HE GLARES OUT, each eye a path, down the lo the end of which is Hana. After she has bathed him she breaks the tip off an ampoule and turns to him with the morphine. An effigy. A bed. He rides the boat of morphi races in him, imploding time and geography the way maps press the world onto a two-dimensional sheet of paper.
The long Cairo evenings. The sea of night sky, hawks in rows until they are released at dusk, arg towards the last colour of the desert. A unison of performance like a handful of thrown seed.
In that city in you could buy anything—from a dog or a bird that came at och of a whistle, to those terrible leashes that slipped over the smallest finger of a woman so she was tethered to you in a crowded market.
In the northeast se of Cairo was the great courtyard ious students, and beyond it the Khan el Khalili bazaar.
Above the narrow streets we looked down upon cats on the cated tin roofs who also looked down the eo the street and stalls. Above all this was our room. Windows open to mis, feluccas, cats, tremendous noise. She spoke to me of her childhood gardens. When she couldn』t sleep she drew her marden for me, word by word, bed by bed, the December ice over the fish pond, the creak of rose trellises. She would take -my wrist at the fluence of veins and guide it onto the hollow iion at her neck.
March , Uweinat. Madox is irritable because of the thinness in the air. Fifteen hundred feet above sea level and he is unfortable with even this minimal height. He is a desert man after all, havi his family』s village of Marston Magna, Somerset, altered all s and habits so he have the proximity to sea level as well as regular dryness.
「Madox, what is the name of that hollow at the base of a woman』s neck? At the front. Here. What is it, does it have an official hat hollow about the size of an impress of your thumb?」 Madox watches me for a moment through the noon glare.
「Pull yourself together,」 he mutters.
Let me tell you a story,」 Caravaggio says to Hana. 「There was a Hungarian named Almasy, who worked for the Germans during the war. He flew a bit with the Afrika Korps, but he was more valuable than that. In the he had been one of the great desert explorers. He knew every water hole and had helped map the Sand Sea. He knew all about the desert. He knew all about dialects. Does this sound familiar? Betweewo wars he was always on expeditions out of Cairo. One was to search for Zerzura—the lost oasis. Then when war broke out he joihe Germans. In he became a guide for spies, taking them across the desert into Cairo. What I want to tell you is, I think the English patient is not English.」 「Of course he is, what about all those flower beds in Gloucestershire?」 「Precisely. It』s all a perfect background. Two nights ago, when we were trying to he dog. Remember?」 「Yes.」 「What were his suggestions?」 「He was strahat night.」 「He was very strange, because I gave him ara dose of morphine. Do you remember the names? He put out about eight names. Five of them were obvious jokes. Then three names. Cicero. Zerzura. Delilah.」 「So?」 「 『Cicero』 was a code name for a spy. The British uhed him. A double then triple agent. He got away. 『Zerzura』 is more plicated.」 「I know about Zerzura. He』s talked about it. He also talks about gardens.」 「But it is mostly the desert now. The English garden is wearing thin. He』s dying. I think you have the spy-helper Almasy upstairs.」 They sit on the old e hampers of the l