Edith was the Belle of the Alleyway, and some liked to say she had given the alley its name. That was fanciful, of course: Haret el-Helwa had preceded the young girl by decades if not centuries. Still, like a lovely fable, a myth that springs out of thin air and takes hold, the story was repeated and spread.
Her beauty didn’t give her too many advantages. Edith lacked both male and female companions, except for my grandmother who wouldn’t let her out of her sight. Alexandra was prone to melancholy, and the only person who could reassure her and keep her calm was her daughter. The two were constantly together—to be separated even for a few hours of a day was unbearable, certainly to Alexandra.
They made a striking pair. Alexandra, small, bent over, pencil thin from years of barely eating, was always slightly unkempt, her gray hair awkwardly pushed back in a loose chignon, her clothes worn to the point of shabbiness, the buttons of her sweater missing or slightly askew, her stockings drooping or with holes in them, her shoes frayed and dusty, with a book or magazine tucked under her arm. Edith, on the other hand, dressed impeccably, in fitted skirts and delicate blouses and high heels. With her perfect posture, she actually appeared taller than her five-foot frame, and she had an innate sense of style that made her stand out among the women of the neighborhood.
Alexandra took immense pleasure in her daughter’s beauty, and she loved to say that Edith couldn’t walk down a street in Cairo, even in the fashionable quarters en ville (downtown), without drawing stares.
In 1937, shortly after her fifteenth birthday, my mother landed her first job—a position as a schoolteacher at Le Sebil, the communal Jewish school that was heavily supported by the Cattaui family. It was a remarkable achievement, not simply because of her youth. Teachers were a kind of aristocracy, and they were treated with absolute deference not only by schoolchildren but by other adults. Women who entered the profession were held in especially high regard in an era when girls were pushed to do little more than get married as young as possible.
And that is exactly what most of them did.
Despite the flowering feminist movement unleashed the prior decade by Hoda Shaarawi, Cairo in the 1930s didn’t encourage a woman to get an education, and girls rarely remained in school beyond the age of twelve or thirteen. Many of the young Jewish girls were snapped up by the local couturieres, or seamstresses, to work as apprentices and learn the craft for a few years before settling down.
Those who were pretty and worldly found slightly better jobs at the big opulent department stores. Cicurel, the grandest of them all, placed a high premium on beauty and tended to hire strikingly attractive young Levantine girls barely in their teens for their sales force. They were paid both a salary and a commission, and the more aggressive among them did quite well.
Edith could never see herself as a shopgirl, nor would Alexandra have allowed it. Instead, she stayed in school an extra couple of years until she earned the coveted brevet, a kind of high school degree, and along with it, a license that allowed her to teach. Few women in the community ever went as far as obtaining the brevet, and Mom considered it her single most precious possession on earth. She didn’t let it out of her sight and never would. Dated May 1937, it was issued by the Academie de Paris, the august body in Paris that set educational standards for schools all over France. The Academie was also in charge of overseeing French schools abroad that followed their curriculum. “Mademoiselle Matalon has been judged worthy of receiving a Brevet to teach elementary school,” the large brown document stated.
There she was, working in the same school the pasha’s wife loved to patronize. My mother had noticed her, of course, as she swept into the school to do her good works in the cafeteria or with the needy students. But she was too shy to approach her and could only marvel at her from afar, admiring both her elegance and the tenderness she lavished on the children.
Situated in a massive brick building, Le Sebil had classes of forty students and more. In addition to the Cattauis, other moneyed families also helped—the Jews who lived on the other side of Cairo—in the gated villas of Heliopolis and Zamalek and Garden City and Maadi. While these didn’t necessarily mix with the Jews of Sakakini or the Old Ghetto, they were committed to making sure the less fortunate in the community had enough food to eat while their children received a solid education.
