He is afraid of me.

  Paul realised it with a rush of elation. It was the first time in his life anyone had ever been afraid of him. Paul savoured the feeling, like strong sweet wine. It made him feel invincible.

  Maybe the sergeant felt it, too. He turned away and spat at the girl. A glob of spittle landed on her hair and dribbled down onto her dress.

  ‘Putain,’ he swore.

  Then, with a twitch of his head, he beckoned his comrades and stalked off down the alley.

  The girl stayed where she was. She stared at Paul, wide-eyed, her whole body shivering despite the heat. She did not even move to pull down her dress, but left it bunched above her thighs where the sergeant had lifted it.

  Horrified, Paul realised he was still holding the gun. She thought he was pointing it at her. He lowered it quickly, smiling like an idiot to show he meant no harm.

  The girl stared at him a moment longer, unwilling to trust him. Paul took two steps back, arms out in innocence.

  ‘You are safe now.’

  The girl wriggled her body so that her dress fell back down to her feet. She picked up a scarf that the sergeant must have torn off, and tied it over her head, sweeping her hair back off her face. Paul caught his breath. She was beautiful, on the cusp of womanhood, with pouting lips and round cheeks and those wide, innocent eyes.

  She saw Paul staring and lowered her gaze. Paul felt ashamed.

  ‘I am Paul,’ he said, pointing to himself. She didn’t understand. ‘Paul,’ he repeated.

  ‘Abasi,’ she said, pointing to herself. And then, ‘Shukraan.’

  Shukraan was one of the few Arabic words Paul had learned. It meant ‘thank you’.

  ‘You are welcome,’ he said awkwardly. It sounded horribly trite, no recognition of the ordeal she had faced.

  Silence hung between them. Abasi stared at Paul, as if she expected something, but even if he could have spoken her language, he was utterly tongue-tied.

  You are safe, he wanted to say. I will protect you.

  The memory of the way the sergeant had looked at him – the fear of his power – glowed warm inside him. He wanted more. But how to explain that to the girl?

  She grabbed his hand. Her fingers were slim and soft. Before Paul could ask what she was doing, she pulled him down the alley and back out into the light and bustle of the bazaar. If anyone had ideas about what a Frenchman and a local girl might have been doing in a back alley, it did not distract them from their business.

  Abasi led Paul out of the market, walking beside him and half a step ahead. As they carried on through Cairo’s narrow streets, Paul saw the groups of soldiers on street corners turn to look at Abasi – even under a headscarf, her beauty was captivating – but when they saw Paul alongside her they turned away.

  Again, Paul felt a glow of power. She was with him. She was protected.

  Abasi led him to a crowded tenement near the al-Azhar mosque. A stout woman in a black dress ran out the moment they arrived, embracing Abasi to her bosom even as she chided her in a stream of scolding Arabic. From this, Paul gathered she was Abasi’s mother. Half a dozen children of different ages leaned out of the doorway, watching the entertainment, while from inside came the smell of cooking.

  Abasi’s mother pulled back and fixed Paul with a suspicious look. Paul smiled and gave a little bow; again, he wished he knew what to say. But Abasi spoke urgently; there was no missing the passion in her voice. Her mother’s gaze softened. She hugged Abasi again, kissing the top of her head, then ushered her inside the house. Just as Abasi crossed the threshold she glanced back, and the look on her face was something Paul had never seen before. More than gratitude: it was adoration.

  Abasi’s mother gave Paul another appraising look. She pressed a finger against the cheekbone below her right eye, then the left, and said something Paul did not understand.

  ‘Pardon?’ Paul spread his arms in the universal gesture of ignorance.

  ‘You.’

  She pointed at him, then at the sun, then made a circular motion with her hand. Lastly she pointed back to the house.

  ‘You want me to come back tomorrow?’

  How she knew if he had understood, Paul had no idea. Evidently she was satisfied – or perhaps she simply wouldn’t waste any more time on the conversation. She shooed him away and went inside, leaving Paul with a confused grin on his face, and the memory of Abasi’s final gaze making him long for tomorrow.

