by André Aciman
After the present caller paid for using the telephone, the “imbecile” took hold of the handset and began dialing. He listened intently and looked extremely worried. Suddenly, relief and a flustered smile lit up his features. “Hello, Mammaaaaaa?” he shouted in the middle of the crowded grocery store.
She obviously couldn’t hear very well because he had to shout. He made jerky movements with his head each time he warned her to stay put till he got home. “Go downstairs to the shelter. Nowhere else, understand?” I could hear her yammering in the earpiece. “Understand?” he repeated louder. Still she kept jabbering away. “Understand? Yes or no?” he yelled. At which she must have remembered to say yes, because he blurted out an exasperated “Finally,” ending his conversation by whispering, “Me too.”
He paid the cashier and our turn came. My mother, as was her habit, waited a moment as she held the handset before dialing. As soon as she dialed a number, she handed me the telephone. It was busy, I said. “On your word?” she asked with menace. “On my word.” She tried another number. This time it rang. I never knew whom we were calling until they answered the telephone. But no one answered. “No one’s at the office then,” she said. She tried a third number. “But where are you?” the Princess exclaimed. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you. We even called Hannaux.”
“We’re in a grocery store,” I said.
“In a grocery store! What are you doing in a grocery store at a time like this?” she yelled.
“Why are we in a grocery store?” I asked my mother.
“Because there’s a blenkaw. Tell her it’s because of the blenkaw,” insisted my mother.
“She says it’s because of the blenkaw.”
“Because of the what?”
“The blenkaw,” I explained.
“What in God’s name is a blenkaw?”
“What’s a blenkaw?” I asked my mother.
“It’s when they shut off the lights and you’re in the middle of a war.”
“Blackout,” corrected my grandmother, bursting with anger. “Will she ever learn to speak correctly before the boy ends up talking like a deaf-mute?” she commented to herself. When were we coming home, she asked.
“There are no taxis,” answered my mother.
“And what is the name of the grocery store?”
“Miltiades,” said my mother.
“But that’s at the other end of the world. Why did she have to go to Miltiades of all places? I’m coming.”
“She’s coming,” I said.
“She’s not! Tell her not to come. Tell her we’ll go to her house.”
My grandmother began to argue when, in the course of the debate, the all clear rang over the city. My grandmother heard it too at her end of the line. “Come immediately,” she ordered. The Greek and his wife turned on the main lights and almost simultaneously raised the rolling shutter. Blackout rituals from the Second World War were still very fresh in everyone’s mind. “You may leave now, ladies and gentlemen—courtesy of Miltiades,” he said as he stood at the doorway, wishing all of his customers good evening like a doorman expecting a tip. I had grown to like the warm, stand-up fellowship inside the store and was almost sorry to leave so soon, for there was something reassuring in being herded with so many people who smelled of cigarettes, perfume, and damp wool coats.
It occurred to my mother that we still had no way of getting home from where we were. By the time we reached Rue Chérif, all the shops had closed and the streets were emptying fast. There were no taxis available and the carriages normally parked along the sidewalks of Hannaux had disappeared.
The only choice was to reach Ramleh station by foot. From there we hoped to catch a tram to Grand Sporting, where my grandmother lived. But Ramleh was not close. “Can you walk?” she asked. “Because we’ll have to walk to the station, and we have to walk fast.” She gave me two of the smaller parcels and began to march forward, as I held on to her hand. She cursed herself for buying tea and pickled scallions at Miltiades.
The city was very dark. We turned the corner at Rue Toussoum, hugging the walls of the Ottoman bank as we tried to stay clear of the traffic. Mother stopped to judge whether, without knowing it, we might have missed Rue Phalaki in the dark. But no, Rue Phalaki was up ahead, she said. When we finally found ourselves walking along the dark and narrow sidewalk of the street on the way to the Boulevard, the wail of a siren once again tore through the city. People behind us began to run and the few lights inside the adjoining buildings immediately went out. Men were shouting in fear, invoking Allah. We too began to hasten our pace toward the Boulevard. Once we reached the intersection, we made out a large crowd massing around the tramway station. “This is worse than I thought,” Mother said, as she stopped to catch her breath. The underground shelter would be crammed with people by now.
