‘But why?’ Gabrielle asked.
‘She has something to give me.’
‘What about your headache? Why not send Charlotte?’
‘No, no, I’ll be back quickly. I need some fresh air.’
‘That’s not like you.’ Gabrielle said. ‘You usually prefer to be indoors.’
‘If Simone calls, make sure one of you takes the details of her flight,’ Claire said, rushing out of the room.
Claire would open the big brown envelope in which Alexandre had kept his mementoes the next morning, at daybreak.
First, she took out of the envelope a large picture she had never seen before. It was of the opening of the Egyptian parliament with bulky, sullen-looking King Fuad on his raised throne in the middle; below him, standing, Saad Zaghlul was giving a speech, flanked on each side by the seated parliamentarians. Also seated but around a table, at the center, were the various ministries’ permanent civil servants. Amongst them was Alexandre, easily recognizable by virtue of his extremely erect posture, the sharpness of his jawbone and the fairness of his complexion.
Next, she took out of the envelope a small box containing the royal decree awarding Alexandre his decoration. She took out the medal too.
Then she examined a picture of her taken at the zoo shortly after her memorable fall from the fourth floor. Just sixteen years old, she had recently had her hair cut in a slightly boyish bob.
Encircled by an old elastic band were three pictures of three women in their twenties or early thirties. One very pretty, one less so, and one with a penetrating gaze under heavy eyebrows. No names were written on the back of the pictures, only the place and the year in which they were taken: Cairo 1922, Geneva 1925, and Zurich 1926. The one taken in Cairo – the picture of the very pretty young woman – would have been, Claire guessed, a picture of a woman from a wealthy background, to whom Alexandre had been quasi-engaged. As told by Constance, the story was that he had broken up with the pretty young woman after hearing of rumors that he was after her money. His explanation had been simpler: ‘It was not meant to be,’ he told Claire the only time she asked him about it.
Written in pencil – Alexandre wrote mostly in pencil – and folded many times over was the draft of a letter he had sent Claire ten years earlier, in which he was saying that, though degraded in his own eyes to find himself in that equivocal position, he could not but accept the liaison she was having at the time because it brought her material comforts he could not provide; he was referring to a car and a driver. Claire remembered the letter all too well. To read the draft – not much different from the letter she had received – upset her more than it ought to since she was already familiar with its contents. Pity, but also anger for letting herself again be moved to pity, welled up in her: if only she could have been left with traces of Alexandre’s former self as opposed to being confronted afresh with the diminished man! Tempted for a second to discard the draft letter, she nonetheless refolded it as neatly as she had found it and put it back in the envelope. To throw it away seemed to her a disrespectful and callous thing to do.
From the envelope, she pulled one more piece of paper – a tiny scrap that would have come out of the small notebooks Alexandre typically carried in his shirt or coat pocket, on which he would jot down thoughts, summarize articles, and keep track of sources he might want to consult some day. Occasionally, he would copy a few lines of a passage in a book or poem that had struck his fancy. The hand holding the piece of paper was firm but the corner of Claire’s mouth trembled as she read the few lines of a poem that Alexandre had copied:
How difficult for one who has failed,
for one who has declined, to learn the new
language of poverty and new ways
...........................
How will he face the cold glances that will
indicate to him that he is a burden!
Claire stuck that piece of paper back into the envelope, then reached for a big bag Constance had given her. It contained the frock-coat Alexandre had worn on meeting King Fuad at Ras al-Tin Palace in Alexandria to receive his award. The coat was as new, though it reeked of naphthalene. Claire decided that the coat would go to Simone, the medal to Djenane, and the accompanying decree to Charlotte. Her hope was that this small legacy would restore the man in their eyes.
Even though he had converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of sixteen, since he was to be buried in the Conti family crypt in the Greek Orthodox cemetery of old Cairo, Claire thought it best to hold Alexandre’s funeral in a Greek Orthodox church. She had not forgotten the fuss made by the priests in charge of the cemetery over her little boy’s burial.
