then I would do so.

And if this body, hot water running off its arm and seeping into the places between its toes, died in the attempt?

That didn’t bother me at all.

Chapter 27

Memories of ghosts.

Anna Maria Celeste Jones, sitting with her back straight and her eyes front.

I was worn, she said. As a skin.

Beauty is a hard attribute to measure. I have been a long-necked model with golden hair, my lips fresh, my eyes wide, my skin silk. And in this guise I found it hard to walk in my tight red heels, and bewailed how quickly my skin lost its sheen when not pampered with a regime more time-consuming than sense. The volume of my hair was lost after a single wash, the fullness of my lips cracked within a day. No more than a week was I this model of fine proportions before irritation at the maintenance drove me on to simpler pastures.

It is not beauty, in an eye, a hand, a curl of hair. I have seen old men, their backs bent and shirts white, whose eyes look up at the passers-by and in whose little knowing smiles there is more beauty, more radiance of soul, than any pampered flesh. I have seen a beggar, back straight and beard down to his chest, in whose green eyes and greying hair was such handsomeness that I yearned to have some fraction of him to call my own, to dress in rags and sweep imperious through city streets. The tiny woman, four foot eight of purple and pearl; the chubby mother, her bum heaving against denim jeans, her voice a whip-snap between supermarket aisles. I have been them all, and all of them, as I regarded myself in their mirrors, were beautiful.

In 1798, sitting upon the shores of the Red Sea, I first discovered this simple truth: that as one of us who move from flesh to flesh, life to life, I was not, in fact, alone.

Chapter 28

My name was Abdul al-Mu’allim al-Ninowy, and I had chosen the wrong side; or perhaps, fairer to say, the wrong side had chosen me.

I came to Cairo in 1792, as the Ottoman administration collapsed and Egypt fell to whichever Mameluke strongman could muster the sharpest sword. Abdul al-Mu’allim al-Ninowy was such a man, who lived away from the stink of the city in a white mansion with a courtyard of trickling fountains and kept three wives, one of whom I loved. Her name was Ayesha bint Kamal, and she had a fondness for song, wine, poetry, dogs and astronomy, and had been married off cheap and young by her father, who understood wine and dogs and disapproved of the rest.

I met her in the bathhouse, where I was a respected widow young enough to be physically comfortable, old enough to escape excessive pursuit for my wealth. In the steamy confines of the women’s room, away from the ears of men, she and I had laughed and talked. When I asked what her position was, a frown had played across her plucked eyebrows and she replied, “I am the junior wife of Abdul al-Mu’allim al-Ninowy, who sells wheat to the Turks and cotton to the Greeks and slaves to everybody. He is a great and a powerful man. I would be nothing, if I were not his.”

Her words were level as the stones on which we sat, and the next day I was the fourteen-year-old serving boy who bought al-Mu’allim his bread who no one noticed or cared for. Five days after that, having gathered sufficient information to fulfil the role, I was al-Mu’allim himself, slightly paunchy in my early forties, with a magnificent beard that needed constant attention, lips that tingled just before rain and overly long nails that I trimmed on my first day.

Naturally, upon habitation I set about reordering the household. Some slaves I sold; some servants I traded away. Friends who came to the door whose faces I did not know were politely rejected and informed that I had a fever, and sure enough fear of plague kept even my most loyal associates from knocking on my door, save for one cousin who hoped–who prayed, no doubt–that this was the fever that took his uncle from the world, and his cash from the vault.

Of my two senior wives, one was an absolute harpy. On learning that she had a sister in Medina, I recommended–for her health, both physical and spiritual–a pilgrimage, for which, naturally, I would pay. The middle wife was far more pleasant company, but it took her a few 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.”