In Their Father's Country

by Drosso, Anne-Marie;

  Each employee had a chair on which they were authorized to sit when they had no customers. On her second day at work, Claire’s chair disappeared several times in the course of the morning. ‘Can’t you take a bit of a joke?’the culprit said when she finally showed her exasperation.

  The third day, an electric fan standing close to her Women’s Wear Department was moved away on the pretext that hers was the cooler part of the store. Then, her fly swatter went missing. ‘Madam needs a chair, a fan, a fly swatter. But we’re here to work. Maybe Madam does not realize this,’ the shop assistant in charge of home appliances said, not an ounce of levity in his tone. He did not even try to pretend he was joking. Later that day, hunting for her chair – she needed to sit to tack the hem of a dress a customer was trying on – the man declared for all to hear, ‘But if she cannot kneel to do the job, isn’t it time for her to retire?’ causing Mona to exclaim, also for all to hear, ‘Enough nonsense;’ words that had on Claire the effect of a most precious balm.

  On the fifth day, there was a lull, although shortly before closing time her persecutors’ ringleader, the assistant in charge of home appliances, raised, out of the blue, the subject of the 1967 war. Looking in her direction, he asserted that the Khawagas in the country were either indifferent to what that defeat really meant for Egypt and the Arab world, or, even worse, secretly happy at the terrible outcome. And, hadn’t they, in all likelihood, rejoiced the day Nasser announced his resignation only to bemoan his subsequent decision to stay on in response to popular support, the sales assistant asked, clearly rhetorically. Claire chose to ignore these remarks, in part because she would have found it difficult to express her views persuasively on such matters in Arabic. Besides, the man was unlikely to believe that she felt as strongly for the Palestinian cause as she did. So what would have been the point?

  Mention of the Khawagas in the country in that derogatory tone was to become a frequent occurrence after that, particularly when some of the few remaining members of the Greek and Syro-Lebanese communities of Minya began dropping in, sometimes to buy something but other times just to chat with Claire. ‘Madam thinks that the store is a club,’ one or the other of the shop assistants would mutter. She pretended not to hear.

  Her second week at work started with her being told by two of the shop assistants that, from now on, she would have to walk the goods bought in her department over to the counter where they were wrapped, as the shop assistants’ helper was too busy to lend her a hand. ‘But he is doing that for everyone else!’ she objected and went to complain to the store’s director, who hardly ever came out of his back office. He commiserated with her, saying that he wished he could help her but this was Upper Egypt, where outsiders were never much welcome, as he himself, being from Alexandria, had unfortunately experienced. The following morning, he called her to his office with an offer he would have to run by top management in Cairo: would she consider the position of Mufatescha – a supervisory position that might secure her the respect of her co-employees? It would involve her filling him in on all that was happening and being said in the store. She declined, invoking her bad Arabic. ‘But you don’t need to say much, just to listen to what is being said,’ the director countered. She agreed to mull it over, knowing that she would not accept, even assuming the offer was serious. The job’s duties went against her nature. Besides, the offer smacked of a trap: a supervisory role would likely exacerbate, not curb, the employees’ hostility towards her. ‘I cannot force you,’ the director said on hearing her final decision, after which he made her another, most incongruous, offer. He was thinking of borrowing money from the bank for which he needed a guarantor. If she were willing to act as his guarantor, he would act as hers. ‘But I’m not thinking of taking a loan,’ she said weakly, as she had no wish to alienate him. ‘Think about it,’ he said with an unctuous smile. ‘You never know. At some point, you might well need some extra money so it would be a mutually beneficial arrangement.’ She left his office cursing herself for having gone to see him in the first place.

  That very same day, a sales assistant in trouble for the disappearance of a couple of watches went up to her and said angrily, ‘I’m a dangerous man, you know. I am capable of doing much harm, of hurting people. I thought I should let you know that.’ His threats – he looked fierce as he uttered them – left Claire in a state of consternation. Had he got wind of the director’s idea of giving her a supervisory role in the store, and had this been his way of warning her that she would be well-advised never to make an unfavorable report about him? She had been thinking in fact of offering him some money, to help him with the fine for the vanished watches. His threat made it impossible for her to make the offer.

  On her return to her hotel room that day, Claire would write in her copybook:

  The staff hold me responsible for their poverty; they compare their lot to mine and don’t see me as a victim. They see me as a very privileged person, whose presence in the store is an affront to them. I can understand them. I would have felt the way they do. Would I have reacted as they have? I don’t know. I don’t fault them. I fault management 100 percent. Those in charge put me in a hopeless situation while giving the store employees yet more reasons to be unhappy with their lot. They have failed in their duties as managers since I will not resign and, although they have managed to sow the seeds of hatred towards me, I’m sure they have sown them towards the corporation too. I don’t know what turn events will take, but should something happen to me, management and only management would be the guilty party.

  Then, in a postscript, she had added:

  Work gives man a feeling of self-worth. It connects him to society.