Academic standards were fairly rigorous, but life at the Sebil was grim. My mother was shaken by the extent of the poverty among the children. Many came to class in the morning hungry, and she was painfully reminded of herself as a little girl, foraging for food with Alexandra. “Ce sont des pauvres hères,” she’d tell her mother sorrowfully; They are all these poor ragamuffins.
In the absence of a government welfare system, the Jews of Egypt tried to take care of their own with a far-flung network of charitable funds set up to help every needy group imaginable—orphans, widows, the sick, the aged, the destitute, the insane. There was even a pot of money for single women in danger of never marrying because their families couldn’t afford a dowry. It was a favorite cause of the pasha’s wife, for whom every bride was Indji, every dowry she subsidized was one she would have arranged for her dead daughter.
In Edith’s case, her slender means didn’t seem to matter. Matchmakers were already circling; they had approached my grandmother about potential suitors anxious for her daughter’s hand. These were said to be so smitten that one or two were prepared to forgo la dotte—the all-important dowry.
Alexandra wouldn’t hear of it. She made it clear she wasn’t going to turn her daughter over to le premier chien coiffé, the first well-groomed dog, as the French liked to say, the first rake who came along. She was sure that Edith could make a dazzling match someday, and she was still so young they could afford to wait. Besides, it would be so hard living apart—now that her daughter went to work every morning, the day somehow felt longer, more difficult to navigate.
Edith left early for her teaching duties at the Sebil, and Alexandra was left to fend for herself.
My grandmother was so terrified of being alone she’d simply remain on the balcony and wait for Edith to come home. She’d be fixing herself coffee, boiling the water with several spoons of the thick Turkish blend; and for nourishment she nibbled on some khak, the salty, ring-shaped biscuits sprinkled with sesame. She was also constantly lighting up—one cigarette after another she bought from urchins on the street. These were young boys who made a living gathering discarded cigarette butts that they turned over to slightly older youths who specialized in removing any precious leftover tobacco from the stubs, which they’d then recycle. There was a whole industry in Egypt rolling these primitive, cheap cigarettes that were sold loose on the streets, and Alexandra was a devoted customer.
She’d plunge into some novel her daughter had managed to filch for her because in the same way that my grandmother was always smoking one cigarette after another, and drinking one cup of coffee after another, she couldn’t survive without reading one book after the other.
When Edith finally came home, the two women would start the evening side by side on the balcony, sipping coffee and chatting. Later, they’d take a stroll over to Sakakini Palace around the corner. Years after it was built, it was still an object of wonder, this fantastical mansion with its domes and golden statuettes and turrets. There it stood in the middle of a vast traffic circle from which eight different streets fanned out, like spokes of a wheel. The palace not only anchored the neighborhood, but gave it a certain cachet and even its name.
In their evening walks, Alexandra, arm in arm with Edith, would cross over to the palace. Often, they continued their stroll and went to pay a call on Alexandra’s stepdaughter, Rosée, who lived nearby. They could sit with her and talk for hours even as she plied them with coffee and food. On a hopeless quest to persuade both women to eat, she’d serve one dish after another. Sometimes, Edouard—Edith’s favorite uncle—would be there. Edouard was a dashing fellow who had clawed his way out of poverty and now lived dow
ntown, where he thrived as a pharmaceutical salesman. He had a special fondness for Edith, and so when he was there, the atmosphere was especially joyful.
Later, if they had a bit of change, my grandmother and my mom would catch a double feature at the cinéma en plein air, the small outdoor movie theater near Sakakini Palace whose nightly show started promptly at 9:00 P.M. The cinema offered comfortable bamboo chairs where every evening, spectators could lean back and enjoy the latest Hollywood movie while eating a sesame roll with cheese from the vendors who walked up and down the aisles; and my grandmother, who loved the movies almost as much as books, was finally at peace.
Typically, the shows lasted till midnight, and when they came out, the neighborhood was still awake and alive, and they could buy a bag of roasted chestnuts from one of the vendors stationed outside the cinema and nibble on them as they strolled home.
