Author's Note:
Nevertheless, a big thank you to those who read. I hope you haven't given up on this yet! Thank you, Deana, for faithfully reading and reviewing! Sorry, Ardeth will need to wait for a bit. Your encouragement however, helps very much and pushes me onto write. Thank you, Deb and Ann, who simply asked for more and more.
Some historical background and re-cap for those who think they will get lost:
Egypt was slotted into the British Empire during the First World War. The Wafd party, as I have mentioned many times throughout this story, is fiercely nationalistic, and anti-colonialist, founded before the First World War by a man named Sa'ad Zaghloul whose impetus for forming this party originated from the rejection of his demand for complete autonomy for Egypt. He was eventually arrested and deported to Malta in 1918, anti-British riots sprouting in the wake of his deportation. In 1922, (before The Mummy even) Britain ended the protectorate, and recognised Egypt's independence, yet maintained control over essential government institutions and the Suez Canal. From 1922 onwards, Egypt would face a rather turbulent unrest, and we see different opinions of colonialism arising in this transition period which you soon find out, embodied in Severige and Ardeth, and also how the workings of politics are more often than not, very ugly.
Chapter 11: A Startling Revelation
These are the characteristics of the world: confide not therefore in it, nor incline to it; for it will betray him who dependeth upon it, and who in his affairs relieth upon it. Fall not in its snares, nor cling to its skirts.
- A Thousand and One Nights, the Story of the City of Brass
Evelyn Carnahan was beginning to feel like a caged bird; it was the only imagery that she found suitable for herself as she whimsically listed the animals in succession that she thought matched her personality. Imagination be damned! The bird and the cage seemed to do well with each other as the one of the oldest metaphor of the world, she thought, a cliché of freedom and captivity overplayed but nevertheless the easiest to use. Yet in that month of self-imposed imprisonment, her thoughts were no less clearer, no less diminished in turmoil than the day Severige had sat her down and inundated her and Jonathan with the gruesome details of the sins of the past generations.
She had received all she had wished for, and more, and the sudden urge to erase it all was tremendously strong, intense. The grandiose dream that she had loftily carried to Egypt was now crushing reality she held in her hands that urged her to reconsider the goodwill previously forged among the Medjai.
Ardeth Bay, Rick O'Connell, they were, after this singular episode, now hooded figures whom she now found difficulty in identifying with.
Let me tell you the story, Severige had said, gently and she had been moved by the genteel kindness he had rushed to show her, his undaunting readiness to shred her maddening state of ignorance in the revelation of truth was indeed for her a cry of relief from the assailing apprehension.
Evelyn Carnahan had leaned on plush cushions, rapt, over their abandoned cups of sweet tea, involuntarily stiffening, tensing over parts she had scarcely believed had happened, yet taking comfort in the slightest nuances of daily life so easily overlooked -Jonathan's lazy slouch, the small, smile that sometimes graced Najya Mahadeva's lips -
The full story of your father still eludes me, he had admitted candidly, but I will tell you all that the Wafd is, and as much as I can of the Medjai.
He had torn the thin veil that divided them as she had requested- the veil of knowledge and ignorance, but it now seemed, in retrospect, a foolish act, an impetuous mistake to have asked for information way beyond her ability to manage them.
Severige's narration was nothing short of extraordinary; it was like watching a hunter and its prey, the hunter fat with the knowledge of a cornered prey, the prey scuttling about in its last-ditch attempts of survival.
Your father had not known the turn that his life was to take when he married your mother; I believed he was a good husband, and he wanted to follow his wife back to Egypt when she received a letter stating that her uncle Sayyed, your Grand-Uncle Sayyed, Evelyn, was critically ill. You see, Rahiq Mahadeva belonged to a family of nationalists, strongly affiliated with the Wafd, as what we are. He had glanced meaningfully at his sister.
I think your father took up office with the British Embassy, but I could not know for sure. Your parents returned to Egypt in 1917, and found that the streets of Egypt were frequently filled with petty skirmishes that many people were tired of. Our leader Zaghloul was exiled to Malta in 1918, and it seemed that the Wafd would have fallen apart, if not for Ishaq Bay.
Severige had paused in his speech, as if the mere recollection brought him deep pain. But curiosity and dread had burned in her widened eyes; the unlikely connection of the Medjai and the Wafd incredulous even to her ears.
Your face is truly an open book, Evy, Najya had smiled sympathetically. Listen carefully to what we are going to say next, for it will truly challenge all that you think were facts.
Jonathan had fiddled with bric-a-brac, before stilling, and perked up once more. He grabbed the nearest untouched cup of tea and gulped with distaste. Serious conversations were hardly his suit.
Ishaq Bay was then the Chief of the Medjai. He too, was weary of the Great War, and his strong sentiments regarding European governance led him to pledge his allegiance to the Wafd, and in doing so, he brought with him the commanders of the 12 tribes and their bravery and triumphs became ours. He had 2 sons, Ardeth Bay and the younger brother, Mejdan Bay. The younger was naturally ambitious because he did not have his elder brother's inheritance of the tribes and the leadership that was to fall to him, but Mejdan Bay was also brilliant, a shrewd tactician and a competitive warrior.
She sighed. Severige stood up.
Evelyn, I must apologise. This conversation is not doing good for any of us.
But he was undone by the beseeching look in her eyes. Do not stop, please, for my sake. Where does my father come in then?
