by Maya Angelou
Whether our new start was going to end in success or failure didn’t cross my mind. What I did know, and know consciously, was that it was already exciting.
CHAPTER 15
Our plane landed at Cairo on a clear afternoon, and just beyond the windows, the Sahara was a rippling beige sea which had no shore. Guy and I went through customs, each peering through a frosted glass for a sight of Vus.
Barefoot men in long soiled nightdresses walked beside us, talking Arabic, asking questions. When we shook our heads and shrugged our shoulders, gesturing our lack of understanding, they fell about laughing, slapping their sides and doubling over. Laughter in a strange language has an unsettling effect. Guy and I walked close together, shoulders touching, into the main terminal.
The room was cavernous, and nearly empty, and Vus was not there. A porter asked in his version of English if we wanted a taxi. I shook my head. I had money, nearly a thousand dollars in travelers’ checks, but I wasn’t about to get into a taxi in an unknown country. Then I realized with a numbing shock that I had no address. I couldn’t take a taxi if I wanted it.
I thought about Guy and caught the gasp before it could surface.
“Mom, what are we going to do? You gave Dad the arrival time, didn’t you?”
“Of course. We’ll just go over there and sit down.” I didn’t comment on the accusation in his voice, but I recorded it. We had lugged our baggage through a group of laughing porters and janitors when two black men in neat Western suits approached.
“Sister Maya? Sister Make?”
I nodded, too relieved to speak.
“Welcome to Cairo. And Guy? Welcome.”
We shook hands and they mentioned their multisyllabic names. Vus was in a meeting with a high official and would join us as soon as possible. He had asked them to pick us up and bring us to his office.
They helped us into a ramshackle Mercedes Benz as if they were placing royalty in a state carriage. My son and I rose to the occasion. Neither of us said a word when, on the outskirts of Cairo, the driver neatly swerved to avoid hitting a camel, although I did push my elbow into Guy’s side as we passed the beautiful white villas of Heliopolis. The shiny European cars, large horned cows, careening taxis and the throngs of pedestrians, goats, mules, camels, the occasional limousine and the incredible scatter of children made the streets a visual and a tonal symphony of chaos.
When we entered the center of Cairo, the avenues burst wide open with such a force of color, people, action and smells I was stripped of cool composure.
I touched the man in the front passenger seat and shouted at him, “What’s going on? Is today a holiday?”
He looked out the open windows, and turned back to me shaking his head.
“The crowd? You mean the crowd?”
I nodded.
“No.” He smiled. “This is just everyday Cairo.”
Guy was so happy, he laughed aloud. I looked at the scene and wondered how we were going to enjoy living in a year-long Mardi Gras.
Emaciated men in long tattered robes flailed and ranted at heavily burdened mules. Sleek limousines rode through the droppings of camels that waved their wide behinds casually as they sashayed in the shadow of skyscrapers. Well-dressed women in pairs, or accompanied by men, took no notice of their sisters, covered from head to toe in voluminous heavy black wraps. Children ran everywhere, shouting under the wheels of rickety carts, dodging the tires of careening taxis. Street vendors held up their wares, beckoning to passers-by. Young boys offered fresh-fruit drinks, and on street corners, men stooped over food cooking on open grills. Scents of spices, manure, gasoline exhaust, flowers and body sweat made the air in the car nearly visible. After what seemed to be hours, we drove into a quiet, by comparison, neighborhood. Our escorts parked the car, then led us through a carefully tended front garden and into a whitewashed office building. They placed our luggage by the door of the lobby, then shook hands with Guy and me, and assuring us that Vus would arrive soon, left us in the lobby.
Africans came and went, nodding to us in passing. Just as exhaustion began to claim my body, Vus entered through the open doors. He shouted when he saw us, and came rushing to hold me and Guy in his arms. He grinned freely, and he looked about ten years old. I had no doubt, for the moment, that we were going to make each other frivolously happy. Cairo was going to be the setting for two contemporary lovers.
Vus released me and hugged Guy, chuckling all the while. He was a sexy brown-skin Santa Claus, whose love and largesse were for us alone.
