The Map of Love

The sheik that Sharif and Anna have been waiting for, Muhammad ‘Abdu, returns, and meets with Sharif and his friends to further discuss their plans to found the school. Muhammad ‘Abdu describes his journey, upon which the Turkish Sultan’s spies shadowed him. The friends are weary, but hopeful for a better future. Privately, Sharif asks Muhammad ‘Abdu to perform the marriage, and Muhammad ‘Abdu agrees.

Amal looks over the marriage contract, which was enclosed in the trunk and gives remarkably forward-thinking terms (including the right for Anna to divorce Sharif). Back in Anna’s journal, there’s a record of the less sunny part of the marriage: when she and Sharif go to register their wedding with the British Agency, Lord Cromer receives them and is very unhappy with them. He warns Anna that she’s making a mistake and is rude to Sharif. Anna’s servant Emily is similarly unimpressed. Disapproval can’t disturb Anna and Sharif’s happiness.

Amal speaks to Omar about Isabel and finds him hesitant to respond to her affections—fearing the disruption to his life and the age gap between them. Omar also mentions that he plans to visit Egypt and wants to see Amal. Amal doesn’t ask him for further details, knowing that his phone might be tapped after his involvement with (and subsequent break from) the Palestine National Council.

Next comes Layla’s account of the elaborate, glittering wedding feast of Anna and Sharif. Layla, describing the beautiful singing at the party, describes the experience of tarab, a word that Amal tells us is hard to translate; it’s the overwhelming, transporting experience of music. Anna’s diary recounts her nuptial bliss.

Isabel calls from the US to tell Amal that Jasmine is in decline, and that she’s still struggling with her attraction to Omar: he seems to be evading the love that Isabel feels could be there between them. Isabel also tells Amal that she’s getting whiffs of the smell of orange blossom that she remembers from her encounter with the phantoms in the locked tomb.

Amal’s friend Tareq comes to take her out to dinner again. He flirts with her, but she rebuffs him. Nonetheless, he offers more help in getting the school up and running again.

Isabel calls again and reports that Jasmine has died. Before her death, she began speaking, but only in French; she’s been babbling memories of fleeing France during the second World War, falling in love with her husband, and being pregnant with Isabel. The grieving Isabel sought comfort with Omar, and they had sex.

Amal hears that Omar is now in Ramallah, objecting to the Palestinian Authority’s Conference of National Unity. Amal is worried for his safety; she sees newspaper reports of suffering in Ramallah.

Amal is nervously waiting for news from all the people she cares about. In the meantime, she turns back to Anna’s diaries. Anna’s maid Emily leaves her, and Anna settles into the rhythm of her new life free from any reminders of the old. At first she loves everything about this experience. Things take a turn when Sharif becomes enraged with her for taking money out of the bank without telling him; he has been having his servants watch her.

Layla’s account records this tension. She explains the Egyptian traditions around money in marriage to Anna and tells her why Sharif is so angry: this breaking of custom will look bad to the English authorities. Anna and Sharif make up after their fight, aware now that they still have cultural confusion to overcome. Anna gets to know Sharif’s father and writes a few letters to Sir Charles, though they’re less frequent now. Anna notes that she’s having a more difficult time communicating with her old friends, who have a sensational picture of what her life must be like.

Omar and Amal visit the seaside, and Omar describes the situation he’s seen in Palestine, in particular the rise of Hamas against the rule of Arafat. Omar also reveals something shocking: he had once, back in the 60s, been in love with Jasmine. Jasmine had left him, and he wrote her many long letters asking her to take him back. In a further bombshell, he mentions that he’s afraid there’s some possibility that Isabel might be his daughter.

The chapter ends with a journal entry in which Anna recounts being snubbed at the market by women who must have heard of her faux pas at the bank.

