by Ahdaf Soueif
an intricate inlaid board. He teaches me the classic maneuvers and the set moves. And he gives me silver money when I beat him.
To everything there is an order and a pattern.
Parental decree forbids servants and relatives to tell frightening stories or threaten abduction by the ghoul or the bogey or the man with the skinned leg. So I grow up in ignorance of the more menacing figures of folklore. I know Cinderella well, and am repeatedly ecstatic as the glass slipper is fitted to her dainty foot; I have unbounded confidence in Clever Hassan, who always comes out on top; and I know that the real story of Little Red Riding Hood ends with her and her grandmother emerging triumphantly from the wolf’s belly. The wolf is so overcome by this miracle that he is transformed into a domestic pet and they all live together happily ever after.
Divine Order. Evil is a passing naughtiness; mighty forces work for the good and all stories end happily.
I endlessly make up tales surrounding the pictures in the books I cannot yet read. I pore over a bookful of Rodin sculptures and my parents are delighted with the sunny little fables I produce. My life is woven into my tales and my tales become part of my life: aunts and uncles are characters in a storybook and Hansel and Gretel join me under the desk in my grandfather’s shop. I invent characters who become my friends and perform a play with them to an assembled family audience. “The child has such a lively imagination,” they say, and surround me with admiration and love.
My parents’ books become increasingly fascinating. I pick up even the ones with sparse illustrations and ask questions: “Who is this?”
“A man called Vathek.”
“Where does he live?”
“He’s not real. He was invented by a man called Beckford.”
“Where does he live?”
“He lived in the last century, in England.”
My father’s books are still out of bounds.
Then there comes a break. My mother is absent and I live in the Spoiling House. After many weeks I go on a long journey across the sea alone with my father. We land in a cold dark wet windy place with a lot of people and a lot of trains. We sit in a café drinking hot milk. Then my mother’s face emerges out of the rain. She is wearing a light green raincoat. She runs into my father’s arms and I embrace her legs. She bends to pick me up and she is laughing and crying at the same time.
Now I remember a new home. It is much smaller than the ones we’ve left behind and not so pretty. But there is a fire in the living room wall. Everything here is much colder, much darker than I’m used to. There is no one; no one except my parents. And I don’t see very much of them, for I am sent to school. My parents are pleased that I find my feet and learn the new language so easily. I miss my aunts and uncles and grandparents. But now I like my new friends. I like sitting on the floor on a huge sheet of paper and painting gray castles and soldiers in red and black uniforms. I like cuddling up to Miss Eve at storytime. I like taking a goldfish home for the holidays. I miss the sun. But I like the evenings when I sit at my mother’s feet in front of the fire. She reads and writes and I look at pictures. There are no sugar dolls, no Ramadan lantern, no Eid, and no sheep. But instead there is Father Christmas and a stockingful of presents.
A new routine is introduced: I am initiated into a semi-grown-up role. Once a week my parents go out in the evening and I am left on my own. My mother gives me my bath and my dinner, then tucks me up in bed with a hot-water bottle. Both my mother and father kiss me good night. A small night-light is left burning. I don’t mind at all. I tell myself stories till I fall asleep. In the morning the brownie will have visited me and left a chocolate or a packet of sweets under my pillow. He always comes when my parents go out in the evening. He never forgets. I try to wait up for him but I always fall asleep.
One night after I’ve fallen asleep I am suddenly wide awake. I sit up in bed and there, by the wall, I see him. He is a cross between a tiny man and a hamster. He is running quickly, upright on two legs, and he wears a little green suit and hat. He has a human face with a black mouse snout and pointed pixie ears. I know instantly that it’s the brownie and I sit very still so as not to frighten him away. Then I wonder about his gift. I slip my hand under the pillow, but there’s nothing there. I twist around to look and make sure. Still nothing. When I look up, he has gone. I know he will be back with my present, so I sit up to wait for him. The next thing I know it is morning and my mother is waking me up. There is a bag of licorice under the pillow. Over cornflakes I tell my parents that I’ve seen the brownie. At first they smile; then as I describe the scene in detail, they start to look anxious.