During the service, which she could not follow as it was in Greek, Claire wondered whether the priest officiating was saying something about Alexandre and if so, what? Alexandre’s profile was singular even in the context of the hybrid milieu to which he belonged: an Italian who wore the tarbush; spoke, read and wrote Arabic like an Egyptian; went to a French school; Greek Orthodox by birth; may or may not have been of Greek origin on his father’s side, but certainly was on his mother’s; a convert to Roman Catholicism yet buried in a Greek Orthodox cemetery; a man who declared he had a profound Christian faith but would never spend more than five minutes in a church because they made him claustrophobic and subject to dizzy spells during mass, so he said; a man with a privileged childhood and rich and powerful friends yet penniless at the end of his life ... to say nothing of his marriage so little like a marriage.
Had she ever loved him?
Yussef Sahli’s wife Farida attended the funeral with Aristote, Bella’s estranged husband. Her mind not altogether there, she asked the young man standing next to her twice during the ceremony, ‘Who are you?’ and also asked him, ‘Remind me, who is it we’re burying?’ The young man was Hamid Hassanein, Claire’s lawyer. His father, Alexandre’s friend Maher, was in bed with pneumonia.
The evening of the funeral, Iris telephoned Claire from Geneva. ‘I was very fond of Alexandre,’ she began, ‘my father talked to me a lot about him towards the end of his life. He said more than once that Alexandre had too much pride and that was his problem. He said he was a man who had not adjusted to the changing times; that he belonged to a bygone era. It was clear that, in spite of their quarrel, he was still fond of him. I got the feeling he would have liked to see Alexandre one last time.’
‘It’s all so unfortunate,’ was all that Claire said in response, suspecting Iris to have made up this story. She did not tell Iris that, in her uncle’s dying days, she had suggested to Alexandre he go see him. His response came back to her almost word for word:
‘What would be the point? To pretend I am no longer angry with him for treating me like his flunkey all the years I worked for him? Summoning me to his office up to thirty times an hour – yes, up to thirty times – to tell me drivel! Calling me at home at dawn or at midnight to say something he could have easily told me in his office! Using me as entertainer – please don’t interrupt me – yes, entertainer at his soirées! When he was in need of someone to animate the conversation, he would not rest until I agreed to go, which I usually did for your sake. But that one evening he insisted I go to his place to play a game of backgammon with a potential business partner, I had had it. You know the rest! No Claire, I won’t go see him. I don’t wish him ill, but I cannot pretend all is forgotten.’
Had Alexandre ever wondered about the nature of her uncle’s affection for her? That was a subject neither he nor she had ever raised.
After Iris’s phone call came a telegram from Bella, ‘I expect it will be hard for you ... in a certain way. Love, Bella.’
Bella had guessed right: it proved to be hard on Claire, in a certain way. Alexandre’s death should have brought her relief – if only from the scenes he customarily made – scenes with Constance and Gabrielle, both as irascible as he was, but also with the girls, with the household help, with herself. He and her uncle had been alike in that respect, except th
at Alexandre’s explosiveness was more understandable; there were good reasons for it. So yes, his death ought to have made life easier for her. And it did, though without bringing her any light-heartedness. Instead, after Alexandre’s death, Claire’s spirits sagged. When she returned to Minya, her co-workers treated her with the courtesy accorded the newly widowed, but that did not last long. Within a few weeks, the harassment resumed, with management doing nothing about it. It was now clear to all in the store that she was not about to quit. Her workdays required a staying power she managed to summon, but, perhaps precisely because they were so grueling, she found herself running over in her mind, many times a day, what her life might have been without Alexandre. The more she let her mind wander, the more she held it against herself that she stayed in her marriage – albeit only with one foot – for her staying did not seem to have made anyone happier; neither him, nor her, nor her daughters, who had had to live in an atmosphere of perpetual tension. In Minya, Claire’s character took a morose turn. To combat that tendency – her mother’s specter loomed over her – she became an assiduous member of the bridge group at the Greek Club.