  And in a second postscript:

  Mona has asked me to teach her French. I have agreed. I’ll spend a couple of hours a week doing that. On Sunday morning and maybe once a week after work. In my hotel room. She is a very bright young woman. I have a feeling that she will learn fast. Thinking of the difficulties she is facing in life – having to give her meager salary to her father to help support eight children whom she has been mothering since her own mother’s death – should reconcile me to the difficulties I am facing. I have decided to brush up my English by reading The Forsyte Saga.

  Still feeling the effect of getting from the store to the hotel – barely ten minutes walk but much of it in direct sun – Claire remembered that Alexandre’s seventy-ninth birthday was in two weeks’ time. He was thirty-seven when they first met, and thirty-nine when they married.

  If he truly loved her, he would have let go of her a long time ago and urged her to remake her life instead of hanging on to her, she thought, not for the first time.

  ‘The nonentity I have become,’ was how he had described himself the day after his sixty-ninth birthday, in a letter asking her to consider a reconciliation. At the time – he had moved in with Constance – his use of that epithet had filled her with a compassion so strong that she had, at once, agreed to meet him for a beer at Groppi’s – a meeting that would lead, after several more, to his return home. Now his describing himself in those terrible terms seemed to her more a ploy aimed at softening her than a cry from the heart. In truth though, it was not just his holding on to her that had kept her locked in the marriage. With her sense of fair play, how could she have abandoned him, once she had foisted on him children that may not have been his; children whom he, no matter what he may have suspected, had accepted as his, be it out of pride, in self-delusion, or as a way to keep her? She had wanted children from early on in the marriage, yet, by thirty, still had none. After Guy, her desire for children had become all consuming, much exceeding her desire for love. She would gradually come to see her marriage as affording her the possibility of having children, no matter whose they were. That was how she had come to terms with it. And perhaps the children were his. Paradoxically, she might have found it easier to leave him, had she been certain that he was their father. She would have felt she owed him less.

  When,
after several attempts, Claire managed that evening to place her telephone call to Cairo – the line kept on breaking – it was to hear Constance tell her, ‘There’s no doubt in my mind that your leaving for Minya caused his stroke. He was very, very worried about you, he talked all the time about what a terrible thing it was for you to be sent there. Those who sent you there are responsible for his stroke, those wretched creatures.’

  ‘How are you holding up?’ Claire asked her. Constance was nearing her eighty-first birthday.

  ‘I couldn’t have managed without Batta and her daughter. They take turns. Batta is here during the day, her daughter does the night shift. Thank God for the two of them. Batta is a real gem. Just like her mother used to be, God bless her soul. I cannot say the same about the daughter, but I should not complain. No five minutes go by without him calling for someone, whether or not he needs anything.’

  ‘Has Charlotte been helping out?’

  ‘I cannot expect her to help much. She’s busy getting ready for Germany. She has been shopping with Gabrielle. I have a feeling she’s finding it a major adjustment to be living with Gabrielle. It cannot be easy. Alexandre wants to talk to you. Let me hand him the phone.’

  Alexandre’s voice on the phone was faint; usually it was clear and strong. He started by saying, ‘Don’t worry about me,’ then, immediately asked, ‘When are you coming. When? Soon, I hope.’

  Claire promised she would do her best to come to Cairo within the next four weeks.

  Two days later, in the middle of the night, Alexandre fell on his way to the bathroom – the one time he had not rung the bell for help – and fractured his hip. He underwent an operation the next day.

  Gabrielle cabled the news to Claire.

  It would take Claire three days to obtain permission to go to Cairo. The director of the Minya store had to refer the matter to his superior in Alexandria, who had to refer the matter to the corporate headquarters in Cairo. ‘I would think that you’ll stop working soon then,’ the Minya director told her as he handed her written authorization for a week’s emergency leave. ‘Don’t you think?’

  Claire ignored the question.

  For once sympathetic, her co-workers, even her tormentor from the appliance department, seemed sorry for her. During her three days of waiting for the authorization, her chair was not moved once, the electric fan was moved back close to her department, no remarks were made. Thanks to young Mona, everyone in the store knew about her situation.

  Three nights in a row, Claire went to the Greek Club to play bridge. Staying in her hotel room was too oppressive, the question of what to do should Alexandre never walk again – a likely outcome at his age – gnawed at her.

  At the club, she made the acquaintance of a middle-aged Greek woman, a paediatrician, who would become a good friend. The woman was still living in Minya because of a twenty-year-long affair with a man unwilling to leave his disabled wife, something for which his lover admired him.

  During those three days of waiting, it seemed to Claire that she could perhaps get used to life in Minya as long as the atmosphere in the store remained serene.

  Coming out of the train in the Ramses train station, despite the sea of people, Claire spotted Gabrielle and Charlotte before they saw her. It would have been hard to miss Gabrielle – tall and with striking salt-and-pepper hair. Of her three daughters, Charlotte was the smallest. Wide-hipped, with a crop of curly jet-black hair and an olive complexion, she was by far the most Egyptian-looking. Aunt and niece were unsmiling.

  ‘Is it possible that I arrived too late?’ Claire thought as she made her way through the crowd. The train ride had been long and exhausting: no air conditioning and a one-hour delay in Beni Suef. Cairo felt almost as hot as Minya. It was a blistering end of August all over Egypt.

