The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [223]
‘I am sorry’ stammered Mountolive, still trying to atone for his gaffe.
‘I am not’ said the invalid. ‘It is good that we should mention these matters openly because we Copts feel them in here, in our deepest hearts. The British have made the Moslems oppress us. Study the Commission. Talk to your compatriots there about the Copts and you will hear their contempt and loathing of us. They have inoculated the Moslems with it.’
‘Oh, surely, Sir!’ said Mountolive, in an agony of apology.
‘Surely’ asseverated the sick man, nodding his head upon that sprained stalk of neck. ‘We know the truth.’ Leila made some small involuntary gesture, almost a signal, as if to stop her husband before he was fully launched into a harangue, but he did not heed he r. He sat back chewing a piece of bread and said indistinctly: ‘But then what do you, what does any Englishman know or care of the Copts?
An obscure religious heresy, they think, a debased language with a liturgy hopelessly confused by Arabic and Greek. It has always been so. When the first Crusade captured Jerusalem it was ex-pressly ruled that no Copt enter the city — our Holy City. So little could those Western Christians distinguish between Moslems who defeated them at Askelon and the Copts — the only branch of the Christian Church which was thoroughly integrated into the Orient!
But then your good Bishop of Salisbury openly said he considered
these Oriental Christians as worse than infidels, and your Crusaders massacred them joyfully.’ An expression of bitterness translated into a cruel smile lit up his features for a moment. Then, as his customary morose hangdog expression appeared, licking his lips he plunged once more into an argument the matter of which, Mount-olive suddenly realized, had been preying upon his secret mind from the first day of his visit. He had indeed carried the whole of this conversation stacked up inside him, waiting for the moment to launch it. Narouz gazed at his father with sympathetic adoration, his features copying their expression from what was said — pride, at the words ‘Our Holy City’, anger at the words ‘worse than infide ls’. Leila sat pale and absorbed, looking out towards the balcony; only Nessim looked serious yet easy in spirit. He watched his father sympathetically and respectfully but without visible emotion. He was still almost smiling.
‘Do you know what they call us — the Moslems?’ Once more his head wagged. ‘I will tell you. Gins Pharoony. Yes, we are genus Pharaonicus — the true descendants of the ancients, the true marrow of Egypt. We call ourselves Gypt — ancient Egyptians. Yet we are Christians like you, only of the oldest and purest strain. And all through we have been the brains of Egypt — even in the time of the Khedive. Despite persecutions we have held an honoured place here; our Christianity has always been respected. Here in Egypt, not there in Europe. Yes, the Moslems who have hated Greek and Jew have recognized in the Copt the true in-heritor of the ancient Egyptian strain. When Mohammed Ali came to Egypt he put all the financ ial affairs of the country into the hands of the Copts. So did Ismail his successor. Again and again you will find that Egypt was to all intents and purposes ruled by us, the despised Copts, because we had more brains and more integrity than the others. Indeed, when Mohammed Ali first arrived he found a Copt in charge of all state affairs and made him his Grand Vizier.’
‘Ibrahim E. Gohari’ said Narouz with the triumphant air of a schoolboy who can recite his lesson correctly.
‘Exactly’ echoed his father, no less triumphant ly. ‘He was the only Egyptian permitted to smoke his pipe in the presence of the first of the Khedives. A Copt!