Samia Serageldin – The Naqib’s Daughter (страница 16)

‘We will make inquiries, madame. If the girl was injured or killed, the perpetrators will be hanged, even if they turn out to be French.’

‘Thank you, sir! I knew I would not appeal in vain to French justice. And thank you for your patience in listening to me.’ She rose, gathered her abaya about her, bowed, and exited the hall.

Did the French even realize how unpopular the measures they were taking would make them, imposing taxes on the very charities the poor relied on for shelter and water, schooling and hospice care? They should not be surprised if there were an uprising of the people.

As she rode back towards her house in the Red Quarter, her chief eunuch on the mule before her and a maid on the donkey behind her, people in the street recognized Nafisa in her white veils and greeted her with cries of, ‘God bless you, Sitt Nafisa the White.’ She nodded to Barquq to hand them a coin or two, discreetly; it pained her not to be able to give more.

The poor and the weary travellers who came to fill their jars at her fountains; how could she let these people down? But the dream that was closest to her heart was to build a school, a kuttab for orphans. God had not seen fit to give her children, so the young of the poor and abandoned would be her consolation.

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