Pitt rose to his feet and inclined his head in a slight bow. “How do you do. Yes, I am Thomas Pitt. Thank you very much for coming.” He gestured to the other chair, inviting Yacoub to be seated. “May I offer you dinner? The food is excellent, but I daresay you know that.”
“Are you yourself dining?” Yacoub enquired, accepting the seat.
Pitt had already learned in his few days there to be indirect in his speech. Haste gained nothing but contempt. “It would be pleasant,” he replied.
“Then by all means.” Yacoub nodded. “That is most gracious of you.”
Pitt made a few remarks about his interest in the city, commenting on the beauty of some of the parts he had seen, especially the causeway between the old lighthouse and the city.
“I felt as if, were I to close my eyes, then open them suddenly, I might see the Pharos as it was when it was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world,” he said, then felt self-conscious for voicing aloud such a fancy.
But then he saw instantly that Yacoub understood. His face softened with a warmth and he relaxed a little in his seat. He was an Alexandrian and he loved to hear his city praised.
“The causeway is called the Heptastadion,” he explained. “Built by Dinocrates. To the east is where the old harbor of the Middle Ages was. But there are so many other things you must see. If it is the past that interests you, there is the tomb of Alexander the Great. Some say it is beneath the Mosque of Nabi Daniel, others in the necropolis nearby.” He smiled apologetically. “Forgive me if I say too much. I wish to share my city with everyone who looks at it with the eye of friendship. You must walk along the Mahmudiya Canal to the Antoniadis Gardens, where there is history in every handful of the earth. The poet Callinachus lived there, and taught his students, and in 640 A.D. Pompilius prevented the king of Syria from capturing the city.” He shrugged a little. “And there is a Roman tomb,” he finished with a smile, as the waiter presented himself.
“Are you familiar with our food?” Yacoub enquired.
“Very little,” Pitt admitted, willing to allow him to help, both for practicality and courtesy.
“Then I suggest Mulukhiz,” Yacoub replied. “It is a green soup, a great delicacy. You will enjoy it. And then Hamam Mahshi; that is stuffed pigeon.” He looked at Pitt questioningly.
“That would be excellent, thank you,” Pitt agreed.
Pitt asked him further questions about the city until the food was served. They were halfway through the soup, which was indeed delicious, when Yacoub at last raised the subject for which they were met.
“You said that Miss Zakhari was in a certain degree of difficulty,” he said, laying his spoon down for a moment and looking more closely at Pitt. His voice was light, as if they were still discussing the city, but there was an intensity in his eyes.
Pitt was aware that there was an excellent telephone service in the city, more reliable at times than that in London, and it was more than possible that Yacoub already knew of her arrest, and the charges. He must not be caught in a misrepresentation, let alone an outright falsehood.
“I am afraid it is serious,” he conceded. “I am not sure whether she will have had the opportunity to inform her family, or perhaps she has not wished to cause them concern. However, if she were my daughter, or sister, I should prefer to know all the details as completely as possible, so that I might know how to help.”
If Yacoub knew anything he kept it from his face. “Of course,” he murmured. “Naturally.” But he did not betray any surprise that Ayesha Zakhari should be in difficulty or danger. Pitt would have expected surprise, even alarm, and there was none. Was that because Yacoub had already been told of her predicament through the news, or was it something not unexpected from his knowledge of Ayesha herself? Pitt remembered Narraway’s warning with a sense of coldness, even here in the stifling dining room with its odors of food, and the breeze from the water drifting in through the open doors. The young man opposite him was charming, so easy of manner he could forget that his interests might be very different from Pitt’s, or from the British government’s.
“You are acquainted with her family?” Pitt said aloud.
Yacoub lifted his shoulders slightly, an elegant gesture that could have meant a number of things. “Her mother died many years ago, her father only three or four,” he answered.
Pitt was surprised that he should feel a sense of pity. “Is there no one else? Brothers? A sister?”
“No one,” Yacoub replied. “She was an only child. Perhaps that is why her father took such care that she should be educated. She was his dearest companion. She speaks French, Greek, and Italian, as well as English, of course. And Arabic is her native tongue. But it was philosophy in which she excelled, the history of thought and of ideas.” He was watching Pitt, and noted his surprise. “You look at a beautiful woman and think she seeks only to please,” he remarked.
Pitt opened his mouth to deny it, and realized it was true, and Yacoub knew it. He felt himself blush, and said nothing.
“She did not care much about pleasing,” Yacoub went on, a faint smile in his eyes more than on his lips, and he resumed eating, breaking the bread in his fingers. “Perhaps she did not need to.”
“Did her father not wish to see her married well?” Pitt knew it was a somewhat impertinent question, but he needed far more information than this, and if she had no family alive then a friend was all there was to ask.
Yacoub looked back at him. “Perhaps. But Ayesha was willful, and Mr. Zakhari was too fond of her to push her against her wish.” He took several more spoonfuls of his green soup before deciding to continue. “She had sufficient means not to need to marry, and she cared nothing for convention.”
“Or love?” Pitt risked asking.
Again, Yacoub gave the delicate gesture which could have meant almost anything. “I think she loved many times, but how deeply I have no idea.”
Was that a euphemism? Pitt was floundering in a culture far different from his own. He still had little idea of what kind of woman Ayesha Zakhari was, except that she was unlike any other he knew. He wished profoundly that he could have asked Charlotte. She might have been able to cut through the words and grasp reality.
“What sort of people did she love?” he asked.
Yacoub finished his green soup and the waiter removed the plates and returned with the pigeon.
Yacoub looked not at Pitt but at some point in the distance. “I knew only one personally,” he answered. Then, raising his eyes suddenly to Pitt’s, he demanded, “How does this help her, that you should know about Ramses Ghali? He is not in England. He can have nothing to do with her present troubles.”
“Are you certain?”
There was no hesitation in Yacoub’s face. “Absolutely.”
Pitt was unconvinced. “Who is he?”
Yacoub’s eyes were soft, but his expression was an unreadable mixture of anger and sorrow. “He is dead,” he explained quietly. “He died over ten years ago.”
“Oh…” Death again. Had she truly loved this man? Could he be the key to her behavior now? Pitt was reaching for straws, but there was nothing else. “Might she have married him, had he lived?”
Yacoub smiled. “No.” Again he seemed absolutely certain.
“But you said she loved him…”
Yacoub looked patient, as with a child who needs endless and detailed explanations. “They loved each other as friends, Mr. Pitt. Ramses Ghali believed passionately in Egypt, as his father did.” A shadow crossed his face, and an emotion Pitt could not read, but he thought there was a touch of anger in it, a darkness.