Towards the end of 1957, when Nasser began talking of socialism, Yussef said to his entourage, ‘These are words! Only words! Nasser wants and needs the Americans. He cannot abide the communists. Sure, he has been buying arms from the Soviet Union but only because he had to.’
In 1958, he whole-heartedly applauded Egypt’s union with Syria, seeing in it solid business opportunities for the two countries.
In 1959, Nasser’s rift with Khrushchev over events in Iraq, where the communists were helping crush Arab nationalists in Mosul and Kirkuk, seemed to vindicate him. ‘Didn’t I tell you that Nasser is no socialist! He’s too smart to go down that path. He’s got nothing to gain from asphyxiating the private sector.’ America’s closer ties with Egypt in the late 1950s would, in his eyes, confirm this.
‘But why, why?’ he shouted, in February 1960, on hearing of the nationalization of Egypt’s two main banks. A couple of months later, in the wake of the nationalization of the press, he said, ‘I’m too old to leave the country, let’s see what happens next.’ Next he suffered the stroke from which he would fully recover despite his age. ‘Do me a favor,’ he told his wife after coming round, ‘don’t attribute my health problems to what’s happening in the country! I don’t want to hear that.’
In the early 1960s, with the government taking over all of Egypt’s import trade, much of its export trade, as well as banks, insurance companies, and industrial and commercial businesses, there was no more room for speculation, for ‘whys and wherefores.’ Another round of nationalizations coupled with the sequestration of the properties of hundreds of Egypt’s wealthiest families – those under sequestration were forbidden to participate in the country’s political life – came on the heels of Syria’s secession from its union with Egypt. It would be during that period – the fall of 1961 and early winter of 1962 – that Yussef Sahli finally understood he was living in a different world. What would bring this home to him was a political event: the jailing in Cairo of a young French diplomat whom he had befriended. Together with three colleagues, the young man stood accused of spying and was brought to trial only to be released with his colleagues, before the trial ended, just around the time the French government freed Ben Bella and it became apparent that Algeria was nearing independence. ‘I guess the rules of the game have changed,’ her uncle said to Claire one morning as they were driving to the tribunal to attend a hearing. That was before the young man’s release. ‘Your father would undoubtedly have had a theory to explain all this to us – a sensible, even-handed theory I’m sure. As far as I’m concerned, Egypt has gone to pieces, but perhaps I’m being too self-referential,’ he added wistfully. Never before had Claire heard her uncle express himself with anything less than absolute certainty or engage in the slightest form of self-criticism.
‘Am I judging him too harshly?’ Claire asked herself, as she heard the boarding call.
Yussef Sahli was conscious when Claire entered his room. She was no longer angry with him. She was just very weary.
‘So you’re back!’ her uncle said. ‘I’m glad.’
‘How are you feeling, Uncle Yussef?’
‘Not well,’ he said, ‘Not well, but that’s normal. I’m about to turn eighty-five. Remember?’
‘We’ll have to celebrate,’ she said.
‘It’s not your style to utter platitudes,’ he said then asked, ‘Are you going back to Beirut?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, then repeated, ‘I don’t know.
He closed his eyes.
She looked away. The smallest details of the events leading to her son’s death came back to her. Thoughts of her father dying came back to her too. Her eyes filled with tears, something that seldom happened. She heard her uncle say, ‘Your problem in life is that you are too lovable, too gentle.’
‘I won’t disabuse him,’ she thought, instead smiling feebly at him.
‘Be careful,’ he said, his tone becoming agitated. ‘If you go back to Beirut, your Aunt Farida and Bella might ask you to smuggle jewelry out of the country, to hide some in the hem of your dress. Don’t, even if they offer you something in return!’
Wondering what would be on offer – her uncle’s wife had magnificent pieces of jewelry, including a ruby necklace worth a small fortune – Claire told him not to worry. ‘I don’t think that I would have the courage, Uncle, so don’t lose any sleep over it,’ she said.
‘Good,’ he said and relaxed. ‘But you’re wrong. Courage you have, though not of the right sort.’
He died a week later, on the eve of his birthday.
