The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif

Author:Ahdaf Soueif
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Azizex666, Fiction
ISBN: 9780307783554
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 1999-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

A Beginning of an End

But from these create he can

Forms more real than living man.

P. B. Shelley

Is it Fate? Or the pull of the past? Is the empty, unchanging house easier on the mind than the voices, the points of view, the hope and the despair? Or is it merely a conscientious application to a project?

A bend in the dark stairway. A thin strip of light betraying a door not fully closed.

Two days after her evening at the Atelier, Isabel paid her extra five-pound charge for the camera and slipped through the old doorway and into the cool, echoing courtyard. She shook off her guide with a small gift of money and wandered about the empty house, trying to imagine it as it must have been a hundred years ago with evidence of daily life strewn about the rooms: a ruffled newspaper by the window, a book lying open, a glass of water half drunk, a set of keys on a table, on the floor a pair of slippers left empty when their owner had settled on the divan, tucking her feet comfortably underneath her. Isabel wandered round the house. With her mind she put curtains up on the bare windows and watched them move gently with the breeze. She crumbled incense into the hanging burners and it filled the air with its sweet smell. She turned on the fountains and heard the soft patter of water on the tiles. And above it came the sounds of children playing and women’s voices calling out to them when their play got too rough. From the kitchen below the smell of frying spices and freshly baked bread came wafting into the room. She sat behind the mashrabiyya and watched Sharif Pasha once again stride the great entrance hall, his hands locked behind his back, Anna’s dejected young abductors waiting silently for him to speak. Time and time again she framed a scene in her viewer, adjusted her focus on the empty halls and clicked. She would surprise him with these photographs. She would surprise him with how much she knew.

And now she makes her way down the dark back staircase with its steep steps and as she arrives at the bottom she sees the streak of light. Isabel pushes the door. It opens and she steps out into blinding sunlight. Shading her eyes, screwing them against the glare, she sees that she is in yet another courtyard. Two plain walls enclose it on the right and the left. Straight ahead, it is bounded by a low building crowned with a dusty green dome. A door opens and a woman comes forward. There is something vaguely familiar about the welcoming face, about the loose blue and white garments, about the woman’s posture as she stretches out her arms.

‘Marhab,’ she calls out in a sweet, low-pitched voice. ‘Welcome! We have been waiting for you.’

She stands to one side to let Isabel through the door. A cool room bathed in shadows. To the right, and

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