Page 60 of A Modest Independence

Tom arrived shortly after, giving Jenny a smile so faint she couldn’t even be sure it was a smile and not a trick of the sunlight on his face. “Miss Plank had some difficulty with one of the stewards.”

Jenny refrained from commenting on the subject, saying instead, “Our train leaves in five hours, I believe.”

“Four and half,” Tom said. “Ample time to take rooms at a hotel and order something to eat.”

“Enough time to see any of the sights?”

“Which ones did you have in mind?”

“Bradshaw’s mentions Pompey’s Pillar and Cleopatra’s Needle.” Jenny fumbled for the guide book in her reticule. She flipped through to the dog-eared page on Alexandria. “It says here that they’re both reachable by carriage or donkey.”

Ahmad gave Tom a doubtful look.

“Carriage it is, then,” Tom said. “Providing we can settle our other affairs in a timely manner.”

There wasn’t a great deal to settle. As passengers of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, their luggage and railway passage were already taken care of, as was the passage for their P & O steamship journey from Suez to Calcutta. All that was required was for them to book in at one of the hotels. After disembarking, they fought their way through a multitude of shouting donkey drivers all battling for the passengers’ attention, and boarded an omnibus bound for the grand square.

A short time later, they arrived at their destination, only to discover that the first three hotels they called upon were already full.

The fourth hotel—the Hotel d’Angleterre—had two rooms available, which they booked at once. Tom ordered their dinner for three hours hence and Jenny ordered baths for both herself and Mira. They then departed by carriage for Cleopatra’s Needle.

Along the way, they passed through crowded, zigzagging streets of well-trod sand, adorned here and there with feathery palm trees. Jenny had never seen such a diverse collection of human beings. British travelers, garbed as anyone might be in the English countryside, mingled with olive-skinned Greeks and Spaniards, black-bearded Arabs in gracefully flowing robes, and veiled women with babies riding on donkeys. There were men puffing long pipes, and merchants bartering with customers in swiftly uttered French and Arabic. She even saw her first camel—a whole string of them—being led through the street by an Egyptian in a tasseled hat.

It was a cacophony of smoke and sound and stimulating scents.

Some of the residents of the city were, indeed, as semiclothed as Mrs. Plank had foretold, but there was nothing of savagery in it. The streets were dusty and the sun was shining bright. The city was vivid. Wholly alive. The diversity of language and skin color—of dress and undress—was as well-suited to the setting as anything Jenny could imagine.

And yet she couldn’t be entirely at ease. No sooner had they climbed into their hired carriage than a flock of children began to run after them with desperate pleas for “baksheesh.”

Jenny gave Tom an anxious glance. “Can’t we give them something?”

Tom hesitated a moment before calling out to the driver. “Stop the carriage!” And then again in French, “Arrêter le chariot!”

The carriage came to a jolting halt on the street. It was at once surrounded by beggars. Not only the children, but grown men and women, too; all of whom seemed to materialize out of nowhere.

“Don’t get out,” Ahmad warned. “Unless you wish to have your pockets picked clean.”

Mira peered warily out the carriage window. “We shouldn’t have stopped, madam.”

Jenny had to admit they were right. The money she’d withdrawn from her reticule seemed dreadfully inadequate now, even when combined with Tom’s contribution. As he tossed the coins from the window, a crippling sense of helplessness assailed her.

The experience made it near impossible to enjoy seeing Cleopatra’s Needle. There were beggar children there, too. A small group of them, following along as she and Tom circled the red granite obelisk.

It was a beautiful relic. One of the most fascinating sights Jenny had ever seen—and also one of the saddest. Instead of standing upright, it was half buried in a ditch. A European gentleman in a cloth-covered helmet was perched atop the exposed end of it, breaking off a portion of the inscribed stone with a small mallet and chisel.

She suppressed a cry of protest. “Is that permitted?”

Tom frowned. “Judging by the state of the thing, I’d say it’s encouraged.”

The obelisk was indeed missing several chunks. As if countless tourists had taken pieces away with them as souvenirs.

“It belongs to Britain,” she said under her breath. “He has no right to deface it.”

“I don’t recommend we tell him so.”

Jenny had no intention of saying anything to the man. But she wasn’t averse to scowling at him as they passed, giving him a look so sharp with disapproval that it briefly stopped the trajectory of his mallet.

As they walked, the beggars kept pace with them, calling out, and—every so often—tugging at Jenny’s skirts or touching the velvet of her caraco with curious fingers. It became more and more difficult to ignore them. They weren’t hardened criminals. They were just children, some of them scarcely more than babies, toddling along in the wake of their elders. One of them looked up at her, giving her a gap-toothed smile. Jenny smiled back at him, alarmed to feel the sting of tears in her eyes.