, lift anchor, and sail up the Nile with him to Upper Egypt, to Luxor, to the Valley of the Kings, to the Valley of the Queens, to Aswan, to Khartoum, to the end of the world—to freedom! What a wretched condition this life was without freedom! What a wretched farce of a rebellion!

Have you ever been to Upper Egypt? she asked, covering her inner wretchedness with a happy smile.

A couple times. I saw the dam the Russians are building at Aswan. Quite a project.

Oh, those Russians. Why did America refuse to build it? Why did you let the Russians do it? That was stupid of you.

Don’t blame me. That’s our schizophrenic foreign policy.

The whole world is schizophrenic.

They came to the Nile Corniche, which bordered the river. There were few people in the streets at this hour, and little traffic except for an occasional taxi rumbling over the uneven road. A brace of horse-drawn wagons, the drivers standing with reins in hand on the rattling floorboards, raced each other down the deserted corniche, wooden wheels clattering, bullwhips snapping: phantom charioteers of the night. Moments later Nadia and Mark came upon a flock of fat-tailed sheep being herded down the street on their way to tomorrow’s morning market. Imagine seeing this in a main section of a world capital in 1966, he remarked. That’s why I like this city so much. It still has so many traces of its medieval character. But a lot of those traces were fast disappearing. He told her how it pained him whenever he saw one of those grand old palaces of arched colonnades, glazed tiles, and hand-carved Mamluk ceilings being destroyed to make room for a new tourist hotel or some other modern eyesore.

Old palaces don’t feed hungry people, she rejoined.

Nor do tourist hotels.

They bring the hard currency we need. Besides, we have so many old monuments. It’s good we lose some of them or there’d be no room to walk.

When they were nearing Nadia’s apartment building, she became afraid of being seen by one of the doorman bawaabs and suggested they go down the steps to the riverbank in front of the Shepherd’s Hotel. They walked along the dirt bank, stepping around and over the planks that were used to board the feluccas anchored along the shore. When he saw she was having a hard time of it with her heels, he took her hand to help her along. Her hand closed on his. They continued a short ways along the bank hand in hand. Tiny waves were rippling up the muddy shore, stopping short of their feet. A disparate medley of sounds fused in the cool night air over the river: the creaking timber of anchored feluccas, the tortured nasal wail of an Arab songstress, a husky peal of female laughter, the distant splash of something, or someone, falling in. Men sometimes take prostitutes and smoke hashish on those feluccas, observed Nadia, her eyes widening at the thought of such decadence.

How naughty.

Why are you smiling?

Oh. Nothing. I was thinking of Shaughnessy. He once fell off of a felucca and almost drowned. Nadia laughed at the image of rotund Shaughnessy tumbling tipsy into the Nile. That man is so funny. He’s a good actor, isn’t he?

All he has to do is play himself.

People who have to hide things about themselves make the best actors.

The feluccas were rocking to and fro in the little waves washing up the shore, their gently swaying colored lanterns radiating an inviting coziness. Mark asked if she’d like to have a sail. Nadia looked at her watch. Her father would be home and this wonderful evening, her first time out with a man, would come to an end. The sad thought of it pulled at her heart. She wanted it never to come to an end. She decided not to be afraid for once and agreed to go. But it will have to be a quick one. I have studying to do. Mark put an arm around her waist to help her over the wobbly planks and led her onto the most comfortable-looking of the feluccas. They sat close together at the rear.

The boatman shoved off. He unfurled the single sail that filled in the breeze with a snap, and immediately the felucca was skimming over the river toward the colored lights of the casinos strung out along the opposite shore. Listen, she whispered. You can hear the heartbeat of the river. Small waves were slapping rhythmically against the prow. In ancient times the Nile was considered sacred. Every spring a virgin princess was thrown in as a sacrifice so the river would rise and there would be a good harvest. Bride of the Nile. She paused at the memory of her great-aunt that came disturbingly to mind. How many virgin hearts this old river must have swallowed, she said, sighing trustfully. Observing Mark’s questioning expression, she was amused at how little this American doctoral student of Egyptian history understood about the Egypt he was living in.

A strong breeze rose up. Mark draped his jacket over her shoulders and, when she gave no sign of protest, left his warming arm around her.

