And why on earth had she decided to look for them in Kasr El Aini, one of Cairo’s main arteries, a street that seems to suck up the heat as no other? She was too lethargic to change course, to think of where else, nearby, tomatoes might be found. She forged ahead, staying close to the buildings lining the streets, in the hope that the small patches of shade under their protruding balconies would give her some protection, if only for a few seconds. She suddenly remembered seeing a vegetable cart on a street corner not too far away. A couple of minutes at most and she would be there. It felt like an interminable journey. She threw a tired glance around her. Kasr El Aini was less busy than usual, yet the cars’ honking was worse than usual. Incessant honking! Was this always the case on especially hot days?
She looked straight ahead and became vaguely aware of a commotion at the nearest bus stop. As she came closer she saw a woman with an infant in one arm, holding on to a man who was trying to free himself from her grip while motioning oncoming buses to stop. The woman held on to him firmly. Even before she reached the bus, she could hear the woman and the man shouting. By the time she reached the scene more than a dozen people, children as well as men and women of all ages, had assembled around them.
‘I won’t let go of him until he gives me money!’ the woman shouted, addressing the small crowd.
‘I told her a hundred times that I have no money; I only have enough for the bus fare!’ the man yelled. ‘Here, come and search me,’ he offered, lifting his arms above his head as the woman continued to hold him by the front of his shirt. ‘If she wants money, then she should let me catch the bus so that I can get to work on time. What sense does it make to keep me here when I should be going to work, if money is what she wants? You tell me!’ the man asked the crowd, this time in a calmer voice.
‘As usual, words, words and words! He knew very well I needed money for the child’s prescription. Yet he left home without leaving a piaster. Not a piaster! He left while I was resting. Up to his usual tricks. He thought he could slip off on the quiet. Just like that! But I’m no fool. I was awake when he closed the door, so I jumped out of bed and followed him. I knew where he was going. Do you think that it’s right and proper for a father to leave the house without leaving any money for his child’s prescription?’ Again, the question was aimed at the crowd.
Buses came and went but few people left the scene. By now the spectators were too involved in what was happening to be jumping on to a bus.
‘Lady, perhaps you should let your husband go to work and you’ll get your money later in the day,’ a middle-aged man suggested. The man, holding a worn-out briefcase, looked like a government employee or a teacher.
‘At last, some sensible words!’ the husband exclaimed triumphantly.
The woman shrugged, turned her head towards the man who had offered the advice and shrilly said, ‘Don’t you understand that he won’t give me the money? He won’t give it tonight. He won’t give it tomorrow either, nor the day after. He doesn’t care about us. He doesn’t care about his children. All he cares about are his cigarettes, his cups of coffee (dozens of them a day), sitting for hours on end at the café, and eating the meals I prepare. God only knows how I manage to put food on the table, twice a day, every day.’ In the heat of her diatribe, the woman had let go of the man, who proceeded to tidy his shirt and tuck it properly into his trousers. Eyeing him with scorn and rage, the woman shouted for all to hear: ‘If he were a man, a real man, he would be looking after his children and not after his shirt.’
Strangely enough, throughout the whole scene, the child had remained silent and looked in fact quite content, smiling at friendly faces in the crowd.
‘Shut up and go home!’ her husband yelled. ‘If you’re so concerned about the children, you wouldn’t be running around town with this one in your arms, in this heat. Be sensible woman, at least once in your life.’
‘If she needs the money, she needs the money,’ a short but large and fierce-looking woman interjected in a dismissive tone, looking at the man straight in the face. Then, turning towards the wife, she said, ‘God be with you; God be with you.’ And as she said this, she waved her arms energetically, and her many gold bracelets jingled and glittered in the sun.
The husband hollered: ‘You leave my wife alone. You stay out of this. You have no business interfering in our affairs. Stick to yours. I pity your husband.’ He then walked menacingly towards the woman, at which point a young man jumped between them, putting his hand on the man’s shoulder, soothingly. ‘Don’t get upset. She meant no harm. She was only trying to comfort your wife,’ the young man said, sounding older than his years.
