The Cairo Waltz The storm arrived without warning, as storms in Cairo have a habit of doing. One moment the sky over the Semiramis Hotel was the color of warm cream, the next it was bruised purple, and then the rain came down in sheets that turned the streets of Ismailia Quarter into rivers. Edward Ashworth was playing his cello in the lobby when the first thunderclap shook the windows. He had been attempting Vivaldi's Spring, but the storm had other plans. His bow slipped on the string twice, and he stopped, setting the instrument gently against the velvet chair. He was twenty-six years old and had played in the Royal Academy's concert hall last month to an audience that included the Dean of Music, and still the storm made him set down his bow as if it were a surrender. In the corner of the lobby, a young woman was reading a newspaper with a headline about Egyptology -- something about a tomb being discovered in the Valley of Kings. She had closed the paper when the storm began and now watched the rain with an expression that Edward could only describe as relief. As if the storm had confirmed something she already suspected: that the world was larger than her problems, and therefore her problems were smaller than she had thought. She noticed him looking and looked away. She was wearing a dress of pale blue that was clearly expensive but slightly worn at the cuffs, as if the family that had bought it for her was not what it had been. Edward, who had been raised to notice such things, felt a strange kinship with her. When the electricity went out and the lobby was lit only by the flickering gas lamps, she rose and moved to the fireplace. Edward watched her arrange herself by the fire, and she caught him watching and raised her chin slightly, as if to say: What are you looking at? "I play cello," Edward said, because the silence was too heavy to leave unbroken. "I can tell," she said. "You play like someone who has something to say." He considered this. "I do," he said. "Sometimes." "Sometimes?" "Mostly not." She smiled, and it transformed her face from pretty to interesting, which was, Edward thought, a much better combination. "I am Edward Ashworth," he said. "Clara Walsh," she said. It was not her name, but he did not ask. In Egypt, everyone was someone they were not. The storm lasted three hours. When it ended, the streets were flooded but the sky was clear, and the two strangers in the Semiramis lobby sat by the fire and talked until midnight. She told him about her interest in ancient Egypt -- not the tourist variety, but the real thing, the language and the architecture and the way a civilization could speak to you across three thousand years if you knew how to listen. He told her about music -- how a cello's voice was the closest thing to a human voice that instruments could produce, and how he had come to Egypt at the invitation of Lord Pemberton to document ancient musical instruments for the British Museum. "You think ancient Egyptians had music?" she asked. "Of course they did," Edward said. "They had everything. Music was not invented by the Romans or the Greeks or the English. It was invented by people who looked at the world and wanted to make it beautiful. The Egyptians understood that better than anyone." She looked at the fire. "I think I understand that too," she said quietly. When morning came, they discovered that the hotel's upper floors had taken on water and several guests had been relocated to the ground floor. Edward and Clara, who had been sitting in separate chairs, were now sharing a sitting room because the hotel clerk had run out of space. This was, Edward thought, how stories begin. They toured together for the next week. She showed him the Coptic churches of Old Cairo, with their carved wooden doors that looked like they had been cut from the trees of Paradise itself. He played his cello in the courtyards of the citadel, and she sat on the stone steps and listened with her eyes closed. At the Pyramids, he played Bach. She stood beside him and did not speak for a long time. When he finished, she said: "You know, I don't believe in destiny. But I believe that sometimes two people are meant to stand in the same place at the same time and hear the same thing. And that thing is not Bach. It's something else." "What thing?" he asked. She didn't answer. She just looked at the Pyramids, and he looked at her looking at them, and that was enough. One evening at a garden in Giza, the desert wind picked up. It was cold -- the desert wind always is, even in summer, because the desert doesn't understand that warmth is something you can plan for. Edward unbuttoned his wool coat and offered it to her. "You don't need it," she said. "I do," he said, and it was true. He was a man who played music for money and had never been cold in his life. But she was shivering, and he was a gentleman, and gentlemen give their coats to ladies even when the lady doesn't ask. She took it. It was larger than her, as wool coats tend to be on people who are not built like Oxford professors, and it smelled of lavender and old paper and something that might have been cello rosin. She wrapped it around her shoulders and said nothing, but her hand stayed on the lapel for a long time afterward, as if checking that it was still there. In the bazaar of Khan el-Khalili, an Egyptian merchant sold them scarves. He was old, with a white beard that fell to his chest and eyes that had seen everything and were amused by none of it. He held up two scarves -- one deep blue, one gold -- and looked at them both with an expression of profound seriousness. "You," he said, pointing at Edward. "Pharaoh." He pointed at Clara. "Queen of the Nile." Clara flushed. Edward said: "We are not --" "For Pharaoh and Queen," the merchant said, "I give special price." Edward bought both scarves. He did not know why. Something about the merchant's certainty -- the absolute conviction that these two strangers were royalty in disguise -- made him want to play along. Clara wore the blue one everywhere for the rest of the trip. Edward noticed this, and she knew that he had noticed, and neither of them mentioned it. Then Thomas arrived from Alexandria, and he was everything that Edward was not: loud, irreverent, and completely incapable of reading a romantic atmosphere. He had come to Cairo on business for Lord Pemberton and insisted on joining them on their Nile cruise. Clara did not complain. But Edward noticed that when Thomas told jokes, she laughed too loudly. When Thomas interrupted their conversations, she let him. And when Thomas suggested that Edward and Clara take separate cabins on the steamer because " propriety, brother," she said nothing, but her hand went to the blue scarf at her neck, and Edward saw it. At the gala hosted by the British Consul in Luxor, the entire expatriate community of Egypt was present. The women wore diamonds that cost more than villages. The men wore medals for wars they hadn't fought and titles they hadn't earned. Edward played his cello in the corner, because this is what men who play cello do at galas: they stand in the corner and play. But he did not play Vivaldi or Bach. He played a piece he had written himself, a composition he called "The Desert Waltz." It was not a waltz in the traditional sense -- it was slower, more meditative, with a melody that moved like sand across water. It was about a man and a woman who met in a storm and found something they had not been looking for. It was about the way a wool coat can feel like an oath. It was about a blue scarf worn in a room full of diamonds because it is more precious than anything in the room. Clara heard it. She stood at the edge of the room, holding a glass of champagne she did not drink, and she heard it, and she understood. She dropped her fan. It was a small thing, a piece of wood and lace that fell from her hand and landed on the marble floor with a sound that was lost in the applause. But in the language of Victorian England, it was as clear as a proclamation. I consent. Edward set down his bow. He walked across the room to her. He took off his coat again -- he was carrying it, because he had taken it off for her once and never felt the need to take it back -- and he held it out to her one more time, not because she was cold but because it was the thing he had when everything else was insufficient. "Clara," he said. She looked at the coat, then at his face. "Edward," she said. They did not speak of it again that night. They did not need to. On the boat to England three days later, he played a small piece of music, and she hummed along, and the blue scarf was wrapped around her neck, catching the desert wind like a sail. And the desert, which had watched countless lovers pass through its gates and had never cared about any of them, made a slight exception. Just for them. ======================================================================