The boatman maneuvered the single sail as he tacked the felucca toward the casinos. Music of the Mediterranean came floating over the river: Arabic, French, Italian. There was a new Beatles song. It was a perfect night.

Following a long silence, Nadia asked how it was Mark had come to the Middle East. He told her the story of his having studied engineering and then going to Saudi Arabia to work with an oil company upon graduation, and how in Arabia he had become captivated by Arabic, Islam, and history. He had been a young man of twenty-one swept away by the exotic, romantic East. But there had been nothing exotic or romantic in the sterile environment of an oil company operating in the barren desert. It had been a romance of mind, a romance of understanding a foreign culture, of which he had but a fleeting experience during those all too brief and rare weekend trips to Beirut, enough only to whet the physical and mental appetites.

Nadia listened with alternating turns of excitement and pangs of insignificance. The best students in her country were studying engineering. Everyone she knew wanted to be an engineer, or a doctor, and here this man had chucked it. He braved the world and followed what he wanted because it interested him, not because he had to, while she had to lie to her parents to have a few hours out in the evening, couldn’t even have a drink on the Isis riverboat, always had to be afraid—afraid of being open, afraid of being seen—and always having to shade the truth.

You’re lucky to have the freedom you have in America, she said.

You have family security and you have love. That makes up for not having freedom.

No. Sometimes the family is as tyrannical as the government.

Even yours?

Especially mine. My parents are forever telling me how shameful everything is. Shame this, shame that, shame upon shame. It never ends. Whatever I do is shameful. My mother is obsessed with shame. The way I sit, the way I cross my legs, the sweater I wear, she’s always bringing shame into it. Even with my being secretary of the Music Club. You can’t imagine how happy I was doing something useful. Cataloging albums, ordering new ones from abroad, planning Bach and Beethoven programs, I’d never felt so pleased with myself. I was actually working, doing something important, especially because it was music. I just adore music! she exclaimed enthusiastically, her mood brightening, only to dim again as she told the next part of the story.

I was so happy that I told my father about my being secretary of the club. What a mistake. Instead of sharing my feelings, he got angry and shouted, ‘What! My daughter working like a common girl of the streets! What a disgrace! What will people think!’ So he made me resign from the Music Club. I’m always misjudging people, even my own father. She sighed. But it was my fault. I should have known better than to tell him. It’s just that it’s hard not to confide in people you love and respect.

Hard for me to imagine. You have a big family?

I have a brother. That’s enough.

Most Egyptian families have six to ten children.

Not the educated ones. Nadia leaned back against the cushions and looked up at the starry sky, enjoying the cool breeze that was wafting across the Nile and blowing across her face. She asked how old Mark was.

Twenty-seven, he replied.

You don’t look that old.

Is that old?

No, it’s a good age for a man. It means you’ve had experience in the world. You know yourself and what you want.

Well, at least the experience part of it is right. I’ve had enough of that.

Were you ever married?

I was.

Oh. There was no hiding the disappointment in her voice. And now?

No. No longer.

She waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, she sighed lightly and asked, Divorced? He shook his head—no, not divorced. Because he added nothing more to that, she figured he treated his private life like she did politics, as something better not discussed. The idea that they both had secret regions of life they wished to keep private appealed to her. A man of depth, mystery, suffering, and experience was seductive, exciting.

Having tacked across the river, the boatman turned the felucca around in a wide arc and headed back to shore, the winter wind out of the desert sailing them speedily back. Mark and Nadia stood holding hands on the bank as they contemplated the reflections on the rippling water, both acutely conscious of hand touching hand, finger locking on finger, arm brushing against arm. After several minutes, she said she had to go. When he started to accompany her up the stairs to the corniche, she asked him not to. Her building was near. You know how it is here, she added. Then she said hesitantly, If you wish, I can see you tomorrow.

Where? he asked.

Do you know the Gezira Sporting Club? He did. I could be walking at the far end of the golf course at noon, by the riding academy. It will be Sunday and there won’t be many people around. He said he would be there and thanked her for a wonderful evening. She ascended the stairs and disappeared.

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Nadia crept soundlessly to her room to find her mother sitting in nervous wait on the bed. Thank God your father hasn’t returned, she said in French, reverently kissing her prayer beads. I’ve been praying he wouldn’t come before you. Where have you been so late at night?

