‘Isn’t it obvious what it was all about? As I said, mobs gone mad!’ Yussef vociferated.
‘But why did they go mad?’ Alexandre said, his voice rising.
‘Sorry to interrupt, but I’m getting a bit tired,’ Nicolas said.
‘What can I get you?’ Constance immediately asked. ‘Anything?’
‘What he needs is peace of mind’, Yussef said. ‘Seeing the surgeon will give him that. As for me, I must be going. The driver is waiting.’
Before leaving, Yussef patted Nicolas’s hand, saying, ‘You’ll be back shooting next week or the week after, unless they shoot us all in the meantime.’ Then, he instructed Claire, ‘Walk me to the car. Walking is good for you. Besides, I need to talk to you about Iris.’
Outside the room, Yussef asked Claire how Nicolas had taken the news that the small business in which he had invested some money had burnt to the ground. Claire was taken aback. ‘What business?’ she asked. She had no idea that Nicolas had invested money in a downtown business.
‘You didn’t know?’ It was Yussef’s turn to be surprised. ‘You didn’t know that he put a handsome little sum of money into a car repair shop as well as some of Constance’s money? Against my advice, by the way.’ He shook his head and went on, ‘Well, you’d better say nothing. But let’s talk about Iris and Anastase’s plan to leave the country. Talk them out of it. Make them see the stupidity of it. Why leave family, friends, comfort, the country that has made you who you are? For what? They’ll get no help from me whatsoever, if they go. None. You tell them that.’
Once in his car, Yussef called Claire to the window to say, with a slight quiver in his voice, ‘Other than Anastase, you’re the only one Iris listens to. You can influence her.’ Then, quickly regaining his composure, he added sharply, ‘I would think that you too would want to keep her in Cairo.’ He sat back and then forward again as Claire began to walk away. ‘And call me after you have talked to them,’ he shouted after her.
When Claire returned to the room, Alexandre said, ‘Your uncle was damn fortunate. Not so much as a spark touched his interests.’
‘Well, thank God for that! Should we have wished otherwise?’ Gabrielle asked pointedly.
‘He has aged,’ Claire said to deflect the train of the conversation.
‘I’m actually quite tired now,’ Nicolas said. ‘If I could close my eyes for a few minutes that would be good.’
‘Does he know what happened to the business he put his money in?’ Claire asked herself. And, even more importantly, did Gabrielle know?
The operation, scheduled to take place around mid-morning the next day, was to last an hour at most, the French surgeon, newly arrived in Egypt, said when he dropped by in the evening. Out in the hallway, Claire managed to have a private conversation with him. ‘Are you concerned, doctor?’ she asked, thinking that he looked extremely young and self-assured.
‘I’ll be frank with you: more than I would like to be,’ the doctor replied.
Claire’s heart sank. The possibility that Nicolas might not make it frightened her. The feeling that Gabrielle would take it out on her returned. ‘He seems so robust though,’ she said to the doctor.
‘Yes, he looks very robust,’ the doctor agreed. ‘We’ll have to see though.’
When Gabrielle talked to the doctor, she avoided asking him how serious Nicolas’s condition was. When he explained to her the surgical procedure that Nicolas would be undergoing, she listened without listening. She was squeamish about poor health and any related matters – a squeamishness that lay behind her apparent insensitivity to others’ ailments.
Constance insisted on spending the night in the hospital. Gabrielle had to go back home to be with Aida.
In the course of the night, Nicolas told Constance about the burning down of the business in which he had sunk their money. Word of the destruction had come to him on Saturday evening. He said that the business was probably going to fold up anyway. The Frenchman who managed it, in whom he had put his trust, had been swindling him. She took the news with seeming unconcern and would not hear of the arrangements he had made for her to be compensated, should something happen to him.
Alexandre returned to the hospital in the very early hours, then, shortly afterwards, Gabrielle arrived, then Claire.