The issue of the jewelry to be smuggled out of Egypt did not come up. Claire ended up staying in Cairo, almost by default. She could not make up her mind to leave.
1968: Alexandre
‘Frankly, Madam, you’re an embarrassment to the corporation. Not only are you being paid for doing virtually nothing – with your lamentable Arabic you’re incapable of doing much of anything – but you get paid a lot, a huge amount to do the little you do. It’s an intolerable situation. Management can no longer put up with it. They can no longer make allowances for your ineffective presence in the store. It was clear from the moment the store was nationalized last year that something would have to be done. Management has been ultra-patient, you must admit. But we reached the point where something needed to be done.’ Claire’s immediate supervisor, a burly man who reeked of cologne and wore sunglasses indoors, spoke slowly as if he was uncertain whether Claire understood him. Puffing on his cigarette with a weary air, he went on, ‘At a meeting yesterday, it was decided that the time has come to solve the problem, so a decision was made to transfer you to a branch in Minya.’
‘Minya?’
‘Yes, yes, Minya! Starting the first of next month,’ he said casually, as though speaking of a routine occurrence.
‘But I have an elderly husband who is not well and a daughter who is sixteen years old,’ Claire said without disclosing the fact that her daughter was about to go to Germany on a scholarship.
For a split second, her supervisor seemed uneasy. He fidgeted on his chair. ‘Well, take them with you,’ he said. ‘Take them with you.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Claire said bewildered and, drawing on her best Arabic, argued, ‘The fact that I speak French and English is of some use, here. More so than in Minya. Here, my salary is not so out of line with other employees’ salaries. I can even think of one person whose salary is higher than mine. In Minya, salaries must be much lower than in Cairo. Won’t I be even more of an embarrassment to the corporation there? I really don’t understand.’
‘First, I don’t see how you can compare yourself to Ustaz Hamdi, as it’s him you must be referring to. He reads and writes Arabic. There’s no mistaking him for a Khawaga. But the point is that we’re not forcing you to go to Minya. Far from it! Whether you want to keep working is entirely up to you.’
‘If I stop, I wouldn’t get much of a pension. I am fifty-eight years old,’ Claire said, with as much calm as she could muster.
‘I cannot make that decision for you. I called you to my office to communicate to you the decision management made yesterday. I’m sorry but your family problems are yours, not theirs. You have almost a month to look after your family affairs, which is not bad. We could have ordered your immediate transfer and insisted you be in Minya within three days. I am not sure you realize this. You’re working in the public sector now. What more can I tell you?’ The supervisor got up hastily, walked to the doorway and yelled down the hallway, ‘Ahmad, have you forgotten my afternoon cup of coffee? I need it badly. I’m getting a headache.’
For once not overcome by her usual indecisiveness, Claire walked out of that meeting determined to go to Minya and see a lawyer. She wasn’t in a position to quit eighteen months away from her pension. It was clear to her that the management had come up with the Minya idea to force her to do so; under the new labor laws they could not fire her.
She would stick to her resolution and go to
Minya, a city about 155 miles south of Cairo, where she worked for eighteen months in a store that sold an odd assortment of items – from ladies’ underwear to light fixtures and home appliances but also copy-books, pencils and erasers. And she retained the services of a leftist lawyer, Hamid Hassanein, the son of Alexandre’s friend Maher and grandson of an ex-prime minister, whose family had owned huge tracts of land in the Delta before the agrarian reform. In between stints in jail for communist activities, despite his halting speech and unprepossessing countenance, the young man was making a name for himself as a labor lawyer willing to take on hard cases. He was rumored to have been involved in organizing the worker–student demonstrations held in February of that year – the largest Egypt had seen since 1954 – in which a crowd stretched out over a mile-long path had wound its way from Cairo University to the Maglis-al-Umma, demanding elections and an end to the police state. The lenient sentences received by Egypt’s top officers for their mishandling of the June 1967 war had sparked the demonstrations as well as heated debates about what had gone wrong for the country to have suffered such a crushing defeat. Was the single-party system to blame? Had God inflicted that punishment on Egyptians for embracing socialism, a departure from Islam, or had the problem been insufficient socialism? Was it, more simply, the case of the men in charge being corrupt and self-seeking – Nasser himself, however, remaining unassailable? Elements from all walks of Egypt’s political life – the Muslim Brotherhood, the liberal center, and the left – had participated in the February demonstrations, with the left playing the biggest role.
