Dreamers of the Day (22 page)

Detective Sergeant Thompson was easy to pick out in the multitude, since he stood a good deal taller than your average man, English or Egyptian. Moving in his direction, I waved to him and called, “Are you going to make the climb?”

He opened his mouth, closed it, started again to say something, and thought better of it. “No,” he said finally, and carefully, and quietly. “I feel like I’ve been beaten with clubs.” He started to jerk his head toward Churchill in the distance, but winced and curtailed the gesture. “At least he’s decided we won’t go on to Sakhara after all. Just the bloody Sphinx, then back to the hotel.”

Indeed, merely walking around to the other side of pyramid was more than enough exercise to satisfy the most athletic and ambitious among our party. The stepped pyramid at Sakhara was impressively visible to the south and I’m sure it was very interesting, but it was all I could do to hobble the last little distance to the Sphinx, where our camels would be waiting for us.

To make even that small additional effort seemed unlikely to be worth the trouble but, once again our pain was rewarded by the stunning difference between anticipation and reality. The Sphinx is larger, more somber, and more surprising than one can prepare for, no matter how familiar its image. Its body was said to be that of a lion at rest, though it looked to me like a monumental Labrador retriever. Each huge paw was fully fifty feet long, by my pacing measurement. The head would require a three-story house to contain its volume; the ears alone are just over four feet from top to bottom. Sadly and famously, its nose is mutilated, but the face remains quite beautiful. With the impassive dignity of a handsome Negro man, its stony eyes have seen empire after empire rise and fall, and disappear into the desert.

“Yoo-hoo!” In a parking lot nearby, Lady Cox was waving a hankie to get my attention. “Miss Shanklin, where is everyone?” she called in a shrill voice that cut like a train whistle through the sightseers’ babble.

I picked my way across the sand. Lady Cox and I exchanged stories. Mine was filled with discomfort and wonderment, hers with boredom and annoyance. “I’ve been waiting hours,” she complained.

“We’re going to have a photograph,” Clementine called out just then. “Everyone! Get back on the camels for the picture!”

There was a fair amount of French commentary on that notion. We were all wretched. Hips, shoulders, back, knees—everything ached, and every point of contact with the saddle felt raw. Joints and muscles had begun to seize up like a Model T engine after its crankcase has jolted apart on a stretch of rutted road. I hated to think what I would find when I undressed. Blisters, boils, bruises…

Nevertheless, most of the British remounted at Clementine’s request, and that photo is in the history books. There we all are: the people who invented the modern Middle East and those who came along, or fell in with them by chance. The Sphinx is nearby, the pyramids in the distance. You can see Clementine and Winston, Miss Bell, Colonel Lawrence, and Sergeant Thompson high on camelback, along with several officers in uniform. I hung back, shy as always of being photographed. Clementine insisted, so I hurried over and stood next to Lady Cox. You can see the two of us, on foot, off to the left. We are standing next to an Arab whose name we did not ask.

Mercifully, Lady Cox offered me a ride back to Cairo in the consulate car; I accepted with gratitude. When young Davis asked, “Did you enjoy the day, miss?” I hardly knew what to say, for if the world offers a more lacerating, bone-shattering, muscle-wrenching mode of transportation than riding a camel, I never discovered it. And yet, memories of that day are among the most vivid of my time in Egypt. Indeed, they remained among the most vivid of my life, and I would not have traded them for an experience more comfortable or luxurious.

I returned to the Continental Hotel early that evening in a state of utter aching affliction. Karl was the very soul of understanding and lifted Rosie into my arms for her delirious greeting when he realized I was too stiff and sore to bend over and pick her up myself.

“
Ach!
Agnes! I well remember my own first journey on a camel,” he said, and insisted I take some aspirin immediately. He’d had my room tidied. The morning’s flowers were artlessly arranged in a lovely faience vase. “A gift,” he said. “Rosie and I found it in a shop this afternoon.”

While Karl ordered something from room service, I retreated to the bathroom. Within minutes I was nude, as I had imagined I’d be early that morning, but soaking alone in a tub of warm, scented water that Karl had drawn for me himself. Half an hour later, Rosie announced the arrival of room service, and I climbed, whimpering, out of the water. A light supper was waiting for me when I hobbled out of the bathroom, tying the belt of my silk wrapper over my nightie.