As scheduled, Nicolas was taken to the operating theater around mid-morning. Just before being wheeled there, while Gabrielle was bustling about, he whispered to Claire, ‘I don’t need to tell you how much you mean to Gabrielle, but I feel I must. Anything can happen.’
‘Please, don’t even think such thoughts,’ Claire said.
An hour or so after Nicolas was taken away, Gabrielle, Alexandre and Constance began pacing up and down the hospital hallways.
Claire stayed in the room. She was reading when her Uncle Yussef called to find out how the operation had gone.
‘He’s still in the operating theater?’ Yussef Sahli said in a surprised tone. ‘I must confess that he doesn’t look well at all. I didn’t want to tell you that yesterday but I was really shocked by how poorly he looked. I hope it’s nothing serious. The problems with the business in which he stupidly put his money would have definitely aggravated his condition.’
Two hours went by and still no news. An altercation between Gabrielle and Constance erupted. Constance wanted to look for the head nurse to check on what was going on in the operating room. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Gabrielle yelled at her sister-in-law.
Another hour elapsed. Alone again in Nicolas’s room, Claire was suddenly hungry but felt too anxious to go to the cafeteria. Besides, she was expecting Iris and Bella to drop by any time. Her book no longer sustaining her interest, her mind wandered to Nicolas’s statement that she ‘meant so much to Gabrielle.’
What did he really mean? That she was to be forever subjected to the push and pull of Gabrielle’s intense, but mixed feelings for her? That she would never break free from Gabrielle’s envious admiration? Unwarranted as this admiration had become, since whatever advantage she may initially have had over her sister, her life was far from a brilliant success.
The surgeon suddenly appeared at the door, followed by an assistant. He looked exhausted, and not quite so young anymore.
‘So, doctor?’ Claire asked, struggling to get up under the weight of her pregnancy.
He came close to her while his assistant stayed behind, and without quite looking at her, he said, ‘We did all we could. But it was far too far gone, even more so than I had feared.’ Then, looking at her, he added, ‘He was a very, very courageous man.’
‘Please, don’t leave me. Wait until Gabrielle returns. Please,’ Claire said.
‘Your sister is a strong woman. It will be hard, but she’ll manage.’
‘You must give her the news.’
‘Of course. Now you sit down. I don’t want you to get too upset. It would not be good in your condition.’
A few minutes later, when the surgeon told Gabrielle that Nicolas had died on the operating table, Gabrielle kept on saying, ‘It was just an ulcer, just an ulcer.’
‘And when I think that, all along, you treated him as if there was nothing the matter!’ Constance screamed at her.
Ignoring Constance, Gabrielle turned towards Claire and let out angrily, ‘It’s all your fault. If it had not been for your stupid, stupid marriage ...’ Realizing the enormity of what she had said, and what she was about to say, she stopped mid-sentence, casting a rapid glance at Alexandre – a glance that exuded despair and bitterness and loathing. After that, she slumped on the bed and broke down, tears streaming down her face.
Claire sat by her side and said softly, ‘I’m sorry, Gabrielle, so sorry, so very sorry,’ adding, almost inaudibly, ‘for everything.’
Consumed by grief over his brother’s unanticipated death, Alexandre told Claire the morning after, ‘It should have been me – not him. I’m the older one,’ and, in the same breath, he said, ‘Your sister needed him; they were a couple, a real
couple.’
Three days after Nicolas’s funeral, Gabrielle was back at work, causing raised eyebrows among her family and friends. She functioned but was a bundle of nerves and lost weight. The expression on her face became perpetually angry. She decided to move out of the house she and Nicolas had bought in the suburbs. For several years after that, she would move with Aida from one furnished apartment to the next, with a regularity that seemed intended to convey that she had no home.
During the first three of those wandering years, Gabrielle would speak neither to Constance, who continued to blame her for Nicolas’s death, nor to Alexandre, who took the position that he ought to be made Aida’s co-guardian. Convinced that his claim to guardianship was just a means to gain control over their assets, Gabrielle refused to have anything to do with him.
