After that evening, Kuchuk Hanem – let’s call her that, as few knew her by her real name – would linger in the men’s memories even after they returned to their continent. Her two guests were indistinguishable from other tourists, their whiteness and curiosity making them easy targets for thieves. They had come expressly to see her, the most famous courtesan in Esna. She stood at the top of her spiral staircase, her chin raised, inspecting her prey with imperious eyes. The strands of her necklaces glistened. Kuchuk Hanem let the pair gawk at what they could make out of her body beneath her gauzy lavender robe. Her mastery of the pose allowed her to evoke divinity. She had ordered her servant, accompanied by a ewe coloured with henna, to escort the gentlemen to her residence.

Only later did Kuchuk Hanem find out that her visitors, a photographer and a writer, were distinguished in their land of archivists. The former was obsessed with ruins and geometry; the latter, with the human or, rather, the half-human. The writer, while never losing respect for his photographer friend’s obsession with visual fidelity, indulged his own passion for the world around him by describing his encounters with hybrid creatures that were part goddess, part animal, part devil. Despite their different natures, the pair had sailed up the Nile to record this antique land, the playground where Kuchuk Hanem had learned to perform – and cheat – in her games. They had equipped themselves with a map inscribed with the respectable mission of bringing back knowledge about this other world. Through their eyes, one might see the curves of Kuchuk Hanem’s body haunting the severe lines of pyramids, and all Egypt incarnated in her kohl, in her henna, in the rattles on her anklets, in the beads of sweat on her décolletage.

—

Maxime Du Camp and Gustave Flaubert sat on a divan puffing pipes as Kuchuk Hanem, three dancing girls and a small band of musicians prepared for the show. Kuchuk Hanem had washed the guests’ hands with rose water. Ah, these khawajah loved rituals – the more bizarre the better, and the more profitable for the performers. Gustave didn’t have high expectations. His brief experience of Egypt’s demimonde gave him the impression that the beautiful women here danced terribly. The most thrilling dance he had witnessed was performed by a male. Hasan el-Belbeissi, he wrote, wore wide trousers that allowed one to glimpse the slope of his naked buttocks.

The dancing girls could never compete with Hasan’s pelvic gyrations but they were ‘learned women’ nevertheless. ‘The equivalent of our intellectual Parisian ladies,’ Gustave whispered in Maxime’s ear.

Awalim, or ‘learned women’, meant prostitutes.