Sharif is working on a letter explaining why the planned art school is not idolatrous, and he’s very unhappy that he needs to write such a letter at all. He discusses the situation with his group of idealistic friends. They are also dismayed that Ahmad ‘Urabi, Sharif’s father’s former commander and an important political figure, has given an interview supporting the British presence in Egypt.

Sharif is also upset to discover that the townspeople have begun referring to his family home as “the house of the Englishwoman.” He feels uneasy about the political implications of this; though he assures himself that Anna’s Englishness is only a novelty, he understands how his marriage might look.

Sharif goes to see his sleeping father and thinks about the squandered democratic promise of his and ‘Urabi’s youth. A passage from Layla’s record describes Anna’s effect on her family’s life, from the defamiliarizing of normal Egyptian things to the warmth of love. She adds, however, that Anna could not give Sharif peace of mind: while the two were happy at home, Sharif was tormented by Egypt’s public troubles.

In a scene of home life, Anna and Layla discuss the shared Arabic roots of the words for “woman” and “mirror,” and the growing drive for women to be educated and to have a choice about wearing the veil. They go to listen to Sharif and his friends debating colonial issues before the Grand Imam. The men are discussing the divisions within Egypt and the importance of finding a way to present a unified Egyptian front. They also discuss the feminist questions the women were talking about.

Anna’s journal notes that Sharif seems happiest away from all these debates, out in the countryside. She writes to Sir Charles to say that she’s pleased that James Barrington will be taking up a newspaper position, as he’s better-informed about Egypt than most of the Englishmen she knows. She mentions, as well, that she’s a little homesick for English Christmas festivities. Anna describes the frustrating political difficulties that are wracking Egypt, with all the arguments about the fragile balance of power between the Khedive, the Turks, and the British—not to mention the tension between the Copts and the Muslims.

In a letter to James Barrington congratulating him on his new appointment, Anna also remarks that she’s taken up weaving, noting that weaving makes her feel less abstracted from the world than reading and writing do. The chapter ends with a list of different words for different kinds of love in Arabic; Anna remarks she’s learned a great deal.

Amal begins this chapter with a list of contemporary tragedies in the Middle East and elsewhere: suicide bombings, skirmishes between troops and locals, sunken refugee boats, and the death of Princess Diana. She knows all this, she says, because Omar could not stop devouring the news during his stay with her. He’s still concerned about his relationship with Isabel, feeling he doesn’t have the patience for her naïveté. Together, Amal and Omar hang up the piece of tapestry from the trunk which matches the one Omar has had hanging on his wall. It depicts the ancient Egyptian god Osiris.

Anna’s journal records her pregnancy and her fear of childbirth. As her pregnancy develops, the situation in Egypt grows ever more complicated: France and England declare an “Entente Cordiale” which gives Britain even greater power in Egypt and scuppers Egyptian hopes of assistance against the British from the French. Lord Cromer is getting increasingly big-headed about his clout. However, there are good changes, too: the art school and the museum are successfully established, and Anna’s old friend Sabir comes to work with Sharif.

Anna writes to Sir Charles with a bright idea. She has long noted the difficulty in communicating the truth about Egypt to the English and thinks that it might make a difference if there were an Egyptian representative who could address the English public in more accessible and familiar language. She asks Sir Charles’s help in trying to arrange such an interpreter. Anna and Sharif’s baby is born, and they name her Nur al-Hayah. At around the same time, their friend Sheik Muhammad ‘Abdu dies. Anna and Sharif’s love for Nur consoles them.

Amal records her dreams, which have started to cross her own memories with Anna’s. In particular, she dreams of a beautiful old overgrown courtyard, in which her mother is peacefully resting. She begins to pack up to leave for Tawasi but plans to visit the museum first and look for Anna’s sources for her Osiris weavings. When she arrives, she finds that the museum has been closed: someone has thrown a bomb and killed some tourists. Amal sees a charred bus and learns that eight Germans were killed.