I had seen the Boulevard Saad Zaghloul late in the evening before, with its shops closed for the night, but this was different. All the lights were gone now. People in galabiyas were racing around us, running toward the station as, a woman shrieked a boy’s name. In between the dark outline of the buildings along the Boulevard, starlit, silver-flecked patches flashed in the distance, the old harbor.
Not two yards from Délices, we ran into Kyrio Yanni, the chief pastry cook, who immediately recognized us and offered us shelter in the Délices annex that housed the kitchen facilities. In the dark kitchen where we stood, Kyrio Yanni warned my mother that we should not go back to Smouha. “The guns of Smouha are sure to draw enemy fire.” Mother explained that we were not planning to go to Smouha that evening.
Meanwhile, one of the Egyptian pastry chefs who had been smoking a cigarette in front of what looked like a large oven brought us two freshly baked pastries, which we devoured on the spot.
“Two more,” insisted Kyrio Yanni. “Two more.” And before Mother had a chance to refuse, he produced two of the creamiest mille-feuilles I had ever seen. He went back into another room, where I heard him fiddling around with paper. Then he reappeared with a small package. “For the family,” he said. “And now we must go. Come.”
Too impatient to wait for the all clear, Kyrio Yanni put on a winter coat over his white overalls and turned off the light in the stairway. “Slowly, slowly,” he whispered. Then he opened the door to the street. By now there was not a soul on the sidewalk. It was cold. “Are there any bombs?” I asked. “Quiet!” snapped Kyrio Yanni. He was superstitious and did not want me to tempt British bombs. “We’ll first go to the Hotel Cecil,” he said. “It’s close to the station.” He peeked out again. “Come,” he ordered, imitating what he had probably seen in movies of English prisoners escaping from a German camp. Mother pushed me forward and hurried behind me. When I turned and looked back, I saw her holding a half-eaten piece of cake in her hand.
Everyone in Alexandria must have had Kyrio Yanni’s idea, for the hotel lobby was packed with people anxiously watching for the next tram to come into the terminal, at which point they all planned to dash across the street and jump on board. No sooner had we arrived than I thought I heard the tired old metallic clank of a tram bell. “ϒalla, let’s go,” whispered Kyrio Yanni, who had seen the tram—one of those bearing the red Victoria sign on its front—well before anyone in the hotel and wanted us to be the first ones on.
My mother immediately understood why the Greek, who had grabbed me by the hand, was already racing across the street. She followed with packages in both arms. He and I climbed onto the car and ran to the very end of the first-class compartment. “Here, you sit here,” ordered the pastry chef, “while I keep an eye out for your mother.” He lowered the window, stuck his head out, and started to wave in the dark night. There was no sign of my mother on the platform. “But where is that one?” he muttered to himself. Then I heard her voice. She had raced all the way to our door along the siding.
“She could have gotten herself killed,” yelled Kyrio Yanni who had never thought of using the tracks to get to a seat first. Our rescuer the
n closed the window, hoped we did not lack for anything on our perilous journey home, and asked my mother to pass along his regards to the family. “Until next time, then,” he said as he gallantly strode out of the jam-packed tramway car with the heroic self-mockery of a man who might have been a daring resistance fighter in another age but who in ours was, and would always be, the chief pastry chef of whatever establishment he deigned to bake in.
I heard the rhythmic clatter of the steel wheels. We were moving. I looked out the window, watching all of Ramleh and then Mazarita pass by under the moonless sky like an eerie forest in a dark nightscape. Sometimes I saw no farther than my hands. There was only the sound of the wheels, and the tossing within, and the ghostly call of the conductor’s voice from the very back of the second-class car naming invisible stations.
An old lady sitting next to me was pressed against my side. Someone nearby began coughing. Mother tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a candy. I heard her unwrap another for herself.
