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“Please Miss Naldrett, you must sit down. You will be tired in the heat.”
    “But I might learn something,” I say.
    When I look, I can see he is smiling.
    I study him. I can’t help myself, I stare and stare at everything and everyone in this country. He moves across the room and I catch his scent; he always smells very clean. It occurs to me that this might be because, as a Muslim, he does not drink alcohol; unlike Englishmen he is never beery and bleary of a morning. He looks up from his work, the work we share. His eyes are quick, dark but brightly lit, and he has caught me staring, but he gives no impression of having found me out. Instead, he smiles. His face is transformed, as though he smiles with his entire being. And I, unguarded—there’s no reason to feel guarded here, in this place, the Esher household and its gossip and malice are thousands of miles away, there is no one here to see me—smile back. The cramped conditions of the
dahabieh,
simultaneously damp and dry-hot, the sand that filters through every crack when the wind blows, the vermin I see clambering along the river bank, sliding hopefully into the water every time we draw near: all that fades away.
    The
dahabieh.
I whisper the name to myself yet again:
Zint elBachreyn.
Long and narrow, sturdy, with an enormous white cloth sail. Mr. Abu Halaweh and the cabin boy battle to keep it clean; they have some success. There is a crew of eleven men, including the
reis
—captain—and his mate; Mr. Abu Halaweh says the crew are all from Upper Egypt, Aswan. To a man they are sleek and nimble and when my Lady and I embarked for the first time at the port of Boulak in Cairo, they lined up along the shore, immaculate in new white Egyptian cotton trousers, bare-chested, brown. A parade of half-naked men. I looked at them and thought, This is all so peculiar. It was all I could do not to laugh. Everything in Egypt is simultaneously alarming and entertaining.
    Before we left the port, my Lady had the
reis
fix an English flag and an American pennant to the mast, as a signal to the consular agents we will meet along the Nile. Every corner of the boat is packed with supplies purchased during forays into the noisy markets of Cairo: not just food and drink but everything we could possibly need. There is a portable bath. Carpets. Six months’ supply of candles. Linen. An enormous copper kettle. I made list after list, checking and rechecking, consulting both my Lady and Mr. Abu Halaweh: we must not forget anything. This boat is our home for the time being. Our home. But not like any home I have known before.
    WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LEAVE EVERYTHING BEHIND? WHEN YOU leave everything behind? When you leave everything familiar, not just houses and streets and wet windy wintertime, but husbands, children, friends? For me: the train into London on my day off; the arriving back home again. The branch of the oak tree that knocks against the roof of the stable. The postman who comes down the lane. None of these things have followed me to Egypt. Does this mean I am no longer the same person? Does this mean that I too have changed?
    THE NILE: GREEN, A THICK, VISCOUS GREEN, LIKE MILK FLOWING from a great green cow; often brown, churned up, swirling; occasionally clear to the bottom, sparkling, glassy; never blue. At night it is black, its depths infinite. It smells—I breathe in deeply—of vegetation, of grasses, even at times, rather oddly, like an English garden pond. Some days the river stinks, but even that is soon washed away. I stare down into the water for long minutes at a time, longing to dip my fingers, to trail my toes as I see men on other boats doing, but I am unable: the craft is too high above the water and besides, I’d have to take off my shoes and pull off my stockings. I’d have to remove my gloves, unpin my bonnet, put down my parasol.
    And besides, there are crocodiles. I saw one our first day out; it slithered along the riverbank and into the water