The sun set. I ate an omelette. Karl prepared a pipe and listened while I told him everything I could recall of what Miss Bell had said. In one way, to share it all seemed homey and natural, and brought to mind the evenings when Mumma and Papa had discussed their plans to begin a business together. At the same time, it was exciting to feel a part of something clandestine and important.

It was premature to draw out the British ground troops, Karl thought. “Trenchard will need a year at least to build the air bases. The army should remain for now.” He was also wary of the man the British had decided to work with on the Arabian Peninsula. Ibn Saud openly wished to conquer the Hejaz and Mesopotamia, Karl told me. His goal was to spread Wahabism, an ascetic form of Islam to which no one outside his tribe adhered.

“Can the British truly believe that ten thousand pounds a month will buy Ibn Saud’s friendship? They’ll simply end up financing the trouble he makes for them. What a pity that Sufi Muslims are outnumbered!” he remarked. “No one thinks of them, but the Middle East would be better if they ran it.”

He was also quite gloomy about Miss Bell’s map. “This Iraq of hers makes no sense—politically, tribally, religiously.”

“Miss Bell seemed to think that Lawrence’s friend Feisal could bring the region together,” I said.

“Perhaps, for a time, but all men are mortal. What will happen when Feisal dies? A very real civil war, I fear, to end a very artificial state. No,” Karl said decisively, “I see nothing to be gained by Miss Bell’s new boundaries, and I am surprised Lawrence compromised on this. His plan was sensible. Keep the three Ottoman districts separate: Kurds in the north, Sunni in the middle, Shi’a in the south. Unless…” Puffing on his pipe, Karl looked out the window toward the deepening aquamarine where a thumbnail moon was rising. “Perhaps the idea is to play the Kurds off against the Arabs and the Persians. Cox may believe he can use native rivalries to prevent them from organizing a resistance against British influence.”

Karl sat for a time, lost in thought, and when he came to himself, he seemed slightly boggled. “And so! Just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “The Treaty of Sèvres is abrogated: no homeland for the Kurds after all. And nothing for the Armenians. Two nations, brushed aside in the name of compromise.” He lifted the teapot and topped off my cup before asking, “And what of Palestine?”

“No one mentioned it.”

“Odd. I heard that Sir Herbert Samuel arrived for the negotiations yesterday. He’s the high commissioner for the Palestine Protectorate.”

I thought back, but nothing came to mind. “I don’t recall hearing that name at all, but—Oh, I keep forgetting! Lawrence has invited me to come with the British party that’s visiting Palestine!”

I expected Karl’s usual response:
Agnes, you must go!
Instead, his face clouded over. “I’m not certain this is a good idea, Agnes. Churchill is unpopular here, but he is truly hated in Palestine.”

“Do you think I should decline?” I chewed a bit of buttered toast, trying not to look delighted at the idea of staying here with Karl. “Lawrence wanted to show me where my sister used to teach, in Jebail, just north of Beirut. That’s where he and Lillie met before the war, but perhaps you could take me there instead?”

He said nothing, and there it was again: a silence that felt like punishment. Even a few seconds distressed me, and the old habit of appeasement and ingratiation reasserted itself, as though a switch had been thrown.

“Karl,” I said tentatively, “wouldn’t it be useful to you? If I were to go with them, I mean? People just talk to me. I don’t think they realize…”

“…that you are a woman of intelligence?” he suggested.

“Well, I guess I just look so harmless, nobody imagines—And really, I just listen, but maybe I—I could—I could be useful.”

“Mother’s little helper.” With a deep breath, he looked away, deliberating. At last he made up his mind. “Lawrence would not have invited you, I think, if he were not confident that you will come to no harm. All right,” Karl agreed. “You must be careful, but yes! This is an extraordinary opportunity.” There was a long moment while he held my gaze, and then he added, “For both of us, I think.” And I felt a sort of bone-deep relief, as though Mumma had told me that she was pleased by a gift I’d given her.

While I finished my supper, we discussed the vagaries of traveling with Rosie. She certainly made everything more complicated, but I could not have imagined leaving her at home in Ohio. “And if you had, we never should have met,” Karl said. “So I am glad that you brought your
wursthund
with you.” In the end, we decided that Rosie would be perfectly happy to let Karl feed her sausage for a few days. He had business in Alexandria, but she could easily come with him on the train, whereas things were likely to be much less flexible on a British diplomatic excursion to one of the empire’s embattled protectorates.