At the end of her two years in Minya, she concluded that the time she had spent there had not been all that bad. She had made some friends, kept her bridge skills going, read the Forsyte Saga in English as well as much of Edith Wharton’s work, and discovered Natalie Sarraute. And she had got to know Hamid Hassanein, whose selflessness, humility and dedication in fighting the battles of the little guys harked back to her youthful spirit and made her think of her father. Thanks to her lawyer, in the bittersweet make-up of Claire’s character, some sweetness remained. When she returned to Cairo, he urged her not to bear too much of a grudge against her co-workers as their reaction was understandable. She assured him she had understood (which she had), but it did not made the experience any easier.
Claire had been back in Cairo for a couple of months when, following a meeting aimed at bringing about a reconciliation between the PLO and King Hussein of Jordan, Nasser died after collapsing with severe chest pains. He had already begun steering the country to the right – a move now accelerated by his successor, Sadat. For Claire’s lawyer and his leftist comrades, who had seemed to be gaining momentum after the June 1967 war, the future looked bleak again. Their days of being hounded were not over. And soon, the Muslim Brotherhood would overtake the communists in popularity, making Claire remark that Nasser may have been an aberration.
1978: Constance
Charlotte was back in Cairo. Perhaps to stay, she announced on arrival. Filming her documentary on Egyptian women would give her some sense of what life in Egypt had become and therefore some basis on which to make up her mind. She had been living in Montreal where she had just completed a Ph.D. in anthropology while studying filmmaking on the side. Briefly married, she was at present unattached, had no children and wanted none. ‘You may change your mind,’ Claire told her. ‘You’re only twenty-seven.’
It had been ten years since her father died; eight since Sadat became Egypt’s president; four since he embarked on his program of economic liberalization; two since he dissolved the Arab socialist party; one since his trip to Jerusalem and speech at the Knesset; and barely four months since the death of Constance at the age of ninety-one. Constance had died in an old people’s home founded seventy-five years earlier thanks to a donation made by a Conti, one of Constance’s uncles. The home, on the outskirts of Cairo, took her in free of charge, more because she was poor than because of the donation.
Charlotte’s toying with the idea of returning to Cairo delighted her Aunt Gabrielle, a firm believer in Egypt’s future. Though it would of course benefit her to have one of her daughters in Cairo, Claire had mixed feelings as she was less optimistic about Egypt’s future. The resurgence of the Muslim Brotherhood – women in the streets of Cairo were beginning to wear the higab – coupled with the weakening of the secular left concerned her. She was not sure that Sadat’s brand of political liberalization would go much further. Her lawyer, whom she still saw on occasion, thought not and predicted that stifling political life would exacerbate fundamentalist feelings.
‘If you’re really serious about trying to make a life here, you ought to look into getting Egyptian citizenship,’ she told Charlotte that morning over breakfast. ‘Unfortunately, neither my being Egyptian nor your being born here entitles you to it, so I wouldn’t be too hopeful, but who knows ... there may be a way.’
‘Can’t your lawyer do something about it?’ Gabrielle asked. Now living in the same building as Claire, she had stopped by for breakfast. Whenever Gabrielle referred to Claire’s lawyer, her intonation acquired a certain edge. His politics still rubbed her the wrong way.
‘I’ll arrange for Charlotte to see him. I’m sure he’ll do his best but he cannot make miracles.’
‘What made you decide to give Egypt a try?’ Gabrielle asked Charlotte. ‘You seemed happy in Montreal.’
‘I am. It’s not a question of my not being happy there,’ Charlotte said. ‘However, for some reason I cannot even explain to myself, I feel that spending part of my adult life in Egypt is important, that I left too early. I feel a bit like I deserted the country.’