  *

  ‘Bonaparte will visit the pyramids tomorrow,’ Lefebvre said that evening. ‘The engineers intend to blow them open with gunpowder.’

  He stroked Paul’s face, and Paul forced himself not to recoil. He remembered the way it had felt aiming the pistol at the sergeant in the alley. The memory was so vivid it made him shiver.

  Lefebvre misread the emotion. ‘You like that, my pet? Then you can come with us. We will be the first men to see inside for four thousand years. Who knows what we might find?’

  Paul fought back his hatred.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said humbly.

  But the next morning he did not rise from his bed.

  ‘I am sick,’ he pleaded from under his sheets. ‘My bowels were running like a tap all night.’

  Lefebvre made a face. ‘I warned you not to eat food from the market. A pity. You will miss the pyramids.’

  ‘They’ve waited four thousand years. I am sure they can wait a little longer.’ Paul groaned. ‘You will have to make some good pictures for me to see.’

  As soon as Lefebvre was away, Paul rose and dressed. He wrapped a robe around his clothes and draped it over his head in the local style, so that he would not be recognised. Cairo’s streets were a labyrinth, but he had made careful notes the day before. With only a few false turns, he soon found himself back at Abasi’s house.

  This time, her mother escorted him inside. There were only two rooms, partitioned by a curtain. Abasi was waiting in one of them, while her family – a great many children, aunts and uncles – crowded into the other. Abasi wore a plain blue dress, with a scarf tied demurely over her head.

  Paul seated himself on a cushion opposite Abasi. Her mother withdrew. An awkward silence fell on the room. Not a sound came from the other side of the curtain: Paul could feel the whole family listening intently. But what could he say?

  Paul gazed at Abasi.

  ‘You are beautiful,’ he said impulsively.

  Abasi stared uncomprehendingly. She had painted her eyelids black, making her young eyes seem rounder, more innocent.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Paul repeated.

  Frustration crept into his voice; Abasi heard it and took it for anger. She shrank away.

  Almost without thinking, Paul pulled out his sketchbook and started to draw. A sinuous line captured Abasi’s profile, from the angle of her cheek through the contours of her neck and shoulders, her waist, her hips and down to her feet. A second line added the flow of her hair.

  He showed it to Abasi and she gasped. Only two lines, yet it captured her beauty and energy better than any oil painting.

  ‘Do you like it?’ he asked.

  Again, she did not understand. He pointed to the picture, then to her. He made a smile, then a frown, then a quizzical face.

  She smiled. She took the paper from his hands and studied it, delight flooding her face. She turned the paper over to the blank side and tapped it, miming drawing with a pencil.

  ‘You want me to draw you again?’

  She nodded.

  This time, Paul took his time. He drew her eyes first, wide open, staring boldly off the page. He shaded in her eyelids, and the dimples in her cheeks. He sketched her full lips with their slight pout, the wisp of her hair that tucked out from behind her ear. Although he drew her clothed, he shaded the folds of her dress so subtly that it seemed to reveal her figure beneath. It was almost more shocking than if he had drawn her naked.

  He was lost in the moment. He felt as if, in tracing her shape with his pencil, he was running his own hands over her. He did not notice the time pass. She stayed motionless and never once complained.

  When he had finished, he passed her the drawing. She stared at it for a long time, then clasped it to her chest, gazing at Paul with her wide-open eyes.

  Paul wished she could express that look in words. He wished he could say everything that was in his heart. But . . .

  The curtains swished as her mother entered with coffee on a tray. Their private time was up. She banged the cups down, then took up position in the corner like a sphinx guarding a temple.

  Abasi rolled up the drawing and slipped it inside her dress before her mother saw it. Paul stood and bowed.

  ‘Thank you for your hospitality,’ he said.

  *

  He was not naive. He could see why Abasi’s mother allowed him into her home. France was the power in Cairo, and if Abasi had a French protector, then she would be safer from the predations of the occupiers. He didn’t care. He visited her every day. He spent hours with her, sketching her from every angle, making love to her with his eyes. She was like cool flowing water, answering a thirst he could never slake.