“You couldn’t have, dear.”
“But I did.”
“You must have dreamt it.”
“But I was sitting up in bed. I wasn’t asleep.”
“You couldn’t really have seen the brownie.”
“Why?”
“Because … well, because he can only come when you’re asleep.”
“But I was asleep. Then I woke up and he ran away.”
They stop arguing with me but they still look uncomfortable and I cannot understand why.
An important event now takes place: I learn to read. One day, all of a sudden, the black marks around the pictures make sense and I am reading. Now every day on the way home from school, we stop at the public library and get me a book. Also, once a week I buy Playhour and Robin. I want to do nothing but read. I read and I read and I make up more sto-r ies. I go r ight through Little Gray Rabbit and Noddy and Hans Christian Andersen and my world is peopled with fascinating characters and bursting with adventure. Pinocchio and Squirrel go with me everywhere. I take to saving up my pocket money and buying comics. The brownie stops bringing me sweets and brings me books instead. Every book is a treasure trove and I play a part in every story.
One week I go to get my Playhour and am attracted by another comic. The cover shows a man in a black cloak and a beautiful blonde lady. The lady is tired, so he is carrying her and smiling. He has horrid teeth. Over the picture is written Vampires. I don’t know what that means, but I already have a penchant for the romantic. I buy it. Something tells me my parents won’t approve, so I smuggle it in and hide it among my toys till their next going-out night.
This time, not only don’t I mind: I positively want them to go. When they do, I sit up in bed and read by the night-light: “The undead … those monstrous characters who feed upon the blood of the living … In Transylvania, Count Dracula’s castle lay shrouded in blackest night.” Here is new material indeed for my imagination. That night (after carefully rehid-ing the comic), I have a nightmare. An octopus is trying to catch me to drive a stake through my heart. I can see my mother, but she cannot see me or hear me scream. Luckily my parents have come home. They wake me up and comfort me and I tell them about the octopus but not about the stake. My father tells me that if I am afraid I’ll dream of something, the thing to do is to remember it consciously before I go to sleep. Then I won’t dream of it. For nights afterward I religiously intone “Octopuses and vampires, octopuses and vampires” before I go to sleep. It works. I don’t dream of them. I also don’t buy any more vampire comics.
My mother has a problem with me. I am finishing my books too quickly. We get home from school and long before bedtime I have finished the books from the library and am demanding more. In desperation she lets me browse among her books. I pick out a heavy red and gold volume of the Arabian Nights. “It’s all right,” she assures my father, “it’s only the Lane edition.” And I enter yet another new world. A world of Oriental souks and magic and djinnis. I am fascinated by the way djinnis can emerge from lamps, bottles, jars—in fact from anything. The world has undreamt-of possibilities. During the day I am at school and in the evening I am sunk completely into this firelit world of magic.
The week rolls around and it is going-out night again. I have my bath and my chicken soup and get into bed. My parents tuck me in and kiss me. I lie on my side in bed, gazing at the
wall. The night-light is burning. Slowly, slowly, the wall begins to move. I stare at it. It splits down the middle and swings slowly and silently open. In front of my eyes appears a giant black djinni with a shaved head. All he wears is a Tarzan-like swimsuit in leopard-skin, and his bulging arms are folded across his bare chest. Behind him appears the vampire in the black cloak. He is grinning widely and his long teeth are dripping with blood. For long seconds I am mesmerized; then I unfreeze. In a flash I am out of bed and on the chest of drawers under the window.
My parents are still in the courtyard when they hear the sound of banging against glass. They turn and look up. A small figure in a white nightdress performs a demented dance behind the darkened windowpanes. Fists hitting at the glass, mouth wide open in a silent scream. They race back up the stairs, unlock the door, and rush in. I am still on the chest by the window as, hysterical, I explain what happened. They tell me it cannot be and try to laugh at me. But whatever they tell me is no use, for it has been and I have seen it. They are not able to explain it away.
