Albert Kinross

“ It was only then that Ziba removed her veil, the white yashmak that was fastened to her ears, and let me see her face and the firm, full neck, and the blue veins that marked the whiteness of the transparent skin below. I have never known a woman more beautiful, more tender, more complete. ”

“ He had three wives and families between Cairo and Alexandria, and I said to him that a man of his temperament ought to become a Moslem and have done with it. It would come far cheaper and he'd be perfectly respectable. But he had a queer fear of the social consequences of such a step. He had social ambitions, and one day, when he was rich enough, he said, he'd clear off to Europe and start over again there, where nobody would know him. He saw himself conquering Paris and London, received at courts, a pillar of high society. With half a million pounds Egyptian it might be done. ”

“ I had been to Athens out of curiosity, because I wanted to see, and, for the same reason, I'd worked my passage about the Greek islands in a steam-yacht that carried expensive tourists, and when the summer came, I'd been dumped down at Alexandria. This was in the nineties, when Egypt was beginning to revive. It wasn't the place it's become since; still, it was good enough. I didn't like Alexandria; too European, too Levantine, for my taste. Good spot to make money in or bathe in the sea, but otherwise dull; so I pushed on to Cairo and found a job. ”

“ The first time she went driving in one of our coupés it was with her mother-in-law, and they were first going shopping and then they would pay a visit at another harim out at Abbassia. Bhe was well satisfied with the carriage I sent her and its pair of well-matched grays, and the flowers I had placed in a bracket. It was 'très chic,' she said; but perhaps one day she would go alone; for she wanted to see me; to see me with her own eyes. She was not particularly backward. They never are, these Eastern women; for love is their business, the business of their lives. ”

“ No one in her world had ever done any work that mattered, even in politics, or in the philanthropy that often occupies our own aristocracy. She was like a flower growing in a garden, a bird singing in a tree; but safe and secluded in her gilded cage, guarded by old women and eunuchs and hidden behind high walls. ”

“ There is no mystery in the East with all those people watching; and to me, the interloper, they would be more than hostile. There was Abdul, our head man, religious and fanatical. Sometimes I wondered what he knew, as his eyes followed me those afternoons when I escaped; and, perhaps, Hamouda, the eunuch, too, had his suspicions. Twice I had been delayed, arriving late at Madame Sangrano's villa, and had passed the carriage as it waited.
"One day Ziba rang me up and I went to the telephone. 'I fear; I fear everything!' she cried. Taher has been told. You must pay a Greek to kill him ”

“ Ziba's eyes had been in the small of my back throughout that drive as she sat munching the chocolates or putting one of the roses to her veil; and I had seen little enough of her, except in the few times when I had turned to take her orders. Always she spoke in Arabic, but when we came again to the Taher palace and it was time to separate, disregarding the ungainly Hamouda, she stepped out of the carriage, and, stopping for a moment as though to look at my ponies, she turned her bright eyes full on me, and finding her words in English, 'You are all sweetness,' she said ”

“ And one day I said to her, 'You would be unhappy with me there; only a rich man could take you to Europe and give you the life to which you are accustomed.' She was so helpless and so remote from our material struggles and our strange society of women who are much like men and move quite freely in the world. ”

“ He settled his business easily and the French lady led him out again. She was to ring for her coupé whenever she wanted it and Taher Bey would settle the bill. That was understood.
"I bowed them out, and though I maintained a professional secrecy, Ziba, in her harim, took three days to discover this new transaction; for though all these ladies are locked up and presumably remote from the world, they seem to know more about its intimate happenings than such as run free. She was not the least bit jealous. Taher was nothing much to her now and he could do as he pleased. ”

“ But it was no dream; for soon she was cooing softly in the telephone. I wonder whether anybody heard us at the exchange. We were mad; utterly and gloriously mad, the two of us, that morning twenty-something years ago.
"A curious double life began for us. Outwardly we lived in our respective worlds; I with my horses and stables and Gyppo drivers, and Marini coming in to collect the money and flatter me for the great success I had made of it; and she secluded in her harim beyond Bab Ul Luk. But once or twice a week we could steal off and meet in secret at the Maltese woman's villa. ”

“ She did not tell me her name, but she told me that she was a Moslem lady in a harim; that life was very wearisome; that she had been to Constantinople and that she longed to go to Europe; that she had had a French governess and had studied English; and that she lived in a house near the ministries beyond Bab Ul Luk. She said that she was guarded by her mother-in-law and by eunuchs and that she would like to talk to me whenever she could. ”

