Cairo Stories

by Anne-Marie Drosso

  Relentless, Nora continued: ‘Why suddenly the concern for the silverware?’ She was very tempted to point out ‘You’re not about to use it soon,’ but restrained herself. ‘And why worry about this second key? Why?’

  Her mother raised her eyebrows and said, with a touch of irony in her voice, ‘I like to know where my keys are.’

  ‘Look,’ Nora said gruffly, ‘I’ll pack first, and then, if I feel up to it, I’ll check the silverware and try to find the key.’

  As she got up Nora was surprised to see the expression on her mother’s face grow slightly more relaxed. She said, ‘I might be asleep by then.’

  ‘So we’ll talk in the morning,’ Nora suggested.

  ‘You can’t count on my being alert at four-thirty in the morning,’ her mother said.

  Frowning, Nora replied, ‘Well then, we’ll talk when I call you from Montreal. And, if I find the key, I’ll leave it on your little writing desk, but don’t count on it. I’m exhausted.’

  ‘If I’m not up in the morning, have a safe trip,’ her mother said. ‘Now, would you switch off the light?’

  Nora kissed her, switched off the light and left the room, noticing that her mother had not wished her a good night.

  ‘But why, oh why, should the week end on that terrible note?’

  Nora wondered as she started packing her suitcase. After she had finished she found the missing key, but was too tired to check the silverware.

  The night was short but felt very long for Nora. She hardly slept. She heard her mother get up several times. For part of the night, there was a light in her mother’s bedroom. Nora thought of going in to check but decided that she could not face her mother staring into space, or looking agitated. Tomorrow the carers would take over. As far as she was concerned she had done all she could during her fleeting one-week stay but, evidently, it was not enough. The fridge, the curtains and the rugs needed cleaning. Some faucets were leaking. One of the armchairs needed re-upholstering. The sad thing was that her mother, who used to attach enormous significance to how the apartment looked, did not seem to mind or notice its dingy state.

  At some point during that interminable night, Nora asked herself whether it was really out of the question to have her mother move to Montreal. She asked herself this in the abstract, knowing, deep down, that she would not feel up to handling her mother on top of her job, her husband and her daughters.

  Meanwhile, in her bedroom, the old lady alternated between staring into space, reading, dozing, getting up to go to the bathroom, and going over an account book in which she kept a meticulous record of her expenses. She both dreaded and wanted the morning to come; both dreaded and wanted her daughter to leave, since such leaving was inevitable. Now that she really needed her daughter, her daughter’s brief stays agitated her. Now she found it easier to express her emotions from a distance. Perhaps she had got used to the distance, to living her life alone and far away from her daughter. There was no question in her mind that living close to her daughter and grandchildren would have been infinitely preferable. But that was not meant to be.

  At times like these she could not help but think of the son who had died such an untimely death. ‘A mother who survives the death of a child can survive any absence,’ she thought. Then, ‘I cannot let emotions take hold of me. If I do, then what?’ and she forced herself to read, which she did for quite a while until thoughts of her own mother crept into her mind. She remembered how frustrating she had found it to look after her mother after the ailing lady had moved in with her. She remembered how self-absorbed her mother had become at the end of her life. She feared becoming like her mother.

  At five o’clock Nora tiptoed into her mother’s bedroom. She stood by the bed, hoping her mother would sense her presence; but she seemed to be sleeping. Nora whispered, ‘Mother, I’m leaving.’ With her eyes closed, her mother replied softly, ‘Have a safe trip, darling; call me, as soon as you get home, to let me know all is well.’

  ‘I will,’ Nora assured her, then gave her a light kiss on the head and quietly left the room.

  In the cab taking her to the airport at a frightening speed, Nora was resentful that her mother had not made the effort to sit up and have tea with her. At the terminal, waiting at the gate to embark, she thought of calling her, then changed her mind, telling herself, ‘What’s the point? I’ve done all I can do.’