We went to Groppi’s for ice cream after the play. It’s not even eleven yet, Mommy. I’m eighteen. Don’t treat me like a child.

You are a child! What will people think? Groppi’s? They’re Greek!

So was Cleopatra.

Don’t be smart. You know what I mean. Good people don’t go there.

Laughing lightly, Nadia sat next to her mother, kissed her on the cheek, and replied that there was no better place to go than Groppi’s for ice cream after a play unless you took a night flight to Paris. She was amazed at how easily the lie came, how well she acted. But why did it have to be this way? Already the beauty of the evening was soured.

Think of your reputation. Staying out late, being seen at common places like Groppi’s, maybe with boys there, staining your reputation, bringing dishonor to the family. Think of your father! He has a high position in the ministry. And your brother! Who would marry him with a dishonored sister? Think of their honor. Think of who would marry you!

I have better things to think about, Mommy, such as my English composition, which is due tomorrow. And what flavor ice cream at Groppi’s do you think would ruin my reputation?

Don’t be impudent. That will ruin your reputation quicker than Groppi’s ice cream. Nadia’s mother stood to leave. Pray to God you don’t dishonor us and we find a suitable husband for you! Here, pray for yourself! She threw her prayer beads on the bed and paused at the door, further admonishing Nadia and accusing her of being heedless about her behavior and what people might think of her. God sees everything!

What’s there for him to see?

Impudent girl! Your father will deal with you.

Nadia remained sitting, thinking of her poor, frightened mother. She was still slim and attractive, still a model of aristocratic perfection in her society, but worry was draining the life out of her. Nadia could see the lines of stressful fretting and worrying under her mother’s careful makeup.

Undressing for bed, Nadia looked at herself in the mirror. It was only a short time ago that she had hardly any breasts at all. How quickly they had blossomed. She turned to see herself in profile. Yes, she might be considered almost beautiful. She thought of how she compared to Elizabeth Taylor. Then, wondering what Cleopatra really looked like, she turned quickly from the mirror, ashamed of her vanity: God sees everything!

Chapter 2

T he Sporting Club, like the university campus, was a separate world: a realm of tranquility, a refuge from the surrounding city’s crushing crowds, suffocating squalor, and maddening tumult of traffic with its choking fumes and ceaseless horns blasting through the sulfuric haze. To pass through the club’s gates was to enter a garden of peace and order where poverty, disease, and filth were forbidden. The club had been built by the British; the university, by the Americans. That Mark so enjoyed the comfort and peace that he found in these two places marred the purity of his negation of Western imperialism and cultural arrogance, but he never considered giving them up for that. One had to live with and accept history.

Wispy clouds streaked the blue sky. The sun’s warmth on his face and arms was welcome in the winter breeze that gently bent the tops of the tall palms, their green fronds opening and closing like bearded hands, beckoning him on as he tramped over the grassy playing fields toward the golf course and his noon rendezvous. The anticipation of meeting Nadia heightened his sense of well-being. All may not have been perfect in his little world, but at the moment he could smile at how good it was.

Without meeting a soul, he passed the riding field and stables, traversed the golf course, and settled on the bench at the far corner, which she had indicated, near a narrow irrigation ditch that bisected the vast breadth of the Sporting Club and the island of Zamalek, on which the club was built, in the middle of the Nile. He stretched out on the bench and surrendered himself to the sun and solitude, savoring the tranquility of this patch of paradise that was only four or five hundred yards away from the clamor and crushing humanity of Cairo.

He looked at his watch. Maybe she wasn’t coming. But no, it was her Egyptian habit to be late. He sat up, scanning the distance in one direction and then the other. Then he saw her. She was coming up the fairway in a curious zigzag fashion, stopping periodically to kneel down, as if to pick a flower, while looking behind and around her to see if she was being followed. Then she would rise and continue on a short way before repeating the procedure once again. Mark was tickled. Her cautionary antics would only have attracted attention had there been someone around to observe. To make sure that there was not, he looked in every direction. Having assured himself that there was no one around, he laughed at himself: now she had him doing it. Fear and suspicion communicated themselves like a plague.

He watched her