Soon would come the second stop at Chatby, she said, followed by Camp de César. Then came Ibrahimieh, Petit Sporting, and finally my great-grandmother’s stop. But when the conductor named Chatby, I realized we had not gone far, and that what I had mistaken for regular station stops were no more than erratic stalls and halts along the congested tracks.
And then it happened, and everyone gasped. The all-clear siren must have sounded some minutes earlier, but no one had heard it. For suddenly, as though roused from a long sleep, night began to lift from the city, unveiling bright bustling pockets of light all across Sporting and Cleopatra. Presently the lights within the car were turned on.
We opened the windows to look outside. The lights along the Bacos and Victoria lines, which bifurcated at Grand Sporting, could be seen dotting the tracks all the way to Cleopatra like a giant V-shaped landing strip. On the deserted platform, a lone, bowed figure stood anxiously watching our tram inch to a stop. It was my grandmother.
She was squinting at our tram, while a few steps behind her, Latifa, the maid, was already waving at us.
“Thank God you’re safe,” the Princess said, kissing my mother. “I’ve been waiting forever.”
“We kept stopping every few yards,” explained my mother. “What happened?”
“What happened? What happened is that there’s a war. The baker called your mother, who called us. Everyone is worried.”
I asked where my father was.
“Here,” she said. He was standing halfway in the stationmaster’s hut, listening to the latest news bulletin in Arabic.
“Not good, not good,” he repeated as he walked toward us. “There’s a blackout all over Egypt. The British, French, and Israelis have attacked. Who knows what will happen.”
This was the first time I had ever seen him anywhere close to a tram. He always had a car—never took a bus, a tram, or even a cab. On the platform now, he looked humbler, like an ordinary commuter, like other fathers who took public transportation every day on their way to work. I liked him better this way.
Kyrio Yanni was right to suggest we stay far from the guns of Smouha. That night my father decided we should spend the war days at Sporting, at my great-grandmother’s home. Two other families had already moved in that afternoon, bringing their servants as well, with the result that the otherwise dark, grim, old Victorian apartment had become festive.
“But didn’t you know the war had already started this afternoon?” asked Uncle Isaac with an unconcealed reprimand in his voice.
“How was I to know? No one told me,” said my mother.
“The important thing is that everyone is here,” interrupted my great-grandmother. “Let’s have dinner, I’m starving.”
Aunt Elsa, who was in charge of the household, always insisted on sounding the gong to announce dinner at exactly eight o’clock.
At the sound, more people came out of the smaller living room, people I had not seen since the centennial, two years earlier. “So many people,” interjected my grandmother, “what joy.” At which my mother remembered the groceries she had bought and, above all, the cakes.
“And cakes no less,” shouted Aunt Marta on hearing the good news. “How many?”
“Twenty-four!” exclaimed another.
“What an idea—to go buying cakes on the night of an air raid!” grumbled Isaac.
A siren began wailing.
Immediately, a loud, burly voice along the street bellowed “Taffi al-nur!” into our dining room. “Taffi al-nur!” it repeated, followed by a string of thuggish curses as it trailed down Rue Thèbes, threatening other households.
“Do they know whom they’re shouting at?” asked an outraged Uncle Isaac. “I could have had them flogged and impaled once.”
“And now it’s their turn,” replied Uncle Nessim.
“Just wait for this war to be over, and we’ll show these savages. I’ve suffered their nationalistic claptrap long enough.”
“Ah, if only the king were still around—”
“What we really need is another Moses, a modern Moses,” said Aunt Marta.
“And the only Moses we’ve got is Vili, and Vili is busy lording it in England. There!”
“Lucky Schwab is no longer with us,” said Uncle Isaac, lighting a cigarette.
“Leave Aldo out of this, poor soul,” replied his widow.
Aunt Elsa rang the gong a second time. When I entered the dining room, one of the servants was busily pulling the heavy curtains shut while another was struggling to lower the wick of a kerosene lamp that had just been placed on the buffet. It was dark. The grown-ups were busily conferring around Uncle Isaac, who was opening a wine bottle, everyone worrying, trying to outguess the course of events. There was a hubbub of voices.