“ I had a premonition.
"'Taher Bey has found us out and Madame Taher is gone. They say she has been poisoned; but who will ever know? I have it from a woman of her household. That is all I can tell you. It is dangerous to meddle with these Moslem women, most dangerous. Hamouda, the eunuch, must have spied on us. It has cost me money to discover so much. But there are other ladies in Cairo—Europeans—I have a little friend—'
"'Here is your money,' I interrupted her. She bade me au revoir and I was left alone. What she had said was doubtless true. The walls that surrounded Ziba had closed on her. ”

“ Arab art reached its climax here, could go no farther; it has never reached that perfection since, will never touch it or come near it. Coldly, you may realize that the thing is mathematics, an arrangement of lines and curves, and lacking the warm humanism we breathe into our masterpieces. ”

“ When you're the only white man among crowds and crowds of natives you'll understand what I mean.
"The old Moslem city beyond the Ezbekiah and ending at the tombs and gates and flowing round the Citadel fascinated and lured me. This world was new to me as it was to you. We lived close by Kasr-el-Nil, all dull and European and I would get on a tram and hop off at Gamamiz or the junction outside the Mousky, and then I'd prowl. One walked a few yards and Europe was ended. At first I used a guide-book with a map and found the great mosques. ”

“ We were cozily aloft, up in my chambers in the Temple, the fire burning the curtains drawn and smoke and refreshment easily to hand.
"Let's hear about the lady of the harim,' I had said "the one I missed." For I'd seen dozens of them, driving about in white and semi-transparent veils, black silk overalls, or whatever they call the costume. They were mostly eyes, those ladies; and some looked exquisite and very much like delicate birds. I had just had time to see them and surrender.
"Yes, they look nice," admitted Vignolles, dubiously. "Most things look nice out in the East," he added ”

“ And the great heat came and the sand-storms that mark the turning of the year. The tourists had all departed; Cairo was emptying. Ziba would have sent me word had she too gone.
"I called on Madame Sangrano. She could gain admission to the house and find out what had happened. I begged her to do so. She promised and named her price. She was a rare old bloodsucker; and I lingered for a space in her low, squat villa with the two rooms she had left clear for us all haunted by the. presence of the woman who now seemed lost. It hurt me to be there; it hurt me to be idle. ”

“ It was all very nice and cool till one came out into the sunlight after one's morning's work. And then Cairo blazed away at you; the whole city had become an oven; your strength departed; and yon could just manage to crawl on to the tram and crawl off again when it stopped quite close to the door of that hospitable Mrs. Todd. Her husband had a job at the Tanzim. It's the department that tries to keep the place clean—rather a business with everybody chewing sugar-cane and eating melon and throwing what they can't swallow into the street. There were Mrs. Todd and her husband and the two children ”

“ You will pay me one pound Egyptian. It is very little.'
"All that was agreed. I would have agreed to anything. Two days later Ziba rang me up and told me that at six o'clock in the evening she would be at Zeitoun. I closed my office early and took the train. She came by road and in one of our carriages.
"I was drinking my first cup of tea with the stout Maltese who called herself an Italian when Ziba was announced and the Syrian servant girl showed her in to us. Outside stood the coupé with its two Arabs, and Hamouda, the black eunuch, seated on the box. ”

“ This Marini was an enterprising chap. He owned a second-rate hotel, a third-rate music-hall, a gambling-house, an Oriental carpet shop, and various other trifles. With the tourist season approaching, he had decided on a further venture. It was before the days of cars and the internal-combustion engine. He proposed to open a first-class livery-stable where the tourists could hire carriages and horses. It was all to be done very smartly—Arab ponies, open coupés, and a bright dress for the drivers. He had bought the coupés in Paris, and he could lay his hand on stables, horse-flesh, and the men. ”

“ The old woman had taken these and placed them in a jar of water. Now Ziba had come in and she had changed her outdoor things and put on a new dress of palest yellow silk. She wished I could see her in it. It was cut low and she wore no corsets. It was only old women or fat women who needed corsets, or the mothers of many children; but she was young. Soon I would see how young she was. Her mother-in-law was going on a visit to Alexandria and then it might be contrived.
"I shall be in the carriage alone,' she said two days after this ”

“ Those hours were the realities of our two lives; the rest, illusion and a dream. Sometimes we looked ahead, trying to arrive at a future; but, in truth, we were two children caught up in a net. We made plans to escape it.
"The mother-in-law had come back from her visit to Alexandria; Taher's own horses were recovered and a second coupé was no longer required. Our meetings became more difficult.
"'I will pay a Greek to stab my husband,' Ziba once proposed ”