Maria Doria Russell, Dreamers of the Day, New York: Random House, 2008. pp253 Are you planning on visiting the Middle East? Will you be staying a few days to take a look at the sites and become acquainted with the local culture? During your short stay, you may make a point, for the local culture's sake, to talk to a taxi driver or two or even a waiter at one of the surviving chic cafés who will tell you all about the good old days, proudly displaying his barely functional knowledge of foreign languages. If you have done all that you are all set to drum up one more little travel book, vite fait, to relate your impressions and venture an opinion on the region. Such books are written by foreigners for foreigners, comforting future visitors in their (equally superficial) impressions. They are, however, of little interest to the native Egyptian who, when informed about their contents, often feels wronged and insulted. Mary Doria Russell's novel Dreamers of the Day is more unusual, even though it still targets a non-Egyptian readership. It is not cast in the form of a travel log, as so many such books are, dating from the beginning of the century, and it does not purport to recreate the period, even if the book's main character, Agnes, insists she is doing just that. In fact her descriptions of Cairo are at best superficial, and at times they are quite inaccurate. Her appetite for the people and sites of the country she had set out to visit is at best frugal, pointing to a reconstruction by the author from various guide books and from other novels set in Egypt. It is possible that Mary Doria Russell has never traveled to the Middle East, and in her acknowledgements she does not claim that she has. Still, one is slightly surprised at Agnes's dismissiveness: Taking a trip up the Nile to Luxor, this is what she has to say: "The river was quite beautiful further south, especially at sunset, with lavender mountains rising beyond reed-fringed banks against a salmon-colored evening sky. And of course the pathetic splendor of Thebes, which with its hundred gates could fill a book but," she adds in a rather cavalier manner, "you may read of it elsewhere if you wish." Having apparently exhausted her efforts at description after a visit to the southern cities of Qena and Assiut she adds: "What else? Let me see...There is lovely pottery made in Kenneh which is said to be the healthiest place in Egypt. And the Coptic girls in Assiout embroider exquisite net scarves with gold and silver thread. The scarves are sold in Cairo but don't buy them in the city. You can buy the best in Assiout and pay much less." As for the Egyptians they are represented by rioters shouting "à bas Churchill," by the dragoman, by the little boy who walks her dog for a couple of piasters, and by an anonymous felucca man who rescues Agnes and her dog from drowning. The narrative is a historical fantasy and essentially a work of fiction, as the writer asserts herself, drawing upon the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference, which gathered T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), Gertrude Bell and (accompanied by his wife Clementine), at the Semiramis Hotel. There, they sat in a conference room, carving up the Middle East at the convenience of "Churchill and his forty thieves" as the attendees were dubbed. Agnes, a middle-class and rather innocent American fifth-grade schoolteacher of 40 and "a woman without a vote of [her] own, or even a man to persuade," is somehow privy to all this and goes on to tell the tale. However, politics are carefully kept at a bare minimum, the author concentrating on her protagonist's feelings and appearance instead, as well as on her search for romance and on her plaguing attacks of self-doubt. In fact, Agnes Shanklin is a rather plain girl and a member of a large family living in the suburbs of Cleveland during the first decade of the last century. Her mother rules her brood with unwavering puritanical principles and an iron hand. Agnes has been blessed with a bright mind to compensate for her lack of beauty. She worships her mother and does as she is told, becoming a school teacher since her chances of getting married are few according to her mother. Her young and beautiful sister Lillian, on the other hand, quickly finds her match in a handsome missionary who is on his way to preach in the Holy Land, and here the couple settles in a mission in the mountains of Lebanon. However, tragedy strikes in 1918 when an influenza epidemic wipes out Agnes's entire family both in Cleveland and in the mountains of Lebanon. Recovering miraculously herself, she finds herself alone in the world with a small inheritance and Rosie her funny dachshund. The second, main part of the book unfolds in Egypt where Agnes (accompanied by Rosie the dog and the spirit of her dead mother who provides commentaries on her daughter's behaviour) has decided to go following in the footsteps of Lillian. First destination, Cairo. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel (she has booked her room through Cook's), she immediately provokes a small scandal caused -- she never really finds out -- either by her short dress or by her short-legged dog. The screaming match between Agnes's dragoman and the porter of the hotel attracts the attention of a party standing in the lobby, which consists of the stern Gertrude Bell and her companions and his wife Clementine, as well as Captain Lawrence (of Arabia) who mistakes Agnes at first for her dead sister Lillian. By an extraordinary coincidence Lawrence had been a great friend of Lillian's at the time when she and her husband had been spreading the Christian faith in Lebanon. Eventually, Gertrude Bell arranges accommodation for Agnes and Rosie at the Continental Hotel. From this point on, Russell's protagonist hangs around the main players of the Cairo Conference, while in her spare time befriending a male German- Jewish spy. Agnes, who has never had a lover, is attracted by the man, especially since he fusses so much over Rosie. This man, Karl Weilbacher, seems eager to have a relationship with Agnes and assures her that his intentions are honourable. Yet, while he has told her the truth regarding the physical aspect of the friendship, his demands are less than respectable where politics are concerned since through Agnes he wants to know what is going on at the Cairo Conference. The reader's credulity is stretched rather thin at this point, since members of the conference make a habit of informing Agnes of their secret arrangements for the region. Why would Churchill and Lawrence spill the beans on a daily basis to an American woman they have just met and whose interest in the region are next to nil? Why do they keep talking to her, even though she never hides her affection for Weilbacher who is known to them to be a spy? Russell provides no answers to these questions, and nor does she explain, when the politicians travel to Jerusalem, why she tags along (minus Rosie who stays with Weilbacher). In Jerusalem, she witnesses riots against the British and Lawrence's masterful intervention to save the day for Churchill. Having sorted out the problems his companions encounter in the Holy City, Lawrence then takes the time to drive Agnes to Lebanon to visit the region where her sister lived and died. Them he ups and leaves her, disappearing without so much as a goodbye. Agnes picks her way back to Cairo in order to inform Weilbacher, a man she has begun to love, of what she has seen and heard. Having obtained the information he was after, Weilbacher dumps her politely and returns to his wife and daughter in Germany. Agnes goes back to America where for a few years she plays the stock market, amasses a fortune overnight that she then squanders, and is finally caught up in the 1929 Crash, finding herself penniless. Times are hard back in Cleveland during the Depression, and Agnes is happy to be offered a job as a librarian at her old school, a position she holds until her death. The conclusion of this entertaining saga is written by Agnes from beyond the grave: she and Rosie have been reunited in an Egyptian paradise on the banks of the Nile, not surprisingly, she comments, since she has drunk the river's waters. Her companions in heaven include Napoleon and Ptolemy III. Gertrude Bell and Colonel Lawrence are however absent. This Egyptian paradise also includes Egyptians, but they dwell on the east bank ( baladi ) while Agnes and Rosie are on the west bank ( frangi ), Like in the Egypt of the living, Egyptians and foreigners do not mix. From her vantage point above the world of the living, a wiser Agnes looks down on at the scene below. She now has the answers to many of the mysteries of her former life. Other puzzles remain unsolved, but in her Egyptian paradise they no longer matter much. Reviewed by Fayza Hassan