Karl would make arrangements for the concierge to help me pack for the trip to Palestine tomorrow; the bulk of my belongings would be stored while I was gone. “And when you come back to Cairo, what would you say to a voyage up the Nile?” Karl asked, his eyes sparkling. “It is the least I can do for such a helpful friend.”

“That would be
wonderful,
” I said.

“It’s settled, then! Would you like more tea? No? Have you had quite enough to eat? Yes? Then it is time for you to rest.”

He turned down the bedcovers and gently took the robe from my shoulders, offering a steady arm as I climbed groaningly into the bed. Rosie, boosted up beside me, promptly nosed her way under the sheets, settling against my aching, blistered hip.

“I’ll come round for her in the morning,” Karl said softly, turning out the light. I heard the door latch click when he left, and nothing more after that.

I suppose you’re wondering if I was disappointed to be retiring alone that evening. After all, just that morning, I had made up my mind to—well, you know.

To tell the truth, I was rather relieved. Yes, of course, “Birds do it, bees do it,” as the song goes, but it was not so easy to throw off the fear that decades of spinsterhood had rested upon, and reinforced. Since Papa died, I had lived by the maxim “You can because you must.” Duties, tasks. Self-control, self-denial.

To delay a little longer—to wait a week or so for the next step—that seemed the better part of valor. Under the circumstances, then, to be fussed over and tucked into bed was not merely sweet but entirely satisfying—for the time being, at least.

When I get back from Palestine, I’ll be ready, I thought. And I slept very soundly that night.

         
M
OST DOGS, WHEN THEY MEET YOUR EYES
, intend to intimidate you. For example, when a collie stares, he is giving an order:
Be quiet, you! Go stand in that group where you belong!
All the world’s a flock of sheep, to a collie.

Not so with dachshunds. Dachshunds gaze. When a dachshund like Rosie looks softly into your eyes, her sweet expression seems to say that you are the most important person she has ever met in her whole life. Moreover, she considers it a high honor and distinct privilege to be your pet. She’s only being nice. Within that absurd tubular body beats the heart of a princess. She gazes at you to demonstrate the very devotion she expects, but she is also issuing a warning:
If you leave me home alone, you’ll be sorry.

Abandon a dachshund and upon your return, you may well be confronted with a small token of her displeasure. This, for the dachshund, is an undignified but necessary form of training. Eventually, you will learn your lesson, which is to take her with you everywhere. When you have finally accepted this, you will be generously rewarded for your good behavior by a jaunty, joyful companion.

I was an exceedingly well-trained subject. Leaving Rosie with Karl was awful. “I can’t stand it. Look at that face! Look at those eyes!”

“She’ll be fine,” Karl insisted, kissing my forehead. “She’ll have many walks and an entire sausage every day.”

“Don’t overfeed her.”

“Agnes, you’re going to be late for the train.”

“You be a good girl, Rosie. I promise, I’ll come back.”

“Agnes, if you don’t make a fuss, she won’t be upset. Into the taxi with you!”

Reluctantly, I did as I was told. Rosie, by contrast, set off happily with Karl on their first walk of the morning, her meaty little hindquarters sashaying gaily down the street. She never looked back, and as the taxi turned onto the bridge, it was I who had to reconcile myself to the separation.

The cab picked up speed and I watched the city slide by. Cairo was slow to awaken: dawn not so much greeted as slept through. Despite the wailing calls to prayer from every minaret, the commercial boulevards remained nearly empty until noon. A donkey cart loaded with dates might clip-clop along a road. A baker’s deliveryman might bicycle across a square, balancing a huge tray of fresh bread on his head while he pedaled. A sweet-potato seller might pass, pushing his rumbling wagon toward a market. Then quiet would descend again.

Thus, my taxi had hardly any competition in the streets that separated the Continental Hotel from the main Cairo train station. I smiled, thinking back to my adventures on the dragoman’s cart, amazed to realize that just ten days had passed since Rosie and I arrived here. In that short time, I had hobnobbed with diplomats, explored the great Egyptian Museum, sipped coffee with a child-bride’s husband, ridden a camel to the pyramids, and met the love of my life. One could hardly ask for more from a vacation, I thought giddily. And now, it was on to Palestine, and to the Lebanon beyond!

