Napoleon's Egypt: Invading The Middle East - Reenactor.ru

138 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTdrawing water. She looked up at his footsteps and gasped, covering her face withher hands, and then she hurried away, leaving her jug behind. Bernoyer, “ever gallant,as you know,” picked up the jug and went after her. He called out in his brokenArabic, “Look, my pretty friend, you forgot your jug!” She stopped, and hewasted not a moment in catching up to her and presenting her with the vessel. Ofcourse, in order to accept it she had to withdraw one hand from her face, uncoveringpart of it. “That one portion that I saw was sufficient as a basis for concludingthat this Egyptian was extremely beautiful. I fell in love at that moment, to the extentthat a great confusion seized my reason and paralyzed me for a few instants.”The owner of the manufactory was proud to give him a detailed tour, but Bernoyerwas so distracted that he hardly heard a word the man said. He cut the tour shorton a pretext. As they rode out, the agent inquired of his intentions. Bernoyerreplied, “I absolutely have to come into possession of that beautiful person.”Ahmad agreed to do what he could, but raised several difficulties. First, howwould he know which girl it was that Bernoyer had seen? They would all beveiled in the presence of strange men. Moreover, all the women who worked inthe factory would be Egyptian Muslims, and they were forbidden to have anythingto do with non-Muslim men. Muslims were so sensitive on this issue, heconcluded, that they might well refuse to have anything to do with intriguingfor Bernoyer. The quartermaster replied that none of these obstacles deterredhim. “On the contrary, they only serve to excite my desires and increase myneed to satisfy them.” The forbidden status of Muslim women eroticized themfor the Frenchmen. Bernoyer then threatened to cut off his agent if he wouldnot cooperate in trying to acquire the girl, all the while ashamed that he washurting the man’s feelings and that his will was unable to rein in the “violentpassion of carnal love that had so strongly subjugated” him. He wondered if itwas the heat of the climate that had provoked these intense desires and swore hehad never experienced anything like it. The Orient itself became the pretext forthe need to subjugate the Orient.Ahmad at length managed to locate the girl in the manufactory whomBernoyer had described and to ascertain that her name was Fatima (“Fatmair”).She was the daughter of a destitute carpenter. Bernoyer had formulated a planof setting up a false marriage between her and his servant ‘Ali. Ahmad pointedout to him that the qadi who married the two would need to be assured that ‘Alihad a sufficient source of income, his own domicile, a cooking pot, a coffee pan,and a pipe. ‘Ali, in contrast, did not have shoes on his feet. Bernoyer stuffed awad of money in Ahmad’s hands and asked him to buy ‘Ali the necessary accoutrements.Bernoyer then sent Ahmad to the carpenter father of the prospective