Those evening hours—the café turc with Edith on the balcony, the pleasant exchanges with neighbors, the little constitutional walks, the occasional double feature—were so precious to Alexandra. It was hard to be a woman on your own in Egypt even if you had relatives or friends. People always looked down on you, felt sorry for you, avoided you.
Edith was her life. Alexandra knew that she could rely only on her daughter who was so much older than her years. Edith the diligent one, Edith the studious one, Edith the pretty one, Edith the dark-haired, doe-eyed hope of the family, the one who would rebuild their lost hearth.
How they had survived after her husband abandoned them, Alexandra was never sure. The recent years in the little ground-floor apartment were the good times. In the late 1920s, when Edith and Félix were children, Alexandra’s husband, Isaac, had squandered what money they had, then left the family to fend for themselves. My aristocratic grandmother—cosseted and spoiled as the child of wealthy parents—hadn’t known how to cope.
Even as she watched Alexandra unravel, young Edith took charge and looked after the three of them, preparing small elemental meals with the bits of food she could gather, keeping the house clean, caring for Félix. The passionate attachment between mother and daughter dated back to that period, when Alexandra had only the most tenuous grasp on reality and Edith was trying to save her with all the might and determination and ferocity that a strong-willed little girl can summon. She was forced to grow up fast, to forgo any childhood pleasures.
To forgo any childhood, period.
They had practically starved, and they couldn’t afford any rents at all, even in the dustiest alleyway, even in the Haret-el-Yahood, the ancient Jewish ghetto where the desperately poor lived in the equivalent of rabbit warrens. So off they went to Alexandria, where my grandmother still had relatives who remembered her, who loved her, who could be counted on to give them a place to stay.
For a time the three of them—Alexandra, Edith, and young Félix—were nomads seeking refuge with various aunts or cousins. Their favorite, Tante Farida, Alexandra’s half sister, took them in for weeks at a stretch. She treated Edith like a daughter and gave the family their own room. There were other stray cousins with whom they could dine so they were assured at least a square meal or two each day. But there were no offers of permanent shelter, and besides, my grandmother would never have agreed. She had trained Edith even as a child not to convey how desperate they were, and above all not to reveal that they were hungry.
Once a month they’d go off together on the most humiliating mission of all: to collect money from Alexandra’s hopelessly cold relatives, those members of the famed Dana family who were almost obscenely prosperous and lived in villas and stylish apartments between Alexandria and Cairo.
They took turns giving my grandmother one Egyptian pound for her troubles—une livre par mois—that was her allowance. One pound. It was supposed to cover her expenses raising the children, feeding them, and keeping a roof over their heads.
Alexandra would pocket the one-pound note, take Edith by the hand, and return to wherever they were staying or travel back to Cairo. There, she would descend on other relatives, like her brother Edgar who also lived in Sakakini, and make an appeal. My grandmother was always so shy and apprehensive when she went to his house. She would practically tiptoe inside, sit quietly in an armchair, and not budge, hoping Edgar would give her some alms.
That was how they had lived for years and years—at the mercy of relatives who weren’t especially merciful.
Despite all the drama and uncertainty at home, Edith threw herself into her schoolwork. She was a star pupil of Marie Suarez, the girl’s division of L’École Cattaui. The newly built private school had opened shortly after she was born and quickly acquired a reputation as the finest Jewish private school. Alexandra had refused to send her to the Sebil—had simply put her foot down. The notion of Edith attending a communal school for the poor was unthinkable to her despite her own penury, and she appealed to her relatives to pay the school’s tuition so that Edith would receive a proper education. My mother was constantly reading and studying and earning accolades. She skipped several grades, received tous les premiers prix—all the top prizes—and was ahead of all her classmates, including those who were considerably older.
From its founding in the 1920s by Moise Cattaui Pasha, then the head of the Jewish community, the school had tried to recruit the finest teachers; and Edith reveled in their love and the attention they lavished on her. The teachers in turn raved about her to Alexandra. What a beautiful penmanship her daughter had—each letter, every word, so perfectly formed. And her compositions were so thoughtful and lyrical.