  When Nora called her mother from Montreal the first thing she said to her was, ‘Mother, would you consider moving to Montreal to live with us?’ then waited for the answer with apprehension. For a few seconds, there was silence on the line, then her mother said, ‘It’s too late really; too late!’ There was silence again, then her mother added, ‘I doubt that it would be any easier in Montreal. You know how Grandma got to be at the end of her life. Her living with us did not prevent her from becoming both depressed and difficult. I wouldn’t want to put you through that, darling, but I appreciate your raising the subject. Besides, I’m managing. Not too badly, I think.’ Ashamed of her unmistakeable sense of relief, Nora replied, her voice faltering, ‘I care a lot, a lot. I wish things could be different.’ Her mother, comforting her by saying ‘Stop worrying, darling; it will all work out,’ gave her the absolution she was looking for.

  Three months later Nora’s mother died, with Nora by her side. After the funeral, sorting through her mother’s affairs, Nora saw several bottles of the antibiotics over which they had had the row. ‘Why was I so stupid to stick to my guns at that stage? Why?’ she wondered. It then dawned on her that the pills, the silverware and the missing key had served a useful function, providing her mother with a much-needed diversion that evening; that her mother’s preoccupation with these things must have reflected but also alleviated her anxiety about Nora’s leaving. From that perspective, Nora judged her mother to have been much braver than she had given her credit for, that one awful evening.

  Egyptians Who Cannot

  Fill in a Form in Arabic

  It was quite a scene in front of the Mugama that morning. Hundreds of men and women clustered in loosely formed lines, some accompanied by children, were standing, sitting on stools and folding chairs, drinking, eating or reading the morning news in front of the massive fourteen-storey, ugly government building, erected at the end of the monarchy and the butt of countless jokes since.

  It was not yet eight in the morning. The men and women had roused themselves at the crack of dawn to make it to the Mugama so early for the same reason, to apply for an exit visa. The government was issuing exit visas to Egyptians wishing to travel abroad. No visa, no travel! Visas were issued only intermittently. There was no way of knowing when the door to the outside world would slam shut again. Leaving the country was a difficult affair for Egyptians in those days. Adequate letters of invitation from friends or relatives abroad had to be provided – letters in which the friends or relatives promised to support the applicant, as travellers would be permitted to take only a nominal sum of money out of the country. And, if the visa materialised, air travel would have to be on Egyptair.

  Some of these people were not even certain that they would actually be travelling. But that did not seem to matter. They wanted the freedom that the visa represented. And they had come fully prepared to wait for hours, to elbow their way into the building, to run from one office to the next in search of stamps, signatures and seals, and, once all this was done, to struggle out of the building, with the visa in hand – or almost in hand.

  Amongst them there were well-to-do Egyptians whose economic assets were under assault from the new regime – Egyptians who, in the eyes of the country’s new leaders, were suspect for being too enmeshed in the old order, or not Egyptian enough.

  In a sense, the country’s new leaders were correct. There were certainly those in the crowd waiting in front of the Mugama that morning who were imbued with a sense of superiority by virtue of their social background and considered themselves as a cut above ordinary Egyptians; and those who, from the outset,
had only contempt for the new leaders; and those who had turned bitter because they felt dispossessed even of their Egyptianness, as their loyalty and commitment to the country came under attack daily from the new leaders

  One of the first to arrive in front of the Mugama the day so many Egyptians flocked to its doors in the hope of obtaining an exit visa was Mrs T., a slight, middle-aged woman with a parasol in hand – a vestige of this old order that the new one was so keen on dismantling. Though without a shred of old regime elitism, this lady stood out, paradoxically, as a caricature of the much-decried old order and its Western orientation. She was an Egyptian who had lived all her life in the country yet spoke its language very poorly, and could neither read it nor write it – one of those Egyptians who spoke virtually only French, thought and felt only in French; an Egyptian who, by the standards of the new regime, did not belong in the country. Of that Mrs T. herself needed no convincing. She was quite aware that people like her had become anachronistic in post-1952 Egypt. She also knew that the old order of things had been both unfair and unsustainable; so she was not altogether opposed to the changes that the country was undergoing. She had that rare quality of being open-eyed about the world she belonged to – as open-eyed as one can be when change is about to engulf one’s world. Her lucidity, sometimes but not always a blessing, did not make life any easier for her, as it intensified her sense that the new Egypt taking shape was leaving her in an untenable situation.