Back in 1906, Anna writes to Sir Charles that war seems imminent: the Sultan is refusing to leave a territory called Taba, and he has the backing of Kaiser Wilhelm. The Egyptians are backing the Sultan on this, as they resent the English pressure on their country. She wishes that Sir Charles might visit, as it will be increasingly hard for her to leave Egypt and she wants him to meet Nur.

In Tawasi, Amal remembers her joy over her own children’s babyhood and consoles herself with the thought that the school is now running well thanks to Tareq. She thinks that she should get in touch with him to say thanks.

As Anna and Sharif plant a grove of flowering trees for Nur to play in, they are disturbed by a much-retranslated letter that Lord Cromer intercepted describing a plan for a nationalist uprising against the British. Anna fears that Sharif’s lack of knowledge of this plan suggests that he’ll be betrayed during it; he’s made enemies in just about every camp involved.

Sharif and his friend Ya’qub examine the letter and find it confused and silly: it seems to be written by a non-native speaker, probably an Englishman in the service of Cromer, trying to stir up trouble. However, they recognize that if it falls into the wrong hands it will work as intended; the British will be quick to send troops if they detect any kind of uprising. The two men discuss how the proof of the document’s falsity is in its bad Arabic; they’d need to write an analysis of its faulty command of the language.

Amal and her friend ‘Am Abu el-Ma’ati discuss how to manage her land in Tawasi. She mentions that she’s heard (through Tareq) of people using Israeli laborers, but ‘Am Abu el-Ma’ati says this is a bad idea, believing the laborers to be a stealthy invading force.

Anna records a skirmish between the British and the peasants in a town called Denshwai—a massacre that began when the British ignored local customs and rules about where one was allowed to shoot pigeons. Anna fears that this fight will be portrayed as the beginning of the fictional insurrection. Further letters describe an unfair trial of villagers in which several are sentenced to death or to floggings by the British courts.

Anna and her family and friends mourn these outrages and send reports to various newspapers, hoping to get British public opinion on their side. Sharif also volunteers to open a house for the grieving families of the executed people—a dangerous move.

Isabel calls to tell Amal that she’s pregnant by Omar. While Isabel is delighted, Omar is still worried about his age and his suspicions about Isabel’s own paternity.

In the aftermath of the Denshwai incident, Amal writes, Lord Cromer resigned and a number of new political parties, differently oriented toward Egyptian independence, form. Anna’s journal records that Sharif won’t join any of them. Meanwhile, though, the art school has opened and the Denshwai prisoners have been pardoned.

Anna begins to long for a less complicated political life, imagining what might have been if she lived in London. In these imaginings, she can’t give up her husband and child.

Layla writes of how she and Anna took special classes for women at the art school, and how Anna herself took the position she had once suggested to Sir Charles jointly with Sharif, writing on the real Egypt for foreign publications. Layla also thinks forward to a future in which her son Ahmed might marry his cousin Nur.

In modern Tawasi, Amal is startled from her reading by a procession of wailing villagers. ‘Am Abu el-Ma’ati, along with other men from the village, has been taken into custody by the government police as a reprisal for a massacre of tourists in Luxor. Amal hurries to the police station to help; soldiers try to stop her, but she gets through. The higher-up officials won’t give her clear answers and she leaves, frustrated and terrified for her friends. She calls Tareq and he tries to console her, saying that they’ll get the villagers out of prison tomorrow. Omar calls, and reports that he’s told Isabel about his relationship with Jasmine, and that she’s taken it in stride.

Frightened and scared, Amal looks at her portrait of Sharif and wishes he were there to console her. The next day, Tareq and Amal make their way to the police station where they wait until the villagers are released; they’ve been beaten, but they’re otherwise okay. In the aftermath, Amal is deeply upset, and Tareq tries to calm her down. His efforts turn romantic. The two are kissing when grateful villagers arrive with lunch for them. After Tareq leaves, Amal’s friends tease her about him. He’s married, but that, they argue, shouldn’t stop her. That night, Amal dreams vivid romantic dreams of Sharif, feeling that she’s home at last with him.