‘I’m not afraid of him – not in the least,’ the woman said defiantly, edging closer to the irate husband. Then she added, ‘I know his sort all too well. Unfortunately I was married to one of them. God had mercy on me and freed me from that man. Now, I don’t have to put up with any more nonsense. God be praised a thousand times for that.’
‘No more such talk. You’re adding fuel to the fire,’ a man was heard shouting.
‘What was I just saying? This woman’s meddling in my affairs, turning my wife against me,’ the husband said, treating the crowd as a jury.
The wife took a couple of steps in his direction. ‘Enough posturing; get back to the real subject. Are you or are you not going to give me the money? Yes or no? I just want to hear a “yes” or a “no”, and if it is a “yes”, I want the money right now.’
The husband started unbuttoning his shirt in a seeming frenzy, shouting, ‘Here, take my shirt, take it! And what else can I give you? You want my watch too?’
‘Come now, don’t disgrace yourself, it’s not worth it.’ Still sandwiched between the husband and the fierce-looking woman, the young man exhorted the husband to keep cool, while trying to restrain him.
A child in the crowd started to laugh, but quickly stopped as a man standing behind him slapped him twice on the head, telling him firmly, ‘Stop misbehaving.’
‘Let him take his shirt off!’ screamed the wife. ‘He enjoys putting on a show. That’s what he’s good at. He should’ve been in the movies.’
At these words the husband stopped unbuttoning his shirt, dashed towards his wife and was stopped in his tracks by three men, including the young man, who urged him, again and again, to keep calm. ‘Think of your child,’ one of the men pleaded, as the child started to whimper.
‘What am I to do? What am I to do?’ the husband kept repeating. ‘She’s sucking my blood!’ he howled.
‘And what am I to do? Steal?’ the wife howled back.
The oldest and least well-dressed of the three men surrounding the husband reached into his own shirt pocket, got out a one-pound note and handed it to the wife, saying ‘Here, take this and I beg you to go home.’
‘Never!’ screamed the husband. Then to his wife, ‘Don’t touch that money.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she retorted, ‘I’m not a beggar.’ Then, to the man offering the one-pound note, she said ‘You’ve a kind heart. God keep you healthy, but I can’t take your money. You undoubtedly have children too. You must spend this money on your children – not on other people’s.’
‘Just take the money,’ the man answered. ‘God will make sure my children are well looked after. God is merciful to the generous.’
The husband, who would have none of this, said to the man, ‘Don’t embarrass me.’ Then he snatched the one-pound note from the man’s hand and stuffed it in the man’s shirt pocket.
‘It’s only a very small thing,’ said the man taking out the note again.
‘No, no, no!’ the husband replied angrily. ‘May God be my witness. This money I will not touch, nor will anyone in my household touch it.’
As soon as her husband had finished saying this, the man’s wife turned her back on the crowd. She walked away, the child on her hip, her slippers beating the pavement, saying out loud, ‘This is no life. No life. I am fed up. Fed up. May God take pity on me and hel
p me see the end of it all. Death is a hundred times, no a thousand times, better than my life with this man.’ As she uttered these words, she looked formidably energetic – a woman destined to live to a very ripe old age.
The small crowd began to disperse.
It was time to start looking again for her fragrant tomatoes. She got out of the patch of shade from which she had observed the scene and heard the husband say out loud to the three men still with him, ‘She thinks I can manufacture money! God be my witness, I spend nothing on myself. Almost nothing. The occasional cigarette, and I’ve cut down on those since the doctor told me to. And, yes, the occasional cup of coffee, but nothing else. This isn’t a marriage. It’s hard labour! Perhaps I ought to steal and go to jail. I’d be happier in jail than in my own home which, thanks to this woman, is a real madhouse. A crazy woman, as you had the benefit of seeing. But I’m the really crazy one – crazy for having married her, despite the many doubts I had. But you see, my mother kept urging me to marry her, praising her virtues. What virtues? And now my mother’s no longer with us – God be with her – and I’m left alone to endure that woman. I was crazy to marry her and I’m crazy to still be living with her. I should’ve divorced her a long time ago.’
