The Cairo House

by Samia Serageldin

  The nurse shrugged. ‘Old ladies all look alike.’

  ‘Can I look in the ward?’

  ‘Our patients have gone to bed for the night.’

  ‘Please. We’re very worried about her.’

  ‘Go ahead and look around then,’ the nurse conceded grudgingly. ‘The women’s geriatric wing is through that archway to the left. There’s a night light in every room, and most of the bedside lamps stay on all night, so you’ll be able to see. Not that you’ll find her.’

  Gigi walked along the corridors, peering into room after room. The smell of disinfectant and old age was inescapable. The two or three occupants in each room all looked alike, especially those who were asleep. At the door of each room Gigi called softly: ‘Madame Hélène? Madame Hélène? C’est moi.’ One or two answered in French, but that meant nothing, the Italian community in Egypt spoke French routinely.

  In one of the last rooms on the corridor a sleeping woman in a pink, knitted bed jacket bore a resemblance to Madame Hélène. Gigi’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Madame Hélène?’ she called quite loudly, to wake her. ‘C’est moi.’

  The woman snorted in her sleep and raised her head. ‘Viens, ma petite,’ she beckoned.

  Gigi hurried to the side of the bed and leaned over her.

  ‘Viens, ma petite, que bellina,’ the woman mumbled, reaching out to pat Gigi’s cheek. But even as she sat on the edge of the bed to let her face be stroked, Gigi knew it was not Madame Hélène. This woman had sweet brown eyes and no teeth. In a minute her hand dropped to her side and her head fell back on her pillow and she started snoring peacefully again. Gigi wondered who she had been dreaming of, a child or grandchild.

  Gigi went back to the head nurse’s office so drained that the woman took pity on her. ‘Look, you said she was very old. Have you considered that in all probability she’s resting in peace?’

  Gigi slumped down in the chair. ‘Yes. But she always said that if anything happened to her she would be brought here for the final rites, then taken to the Italian Cemetery to be buried.’

  ‘She was Catholic?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It would have been recently?’

  ‘A month – two months at the most.’

  ‘I can check the records at the Italian Cemetery in the morning. Leave me a telephone number and I’ll let you know if I find out anything.’

  ‘Would you? At least if I knew that she’s buried properly – it sounds awful, but it’s better than not knowing what happened to her, wondering if she’s alone and suffering somewhere.’

  ‘Of course, I understand. I promise I’ll let you know if I find any trace of her. Now you’d better go home, it’s very late.’

  Over the next few months Gigi called the Italian Hospital several times. It was always very difficult to get through to the head nurse, and when she did she was always told that there was no news. When she did hear of Madame Hélène again it was in the last place, and from the last person, she would have expected.

  11

  The Day of Remembrance

  ‘Have some more of this Om Ali, it’s my cook’s specialty. No?’ The Pasha waved away the suffragi who was offering the dessert to Gigi. One of his aides brought him the telephone to the table. He listened, his expression turning grim. ‘Send Mr Ebeid over right away.’

  By the time lunch was cleared away one of the party parliamentarians had joined them. ‘Well?’ the Pasha asked.

  The man looked at Gigi, hesitating.

  ‘That’s all right,’ the Pasha said impatiently, ‘this is our daughter.’ The Pasha was not using the royal plural, only an idiom which his circle would understand. ‘My daughter’ would have meant just that, but the Pasha was childless; ‘our daughter’ meant a close relative like a niece.

  The man was clearly excited. ‘They’ll give us everything we asked for. Ten more seats in Parliament. Three Cabinet positions.’

  ‘At what price?’

  The man hesitated. ‘That the party purge itself of its present leadership.’

  Even Gigi understood right away. Sadat had resorted to bribing the opposition party to rid itself of its leader. The so-called democratic experiment was largely for the purpose of foreign media consumption. In effect Sadat could only tolerate what he expressed by the oxymoron ‘loyal opposition’. She looked at her uncle, who sat silently digesting the news. She wondered what he would do. The Pasha could truly say of his party as Louis XIV said of the state: ‘L’état, c’est moi.’

