By Mursi Saad El-Din Janice Elliot is regarded as one of the most accomplished novelists in England. She worked first as a journalist and moved into book reviewing before publishing fiction. The title of her novel about Egypt, Life on the Nile, is a play on Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile. It contains minute descriptions of Egyptian scenes and sites, buildings and characters. Charlotte Hamp comes to Cairo with her travel-writer husband, Leo, to go on a Nile cruise. But while Leo indulges his passion for amateur archaeology she plans a more personal excavation. In 1924 her great-aunt Phoebe was murdered while living in Aswan in circumstances never fully explained. All Charlotte has are her letters home and a disturbingly incomplete journal ablaze with life and love for Egypt. There is a sense of mortality and of mystery. In trying to find the truth about one death Charlotte discovers that here there is never a simple explanation for anything. In Cairo she meets the other members of the cruise party, including Max, who has written a book on the Old Testament and is himself stalked by death, and Nikolai, a Hampstead Russian alcoholic of melancholy charm. The cruise progresses to undertows of menace. A stone is thrown and there are rumours of rioting in Cairo. But for Charlotte present dangers are overlain by events of over sixty years ago as Phoebe's story, and that of the turbulent independence movement of the 1920's, become as real as her own and lead to a cathartic confrontation with the past. The author seems to have a sympathetic attitude towards Egypt and a harsh judgment of British action towards the Egyptian nationalist movement of 1919. This is expressed through Phoebe, who is strongly pro Egyptian and is used as the writer's mouthpiece. Phoebe kept a journal, which Charlotte brings with her, together with a collection of letters. The latter are reminiscent of Lady Duff Gordon's Letters from Egypt. They contain many interesting facts and opinions. We get to know, for instance, about the role of Egyptian women in the 1919 Revolution through the Hazim family, a brother and involved in the nationalist movement who were acquaintances of Pheobe. "If you knew this part of the world where women are kept down so you'd understand these political protests are sensational, much braver than our suffragettes," she writes. There are similarities between the present visitor, Charlotte, and her aunt. They both arrive at a time when there is a crisis, the Nationalist Movement in 1919 and the fundamentalist problems in the EgyptCharlotte visits. But Pheobe's attachment to Egypt was stronger than Charlotte's. She stayed longer in the country and made many friends. It is through her friends Nayra, and her brother Ahmed, that Pheobe gets to know and sympathise with the Egyptian issue. She writes about Saad Zaghloul, the leader of the Wafd party, who lead the 1919 revolution. Her enthusiasm is clear about the female Wafd, as she calls the women's wing of the party. What is happening in Egypt, she says, is a revolution for women as well as for Egypt. Pheobe's love for Egypt is clear in the letters she writes to her family in England. She feels a particular affinity for the desert and the Nile which she says make human problems look small and absurd. Life, to her, is like the Nile: for a while it runs in long smooth stretches and then suddenly there are cataracts, rush, muddle. She deals with the Suez Canal and the role of the British in making full use of Egypt's bankruptcy. When the declaration of Egyptian independence is announced she realises the reserved points in the Declaration means "our troops will stay" and laments that with "so many points reserved it's not independence at all". Pheobe makes sympathetic criticisms of the English women living in Egypt. They are all, she sees, trying to put aside enough money to educate their children and buy the homes they dream of in England. "They don't even want to know Egypt and do their best not to see it," she writes. "For me Egypt has become home. Hope to live and die here." Through Nayra and Ahmed Pheobe becomes involved with the independence movement. As a result she becomes unpopular with the British community. Her involvement is her undoing and the author suspects that the British are responsible for her assassination. She learns they sent assassins after Ahmed, who is hiding in her house in Aswan, and Charlotte comes to believe that when Ahmed escapes it is these hired killers who kill Pheobe. Pheobe's love for Egypt goes beyond her present life and beyond the Egypt she lives in. Ancient Egypt is as close to her as the modern country. She sends a head of Nefertiti to her son in England with a note saying: "She lived over a thousand years ago by the Nile and was the beautiful wife of a famous Pharaoh who worshipped the sun. Nefertiti had six daughters. The end of the story of Nefertiti and Akhenaton is sad, but while they lived they were very happy. Akhenaton wrote poetry and Nefertiti played in a walled garden with her six children." This is the head which Pheobe's son, Charlotte's father, values to the end of his life. It stirred in him a great passion for this far off country which he never visits. He keeps the statuette on the brown stained mantel in his study, and Charlotte catches him one day holding the statuette cradled in his hands. Through Charlotte the author gives us a picture of modern Egypt. She describes her walks in Cairo, along the banks of the Nile and in Dokki, but she also gives us the story of Akhenaton as told by their guide Adila. And though politics are relatively thin on the ground in the novel we find passages reveal about Pheobe's attitude towards the Egyptian revolution of 1991, and her niece's attitude towards Israel.