Young Cousin Arnaut, Aunt Marta’s son, was clearly on the verge of panic. “Above all, let’s stay calm,” said Uncle Isaac lifting his glass. “Prosit,” someone else rejoined, “we’ve been through this many times before.”
Children sat at the end of the table and were told not to make noise. I never liked the food in that house. I looked over to where my mother was sitting. In the dark, she could not read lips. I watched as she dreamily eased a bone from the fish, looking at no one in particular, talking to no one, yet obviously thinking about something, because, after bringing her fork to her mouth, she stopped chewing an instant and let an imperceptible shrug escape her shoulders. Mother caught me looking at her. “Why aren’t you eating?” she asked merely by shaking her head at me. “It’s horrible,” I grimaced.
“What is it?” interrupted my grandmother, who saw we were communicating. My mother seized the opportunity.
“If you don’t mind,” she whispered so as not to interrupt the men, “I’ll have him call my parents. They must be very worried.”
“As you wish.”
Mother signaled me to follow her out of the dining room.
In the dark, she held my hand as we picked our way through the long, furnished corridor. I guided my steps by the kerosene lamp in the dining room and by the voices of servants sitting in the dark kitchen.
We found the telephone. Mother dialed the numbers, feeling for them in the dark. As soon as the Saint heard my voice, hers began to warble and finally throw out that familiar string of Ladino words whose meaning I completely failed to comprehend but whose savage caress could reach through the telephone wire. “Why didn’t you call any sooner?” she asked.
“Why didn’t we call any sooner?” I asked my mother.
My mother hesitated a moment.
“Tell her it’s because of the usual reason. She’ll understand.”
“You’ll understand. It’s because of the usual reason,” I repeated.
“I’m her mother, of course I understand,” said my grandmother.
I stood quietly a moment, thinking she had been speaking to me only.
“You didn’t tell her. Tell her I’m her mother, that I’ll always understand her, that I think of her.”
“She thin
ks of you, she says,” I repeated, bored and careless as always when relaying messages on the telephone for my mother.
“And that I’m her mother, that I understand,” insisted my grandmother at the other end.
I said nothing, hoping my grandmother might think I was silently mouthing the message to my mother.
“What did she say? Tell her I want to see her tomorrow,” said the Saint. I relayed the new message.
“But there are bombs, she says,” I said.
“I’ll come anyway. Or she should come to me. Tell her!”
Mother and daughter agreed to call each other the next day.
When we returned to the dining room, everyone, with faces half glazed in the kerosene light, was still talking about the war, all looking like anxious conspirators meeting in the underground.
At five to nine that evening everyone moved into the smaller living room and crowded around the radio to listen to the news. Someone placed the small kerosene lamp on top of the radio.
The Egyptian news bulletin in French announced a decisive victory over the enemy. England, France, and Israel had been thoroughly defeated by the intrepid forces under the command of Colonel Nasser. The crushing march to Haifa and Tel Aviv was already under way, and by midnight of December 31, 1956, the combined Arab armies would celebrate their victory on the shores of the Galilee.
“Pure claptrap!” muttered Uncle Isaac.
Through our living room windows, I looked at the surrounding buildings sitting in sullen, silent darkness. All of the streetlights were turned off. The few cars traveling up and down the avenue kept their headlights off, some already painted cobalt-blue to avoid being spotted by the enemy.
Shouts were suddenly heard along our street. “Perhaps we should put out our kerosene light as well,” suggested Aunt Elsa.
Uncle Isaac lowered the wick of the lamp. My father was busily fumbling with the shortwave knobs on the radio, but all the frequencies had been jammed, which irritated Uncle Isaac even further. He motioned to my father to move away and began turning the knobs back and forth himself, humphing away under his thick mustache, only to find that he too was unsuccessful. “Bastards!” he shouted. It was Aunt Marta who, with the diligent persistence of a blindwoman trying to thread a needle, finally locked onto Radio Lebanon. Radio Lebanon was fulminating against Israel, the treacherous neighbor, the knife in the back, the puny ganging up with the mighty. The announcer said something about a war on Egypt; the British had landed in Port Said.