As all organisations needed to compromise, the Medjai and the Wafd were no different. We were not without our differences, in fact, you can say that our differences were very vast - a tribe so steeped in the glory of the past, and a party so preoccupied with the present and future.
Severige continued, relentlessly, but his look begged for her understanding, for her sympathy to lean towards them.
It was difficult to really say if the Medjai was ever an integrated part of the Wafd and I do not know if you can ever call the Wafd and the Medjai a good partnership, however, there were some slips that suggested otherwise, where mishandling of fund within the party could be vaguely traced tointernal dealings. I never doubted Ishaq Bay's war sentiment, but his secretive nature led him to make a few enemies within the Wafd itself. It was most unfortunate that your father was one of them - Ishaq Bay by then, had a network of connections that made use of the most convenient pawn available - Rohan Carnahan, for he had good knowledge of both British politics as well as the workings of the Wafd through his wife. But the help that Rohan Carnahan had given was not without a price - imagine, no reward but a price to pay! But we all knew that everyone paid for peace. Your father had known a lot, maybe too much in fact, and the way that Ishaq Bay kept his dealings silent (even from us) was simply to kill Rohan Carnahan.
Evelyn paled in shock, Jonathan stunned into silence, the force of his flatly quiet narrative hitting them surely like live canons did.
We found out too late, I am sorry, but it is easy to assume that the disappearance of a man in times like these usually means death, which what Ishaq Bay had claimed Ishaq Bay and your mother died in the Burning of Alexandria, in 1922 and only then people talked, about memories of a brief scuffle and execution in the night. I am so sorry, Evelyn, I do not know how to make it easier for you to bear. Delivering news of death surely curses the messenger as it does the receiver. Rahiq was quiet about her husband's disappearance; she did not fret as much as I thought she would.
A helpless shrug of the shoulders replaced the loss of speech. Truly, they could not do much more to add to or take away all that had happened. How could the actions of men who were intoxicated by freedom and power be defended?
She remembered asking for a reprieve, and they were more than willing to grant her one. The belated mourn of a father and mother she hardly knew was strangely distant, and the refuge that Jonathan offered was too muffled to pierce the disturbed soul that could only, at that point, speak the grammar of dreams.
Ardeth Bay assumed his position as chief of the Medjai. But his ideals differed from his father's, and even his own brother's. He withdrew the Medjai from the Wafd in 1923, but the years of solidarity between the Wafd and the Medjai had strengthened bonds, and this move spilt the Medjai. Half stayed with him, to resume their old duties of guarding the Pharaoh's stones and a past that is dead, but the other loyal half now remains with us, and they fight for a future that is living.
Pardon, an uncharacteristically serious Jonathan had inquired, What happens now? Where does it leave you, the Wafd, or those black-clad people? Had she not been distressed, she would have snorted at the impertinence that laced almost every sentence that he stringed.
Ardeth Bay has since withdrawn the Medjai from the Wafd, but demands the full return of his tribes. He is not content with a diminished tribe that now guards the desert, and arranges for street skirmishes as you saw, to fulfil these demands. He asks for the rest of his followers, but how are we to stop what they believe, and where they choose to stand?
The house was quiet; Severige and Najya had recognised the belated mourning had subtly replaced the earlier festive mood and had left the Carnahan siblings to their own devices. Yet the younger sibling was not as irrepressible as her brother; his daily romps through the town resumed merely after a sombre week, while his sister had withdrawn slightly; the days that passed had given her a different set to her mouth, troubled-creased eyes and a different temperance that they could not yet quite place. It was as if a tearing down of a wall occurred internally and the thrill of another barrier rebuilt, with sharper top spikes, yet prone still to crumbling, in its early stages.
She had lived a month with the knowledge that bore down heavily, shaken by the injustice of war that cheapened lives and the price of peace that was almost not payable, taking comfort in the slight mutterings that had worried Jonathan, wishing that he had not unearthed the notes when they still led that insulated lives they did. They had accepted that their parents were unlikely to return to them back then; why and how should it be different now? How did such dull, blissful knowledge suddenly turn into a swift awakening of scarlet sentiments, sentiments that were previously impalpable and insubstantial?
What do we do now, Jonathan? She had asked her brother when they were finally alone.
He had not hesitated when he answered.
Let us return home, Evy. They need to fight this themselves. The war has been over, for us. It was over when Mother and Father died. Let it stay buried.
But she thought it impossible, and the stirring demons of anger became the authority from which she wanted to heed - the need to retaliate was indeed too great to ignoreagainst Rick O' Connell, against Ardeth Bay and his accursed tribe, to punish someone for the untimely deaths of her parents, to twist Jonathan senseless for showing her the correspondences back home.
Evelyn Carnahan shook her head, and that strangely dispassionate calm settled, but that curious sensation, that ghastly yet partial intent remained and could not be overlooked, only dormant, waiting merely in the shadows, for the flames to be fanned, for a stronghold to scramble up to.
The noisy night streets would probably do her goodmaybe even an unexpected visit to Lyanka who never seemed to sleep, wizened as she was, to soak up that odd, earthy ambience that her house had always exuded.
It was a good time to grab that black shawl that hung invitingly over the dressing table.
A soft knock on the door made her look up, freezing her actions.
Najya Mahadeva stood at the threshold, serene and calm as she ever was, her olive complexion rich by the lights in the night.
"Evelyn, would you care to come out for dinner? We have a few guests. They would like to meet you and perhaps..." She paused, finding the right words, "Perhaps certain actions could be taken to help you with your grief."