This was at least in part my grandmother’s doing. Unable to offer Edith any material possessions, too distraught to give her the modicum amount of stability she needed growing up, Alexandra could only infuse her daughter with her own literary sensibility—her passion for books—along with a boundless, all-consuming, near-hysterical love.
There were times Edith chafed at that love and tried to keep my grandmother at a distance. One year that my mother was set to collect all the awards, Alexandra was invited to attend the ceremony. My grandmother decided to wear the lone “dressy dress” she owned, a deep purple velvet outfit she called in her typically fanciful manner, “ma robe de velours héliotrope”—my heliotropetinted velvet dress. It was from another era and hopelessly inappropriate for this hot June day. As they started walking toward school, my mom realized that they made a ridiculous pair and told Alexandra to go home—that she was embarrassed to be seen with her. My grandmother, looking like a wounded bird, walked back to the alleyway alone in her heliotrope dress while Edith went on to collect her prizes.
Usually, they got along and were devoted to each other and exceptionally close. From a young age, Edith was reading the same novels as her bibliophile mother—adult novels, novels intended for someone older and more mature. My mother had the most sheltered upbringing imaginable, yet in some ways it was also the most progressive because of the books she read. She learned about love affairs while reading Flaubert’s Sentimental Education. Her exposure to marriage and its disappointments and betrayals came from Madame Bovary.
When she turned fifteen, Alexandra handed her perhaps the greatest gift of all—Proust’s A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. She had managed to obtain a complete set from an obliging cousin. Within a few months, my mother had read every single volume.
This became Edith’s claim to fame—that she had devoured all of Proust by the age of fifteen. She would say this with a touch of arrogance, because, truth be told, she looked down on other girls her age who didn’t read Proust, who had no interest in him.
There was no such superior streak in Alexandra, who’d been pummeled far too much by life. She was simply thrilled after the years of humiliations to be able to hold her head high again. These days, when she went to see her relatives, it was to brag a little bit, to give them all the wonderful news. She was overjoyed when her daughter received her teaching credentials. “Edith a reçu son brevet” (Edith got her diploma) she told anybody who�
�d listen. A bit later, she announced, “Edith enseigne” (Edith landed a teaching job). Yet even now that my mother brought home a steady paycheck, my grandmother still went quietly alone every month to collect her one Egyptian pound from balky family members.
As she grew older, Alexandra became more and more fearful. Along with her angst, or perhaps because of it, she was increasingly superstitious. Life was all about good luck and bad luck, how to encourage one and ward off the other, and above all how to avoid what was known in Arabic and Hebrew as ein arah—the evil eye. These beliefs were widespread in old Cairo, and Jews who were educated and cultured were every bit as terrified of the evil eye as their impoverished Arab neighbors. But the fear was carried to an extreme in the ground-floor apartment of the Alley of the Pretty One.
My grandmother was said to be ill fated from the day she was born. From the start, family members spoke of a Curse of Alexandra, which they traced back to her parents, specifically to the day her father, Selim Dana, had married Rachel Dana, a much younger woman who happened to also be his niece. Such near-incestuous unions were tolerated in Egypt—barely—but there were many who were shocked, who shook their heads and said the match was sinister and unlawful in the eyes of God.
“It will bring them bad luck,” people whispered. Ca va porter malheur.
It did. How else to account for the death of Rachel at the age of thirty, leaving behind not only Alexandra but three young sons?
The offspring would be the ones to suffer, those who opposed the union predicted, recalling the biblical injunction about the sins of the father: “For I am the Lord your God, a jealous God, Who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations.”
Whenever Alexandra experienced another tragedy, another setback, people merely shrugged as if to say, “I told you so.” My well-read, intellectual grandmother also believed in the curse; she was convinced that she was star crossed.
The Arrogant Years Page 4