The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif Read Free Book Online Page B

through it — ‘I don’t know what he feels about me. When I’m with him I feel all his attention concentrated on me. I feel this — this energy between us. But I don’t know if he even thinks about me when I’m not there.’ She looks sadly at her mother. ‘I’m not sure what I should do.’
    ‘I’ve given him up, of course,’ Jasmine says. ‘It was the only thing to do. He’s very young, you see. Such eyes! He reminds me of Valentine, of course. I don’t need to be told that; I’ve known it all along, from the moment I saw him. Maybe that’s why I took him in. I don’t remember what it was, Algeria or CND or something — there were so many demonstrations that summer. But he was hurt. He was in danger and I took him in. No one could touch him then; he was on American territory — although he didn’t know it. Jonathan was away and I took him in and I dressed the cut on his head. It was already swelling up into a horrid bruise. And he was so fired up with the state of the world and how he was going to change it all — he and his friends. He was so young. I sat by his bed, and later, when he was asleep, I got in next to him. I couldn’t help myself. Well. There we are. I went to his place later, twice. But then I knew I had to givehim up. But it’s been hard. It’s been like losing Valentine all over again.’
    ‘Mother?’ Isabel is sitting upright now. Jasmine sounded like herself again: chatty, regretful, resigned. But — an affair? Her mother had had an affair? When? Who? Had her father known? She looks at the dimmed eyes, the cropped white hair.
    ‘Did my father — did Jonathan know?’ she asks.
    ‘Such a sweet man!’ Jasmine shakes her head. ‘Such a sweet, sweet man! And so terribly in love with me.’ Shakily, she pushes herself up out of her armchair, pushes her feet into pink slippers. ‘I have to go now.’
    ‘Mother,’ says Isabel, sitting up straight, afraid to reach out and catch hold of a frail arm, afraid to hold on to her, ‘Mother, when was this? Who was he? Did Daddy know?’
    A faded copy of the old, bright smile is turned on Isabel. ‘Goodbye,’ Jasmine says. ‘It’s been so pleasant talking to you.’

6
    Do you not know that Egypt is a copy of heaven and the temple of the whole world?
    Egyptian scribe, c. 1400 BC

By an odd — and, I hope, propitious — chance, we have arrived at Alexandria on the same day as the new Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church — a church which has its seat in this city. A Mr James Barrington, who hoarded as soon as we had docked and introduced himself as having been commissioned to meet me and bring me to Cairo safely (a courtesy for which I have to thank Sir Charles’s letters to the Agency), kindly suggested that I might like to witness the celebrations, and the formalities of disembarkation duly dispatched, we soon found ourselves in a funny little carriage, not unlike a phaeton, with our luggage following behind and Mr Barrington perched on the box with the driver, with whom he appeared to converse most cheerfully. The two somewhat indifferent horses seemed to know their way, and responded only with a toss of their decorated heads to the occasional flick of the whip, delivered in almost desultory fashion and
—
I felt — more for form’s sake than from any true necessity. In this manner we arrived at a tea-house (rather more in the, Viennese style, I’m afraid, than the Oriental) and, the two carriages having been told to wait (I later saw our driver standing by his horse’s head and most tenderly feeding him some green stuff which Mr Barrington tells me is known as ‘bersim’ and is similar to our clover), we settled ourselves at a window table, ordered tea and English cake (which turned out to be a plain but perfectly well-made sandcake), and waited for the parades.
    I observed that there were a great many decorations about: flags and strips of gaily coloured cloth and banners — to say
nothing of the red and white