‘It’s the heat,’ one of the men said by way of consolation. ‘We’re not ourselves when it gets so hot. She’ll get back to her senses once she’s at home. Don’t dwell on what happened. She was worried about the child. She’s obviously a well-intentioned, caring mother. Be forgiving. I’m sure that, at bottom, she’s a good wife and a good mother. I can tell that her heart is pure.’
‘It’s true,’ the husband conceded, ‘she has a pure heart, but she can be so completely unreasonable.’
‘Well, God in his wisdom created us all with some flaws.’
The men slapped each others’ backs, wishing each other many good things. ‘God be with you,’ the three men told the husband as he finally jumped on a bus. ‘God is great,’ he replied as the bus departed.
The street was relatively quiet again. Time to trudge along in pursuit of the right tomatoes.
(Originally published in The Middle East in London, Vol 1, No 4, July/August 2004)
They Took Everything
‘But why won’t you see them? I don’t understand, Aunt Lizzie. It’s so unlike you to be so intransigent,’ the young man implored the old lady reclining on a chaise longue as he handed her a cup of tea.
‘I don’t feel like seeing them. That’s all there is to it. I don’t have to explain why to anybody,’ the lady replied emphatically. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed as soon as the cup was in her hand, ‘the cup’s too hot’; then she said, sounding profoundly irritated, ‘would you please put it on the table.’ The table was a piece of Art Deco furniture.
As always, the young man was struck by how both tasteful and distinctive Aunt Lizzie’s apartment was. His Aunt Lizzie, really his great-aunt, had fearlessly mixed styles that most people would not normally have thought of mixing – Louis XVI, Queen Anne, Chinese, Islamic, African, Art Deco, rustic, as well as funky modern. Far from jarring, the ensemble made one want to linger in the apartment and get better acquainted with its owner, whom one imagined, from the mood created, as having an original but not overpowering personality. The furniture, the casually placed objects, were arranged in such a way as to make one’s eyes wander from one piece to the next, without giving the impression that any single one was on display. More or less bare, the white walls brought the furniture and objects into relief, making the relatively small apartment look roomy. Large bay windows overlooked the Nile. For Cairo the apartment was relatively quiet.
The young man took the cup from the old lady’s hands and put it on the Art Deco table, after making sure that the saucer was neither wet nor hot. This seemed to irritate his aunt, who said grumpily, ‘Joe, don’t worry about the table. It’s there to be used, not looked at.’ He ignored the remark and moved one of his favourite seats, an old Turkish stool with an intricate inlaid pattern, close to her chaise longue. With an unusually serious expression on his boyish face, he sat on the stool, rehearsing in his mind what he was about to tell her. A good-hearted sort, with a distaste for conflict, in particular family conflict, the young man was concerned about his Aunt Lizzie, whose health had been declining. Now was not the time for her to cut herself off from her brothers and sister.
That evening he had arrived at her place determined to make her reconsider her decision to see less of them. He was the only family member to whom she still talked on a regular basis, and whose visits she welcomed. Offers to visit from other family members she was now declining almost as a matter of course.
He was reasonably confident that he could mollify her, even though he expected it to be an uphill struggle. Her grievances against her brothers and sister were manifold. Her oldest brother, she accused of dishonesty, of having pocketed much more than his fair share of their parents’ inheritance, and of having appropriated some of her own money. The youngest brother, his grandfather, she accused of being spineless, and her sister of being self-important. The whole lot she characterised as hypocritical. ‘The modus operandi of family relationships seems to be hypocrisy,’ she often told Joe now.