  Anxious by nature, Mrs T. was full of big and small anxieties the morning she arrived at the Mugama so early. Her chief concern had to do with a major issue hanging over her. She was at difficult crossroads. Were she to get the magic visa, she could start her life afresh in Geneva, working in a bookstore to be opened soon by a friend of hers. To be offered employment at her age was, she realised, a rare opportunity. But would she have the energy and courage to take that step? It would involve persuading her elderly husband of the wisdom of the move and overcoming his reluctance to become entirely dependent on her. In Geneva her employment would be their only source of income. They had no money abroad, not having had the foresight to get money out of the country before the government’s restrictions made it virtually impossible to do so. Leaving her husband behind was a possibility. The marriage had been rocky for years. Twice, on her initiative, they had lived apart for extended periods, at the end of which she had yielded to her husband’s entreaties to give the marriage another go. They had no children. This should have made her leaving him relatively easy, but it had not. She was bound to him by compassionate feelings, more so than ever now that he was really getting on in age.

  So, to some extent, Mrs T. was afraid of getting the visa: if she did, it would leave her in a quandary. To stay in Egypt seemed senseless to her. But to leave her husband behind would require a callousness she doubted she had. And to persuade him to join her in Geneva, once she had set up house there, would saddle her with a responsibility she did not really wish to assume.

  Just before she had stepped out of the apartment that early morning, her husband had come out of his bedroom looking forlorn, and, though he knew the answer, had made a point of asking, ‘So, you’re going to the Mugama to apply for a visa?’ Without looking at him, she replied hurriedly, ‘Yes, I am! I am!’ begrudging him his obvious vulnerability but also feeling sorry for him. A heavy smoker, he had coughed a lot – more than usual it seemed to Mrs T. – and, after his coughing fit, declared feeling out-of-sorts. This made her turn her face away in exasperation only to hear him mutter, ‘How could I contemplate travelling anywhere in the condition I’m in?’ Watching him shuffle back to his bedroom, Mrs T. forced herself to say, as calmly as she could, ‘It’s very early. Have some rest. Hopefully, you’ll feel better later in the morning,’ and rushed out of the door, feeling more apprehensive than ever about the choices she might have to make, should she obtain a visa.

  The more immediate reason for Mrs T.’s nervousness that morning was the prospect of having to deal with the Mugama’s bureaucracy. Any time she was about to find herself in a situation where her deficiency in Arabic was bound to become evident, she worried that some bureaucrat might quiz her – even if not in an ill-meaning way – about her lamentable Arabic. Her fears had some basis: that was happening more and more often. It usually went this way: ‘So you’re Egyptian!’ the bureaucrats would say, sounding surprised, after looking at her identification papers. ‘It must be by marriage!’ they would declare, only to exclaim, once they had looked more closely at her documents, ‘Your father was Egyptian and you were born here!’ Then, some would conclude, ‘So you must have lived much of your life abroad!’ While others would ask – sometimes innocently but not always so innocently – ‘But then tell me why is your Arabic so poor and so foreign-sounding?’

  How to begin explaining to them her appalling Arabic? Blame her Syro-Lebanese father’s fixation on France, even though the man himself, a journalist, had been as fluent in Arabic as in French? Tell them that, throughout her childhood, her father had heaped French books on French history upon her – never once a book on Egyptian history? Blame it on her mother’s Swiss origins? These were not good enough excuses. After all, she had lived all of her life in Egypt, so why hadn’t she learnt the language properly, later on in life? Sure, it was a very difficult language. And yes, she was not particularly gifted for languages. Still, she had been remiss. She had done absolutely nothing to lessen her foreignness in her own country, behaving all along as if she thought it was a lost cause – now clearly a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  While waiting for the Mugama to open, Mrs T. made no attempt at conversation with those around her; nor did she pay any attention to their animated talk. Every so often she would glance at a page or two of the book she had brought along, Marguerite Duras’ Moderato Cantabile. She didn’t try to read properly: she was too nervous for that.