Claire did not hold his political activism against Hamid Hassanein. Quite the contrary, she thought it spoke well of the man. She had difficulties though imagining him in a political context because he was so self-effacing, which made her think all the more highly of him. He took on her case without requesting she pay him anything. ‘Don’t worry,’ he told her, ‘let’s see whether we get anywhere, we can discuss my fees later.’ He also told her, from the outset, that he was doubtful the transfer decision could be reversed, though he would give it a try. His main objective would be to protect her pension entitlement and ensure its proper calculation as he feared that the corporation’s management would, when the time came, try to do her out of some of it. He was right. The court dealing with Claire’s transfer to Minya upheld the transfer. Then, when Claire retired at age sixty, the corporation undervalued her pension. A court case that lasted for six years would in the end be decided in her favor. During those six years, Hamid Hassanein spent time in jail intermittently on account of his political activities.
The evening after being told of her transfer to Minya, Claire went to play bridge at a friend’s place.
‘You’re going to Minya?’ her friends asked in shock. ‘Years ago, Minya may have been alright. Several big landowners used to have second homes there. It also had a large Greek community. But now the city is dead. Completely dead. And if one does not like the heat – you certainly don’t – it’s uninhabitable in the summer. Are you really serious about going?’ one of them asked point blank.
‘Yes,’ Claire said while trying to concentrate on the game. Usually, she kept her problems to herself but had made an exception that evening which she was now regretting.
‘It’s an extremely courageous thing to do,’ her bridge partner said.
‘Courage presupposes some choice. I don’t see myself as having a real choice in the matter,’ Claire said, suppressing her growing irritation at the unhelpful remarks.
‘It’s monstrous on their part to be doing that, knowing how totally unsuitable the position and the city are for a person like you.’
‘I suppose that’s the point they’re trying to make. Is it not?’ Laughing an artificial laugh, Claire added, ‘They decided to put me through a mini cultural revolution. I guess that’s it.’
‘But Claire, are you being realistic about your ability to cope with life there? You’ll be working in a store that sounds like a hole, surrounded by people with such a different mentality,’ her hostess asked while circulating snacks.
‘With enough books, and if I find a few bridge partners, the time will pass.’
‘You might find bridge partners at the Greek Club, if it still exists. But do you think it wise to consult Maher’s son? I would be nervous. He has two strikes against him. He is ancien régime and apparently a communist – quite a combination. Did you know that he has been in jail?’
‘My inclination is to trust a man who has been in jail for his convictions.’
‘Well and good, but won’t the judges hold that against him?’ Gabrielle, also invited, said.
‘I was told that his practice has been growing so he must be winning some cases,’ Claire said.
‘Let’s hope he manages to keep you in Cairo,’ the hostess chimed in. She knew of the tensions between the two sisters.
‘If I win tonight, I’ll take it as an auspicious sign,’ Claire thought.
She lost.
On her way home in a cab – she had left with Gabrielle whose car was being repaired – she went over the game, concluding that two of her bids had been poor.
‘Stop worrying about it,’ Gabrielle advised her. ‘You have bigger problems.’
‘Oh, stop, Gabrielle. Stop!’ Claire cried out with an intensity that suggested she may have been close to one of her rare outbursts. ‘Why is everyone so keen on highlighting the difficulties I’ll be facing?’
‘All right, all right,’ Gabrielle exclaimed and backed off. Usually the one to make scenes, she would be thrown off balance the few times Claire did, or seemed about to. Gabrielle was about to ask Claire how Alexandre, who had had two small strokes in the course of the year, was taking the news but thought better of it.
As if she had read Gabrielle’s mind, Claire – now calmer – said, ‘Alexandre will be moving in with Constance. It won’t be the first time.’ She was referring to the year he had spent at Constance’s, ten years earlier, after a major row brought on by an affair she was having at the time.