  Weeks passed. From headquarters, a string of bold edicts proclaimed the great success of the French regime. On the streets, and in the bazaars, the army knew matters were not nearly so rosy. Murad Bey, the Mameluke commander who had escaped after the Battle of the Pyramids, was still at large somewhere to the south with the rump of his army. In his absence, he had become a hero to the Egyptians. Every night, his name would appear daubed on mosques and public buildings in black paint. However often the French effaced it, the next morning it would appear again.

  Then news of a terrible defeat came to Cairo, that Admiral Nelson had fallen upon the French fleet at the mouth of the Nile and destroyed it utterly. Of fourteen ships of the line, only two had escaped; more than four thousand men had been killed or captured. At the height of the battle, Bonaparte’s great flagship, the Orient, had caught fire. Her hold had stored enough powder to conquer India. When it lit, the explosion blew the ship to pieces. The force of it sent debris flying up to half a mile away.

  Paul remembered the beautiful ship he had sketched in Toulon harbour, and was sad for the loss. Then he thought of the degradations Lefebvre had inflicted on him below her decks and was secretly glad that she had been expunged from the Earth.

  After the battle, the name ‘Courtney’ was on everybody’s lips, spoken with a mix of dread and admiration. It was the English captain’s heroics which had broken the French line and made the victory possible. Again, Paul felt the strange resonance of the name. In the mess, he had to put up with any number of jokes and teasing. He absorbed it the same way he took all indignities, enduring what he must.

  Whatever dreams Bonaparte had harboured of marching to India, they had died that night in Aboukir bay under Captain Courtney and Admiral Nelson’s guns. The challenge for the French army now was how they would even get back to France. The only man who did not see the danger was Bonaparte. To retreat would be to shatter the myth of invincibility which he had cultivated so assiduously. Weeks turned to months. The men lapsed into a stupor, miserable with boredom and homesick, while the locals sharpened their knives and bided their time. Egypt had seen many would-be conquerors over the centuries. Her people knew how to wait them out.

  One of the few men immune to the malaise was Paul. All he could think about was Abasi. Cairo was still not safe for a woman on her own, so he visited often. She was teaching him Arabic. He would sit beside her with his sketchbook and draw: he would say the French word, then she would repeat it in Arabic. He wrote down the words she said phonetically, lying awake late in the nights, reciting them until he knew them by heart.

  It was a chaste affair. Abasi’s mother saw to that. When they sat in her house, Paul could always hear her washing pots or grinding meal behind the thin curtain. Sometimes she allowed Paul to escort Abasi to the market, or to take a walk by the river, but there was always one of Abasi’s younger siblings scampering behind them. Every time he came, Paul brought gifts – tobacco, or cloth, or food he had purloined from the battalion stores. Abasi’s mother accepted them with a nod of thanks – and still kept her guard.

  At first, he did not mind. Simply being with Abasi was enough, the glow he got from her shy smile and her beauty. But as the weeks wore on, a frustration began to mount inside him. He wanted more. When her hand brushed his, it was like a flint hitting steel and striking sparks of desire inside him. At night, with Lefebvre’s sweaty body on top of him, he was shocked to find himself thinking about Abasi. She was so pure and good, what sort of man was he to think of her in such a vile moment?

  Did she feel the same way? Most of the time, with her demure expression and downcast eyes, it was impossible to tell. But sometimes, if he had been concentrating for a time on his drawing, he would look up and catch her gaze darting away like a startled bird vanishing into a bush. When they sat side by side, her leg seemed to squeeze against his with more pressure than was necessitated by the width of the seat.

  Not knowing how she felt about him drove him almost out of his wits. Hoping she might reciprocate his affections was almost too much to bear. For days, Paul racked his brains for a way he could be alone with Abasi. His schemes grew wilder and wilder, each one conceived in hope and discarded in despair. His moods swung from heights of joy to black depression.

  He neglected his work for the Commission. Leaving Cairo meant risking ambush or death, but Lefebvre was a hard taskmaster who would not let him stay idle. Paul used every excuse he could think of. He feigned illness, and came back with tales of lost sketches and paints that had dried out. Once, he gave himself a black eye to convince Lefebvre he had been attacked and robbed of his work. But Lefebvre grew suspicious.