My father sits in the living room and my mother comes and goes between us.
“I must go down now and you must go back to bed.”
“No.” I am hysterical and crying.
“Daddy says he’ll be very cross with you.”
“No.”
“Daddy says there won’t be any new toys or books till Christmas.”
“I don’t want any.”
I know now my parents are neither omnipotent nor omniscient. They cannot stop the vampire from appearing, but at least they can be there when he arrives. I insist that they stay in and I win. I will not be left alone after this. And I am miserable.
1964
I stood in the snow, freezing and waiting for the bus. I was lonely. I had woken up at six as usual, washed and dressed in the cold dark while my young sister and brother slept on. I had poured myself some cornflakes, smothered them in sugar, and eaten them. Then I had let myself out of the back door and walked to the corner of Clapham High Street to wait for the No. 37.
The snow was deep around my ankle-high fur-lined black suede boots inherited from my mother. Or rather, I suppose now, donated by my mother while she wore ordinary shoes in the snow. Fourteen, with thick black hair that unfailingly delighted old English ladies on buses (“What lovely curly hair. Is it natural?”) and which I hated. It was the weather; hours of brushing and wrapping and pinning could do nothing against five minutes of English damp.
I loved Maggie Tulliver, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary, and understood them as I understood none of the people around me. In my own mind I was a heroine and in the middle of the night would act out scenes of high drama to the concern of my younger sister, who had, however, learned to play Charmian admirably for an eight-year-old.
We had come to England by boat. My father had come first. My mother had had trouble getting her exit visa. It was the New Socialist era in Egypt and there had been a clamp-down on foreign travel. Strings were pulled, but a benign bureaucracy moves slowly and it was two months before we were allowed to board the Stratheden and make for England.
We got on at Port Said. The Stratheden had come through the Suez Canal from Bombay and before that from Sydney. It was full of disappointed returning would-be Australian settlers and hopeful Indian would-be immigrants, and beneath my mother’s surface friendliness there was a palpable air of superiority. We were Egyptian academics come to England on a sabbatical to do postdoctoral research. I wasn’t postdoctoral, but it still wasn’t quite the thing to play with the Indian teenagers, particularly as among them there was a tall, thin seventeen-year-old with a beaked nose called Christopher who kept asking me to meet him on deck after dark. In a spirit of adventure I gave him my London address.
I was summoned into my parents’ room, where the letter lay on the desk. It was addressed to me and had been opened. It never occurred to me to question that. It said that it had been respectfully fun knowing me and could he meet me again? It had a passport-size photograph of him in it. My parents were grave. They were disapproving. They were saddened. How had he got my address? I hung my head. Why was it wrong to give him my address? Why shouldn’t I know him? How had he got my address? I scuffed my shoes and said I didn’t know. My lie hung in the air. Why had he sent me a photograph? I really didn’t know the answer to that one and said so. They believed me. “You know you’re not to be in touch with him?” “Yes.” There were no rows, just silent, sad disapproval. You’ve let us down. I never answered his letter and he never wrote again—or if he did I never knew of it.
I was not troubled by the loss of Christopher, just by the loss of a potential adventure. Anything that happened to me represented a “potential adventure.” Every visit to the launderette was brimful with the possibility of someone “interesting” noticing me. When I slipped and sprained an ankle, the projected visits to the physiotherapist seemed an avenue into adventure. But the old man massaging my foot and leering toothlessly up at me (“What a pity you don’t slip more often”) was more an ogre than a prince, and after one visit my ankle was left to heal on its own.
The likelihood of my actually arriving at an adventure was lessened by the eight-thirty P.M. curfew imposed by my parents (“Even in England it’s not nice to be out later than that, dear”).
But no path to rebellion was open to me, so I waited for something to happen obligingly within the set boundaries.