‘So he knows,’ Gabrielle said.
‘Not yet, but I talked to Constance.’
‘What did she have to say?’
Claire shrugged. ‘What do you expect her to say? “No” after all these years of self-sacrifice?’ After a brief pause, Claire added, ‘Batta and her daughter will be helping her. I made the necessary arrangements.’
Alexandre’s custom was to send his letters express, no matter their contents. In keeping with that habit, his handwriting was bold and hurried-looking.
Just over two weeks after her arrival in Minya, the elderly doorman of the small hotel in which she was renting a room handed Claire such a letter. She had just stepped into the hotel bathed in perspiration. It was 1:30 p.m. The temperature was almost 44 degrees Celsius – not uncommon in Minya in August. Claire set the envelope on a rickety hallway table. Like most of the city’s buildings with past grandeur, the hotel had a dilapidated look. She closed her parasol and got a fan out of her handbag.
‘Sit down, sit down,’ the doorman urged her, moving a shabby armchair closer to where she stood. ‘I’ll get you a glass of ice water.’
‘Thank you, thank you, don’t bother with the water,’ Claire said, frowning as she glanced at the envelope. The letter was from Constance, not Alexandre – she could tell from the handwriting – and that alarmed her.
Alexandre had had another minor stroke. For two days, he had been thoroughly confused, mistaking Constance for her, and his own reflection in the large mirror hanging in his room for his brother Nicolas. As on the previous occasions when he had suffered from minor strokes, the confusion went away but he was left feeling feeble and, though lucid, was irritable, wanting company almost all the time. The doctor said that his irritability should pass but his wanting company might not.
‘Not bad news, I hope,’ the doorman said.
‘In truth, not so good,’ Claire said and asked him how she could place a call to Cairo.
‘Don’t you worry,’ he assured her. ‘I’ll look after this for you. I’ll go to the telephone company and book a time for tonight, after you come back from work. How would that be?’
‘That would be really good,’ she said as she got up to go to her room. She had planned on dropping in at the Greek Club after work for a bridge game. It was the prospect of that outing that had kept her going the last couple of days. As she climbed the hotel’s dusty staircase with leaden steps, she brooded upon the unpleasantness she had been put through at work since her arrival, and had a sinking feeling there was more of it to come.
The first thing she did upon entering her room was to switch on the big electric fan she had bought the day after her arrival, moving it as close to her bed as possible. Next, she half lay on the bed, her back against the wall, her hand resting on her damp forehead. She undid the buttons of her blouse but felt too tired to get out of her clothes, too tired to reach for the copybook on the bedside table in which, to let off steam, she had made it a habit to keep a record of her troubles at work and chronicle the events of the day.
‘What shall I tell Constance? What can I tell her?’ Claire wondered. Then the inevitable regret, ‘Why, oh why, didn’t I stay in Beirut when I had the opportunity?’
Claire’s salary was public knowledge in the Minya store before she set foot in it. On her first morning at work, a little girl no older than ten – the relative of one of the store’s six employees, in the store with her mother to get herself a birthday dress – kept staring at Claire and eventually, just before leaving, said to her giggling, ‘Can I ask you a secret question?’ ‘Sure,’ Claire replied. The little girl whispered in her ear, ‘Is it true that you’re earning much, much more money than anybody else in the store except for the director? Ten times more?’ Later that morning, when the shop assistant’s helper complained of a toothache, one of the four shop assistants suggested loudly, ‘Well, if you need Rivos, I’m sure that Madam can afford buying you some. Madam could afford buying you a lifetime supply of Rivos.’ Except for the one woman shop assistant – a young woman called Mona – all the assistants on the floor burst out laughing. Where things stood could not have been clearer. Mona would become Claire’s protector in the store, whereas the men, some more systematically than others, would take turns making life unpleasant for her. Within a week of her arrival, a couple of them would tell her in private that their actions did not reflect their true feelings but they feared the repercussions of showing her any sympathy.
In Their Father's Country Page 12