  When Gabrielle and Charlotte saw her, they waved and hurried in her direction.

  Before the usual hug and kiss, Gabrielle said, ‘It happened early this morning, he became delirious yesterday. He kept calling you and calling his mother.’ After a brief pause, Gabrielle went on, her voice uncharacteristically mellow, ‘He also called for Nicolas a couple of times.’

  Pale despite the heat, Claire turned towards her daughter and asked, ‘Were you at the hospital this morning?’

  ‘No,’ Charlotte said, quickly adding, ‘but we were on our way to the hospital when it happened. Nuni was there.’ Charlotte, her sisters and Gabrielle’s daughter Aida called their Aunt Constance ‘Nuni.’

  Claire took a deep breath, looked away for a second, then asked, ‘How is she taking it?’

  ‘Better than one would have expected. She said she could not have looked after him, that she is too old for that. And, with you in Minya, there was no obvious solution,’ Gabrielle answered.

  ‘She said that?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I brought the car. I’m driving. Do you want to go home first?’

  ‘Yes, take me home first. I’ll call the hospital.’ To Charlotte, Claire then said, ‘He loved you very much.’

  Charlotte whispered, looking awkward, ‘Yes, I know.’

  A few minutes later, while Gabrielle was driving, shouting warnings out of her window to drivers and pedestrians alike, Claire, seated next to her, turned to the back and said, ‘Charlotte, you shouldn’t judge your father on the basis of the man he became late in life. You’ve known him as an elderly man to whom life had dealt blows. You’ve known him as irascible and difficult. There was a time when he was an altogether different man.’

  ‘What’s the story behind my name?’ Charlotte asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Claire asked.

  ‘Nuni once told me that Father had insisted on giving me this name, and when I asked her why, she laughed and said that one of his first loves was a Charlotte. Is it true? Not that I would mind if it is. I’m just curious.’

  ‘It’s true. But it was not one of his early loves. He was already in his mid-thirties then. Charlotte was the woman he fell in love with when he spent a few months in Switzerland during his two years of travel in Europe, after he had cashed in his pension as a civil servant.’

  ‘He told you about her?’

  ‘Yes he did.’

  ‘And you did not mind his wanting to name me after her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not at all?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘So, what happened to that love story?’

  ‘She was married.’

  ‘How long after that did you meet him?’

  ‘Five years or so.’

  ‘How old were you the first time you met him in Uncle Yussef’s office? You told me, but I’m not sure anymore whether you said sixteen or seventeen.’

  ‘Fifteen as a matter of fact, about to turn sixteen.’

  ‘It’s really hard to believe that you were almost three years younger than me when you fell in love with him.’

  ‘It did not happen on the spot.’

  ‘Tell me again how it all started. It’s such a great story. Tell me everything! I want to hear all the details,’ Charlotte said, becoming all animated.

  ‘I had met him a few times in Uncle Yussef’s office. Uncle Yussef and Aunt Farida were all taken by him. They thought he was very clever, very witty. After that, I met him at one of Uncle Yussef’s Sunday lunches. He sat next to me and talked to me about Stendhal, about The Charterhouse of Parma, which he considered superior to The Red and the Black. I disagreed. He was surprised to hear I had read both. He said that women generally preferred The Red and the Black. He had a very engaging conversation, a very engaging voice too.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘A few days after that lunch, I was studying for the bac, getting ready for the philosophy test. I was certain that the notion of courage would be central to one of the essay topics so I was thinking of possible opening lines, pacing up and down the balcony which was right above Uncle Yussef’s office. When I tried to get back in the apartme
nt, someone had locked the door (Claire omitted to tell Charlotte that she had taken refuge on the balcony to avoid hearing the voices of her mother and sister who were in the midst of another of their many arguments; their voices were too distracting for her to concentrate in her bedroom, too upsetting too). Instead of knocking, I decided to step onto a ledge to get to my bedroom balcony, as my balcony door was open. Just as I was about to grip the railing, I slipped and fell on the veranda of Uncle Yussef’s office, where he and your father happened to be sitting, having coffee.’

  Charlotte was riveted although she already knew the story.

  ‘When I came to, it was with your father bent over me, his hand on my brow, saying, “She’ll be all right.” Uncle Yussef was in such a state that your father took charge and had the suffragis carry me to our apartment, where they put me on my bed. In the meantime the doctor, whose clinic was directly opposite Uncle Yussef’s office, was called. Apparently I slept for almost a full day after that, and when I woke up, I was told that the first word I uttered was “Alexandre.” On my desk, there was a big bouquet of flowers he had sent. My mother decreed that I was in love with him.’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘It’s all a bit of a blur now. In any case, my mother saying so caused me to think I was.’

  ‘So your mother was in favor, even though he was thirty-seven and you were sixteen?’

  ‘She wanted a male presence in the family to counteract Uncle Yussef. Your father seemed like a man who could provide that counterweight. Besides, as I said, he had a lot of charm.’ Claire refrained from disclosing to Charlotte that Gabrielle too had been initially enthusiastic about Alexandre.