His cousin slapped his arm.
“I can’t accept all of this,” Elias said. “It’s too much; take it back, eat it yourself.”
“Nah, you keep it,” Nassim said, looking mildly offended. “I’ll go home in a month. I restock at the source.”
Restock, and liaise with Uncle Jabbar about business, no doubt. The potential prospects and troubles for the silk trade with Britain in light of the British tussle with Egyptian nationalists and Ottomans over Egypt. Focus on Lyon and let the French deal with the distribution in Europe, Elias would have advised, but his uncle’s ears were rather closed to his opinions. Jabbar liked to keep him on the fringe of the family business, quite literally, by assigning him positions in Britain, in Lyon, in Beirut, important positions, but outside the innermost circle of decision making.
“They’ll find you a wife this time,” he told Nassim instead. “So watch out.”
Nassim jiggled the bag with pistachios. “Listen, I’m ready. How is your French girl?”
Elias shook his head. “I came from Beirut. Francine was in Lyon.”
He also hadn’t seen Francine since leaving Lyon two years ago, but he knew she would have laughed at being called a girl.
“No one in Marseille, then?” Nassim asked, winking so hard it looked like a spasm.
“You’re shameless,” Elias said darkly. “Too nosy.”
Nassim stepped back to admire his handiwork on the shelf. “You may ask me about my sweethearts,” he said, using the English word sweethearts. Despite overseeing their British operations for the past seven years, his accent was still strong.
“As for my business here,” Elias said. “There has been a delay.” In few words, he explained that the Scottish professor would be away for at least a fortnight.
Nassim’s strong brows pulled together. “What will you do in the meantime? Have you learned any more about that Englishman?”
“Mr. Leighton? Not yet.” He knew the collector’s family had made their wealth through textile trade, and he seemed diplomatically well-connected throughout the Levant.
“I tell you what he is,” said Nassim, his lip curling with contempt. “He’s the son of a dog.”
“He may be unaware of what he’s done.”
Nassim scoffed. “Of course. And he’ll just give everything back once he knows. If you believe that, why don’t you write it down, on a sheet of ice.”
The skepticism was justified; even a pragmatic optimist like Elias could admit to that. Leighton helping himself to priceless Levantine artifacts was part of a wider problem that had affected the Ottomans, the Chinese, and the Persians for a while now: foreign travelers and academics were relieving their territories of their antiquities. Matters had gone out of hand lately, with entire pantheons disappearing and then resurfacing on estates in Europe and the United States, and Ottoman officials were losing their patience. From Egypt to Asia, talks were held, appeals were made, a system of fees and licenses had long been introduced. Yet on it went. The soil of the Levant alone was a layer cake of imposing structures and skilled craftsmanship, produced by half a dozen high cultures over the course of five thousand years. Put a spade in the ground, the newspapers in London claimed, and you might just hit a Byzantian mosaic, an Assyrian obelisk, or intricate Phoenician jewelry. How could a visitor from Europe resist such an exotic treasure trove? A British collector was shortchanged at home; except for the few things the Romans had built, there had only been sticks and mud until recently. So he helped himself, during grand tours or at official digging sites, or he purchased pieces from locals who had realized how easily they could turn old stones into food on their tables. Two years ago, Münif Pasha, Ottoman minister of education, had opened a museum in Konstantiniyye, center of the caliphate, in an effort to prove that one was fit to care for one’s own antiquities. Elias had read the minister’s speech in the newspaper during another dull hot summer afternoon at the Silk Office. Until now, Europeans have used various means to take the antiquities of our country away, Münif Pasha had lamented, and they did this because they did not see an inclination toward this in us.
Elias had mocked the our country part because the Ottomans had taken Constantinople and many provinces from the Byzantines, and while the House of Osman had reigned for centuries now, most of the pilfered artifacts predated their rule by millennia. As the current stewards of the region, the Ottomans were certainly entitled to worry about the situation, but Elias had witnessed their inconsistency: with Ottoman approval, countless pieces had left their provinces in Greece, the Levant, and Egypt, while the native populations had watched their heritage being packed up and shipped west. Besides, a museum wouldn’t help their cause—the foreigners took artifacts not because they cared, but because they could.
“You can come to the museum with me,” Elias told Nassim. “In fact”—he glanced at the beleaguered clock on the mantelshelf—“we’re expected there now.”
“Very well,” Nassim said brightly. “Let’s look at the loot.”
Elias smoothed his cravat. “The professor’s daughter will meet us at the lodge.”
Nassim paused. “A daughter.”
“Behave, will you.”
Nassim went to the fireplace and plucked one of the jars with apricots off the shelf.
“What are you doing?” Elias asked, his hands gesturing confusion.
“A gift for our hostess,” Nassim replied. “I shall say they are from our grandmother.”
“Come on, you can’t be serious?”
“I have good manners,” Nassim said, “unlike you. These are excellent apricots.”
“I have a brain—you don’t give a lady a pound of fruit to lug around.”
Nassim cocked his head, a calculating look in his eyes. “She’s pretty, isn’t she.”
“Her appearance is none of your business.”
Nassim smirked. “Brother, you protest too much.”
Elias grabbed his walking stick from the commode. “You want to carry the jar around the museum like a donkey, or make her carry it?”
Nassim gave a harassed groan and put the jar back. “It would have been polite, and she would have been charmed,” he said, “trust me.”
The lady and her chaperone were already waiting in the gothic archway when Elias and Nassim entered the Front Quad. She did not look charmed. Her quiet oval face seemed ghostly against the dark background, and she didn’t brighten upon seeing Elias approach with a stranger in tow. In a confusing contrast to her solemn mood, she wore a blue silk dress so snug, the curve from the dip of her waist to the flare of her hip could make a man dizzy. Not helpful, this dress, not in the slightest . . .
Elias introduced Nassim. His cousin pushed out his broad chest.