Touch by Claire North

scant days to suspect that I was not myself, and so, to avoid the whispering of my household, I again suggested a pilgrimage – far, far away, preferably by camel with a lame foot.
    They both loathed the idea, nearly as much as they loathed each other, but I was the grand man of the household and it was their duty to obey. The night before they were to depart my senior wife came into my room and screamed at me. She tore at my clothes, and when I was unmoved, she tore at her own, dragged her nails down her face, pulled clumps of her hair in thick fistfuls from her head, and screamed, “Monster! Monster! You swore you loved me, you made me think you loved me but you have always been a monster!”
    My dear one, I replied, if this is so, would you not be happier away?
    At this she pulled her robes wide, revealing a body well kept for its age, nourished but not to excess, loose as a pillow, pale as summer cloud.
    “Am I not beautiful?” she cried. “Am I not what you desire?”
    She did not look at me in the morning as I bade her farewell.
    The majority of my affairs so settled, I moved what remained of my household to a mansion by the waterfront, and invited Ayesha to dine with me. Alas, for the first few weeks I could find nothing of the gentle woman I had met at the bathhouse, and wondered if I had not made a terrible mistake in leaving my wealthy widow. Ayesha would not meet my eye, nor answer in anything other than short affirmations, demonstrating such coldness in her manner that it dampened her veiled beauty too. I wooed gently, as a fresh lover might, and thought I saw no change until one evening, as we picked over fresh dates and cold leaves, she said, “You are very much changed, my husband.”
    “Do you like the change?”
    She was silent a while, and then replied, “I loved the man I married, and honour him, and pray daily for his soul. But I confess, I love the man who I see before me more, and am glad of his company, for as long as it may last.”
    “Why did you marry me, if not for who I was?”
    “For money,” she replied simply. “I had a good dowry, but that is not an income. You have income. You have prestige. You have a name. Even if you had not the first part, two together beget the third. My family lacks for any of these. By my union with you, I secure their advancement.”
    “I see,” I murmured, unsure of what al-Mu’allim would have said to all this, and choosing, therefore, to say as little as possible.
    At my reticence, Ayesha, rather than draw back, smiled. For the first time she raised her eyes to my face, and at that my heart ran fast. Then – a gesture almost unheard of at the dinner table – she reached over to touch my hand. “You do not recall,” she breathed, and there was no accusation in it, merely a statement of understanding, of discovery, “very well.”
    For a moment, panic. But she simply sat, her fingers resting in my palm, and when the sun was down we stood together by the water’s edge and I said, “There is something I must tell you. Something you may not understand.”
    “Don’t tell me,” she replied, sharp enough to make me flinch. Sensing my withdrawal, she repeated, softer, “Don’t tell me.”
    “Why don’t you want to know?”
    “I am sworn to you. I am tasked to honour and obey. While I do this in duty, and sincerity, my soul is clean. Only in these last months, however, have I found joy in my duty. Only with… only these last few months. Do not speak the words that might tarnish the joy we have. Do not wipe away this moment.”
    So I said nothing. She was my wife, and I was her husband, and that was all that we needed to know.
     
    It lasted six years, in which my wife lived with me in wealth – wheat, cotton and boys being profitable markets at nearly any time, and there the matter may have rested, until the French came to Cairo. When the rage of the Egyptians against their remarkably moderate oppressors grew too great, conspirators came to my