‘I can tell you one thing,’ Gabrielle said, ‘you look Egyptian. Your years abroad did not change that. You lost weight but all the girls in Egypt have too, no matter their social class.’
Charlotte laughed. ‘So I fit right in,’ she said. She was about to add that her desire to come back to live in Cairo had surfaced soon after Constance’s death but stopped herself, mindful of the old tensions between her two aunts. Was this a coincidence, or could the death of an aunt to whom she had been strongly attached as a child trigger this longing for a homeland she had left quite young?
‘Well, I must leave you now or else I’ll be late for work,’ Gabrielle said. Though nearing seventy, Gabrielle was in charge of an haute couture house – a job offered to her a year after she retired as a supervisor in state-run schools. She loved her job, as well as pointing out that she owed it to Sadat’s liberalizing policies; under Nasser, there would have been no such job for her. Claire too was working four days a week in a friend’s bookstore.
Now much fonder of her Aunt Gabrielle than she had been as a child, Charlotte walked her to the door. ‘It’s a good time to talk to Mother about Nuni,’ Charlotte thought on her way back to the dining room.
The evening before leaving Montreal, Charlotte had sat at her desk and, on the spur of the moment, begun writing a piece on her Aunt Nuni. She had continued writing on the plane as well as during her brief stay in London, where her sister Simone lived. In Cairo she had written more and had just finished the piece which she intended to show to her mother. But, before doing that, she wanted to hear her mother’s perspective on her aunt’s life.
‘By the way,’ Charlotte began as she poured herself another cup of tea, ‘how did Gabrielle and Nuni get along during the last years of her life?’
‘They made their peace,’ Claire said. ‘Gabrielle was quite good about visiting her in the home. She saw her once a week. Sometimes Batta went along.’
‘You went too, I presume?’
‘Not as often.’
‘How come?’ Charlotte asked, surprised.
Claire frowned. ‘I found it hard.’
‘I would have thought that Gabrielle would find it harder.’
‘It’s hospitals that Gabrielle has an aversion to.’
‘And yours is to old people’s homes?’
‘To some extent, yes. But ...’
‘But?’
‘I found it hard to visit Constance.’
‘But why? You two got along. She was extremely fond of you.’
‘I know,’ Claire said. ‘And I admired her resilience. I thought her immensely courageous. Immensely selfless. But to be honest, I felt I had done my share and could do no more.’
Before Charlotte could say anything, Claire went on, ‘Yes, yes, it was unfair of me.
I should have risen above my feelings. But whenever I would visit her, I would end up reviewing my life, the choices I made or did not make, and I would end up feeling bitter. The visits dragged me down. Perhaps I identified with her.’
‘How so?’ Charlotte said bemused. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Like me, she must have had many regrets.’
‘I think you’re projecting,’ Charlotte said heatedly.
‘Look, she ended up destitute and alone, in an old people’s home, in a kind of dormitory. How could she not have had regrets?’
Avoiding the question, Charlotte said almost reluctantly, ‘I wrote something about her.’
‘About Constance?’ Claire asked.
‘Yes. Why? Do you find that strange?’
‘I didn’t know you wrote. That’s all.’
‘I don’t write. I just wrote this one little piece. If you feel like reading it, you can have a look at it but only if you want to.’
‘I’ll read it,’ Claire said without much enthusiasm. She found the subject of Constance’s life painful, both because she deemed it a very sad life and because it somehow brought home her own failings and failures.
After reading the piece, she told Charlotte, ‘At your age I might have written something similar.’ Would she have though?
I did not do right by Nuni during the last years of her life, which she spent in an old people’s home on the outskirts of Cairo. I should have sent her letters or at least postcards yet seldom did. I was too wrapped up in a life so distant from the life in which she played such a big part – my life as a child and adolescent growing up in Egypt – to feel remorse for my neglect. News of her death left me feeling awkward – the kind of awkwardness that covers up a bad conscience.
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