The curious thing was that his aunt had started expressing her bitterness about her family only late in life, a year or so after the death of her husband. Joe had initially thought that her husband’s death had left her financially insecure, although money should have been of no concern to her: she was well-to-do. But the young man had observed some of his other elderly relatives become excessively concerned about money matters, for no good reason, from which he had deduced that it was one of those unfortunate things that can happen with age. It turned out that his Aunt Lizzie was aggrieved not only about money matters. She bore grudges against her father, long since dead, for having apparently thought little of her, from when she was a little girl to the day he died. Only her mother, also long since dead, escaped her criticism.
The young man put his hand on his Aunt Lizzie’s hand. He had no desire whatsoever to hear from her, yet another time, the specifics of her allegations about her brothers’ and sister’s conduct. He feared that, by broaching the subject of the family, he would ignite his aunt’s feelings and cause her to rehearse her grievances with abundant supporting evidence. He had no stomach for that and wanted to get very quickly to the heart of the matter, her obstinate refusal to have much to do with them.
His one and only purpose was to bring back a modicum of harmony in the family – enough for his Aunt Lizzie not to be so isolated at the end of her life.
What was in it for him? A good deal, but nothing tangible. Up until the sudden outpouring of her many resentments, his Aunt Lizzie had been seen by all in the family, including himself, as a model of generosity, tact and kindness; as someone who would never, never use her intelligence and wit to offend or denigrate others. He had grown up filled with admiration for the benevolent quality she exuded. He was not quite prepared to see her in a different light. It troubled him that she should be displaying that rancorous side. Her transformation from a big-hearted woman to a bitter one was corroding his childhood and teenage memories. And that bothered him. He could have concluded, as others in the family had, that she had lost her mind, but he saw no evidence of any diminution in her intellect and did not believe that to be the trouble.
Sitting on the stool, his hand over hers, he decided to appeal to her intelligence, as it must be obvious to her too that she had nothing to gain from her present attitude. And he would also appeal to her heart.
‘Aunt Lizzie,’ he said softly, ‘what are you achieving by refusing to see them? You might look at things differently, if you started interacting with them again the way you used to. Your refusal to have much to do with them accomplishes nothing.’
The old lady shrugged and replied in a weary tone, ‘Look Joe, you reach a stage in life when form matters little, even not at all. The very old become a bit like the very young in that rega
rd. I have reached that stage. I no longer want to abide by empty conventions. I have earned that freedom. I want to say it as I see it.’
‘I can understand that,’ the young man said, ‘but you’ve said your piece, and if you want to say more, go ahead and say it, but that’s no reason not to see them. They know what you think, yet they still want to see you.’
‘That’s precisely the problem. Unlike them, I can’t pretend that everything is fine. Once certain things are said, you can’t reverse course. You can’t interact, as if you’d never said them.’
Feeling encouraged by the way the conversation was going, as his aunt seemed at least willing to discuss the matter, the young man carried on. ‘Look Aunt Lizzie, nothing is ever black and white. You yourself used to tell me that life is made of shades of grey. You’re probably setting too high standards when you’re judging them because you’ve always applied high standards to yourself. But Aunt Lizzie, one …’
His aunt interrupted him brusquely, saying, with the sharpest tone he had ever heard her adopt with him. ‘Please Joe, spare me this! Don’t flatter me! Don’t start telling me how good I am! If I were as good as you’re about to suggest I am, I wouldn’t be saying the things I have been saying about them, nor would I be declining their offers to visit. But I’m no longer interested in being, or in appearing, good. I hope you understand that.’
Undaunted, the young man persisted. ‘But Aunt Lizzie, you don’t mean to tell me that, all these years, you were playing at being kind and tactful and understanding. That would be untrue. You …’
Again, his aunt interrupted him. ‘Please, come to the point,’ she said tersely.
‘I’m not here to judge anybody. It could well be that my grandfather, Uncle Paul and Aunt Mary behaved badly. Still, they need you, and you need them. Put the past behind you. Please, Aunt Lizzie. Think of the bigger picture. They are family, after all.’
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