The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif

would make a single true convert for his troubles.
    And now, my dearest Friend, lest you think I am grown too dull and solemn I will tell you that I have attended that apex of the Egyptian Winter Season: the Khedive’s Ball. It had been postponed out of respect for our Mourning, but the Coronation having taken place, it was considered proper to hold the Ball — particularly as it is the one Event here at which all the Nations mingle and so has a most particular political and diplomatic standing.
    It was a very grand affair, held atAbdin Palace, the official Residence of the Khedive (his personal Residence is at the Qubba Palace), and on the night the carriages were nose to back
from the Hotel and progress was very slow indeed. (Made slower by an odd occurrence, for as we came to the southern end of Opera Square we were halted by what I took to be a procession: two hundred or so men, in the official workers’ clothes of the Tram Company, together with some young Egyptian men in European dress, all marching, preceded by a brass band! They came from the direction of the Citadel and turned ahead of us so we had to follow them all the way to the Palace. Nobody knew who they were but it was thought they might be celebrating some event.) I went with Lady Wolverton and Sir Hedworth Lambton and we were deemed of enough importance to be presented to His Highness and to be placed well to the front in his train when entering the Ballroom. The Khedive really seems a very pleasant young man, with an intelligent look and a good-humoured smile and perfect manners, and it is a shame he and Lord Cromer cannot get on better with one other. The Lord made an appearance but left early — before supper even — and this was excused on account of his bereavement and his known antipathy to festivities.
    The Ballroom itself is of surpassing magnificence, gilt and crystal and velvet everywhere and on the whole everything you would expect in a Royal Palace and more. At one end it had huge doors which opened later in the evening to reveal a Banqueting-Hall of equal magnificence. At the other end, a kind of narrow gallery ran around the higher portion of the wall and at the back of that was a curious golden grille, behind which I was told the ladies of the household sat and watched the proceedings if they had a mind to. My interest was naturally immediately captured by this and throughout the evening I found myself glancing up at it so that, were I a man, my behaviour would surely have been construed as indelicate. And yet, I think that for all my commonplace curiosity about the world behind that screen, my greater wish was somehow to know how we, in the Ballroom, appeared to the hidden eyes which watched us.
    For the dances, they were in every point similar to what we would have at a formal ball in a great house in England — but I have never before seen such a mix of nationalities, for all the
Consuls of the Powers and the Consuls of every other Nation were there together with their Ladies, and naturally there was a very large British Presence. The Native notables were there (and those are the people I was most curious about, not having met any at all though I have been here more than five months) but not one single Moslem lady. No doubt they were all behind the grille! The Natives were in the uniform of the Egyptian Army, or in the robes of the religious orders or, like the Khedive, in Court dress topped by the scarlet fez, and I own I thought some of them looked most gallant. But they kept to themselves. I did not see one of them dancing.
    You will want to know what I wore. I chose my violet silk, which Emily did not think was grand enough and I own it probably was not, but as I knew that Moslem notables were to be present I thought it would provide me with adequate covering and would not cause offence. We are, after all, in their country. But I did wear Lady Winterbourne’s tiara and my mother’s amethyst necklace and I believe I did not