“Come, let’s go home. We live across the street.” I spoke to Guy and pointed to the luggage. Vus shook his head and said, “They will be brought to us.” We walked through the garden, arms linked, and headed for number 5 Ahmet Hishmat.
Vus led us up the stairs of the large marble-fronted building. On the steps, a black man dressed in dirty clothes grinned and bowed: “Welcome, Mr. Make.” Vus put some coins in the man’s outstretched hand and spoke to him in Arabic. As we walked into the building’s cool dark corridor, Vus told us the man was Abu, the boabab or doorman, and he would deliver our bags. At the end of the corridor, he unlocked a carved door and we entered a luxurious living room. A gold-and-red-striped satin sofa was the first object which caught and held my attention.
A muted tapestry hung on the wall above another rich-looking sofa. In the middle of the room a low table of exquisite parquetry rested on an antique Oriental rug.
Vus wondered aloud if I liked the room and Guy made approving sounds, but I couldn’t imagine how a landlord could leave such important and expensive pieces in a rented apartment.
Guy shouted from a distance. “You should see this, Mom.”
Vus took my elbow and directed me into the next room, where a Louis XVI brocaded sofa and chairs rested on another rich rug. The dining room was filled with French antique furniture. The large bedrooms held outsize beds, armoires, dressing tables and more Oriental rugs.
I grinned because I didn’t know what else to do. When we reached the empty kitchen, a little sense returned to me.
A soot-encrusted lamp sat on a ledge with stacked plates, a pile of cheap cutlery and thick glasses.
Vus coughed, embarrassed. “They use this”—indicating the lamp—“to cook on. It’s a Sterno stove. Uh … I didn’t get around to fixing up the kitchen yet. Anyway, regular stoves are very, very expensive. I thought I’d wait until you arrived.”
“You mean, we own all that crap?” I must have shouted because Guy, who was crowded into the small room with us, frowned at me, and Vus gave me a haughty, angry look.
“I have tried to make a beautiful house for you, even to the point of ignoring my own work. Yes, I’ve postponed important PAC affairs to decorate this apartment, and you call it crap?” He turned and walked through the door. Guy shook his head, disgusted with my lack of gratitude and grace, and followed Vus out of the kitchen. Their silent departure succeeded in humbling me. Vus was a generous man. Indeed, I had only seen that kind of furniture in slick magazine advertisements, or in the homes of white movie stars. My husband was lifting me and my son into a rarified atmosphere, and instead of thanking him for the elevation, I had been sour and unappreciative.
A profound sense of worthlessness had made me pull away from owning good things, expensive furniture, rare rugs. That was exactly how white folks wanted me to feel. I was black, so obviously I didn’t deserve to have armoires, shiny with good French veneer, or tapestries, where mounted warriors waged their ancient battles in silk thread. No, I decided to crush that feeling of unworthiness. I deserved everything beautiful and I merited putting my long black feet on Oriental carpets as much as Lady Astor. If Vus thought he wanted his wife to live beautifully, he was no less a man (and I had to get that under the layers of inferiority in my brain) than a Rockefeller or a Kennedy.
The luggage had been placed in the middle of the floor of the first living room. I heard Vus’s and Guy’s voices from the balcony, so I went to join them with a sm
ile warm enough to melt the snows on Mount Everest.
“This is the most gorgeous house I’ve ever seen.” Vus nodded and smiled at me as if I were a recalcitrant child who had recovered her good manners following a foolish tantrum. Guy grinned. He had known his mother would come through. We stood looking down on the back of a man who was bent weeding what Vus said was our private garden. We had a doorman and our own gardener. That information was a fair-sized lump, but I swallowed it.
The first weeks in Cairo were occupied with introductions to freedom fighters from Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, North and South Rhodesia, Basutoland and Swaziland. Diplomats from already-independent African countries dropped by our apartment to meet Vus Make’s American wife, who was trying to be all things to everybody.
Jarra Mesfin, from the Ethiopian Embassy, and his wife Kebidetch Erdatchew came early and stayed late. Joseph Williamson, the Chargé d’Affaires from Liberia, and his wife A. B. invited us to the Residency.