She continued to see Claire, though barely concealed her bitterness at being the one to have lost a husband. Claire would learn to endure being the recipient of her constant criticism – its gist being that Claire lacked decisiveness, was too soft, could not confront problems head on and tended to bury her head in the sand. Paradoxically, critical as Gabrielle grew to be of Claire, no day went by without her calling to consult her sister about something – what book to read, which exhibition to see, or how to redecorate an apartment. Her growing disapproval of Claire seemed to be the flip side of an intense need to emulate her. The tension that grew between the two sisters following Nicolas’s death – though the seeds were sown before his death – would never abate, even when, in her late fifties, Gabrielle would fall in love again.
Eventually, Gabrielle made up with Constance, enlisting her help to look after Aida. She also eventually made up with Alexandre, though forever reminding him that she considered him a failure.
In March 1952, two months after Nicolas’s death, Claire gave birth to another girl. It took two weeks for her to choose a name – almost as long as it had for Djenane. This child began life as Nevine and ended up as Charlotte.
In July 1952, events that were initially described by Haydar Pasha, commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army, as a ‘tempest in a teacup’ would bring an end to the monarchy and the rise to power of a group of young men known as the Free Officers.
Constance lamented the passing of the monarchy.
Alexandre thought that the coup d’état might prove to be a good thing considering that General Naguib, the Free Officers’ flag-bearer, talked about the need to create a truly cosmopolitan Egypt in which minorities would feel a legitimate part of the country.
Yussef Sahli decreed that it had saved Egypt from falling into communist hands.
Though still wrapped up in her sorrow, Gabrielle welcomed the prospect of Egypt achieving complete independence from the British.
And Claire? Claire admired the Free Officers’ sagacity and their ability to effect a bloodless transition. She saw it as fitting, fair and timely that men with a middling to lower middle-class background should finally assume the reins of power. Yet, more than ever, she wished she were in a position to make a life for herself outside of Egypt, as Iris and Anastase were about to. Her first day at work, in a recently inaugurated gallery of modern art owned by a friend of hers, happened to be July 26, 1952, the day King Faruq sailed into exile.
1962/63: Yussef
‘We’re not sure when the flight will leave. We’re not even sure there will be a flight to Cairo today. We should know within the hour,’ the Egypt Air attendant told Claire with undisguised impatience after which she closely inspected her nails, pushing the cuticles back.
‘What’s the problem?’ Claire asked with apprehension.
‘Crew problems, Madam. Problems over which we have no control.’
‘But what do you mean “no control”? If the company has no control over the crew, then what does it have control over?’
‘Madam, there’s a problem with the crew. I know nothing else. Believe me, I wish I did, but I don’t. So please, try to relax, find a seat and come back in half an hour.’ Smiling – her first smile during that exchange – the attendant suggested, ‘You’re welcome to leave your suitcase here, if that makes it easier for you. I’ll keep an eye on it.’
Claire seemed to hesitate.
‘Don’t worry! It will be here when you come back. I promise,’ the attendant said with a robust laugh.
Beirut airport was small; there were few seats in its departure hall. Claire moved away from Egypt Air’s counter, feeling lost. Her eyes were bothering her. She was still not used to wearing contact lenses. ‘I should consider my six months’ stay in Beirut more than worthwhile, if, by the time I leave, I can do without glasses,’ she had written to Gabrielle, soon after ordering the contact lenses. ‘Yes, even if I don’t end up accepting the job here,’ Claire had gone on, only to blot out that sentence, writing instead, ‘Yes, even if nothing else comes of my stay here ... You know what I mean.’ Composing Egypt-bound letters was an exercise in elliptical writing, for fear that the Egyptian censor might take exception to the slightest hint of disloyalty to the country. On re-reading her letter and deciding that the censor had bigger fish to fry, she re-inserted the explicit reference to the job in Beirut.