Days of calm Clapham harmony passed and I was fretting— “moping,” my mother would say. Nothing ever happened. Life was passing me by. Then one day, when I returned from the launderette, my mother said that some young people, the vicar’s children from down the road, had come by and asked if I would like to go out with them that evening. She had said yes for me. I was thrilled.
They came to collect me. Two tall and angular girls with vanishing eyebrows and hair pulled back into ponytails and a boy with extremely short hair and glasses and a brown-checked suit. My knowing heart made a little motion toward sinking, but I was resolute. I was going out with three young people of my own age. I did not know where we were going, but the possibilities were infinite. We might go down to the café at the end of the road and play the jukebox; I had looked through the window and seen it gleaming. We might go to a movie (“It’s called a film, dear”). We might go to a youth club; I had heard of those and imagined them to be like the Gezira Club at home, only much more exciting and liberated. Instead, we went to church.
It was not even an old and picturesque church. It was modern and bare and the benches were miles away from the pulpit and my new friends’ father preached for a long, long time. I told myself it was nice that they thought nothing of taking me, a Muslim, to their church. It was proof that I belonged— a little; that I wasn’t as different as I feared I was. We all prayed.
I knew about prayers from books I had read and made the appropriate movements, and when we bent our heads and closed our eyes, communing silently with God, I prayed for something to happen to relieve the awful tedium of life. I knew it was slightly incongruous to ask for excitement in church, but I was desperate.
“Friends,” the vicar said, “in our city today we find increasing numbers of people who come to us from far places: from alien races, alien beliefs. There are some of those among us tonight. Should any person in this congregation wish to join with us in the love of Jesus Christ, let them raise their hands now while the eyes of everyone are closed in prayer and I will seek them out later and guide them into the love of Our Lord. Raise your hand now.” I kept my eyes closed tight and my fists clenched by my sides. I could not swallow. There was no doubt in my mind that he meant me.
Afterward we all had tea in a hall somewhere in the building. Everybody was large and pale with straight light brown hair and tweeds. I felt excessively small and dark and was agonizingly conscious of my alien appearance, and particularly my alien hair, as I waited to be sought out and guided into the love of Jesus Christ. Mercifully, it did not happen. Even so, I had been—
however unknowingly—betrayed, and I knew I would never go out with the vicar’s children again.
On the way home I kept my eyes open for the teddy boys and the rockers preening on the street corners. My heart yearned after them, with their motorcycles and their loud and gaily colored girlfriends. They were all that I was missing, and
every time I walked past one, my heart would thud in anticipation of his speaking to me. It was hopeless, I knew. My parents would never allow me to make friends with them. And when a crowd of them whistled at me one day, I knew it was even more hopeless than that. For they were hostile. And I realized that with my prim manner and prissy voice they wouldn’t want me for a friend anyway. I was a misfit: I had the manners of a fledgling westernized bourgeois intellectual and the soul (though no one suspected it yet but me) of a rocker.
After I had refused a few times to go out with the church children (“But you’re always moping around complaining you don’t know anybody”), temporary rescue came from some friends of my parents. We went to visit them and it turned out that they had a son three years my senior. They suggested (I was sure to his annoyance) that he take me to the theater. My parents had no choice but to give their consent there and then, and arrangements were made for later in the week. Oddly, though, I still had to get formal permission to be out late. Permission to go to the theater apparently did not automatically include that. After all, one could always get up in the middle of the first act and be home by eight-thirty. However, permission was granted, but at ten-thirty on the dot I had to be home. I bathed myself like a concubine and went out dressed to kill in white gloves and a tartan kilt. There were lots of awkward silences. Hobson’s Choice ended at ten. David suggested we have something to eat but I had to get from Waterloo to Clapham in half an hour, so food was out. There followed a rush to get home, and though he kissed me good night in our front garden he never asked me out again. But I had had an adventure: my first-ever kiss. I had felt nothing at all, but I became more and more a heroine and borrowed from the library Mills & Boon romances that I read by flashlight under the covers in the dead of night.