eunuch sat upon the box beside the coachman, a slave sat in the carriage with her, and the enveloping faradje and charsaf made her look as sexless as a sack of meal with a flower-pot on top of it. Thus enveloped I could have smuggled almost anything smaller than a Rolls-Royce out with me, and bit by bit I took my jewels from the treasure chests and handed them to Reshad as he helped me from the coach. After praying I was always in a state of near-collapse; so I had an excellent excuse to be driven through the streets for some time before returning to the haremlik. Reshad found it convenient to direct our route past the counting-house of Himor Kimirian, who in addition to being a fellow Armenian was one of Cairo's shrewdest bankers and jewel brokers.
When most of my jewels were disposed of we were ready for our break. A Jewish friend of Kimirian's leased a small shop and to this I was driven on my way back from the mosque. Of course, the slave accompanied me into the place, but she saw nothing amiss when a woman assistant handed coffee to us. I don't know what the stuff contained, but it must have been most potent, for the girl had hardly swallowed it when she fell over in a stupor.
The rest was almost shamelessly easy. I left the shop by the back door, met Reshad in the alley and got into another carriage. In a short time we were at Kimirian's, where I changed my clothes, and within an hour I was on my way to Alexandria with nearly a million francs to my account at the Crédit Lyonnais, and a most artistically forged British passport in my reticule.
I knew just how a prisoner reprieved from life incarceration feels when I stepped from the Marseilles-Paris train de grande vitesse. I was a Comtesse de Monte Cristo, and the world was mine. I was young—at least it seemed the body they had given me was scarcely past its adolescence—beautiful and rich, and absolutely at a loose end. I reveled in my freedom, going on long shopping tours at Liberty's and the Galeries LaFayctte, or the smaller, more exclusive shops, consulting skilled coiffeurs and coitturières, riding, dining, going to the theater and the opera. I was catching up on all I'd missed of life during five years spent behind the harem's lattices, and loving every instant of it.
Then, gradually but surely, I became tired of myself. I still admired my woman's body and took pleasure in adorning it, but it and I—the real I—had not fused. When I was with men I felt like a man, and to come in contact with them roused purely masculine reactions. I could shake hands with them or touch them casually, but to be made love to by them outraged me as much as if I still wore a man's body. When I was with women I felt like a woman. There was pleasure but no thrill in kissing them or being kissed by them. Also, I soon discovered men were much the same in Europe as in Northern Africa, the principal distinction being that the Moslems were more frank about their attitude.
Finally I decided to come back to America. There would be a sort of bitter-sweet solace in visiting the scenes I knew so well and seeing all the friends I'd known, yet passing them unrecognized, like a ghost who haunts the scenes he'd known in life and watches his old friends while he remains invisible.
One of the first things that I did on my arrival was to visit the museum and make them a contribution. My gift,