Casting a glance around her in search of a seat, a bench, or somewhere to lean against, Claire despaired over her inability to tell whether she was relieved at the thought that she might not be on her way back to Cairo, or, on the contrary, upset by that prospect. She was in the same confused state she had sunk into after arriving in Beirut and that had kept her awake many a night: confused over whether to accept the job offer that had lured her there or return to her old job in Cairo.
In Beirut, she would have plenty of friends – Levantine Egyptians who had left Egypt once they realized they would run into difficulties under Nasser – but her salary would be meager, barely enough for her and her younger daughters to live on (Simone was already on her own, struggling in Europe). In Cairo, her social circle was dwindling but her job in the art gallery-turned-furniture store where she had been working since 1952 paid well, though she did not know how much longer she could count on it. The store’s owner, a good friend of hers, was a wealthy man who had abandoned his assets in Egypt, as he believed that it was only a matter of time till the government seized them. He was now setting up shop in Beirut. ‘Join me,’ he kept telling Claire. ‘You cannot count on your present situation in Egypt to last. The government will soon pounce on the store and once that happens, there’s no predicting what will happen to you. You’ll be like a hair in the soup.’ Their friendship – that was what it was, no more – was such that he felt comfortable enough to be blunt with her: ‘There are no prospects for a woman like you in today’s Egypt. If you lose your job, you would be hard pressed to find anything else there, then what?’ He knew that she had become the family’s breadwinner, and was very fond of her. And because he saw she would be an asset to the new store, he was willing to keep the Beirut job offer open for a few months – enough time for her to make up her mind – but not indefinitely.
The choice confronting Claire was not just between relative comfort in Cairo for as long as it lasted and tight means in Beirut; or a life in which her milieu was vanishing and one rich in friendships. The choice involved more than money and lifestyle. It involved Alexandre, a man now in his seventies without the means to move to Beirut. Could she really leave him behind, emptying his life of the little bit he had left, namely, her presence, Djenane’s and Charlotte’s? On her Beirut salary, she could not support the three of them.
From Beirut, in a letter in which she was explaining to him that she would try out the job for a few months after which she would return to Cairo then have six more months to make up her mind, Claire had written:
The best thing about this decision is that it’s not one! After six months in Cairo I’ll need to make up my mind whether to return to Beirut or not. ‘To be or not to be?’ I suppose I should find it comforting that others before me suffered from indecisiveness, a condition which, in my
case, grows worse by the day.
In her next letter to him, she wrote:
What frightens me is the significance of the decision facing me and its ramifications for all of us. Were you to live with Constance, it might be possible to sublet the apartment, in the hope that the rental income would allow you to come regularly to Beirut to see us. I think of you and the girls all the time. I miss home and all the familiar elements of my life in Cairo, notwithstanding the ever-increasing problems. The truth is that it is not easy to start again at my age and work the long hours we do here (R. is, as you know, a driven businessman). It is not easy to be subjected to the vagaries of authority, however benevolent that authority may be. As you must have guessed, I’m demoralized but tell myself I must resist self-pity. In our circumstances, emotions are a luxury we cannot afford. I must think of our future. To live, on a day-to-day basis, as I would in Cairo – my future there being so uncertain – strikes me, all of a sudden, as the worst possible solution. For all of us. But you tell me what you think. Please do, as you stand the most to lose, were I to relocate. I trust your ability to study the matter objectively.
Her tone hardened in a reply to a letter in which Alexandre said that he feared she had already made up her mind to leave Egypt, that he did not understand why she needed to spend more time in Beirut to assess the situation – a possibility she had broached with him. Her agitation discernible, she had written:
You’re wrong. I have not made up my mind although I wish I had. Yes, I wish I had it in me to take the plunge. Wisdom and foresight would require I do, and that I put aside all the other problems which could be solved over time. Unfortunately, I am plagued with too vacillating a nature to make a decision – any decision – without immediately reconsidering it, be it buying a simple pair of shoes or moving house. You know me well enough to know that. I was hoping that you would help me overcome this crippling aspect of my character. I was asking for too much.
In Their Father's Country Page 10