  The Mugama finally opened its doors slightly after eight and the crowd of impatient applicants thronged the building. Mrs T. was fortunate – she was amongst the first to enter – yet her anxiety did not ease. On the contrary, it became more acute. For a brief moment she thought of turning back, but the swarm of bodies behind her pushed her further inside. ‘The die is cast,’ she told herself. And, all of a sudden, she was determined to get that visa. She felt that it was imperative for her to decide for herself, visa in hand, whether or not to leave Egypt and give up for good a life she had grown uncomfortable with but was – for better or worse – accustomed to.

  Carried by the flow of people, clutching the application forms (completed in Arabic by a cousin), her friend’s invitation letter and a letter from her husband authorising her to travel, she forged ahead, walked up the stairs to the first floor, then straight through the Mugama’s airless hallways, into room number 52, the first in a series of rooms abuzz with government employees processing the applications through all the different steps required.

  In anticipation of the deluge of applicants, the employees in room 52 – except for one cheerful-looking young man – exuded a harassed air. Whether it was their customary morning ritual or whether it was to soothe their already frayed nerves, the employees – all five of them, including the cheerful-looking one – were drinking tea or coffee. Spotting the one with the cheerful face, Mrs T. tried to attract his attention, but to no avail, for he was telling some joke to his colleagues. So she ended up giving her documents to a dour young man who took the documents, yawned widely and, noticing the parasol in her hand, remarked casually, ‘So you don’t much like the sun?’

  Set on saying as little as possible, Mrs T. answered, ‘Not very much.’

  ‘Why?’ the young man asked while studying her application. ‘The sun is nice, very nice.’

  She did not answer.

  He yawned again and started discussing loudly some business matter from the previous day with a colleague standing at the opposite side of the room. It was getting hot in the room, by now so full that one could hardly move in and out of it. ‘We
need fans,’ said the dour-looking young employee while perusing, once again, Mrs T.’s application.

  To stop more people from trying to come in, a large woman, sitting at the one and only desk in the room, yelled at a small and sprightly older man whose main task seemed to be serving tea and coffee, to close the door. Loud protests from the hallway were heard as the door was shut.

  While this was going on, Mrs T. noticed with alarm that the young man studying her documents was frowning and shaking his head.

  ‘Anything wrong?’ she asked, visibly worried.

  ‘There’s a problem,’ he said, more gently than she would have expected. ‘Your application is incomplete. You needed to fill in another form.’

  ‘What form?’ Mrs T. asked with a sinking heart.

  ‘I’ll get it for you,’ the young man offered with as much grace as one could hope for in the circumstances.

  Mrs T. took comfort from the young man’s softer tone. He disappeared, reappearing a couple of minutes later with a form that he handed to Mrs T. Despite the chaotic atmosphere in the room, things seemed to get done somehow.

  ‘There it is,’ he said somewhat nonchalantly. ‘I’ll let you fill it in, then give it back to me.’ Before she had mustered the courage to ask for his help, he looked at her and asked bluntly, ‘But can you actually fill it in? You sound like one of those Egyptians who might not be able to!’

  ‘Can you help me?’ she said almost in a whisper.

  Pointing to the people standing in the room, he answered, ‘I would on a normal day, but you can see for yourself how busy we are.’ Then he added, ‘You should learn Arabic, to read it and write it. It’s never too late. I’m sure you could.’

  Standing nearby, the cheerful-looking employee had apparently overheard the conversation and butted in: ‘Why don’t you ask him to teach you? He’s a graduate in linguistics. He graduated with honours,’ he told Mrs T. The suggestion brought a smile to his colleague’s face.