I paid the cabbie and followed the sound of British voices to the train. Passengers were assembling on the main platform, and the place was crawling with British soldiers. Suddenly, I found my path decisively barred, and though the soldiers were quieter about excluding me than the doorman at the Semiramis, they were equally determined, and I had nothing to prove I’d been invited. The longer we discussed the matter, the more likely I was to miss the train, and I’m afraid I raised my voice when pointing that out. To my relief, Detective Sergeant Thompson emerged from one of the first-class cars and saw the difficulty I was in. I expected him to come to my rescue, but he scowled and stalked toward me like an unusually menacing heron.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

I glanced over my shoulder. There was nobody behind me. “I—I’m going to Palestine.”

He looked flabbergasted. “Is this Churchill’s idea? I don’t care if it is—I won’t take a chance on exposing you to that kind of danger.”

“But I was invited!”

I meant to repeat Karl’s logic: that Lawrence wouldn’t have asked me to come along if there were any serious danger. It seemed, however, that I was merely the latest in a series of infuriating events in Thompson’s morning. Before I could say anything further, the sergeant gripped my elbow with one large hand and steered me off to the side of the platform.

“Do you see that man over there?” he asked, though it was more of a command. “That is Russell Pasha, the chief of police here in Cairo. The man next to him is Sir Herbert Samuel. He runs Palestine. Do they look relaxed, miss? Do they look like we’re off on a holiday excursion?” I opened my mouth, but Thompson continued: “No! They don’t, and why? Because we have reason to believe there will be a serious attempt on Churchill’s life in Gaza. Despite what anyone else says, I am responsible for security on this trip, and if you think I am going to let a lady like you get on that train, you are—”

“My guest, and welcome,” said a low, quick voice just behind us.

I turned and almost dropped my handbag in my surprise. It was Colonel Lawrence, but he was not wrenlike this morning. The trilby hat and the badly cut brown suit were gone, replaced by a rich brocade
burnoose
and heavy white robes. These were cinched at his waist with a tooled and gilded leather belt that held a breathtaking gold dagger in a silver-gilt sheath. The effect was dazzling and, as I took it all in, I expected a self-deprecating giggle from him, or some wry remark about playing dress-up. Instead my eyes met an unwavering blue gaze.

“Different people to impress?” I asked.

“Dressed to kill,” he said, and he meant exactly that. Lawrence noted my tiny shiver. “Thompson’s not overstating the situation, but he’s done his work well,” the colonel said then, inclining his head toward the big man. Thompson crossed massive arms over a broad chest and glowered at the compliment. “Russell Pasha has vetted the driving, signaling, and coupling crews,” Lawrence continued. “We’re sending a pilot train ahead, and there are police details deployed wherever the trains must slow enough to be boarded by unauthorized personnel.”

“Unauthorized personnel,” Thompson muttered. “Assassins, you mean.” He looked at me pleadingly. “That riot near the pyramids was nothing to what we can expect in Palestine, miss. If you insist on coming, I can’t be responsible.”

“I shall be,” said Lawrence. And with that he produced one of his glorious beaming smiles, which were so benign and reassuring it seemed silly to have any qualms at all. When he beckoned, I followed, and the attention of the poor harassed detective was immediately redirected toward some other crisis. Leading me through knots of British officials, Lawrence said, “Thompson’s paid to worry, but I have matters in hand.”

Was that remark bravado? Genuine confidence? A drive to display mastery amid all these diplomats and generals, after weeks of blandishment and coaxing? Though Lawrence gave no sign of it, I suspected that he felt a secret thrill of satisfaction as imposing men in Savile suits and tailored uniforms took note of his approach and, murmuring, gave way. They were on his ground now, dependent on his judgment of the situation. Their lives were in the hands of that small Englishman in outlandish Arab dress. He knew it. So did they.

Inside the train, we headed for a compartment at the trailing end of the third carriage. “If we detonate a mine,” Lawrence said with cheery schoolboy relish, “it’ll take out the engine and coal tender, but you’ll be fine down here. Most likely.”

He was grinning, and I took it as a joke, but it drew goggle-eyed stares from two men Lawrence called “Mutt and Jeff” once we’d squeezed past them. Indeed, they were as mismatched physically as those comic characters—or as Lawrence and Thompson were, for that matter. The tall one, with his long bony limbs and ginger hair, looked like a metal farm implement left to rust in a field. His companion was pink and round, and during the hours of our acquaintance, I don’t believe he ever stopped eating for more than a few minutes. Their uniforms seemed to have been borrowed from someone’s clothesline, but they were officers of the Palestinian Police, Lawrence told me, assigned by Sir Herbert Samuel to help guard Churchill. Even to me, the two of them, fully armed, did not seem a good match for an Arab beggar. No wonder Thompson was worried.