I was the heroine in a novel teeming with bejeweled women, handsome men, intrigue, international spies and danger. Opulent fabrics, exotic perfumes and the service of personal servants threatened to tear from my mind every memory of growing up in America as a second-class citizen.
Vus, Guy and I had lunch near the pyramid of Giza, where we watched camel riders lope around the bottom of the Sphinx. Car radios, nearly turned to their highest pitch, released the moaning Arabic music into the dusty air.
I had hired Omanadia, a short stubby older woman from Sudan, as cook-housekeeper after Vus said my reluctance to have a servant in the house was not proof of a democratic spirit, but rather of a bourgeois snobbism, which kept a good job from a needy worker. Anyway, she was a cook and knew how to manage the little Sterno lamp which remained my only stove.
Guy was enrolled in the American College at Mahdi, and was picked up daily in a bus for the fifteen-mile ride out of Cairo to his school. He might have felt the need to show off for his schoolmates and new teachers, or the abrupt cultural change may have prompted him, but whatever the reason or reasons, he did extremely well in his studies. There was no need to urge him to do his homework, and the mood which had visited him in the more recent months in New York and San Francisco was dispelled. In Cairo, he had a clarity, was cheerful, garrulous and my young son again. We engaged each other in a contest to see who would have the largest Arabic vocabulary and speak with the best accent.
There was an Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference in downtown Cairo and Vus thought I’d like to attend.
The sight of the huge auditorium made me catch my breath. Long tables, banked at an easy incline, held headsets and microphones, and men of every color, wearing various national outfits, wandered the aisles, conversing loudly in many languages strange to my ear. The arrangement of seats, the microphones and the multinationals reminded me of the General Assembly of the United Nations, my heart thumped and I reached for Vus, who, hating public displays of attachment unless he initiated them, stepped away, but stayed close enough to whisper.
“They don’t make you nervous, do they?”
I straightened myself and pulled as far from him as he had withdrawn from me. “Not at all. I don’t frighten easily.”
That was more mouth than truth, but I put my head up and walked down into the mingle of men. Vus caught my arm and stopped me.
“I want to introduce you to your fellow countryman.” I looked around to see a thin young man, dressed in a well-cut suit, smiling at me. He was of one piece. His eyes were almond shaped, his face long and gently molded into an oval, his smile was long and thin, and he was the color of a slightly toasted almond. Vus said, “This is David DuBois. He is a journalist in Cairo, and my very good friend. David, meet my wife, Maya.”
His first words were a healing balm spread on an ache I had not distinguished. “Hello, Maya Angelou Make. I’ve heard about you. All Egypt will be happy to welcome you. And they say you can sing, too.”
The voice of an adult American black man has undeniable textures. It has a quality of gloss, slithery as polished onyx, or it can be nubby and notched with harshness. The voice can be sonorous as a bass solo or light and lyrical as a flute. When a black man speaks in a flat tone, it is not only intentional but instructional to the listener.
I had forgotten how much I loved those sweet cadences. I said, “I surely want to thank you. I’m glad to be here.”
We smiled at each other and embraced. Maybe he had missed hearing a black American woman’s voice.
—
The cocktail parties at home increased. Vus had to make contacts, and he also had to entertain them, their wives and friends. When he was in Cairo, the house throbbed with activity. I learned to cook elaborate dinners without pork and served chilled fruity unalcoholic punches when our guests were Moslem. Roast hams, rice with ham, spinach with salt pork and peas with pig knuckles, with Scotch and gin, were served to African and European guests.
I began to notice the undeniable link between Vus’s journeys and our entertainment schedule. When he returned from Algeria, which was independent and militantly anticolonial, his spirits were high and he strutted through the house with an air of insouciance. At those times, he wanted to be alone with me and Guy. He would describe the successful Algerian revolution as if the seven-and-a-half-year rebellion had taken place in South Africa rather than at the continent’s most northerly tip. Guy would listen, his eyes gleaming, his face immobile, as Vus told us proudly of his conversations with Ben Bella or Boumedienne. Trips to Ghana also resulted in proud reports of the Nkrumah government and homey conversations. We three would play Scrabble and listen to music. Then in our dim bedroom, he would take me into his arms delicately. My body was the prayer wheel where he placed all his supplications. Love-making became a high celebration, rich and sacred, a sacramental communion.