The next day, she speaks with ‘Am Abu el-Ma’ati, who gently turns down all her offers to pursue justice for him and his fellow villagers, telling her that it will come to no good. Amal is frightened by her sense that the violence in Egypt will beget more violence. At the end of the chapter, Amal gets a call from the doorkeeper at her building in Cairo, telling her that his wife has given birth to another little girl. They agree that girls are a blessing.

Back in Anna’s time, there’s trouble among the new political parties in Egypt. The new Prime Minister has been killed by a man called Ibrahim al-Wardani, and many different factions see a way to use this event to their polemical advantage.

When the next prime minister, Muhammad Sa’id Basha, takes over, he offers Sharif a post but Sharif declines it, citing the continued British presence in the government. The Egyptian people are tentatively hopeful that the British may be doubting the utility of staying in Egypt, but there’s trouble when the former President Roosevelt delivers a condescending speech at an Egyptian university, admonishing Egypt for religious fanaticism and chaotic government. This introduces a new element of unrest, and English leaders also resume their colonial attitudes and repressive practices in the country. Tensions are high. Sharif makes Anna promise that if anything happens to him, she’ll take Nur away to England.

Amal begins to feel the presence of her own father in Anna’s letters: young Ahmad, Layla’s son and Amal’s father, is growing up, and starting to develop habits and skills that Amal recognizes, like an amazing recall of the Koran. Meanwhile, Isabel has received her mother’s possessions; among them is a series of intense love letters from Omar. Isabel, more upset than she’d expected to be, calls Amal to discuss this with her. Amal tells Isabel that a friend of hers has committed suicide after writing a book about her despair, and wonders whether she’d have done it if she had children.

Tareq turns up in Tawasi again, and he and Amal discuss his plans to have the Israeli workers farm his land; he agrees that he won’t do it after all, since it matters so much to her. Reading further in Anna’s letters, Amal notices that Anna makes frequent invitations to her friends in England, which are never taken up, and wonders if she was homesick despite her happiness. Layla’s history records further unease, this time in Palestine, where an influx of Israeli settlers is increasing tensions. Isabel writes an email to Amal in which she says she’s gotten over the letters: she feels, she says, as if they were really written to her.

Sharif and his friends discuss impending fighting in the Middle East. Sharif feels that the fighting is really just a cover for a foregone conclusion: the Entente Cordiale set up the European division of Middle Eastern lands long ago. There will either be war or a dangerous alliance with difficult allies—neither of which will be good for Egypt.

Layla’s history records how impossible it was to live a life untouched by this political turmoil; it reached even into the matters of daily life. She muses:

Could we have ignored all this? And what space would have been left for our lives to occupy? And what man with any dignity would have consented to confine himself to that space and not tried to push at its boundaries? And what woman would not have seen it as her duty to help him? (472-73).

Sharif’s father is thinking of the past and the failed democratic hopes for Egypt he helped to support. He’s getting very old and likely to die soon; his plaintive request for a cold drink echoes Isabel’s vision of the tomb—as does the orange-blossom scent of the old family retainer Mabrouka as she takes care of the children.

Anna has finished her tapestry and wishes to turn her hand now to a portrait of Sharif. He agrees to sit for her.

Back in Amal’s time, the Middle East is still in turmoil. Isabel writes to say that she’s coming to visit and bringing her newborn son, Sharif, with her. Omar may join them. Omar writes to Amal as well, expressing his pleasure in the baby and his relief that his older children are happy with this big life change. ‘Am Abu el Ma‘ati becomes ill and dies during Isabel’s visit. The village mourns him and rejoices in Isabel’s new baby at once.