We arrived at the Churchills’ compartment, and Lawrence slid the door open. Winston looked up from sheaves of paper. Clementine, in a chic gray cloche with a black grosgrain ribbon, laid her book down on her lap. Neither seemed surprised to see me in Lawrence’s company. Winston happily inquired about Rosie. Clementine invited me in and introduced me to the uniformed gentleman sitting across from them.

“Lord Trenchard,” I said, offering my hand to the chief of the Royal Air Force, who would soon be counted upon to bomb the new Iraq into existence. “I’ve been hearing your name all week.”

This person acknowledged my existence with a look of puzzlement followed by a funereal smile that consisted of a slight tightening of his cheek muscles. Not a word escaped the man Thompson had called a “good match for the Sphinx,” but he did move slightly away from the window, which I gathered was his way of offering me a seat.

Lawrence left. Clementine, fanning herself quietly, went back to her novel. Winston, merely by adjusting his spectacles, seemed to create a perfectly businesslike office of his surroundings. There was an additional ten minutes of frantic official preparation outside. Finally, with a jolt and a squeal of steam, the locomotive began to drag us through and away from Cairo.

The Israelites fleeing Pharaoh required forty years for that which our train accomplished in a matter of hours. This difference in travel time, I believe, is partly responsible for the distinct dismay so many travelers have felt upon crossing into the Holy Land from Egypt. If one had spent weary decades wandering through sterile
wadis
and scalding plains of baking sand and gravel, then the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea might have seemed an oasis of milk and honey by comparison. But to the modern traveler, especially one accustomed to the rain-swollen streams and the rolling, fertile farmland of Ohio? Palestine was a dreadful letdown.

“It is a hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land,” wrote Mr. Mark Twain—the real one, not Madame Sophie’s gentleman friend back in Cleveland. Its valleys were unsightly, with feeble vegetation. Outlines were harsh with no lavender shadow of clouds, no dreamy blue mist to soften the perspective. The lumpish naked hills, Twain reported, appeared to have committed some terrible sin for which they had been stoned to death.

Fifty-some years later, I saw nothing to amend that dismal assessment. Not even Winston could discern a scene worth painting, and we were there in spring, when the countryside was said to be at its best.

For thirty centuries, “Cut down all the trees!” was every general’s order at the beginning of every siege. Most recently, the British armed forces had cleared half the region’s groves to deny Turks and bandits any cover from which to attack. Before them, the Crusaders had destroyed the land to save it for Christendom. Before them, when Pompey came to take Palestine for Rome, he leveled the forests. Josephus tells us that Titus axed every remaining tree within ten miles of Jerusalem a few decades later. And if any survived the armies, there were the locusts to denude them and goats that climbed into the topmost branches to crop their leaves.

The barrenness of the land was partly why Karl believed the Jewish “Back to Israel” movement was a foreordained failure. “There is no soil or water there,” he’d told me at breakfast that morning. “No coal, or iron. No oil or wood for fuel. Nothing to buy, nothing to sell. Agriculture is all but impossible, manufacturing impractical, business unfeasible. My people value education almost above God, but what can an educated man do in Palestine? Farm rocks and dodge bullets?”

The Repeatedly Promised Land is what Karl called Palestine, and he was not referring to the pledges of Yahweh. With the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British Crown promised the formation of an Israelite national home in Palestine, on what authority one could only wonder. In Karl’s opinion, “It was propaganda, merely. The British knew how many German Jews were fighting for our nation and they hoped to sap our loyalty.” Only a year or so earlier, the secret Sykes-Picot agreement had guaranteed the French a goodly share in the region, even as Colonel Lawrence was promising the Arabs independence in return for their alliance with the British during the war against Turkey and Germany.

In an effort to untangle this knotted skein, the British considered establishing a New Zion in one of their African colonies. Uganda was a healthy, fertile, and beautiful land, and the Jewish leader Herzl was inclined to accept the offer. The idea was dropped for a variety of reasons. “You see, when the Great War began, only Germany manufactured acetone, which is needed to make TNT,” Karl told me. “There was an immigrant Russian living in England when the war broke out—a chemist named Weizmann—and he developed a way to make acetone from horse chestnuts. His claim for the invention was disputed. The Crown eventually granted a patent to an Englishman, but in return for not pressing his suit Weizmann asked that his service to Great Britain be rewarded with a homeland for his people in Palestine.”