Read Online The Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger - Free Book Online

Mr. Abu Halaweh has shown me how to make, and my Lady’s cigar has been replaced by the bubbling
narguile.
I surprise myself by how much I understand of the conversation, which I attempt to follow as I move from room to room in the French House. Mostly I work in the kitchen with Mr. Abu Halaweh, though I have relinquished all cooking duties to him; there really is no point in my attempting to cook unfamiliar food with unfamiliar ingredients, when everything Mr. Abu Halaweh makes is so delicious. Neither my Lady nor I miss the eggy soldiers and suet pudding that Cook used to make in Esher.
    These men treat my Lady with great respect and courtesy, despite the fact that we are well aware of what an odd figure she is in Luxor society, if village life can warrant such a grand word: a woman—married but with no husband present, no children with her either; an invalid who is an adventurer at the same time, possessed of an avid intelligence and a hunger for debate. Several times a week the men—Sheikh Yusuf, Mustafa Agha, the magistrate Saleem Effendi, and others—gather in my Lady’s salon to recline on the divans and cushions and talk. Sometimes they stay on until late in the evening and Mr. Abu Halaweh and I hover in the kitchen, waiting for my Lady to request our help, refreshing the pipe, serving the trays of sweets that Mr. Abu Halaweh will have prepared earlier in the day.
    “Sally, come here,” my Lady calls out from time to time, summoning me to help her make a point. “The kings and queens of England are not divine beings, are they?” She turns back to the men. “They are flesh and blood, like you and me, aren’t they, Sally?” she says over her shoulder.
    I smile and say, “Yes, ma’am, just like you and me,” and laugh and the men laugh, and I return to the kitchen.
    Luckily for me, whenever my Lady asks me to confirm a point, something the Egyptians really cannot believe can possibly be true or, at least for the sake of the argument, are pretending wholeheartedly not to believe, I always do agree. But then again, what kind of servant would disagree with her mistress, in front of esteemed company?

    ONE MORNING I ENTERED MY LADY’S ROOM AND FOUND HER ALREADY up; we had adopted the Egyptian custom of rising before dawn long since. This morning she had dressed already.
    “This is it,” my Lady said with a flourish, spinning herself around, “this is the new à la mode.”
    “Lady Duff Gordon!” I said, unable to say more.
    “What do you think?” she asked, and spun around again. She was wearing the most extraordinary outfit I had ever seen. She had on a pair of Egyptian trousers (men’s trousers, brown cotton, loose flowing, tied at the ankles) and a long white cotton tunic on top (a man’s tunic, plain) and sandals on her bare feet. That was it.
    I couldn’t think what to say.
    “Come on, Sally. How do I look?”
    I had to say something. “You look like a learned Egyptian sheikh,” I said.
    My Lady pressed her hands together and bowed solemnly.
“Insha allah,”
she replied. Then she picked up her shawl and placed it over her hair, looping it around her neck: “For propriety’s sake.” She looked at me. “You can laugh. It’s quite all right.”
    I let out a laugh then, one brief yap was all I allowed myself for fear of being unable to stop. “It’s so … practical,” I said. We had given up our stockings and underskirts while we traveled up the Nile, but it would never have occurred to me to go any further, no matter how high the temperature rose.
    “It’s comfortable,” my Lady replied. “But here is the real revelation.” She picked up her stays from the divan where she had discarded them and waggled them at me.
    “Your stays!” I said, bowled over by shock; I would have sat down if it had been appropriate.
    My Lady opened her traveling trunk, threw the heavy-boned garment down into it, and slammed the lid shut. “My stays are staying in there, my dear, from this day