In Anna’s time, Sharif is talking about turning to private life, but Anna doubts whether he’ll be able to give up his political work for long. We catch up with him as he writes on the role of the East in the European imagination: as a treasure-box to be plundered, and a land of exotic myths and legends. The trouble comes, he writes, when Europeans get to the East and finds that it isn’t at all what they expect: their choices then are to leave, to remain willfully ignorant, to try to change what they find, or to try to understand. He writes, as well, of the Egyptian attitudes toward their own country: pride in its history, but also an unhealthy admiration for the power and technology of the Europeans. He advocates for a healthier exchange: the freedom for countries to learn from each other, choosing to learn from those elements of each other’s culture that suit their own. Anna translates this piece, and Sharif mails it to various newspapers. He then goes and finds Anna as she rereads War and Peace; she says, “‘I like going back to things I know [...] You see more in them the second time’” (485).

They discuss their feeling of the permanence and inevitability of their love, and through this enter a discussion of “Amen”: a word with Arabic roots that connect it to ideas of safety, security, and unshakeable belief.

Omar conducts an orchestra in the ruins of Sarajevo’s National Library. Amal thinks of him giving this great performance and wants him to reprint Sharif’s essay under his own name.

Isabel has brought the other panel of Anna’s weaving: this one represents Isis, the goddess-wife of Osiris, and (in another coincidence) Isabel’s ancient namesake. Isabel seems to have laid aside her project on the millennium in favor of simply living her new life. She and Amal introduce little Sharif to Tahiyya, and they discuss the Arabic root “j/n,” the source of the words for jinn (or genie), fetus, and madness.

In Anna’s time, Sharif’s article is published, while Anna hears from abroad that Sir Charles is unwell.

Tareq calls Amal, wanting to talk seriously to her; Amal puts him off for now. She does, however, want distraction: she’s almost come to the end of Anna’s story and wants to delay.

Reading a book on the English official Harry Boyle by his wife, Amal realizes that it was he who distributed the provoking letter in bad Arabic that spurred tensions in early 1900s Egypt and precipitated the Denshwai atrocities. She’s enraged and wishes she could warn Sharif and Anna across time. She reflects on how convinced Boyle’s wife was that Boyle’s letter accurately mirrored the “Oriental mind.”

Isabel finds in her bag an unexpected third piece of tapestry, this one representing Horus, the child of Isis and Osiris. Altogether, the tapestries not only give a picture of a full family, but have upon them the legend, “It is He who brings forth the living from the dead.”

In Anna’s time, Sharif learns that war is on the way. He’s becoming more determined to retreat to Tawasi and retire from his public life. He imagines the leisurely pace he and Anna could take, travelling and exploring natural beauties.

Isabel tells Amal that she believes that one of the women she saw in her vision at the tomb must have put the final piece of the tapestry into her bag. Amal is angry at Isabel’s romantic visions of fate and magic.

Layla’s history gives an account of the family’s climactic tragedy. Sharif is carried home badly wounded; he has been shot. Anna, meeting him, cries out in English, “No...no…” (501). He reminds her of her promise to take Nur away to England and dies in the night. No one knows who shot Sharif, or why, though his family suspects a political assassination from any of the many camps that Sharif opposed.

Amal grieves over this ending to the story—though she’s known it the whole way through, she feels it deeply. She and Isabel play with baby Sharif; Amal playfully tells him about Omar. The world events in the news are still terrifying, but Amal turns away from them, feeling that the course of history is out of her hands.

She muses on possible answers to the riddle of the extra piece of tapestry. Though she doesn’t want to believe Isabel’s story, she can’t figure out a reasonable explanation. She thinks about how they might sew all the pieces of the tapestry back together and surprise Omar with it when he arrives. She’s concerned that they haven’t heard from him in some days.

Amal imagines Mabrouka, the old servant, mourning over Sharif as she wrapped up the old tapestries. She’s so touched by this imagining that she cries out for her own brother. We get a final glance at the emptied trunk of artifacts, and at the stack of pages that Amal has written to tell the story of Amal and Sharif. The novel ends with Amal dandling little Sharif; her final word is “hush” (516).