Conversely, when he had traveled into southern Africa, without passports or documents, when he doffed the tailored suits and handmade shoes, and wore the open sandals and blankets of tribesmen in order to reach a stranded party of escapees, he returned to Cairo quickened, tense with wakefulness. The whites of his eyes were always shot with red lines, and his attention was abstracted with what he had seen, and where he had been.
He was hardly in the house before he would pick up the telephone.
“Are you free this evening? Come over. My wife will cook her famous Afro-American food. We’ll drink and eat. Come.”
The invitation would be repeated several times before he would ask if I had something I could prepare in a hurry. Invitees would troop into the apartment, eat and drink copiously, talk loudly with each other and leave. Occasionally during the gatherings, David DuBois and I would find a quiet corner and talk about our folks back home.
David’s journalistic assignments involved all of Europe, Africa and Asia, and marriage had broadened my interests to include the mercurial politics of those areas as well. However, while the conversations around us swelled with concern over Goa and India, Tshombe and the Belgian-owned Union Minière, the Lebanon and Middle East crisis, we wondered how the black parents in America could let their little children walk between rows of cursing, spitting white women and men, en route to school? What would happen to the children’s minds when uniformed police sicked dogs on them just because they wanted to get to class?
At a certain point, we always stopped the self-pitying and reassured ourselves that our people would survive. Look what we had done already.
David and I would begin to hum softly, one of the old spirituals. (He always insisted on starting with his favorite, “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, When I Lay My Burden Down.”)
Surely exhibitionism was a part of our decision to sing in a room of talkers, but a deeper motivation was also present. The lyrics and melody had the power to transport us back into a womblike familiarity. Admittedly, Africa was our place of genesis, long, long ago, but more recently, and more dearly known were the sounds of black America. When David and I lifted the song, diplomats and politic
ians, women on the make, and men on the run, freeloaders and revolutionaries, stopped haranguing, flirting, jibing, imploring, pontificating, explaining, and turned to listen. First half-heartedly, informed by the knowledge that we were airing melodies written by the last large group of people enslaved on the planet, courtesy forced them to attend. After a few verses, the music made its own demands. They could not remain ignorant of its remarkable humanity. I could not read their minds, but their faces were wide open with allegiance to our songs. Vus, conscious of their attentiveness, paid tribute to our survival and by joining in helped David and me to reestablish for ourselves a connection to a bitter, beautiful past.
CHAPTER 16
Omanadia came to the balcony on a lovely summer afternoon.
“Madame?”
I had arisen from a nap in the cool bedroom. I felt refreshed and indulgent. “Yes, Omanadia?” She could not have the rest of the day off, if that was what she wanted. I needed a little more pampering.
“Madame, I stopped the rug man again. You were sleeping.”
“What rug man?” I was awake, but slow.
“The man collecting for the rugs. He hasn’t been paid for two months. And the two furniture collectors.” She laughed roguishly. “The other maids down the street tell me when they’re on Ahmet Hishmat, so I don’t open the door.”
Because of her age and sharp tongue, Omanadia was the bane and the pet of shopkeepers, younger servants and doormen. She knew all the gossip and most of the facts concerning people in our neighborhood.
“Omanadia, how much do we owe?”
She tried to keep a straight face, but her eyes danced. “How much, madame? But Mr. Make would not like me to say. He is the man, madame.”
“How much, Omanadia?”
She made her fingers an abacus. We had only paid a tenth of the price on the rugs. We owed over half the cost of the bedroom furniture. We had not paid anything on the embroidered bed linens or towels. The two living rooms and the dining-room set were way overdue for payment, and our rent was two months in arrears. I thanked her and told her to take the rest of the afternoon off.