  One day, Paul and Lefebvre were in the market when Lefebvre knocked into an orange-seller, spilling his fruit. The orange-seller was furious. He would have attacked Lefebvre, but Paul managed to slip between them and calm the man down.

  ‘He is a general, very important,’ Paul explained in his halting Arabic. ‘If you hit him, they will shoot you. Think of your family,’ he pleaded.

  The man backed down, muttering words under his breath that Paul had never learned.

  ‘I did not know you could speak their language,’ Lefebvre remarked afterwards. ‘I wonder who you have been learning from.’

  ‘I picked it up,’ Paul mumbled.

  ‘You always were a quick learner.’ Lefebvre cocked his head and gave Paul a penetrating look. ‘Do not forget, you are my creature. I am not willing to share you with anyone.’

  *

  Paul had to get away from Lefebvre. He had to be with Abasi. When they went out that evening, walking along the Nile’s banks with one of Abasi’s sisters trailing behind them, he was in a black and sullen mood. Abasi could feel the frustration shimmering off him. She moved away, putting careful space between them, which made Paul even more miserable.

  They bought figs from a vendor, their purple skins bulging with ripeness. Abasi slit them with her long fingernail and peeled them back to reveal the fruit inside. She pressed them to her mouth, prying off every last piece of the flesh. Paul took a bite, but his senses were numb: it was like paper on his tongue. He tossed the half-eaten fruit away.

  Suddenly Abasi turned and ran back. Paul felt a twinge of despair, but she only went about ten paces. She kneeled down in front of the sister who had been following them, gave her a fig and whispered urgently to her. The girl ran off.

  Abasi returned, a strange shy look on her face. She took Paul’s hand and led him around the corner of a crumbling old grain warehouse that overlooked the river. Beetles scattered out of their path.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Abasi put his face in her hands. She stared up at him, her kohl-rimmed eyes so wide he thought he could fall into them. The smell of jasmine enveloped him, and he realised she was wearing perfume. Her lips glistened sticky red from the figs she had eaten.

  Delicately, she leaned up and kissed him.

  A shock went through Paul’s body like a bolt of lightning. Her mouth tasted of cloves and sugar. Her tongue was soft and moist. He wanted it to last forever.

  The moment she pulled back, Paul’s need for her rose even stronger. Tasting her had not sated the need inside him, but only made him desire more.

  ‘I love you,’ said Paul, and though they were not words he had taught her, he could see she understood. ‘I want to be with you forever. You.’

  He put Abasi’s hand in his and pressed it to his heart. She nodded, then lifted it away and cupped his hand against her breast.

  ‘You,’ she repeated. ‘Me . . . love you.’

  The touch of her breast under his hand made Paul unsteady. He could feel the heat through the thin fabric, the softness. He leaned to kiss her again, his hands reaching inside her dress.

  Abasi drew back.

  ‘I cannot,’ she gasped, though the heat of her body said otherwise. ‘Not . . .’

  She twined her index fingers around each other, making a knot.

  ‘Married?’

  ‘Married. We not married.’

  ‘Then marry me,’ he urged.

  It seemed the most obvious thing in the world. A priest, an imam, an army chaplain – he did not care. He wanted to be with her for the rest of his life.

  Abasi squirmed and wouldn’t meet his eye.

  ‘You go,’ she said.

  ‘You want me to go?’

  Paul felt he’d been stabbed in the heart. He pulled away, but Abasi held him fast. She pointed to the river, where the great Nile flowed into a distant haze.

  ‘You go.’

  ‘You mean I will go back to France?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They stared into each other’s eyes, filled with love and longing. Down by the river, a fisherman watched them embrace. Otherwise, they were in their own private world.

  ‘I will not go.’

  Bonaparte had lost the war. When his army departed, they would not notice a few soldiers who fell by the wayside. Paul could desert, be free of Lefebvre and the army, and live in Cairo. For the first time in years he would have a home. He could see his future in Egypt as clear as if he had painted it.