  Gigi had intended to take the opportunity after lunch to ask her uncle if there was any progress in her divorce proceedings. But this was clearly not a good time. She got up.

  ‘Uncle, I’ll leave now, if you’ll excuse me.’

  ‘Of course, dear, it was good to see you,’ he answered absently. She had reached the staircase when he called her back. ‘Gigi! Can you come Sunday afternoon? I’ve decided to hold a press conference, and I expect there will be foreign press too. I’d like to have you here to translate for me.’

  The Pasha made it his policy never to make public announcements in a foreign language, however fluent he might be. He could not understand how Sadat could be oblivious to the criticism he invited by his practice of giving press conferences in English. Sadat sometimes did this even when he was on Egyptian soil, which sent the message to the man of the street that the President considered his constituency to be the foreign press, not his own people.

  ‘Of course.’ Gigi nodded. ‘What time would you like me to come over?’

  ‘About five o’clock, but I’ll call and let you know exactly. Goodbye, dear.’

  That Sunday the local and foreign press corps was there in force in the vast hall of the Cairo House. Gigi peered down from the gallery at the cameras and lights set up below, the cables winding around the bases of the thick, rose marble columns.

  Having decided against the sweeping staircase at his age, her uncle took the rickety little elevator down to the ground floor, catching the assembled journalists by surprise. He took his seat on a gilded bergère that had been set for him in the middle of the hall. Gigi sat on a small chair to his left. When questions were posed in English or French, the Pasha answered in Arabic, and Gigi translated his answers back to the foreign journalists.

  ‘Why are you taking a stand against the Japanese project for the development of the Pyramid plateau, in spite of the fact that President Sadat himself is promoting it?’

  Gigi translated. ‘The Pyramids are not Disneyland. The idea of a tourist theme park built at the very foot of the Pyramids, complete with a Disney-style monorail, is quite simply a sacrilege and a scandal. The Pyramids are not Sadat’s to exploit by selling the concession to the Japanese; they are the heritage of all Egyptians, indeed of the whole world.’

  Gigi made a slip of the tongue, translating ‘the whole party’ for ‘the whole world’. Her uncle reached out and rumpled her hair to bring the slip to her attention. She flushed because the familiarity of the gesture had obviously piqued the curiosity of the journalists who did not realize she was his niece.

  The next question was asked by a French journalist.

  ‘How do you respond to the rumors that you have secretly been negotiating a “marriage of convenience” with the Muslim Brethren, the Ikhwan, for the upcoming elections?’

  ‘No basis whatsoever. Our party has traditionally been the most secular of parties, the one to which minorities gravitate, the only one in which top positions were held by Copts, both in the party and in the government, whenever the party was in power before 1952.’

  ‘But there is justifiable concern that opening up the electoral process in Egypt for the first time in decades will allow the Muslim Brethren to infiltrate legitimate parties. Will you comment?’

  The Pasha answered and Gigi tried to translate, but she was still flustered and had trouble keeping up. The journalist started to press the question, then shook his head, smiled at her, and let it go. It was then that she noticed him, and th
e way he looked at her.

  There was a hush as the Pasha announced that he had a statement to make, after which he would take more questions. He made his short announcement and Gigi translated it into English, then French. There was a moment of silence as the words sunk in. He had announced the dissolution of the party, in effect calling Sadat’s bluff. Rather than relinquish control over his party and allow it, under more malleable leadership, to join the ranks of Sadat’s rubber-stamping ‘loyal opposition’, he had dissolved it. Somehow he had mustered the votes to do so within forty-eight hours. There was a pandemonium of questions.

  An hour later, as the crowd was dispersing and Gigi started up the staircase, she heard someone behind her.

  ‘Mademoiselle!’

  She turned around to see the French journalist.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Excuse me, but I feel I know you. You must be Gigi. Aren’t you? I’ve heard so much about you over the years. From Tante Hélène’s letters. My godmother, Hélène Dumellier?’

  ‘Madame Hélène? Oh! Le petit Luc!’

  He laughed. ‘Luc Joussellin, in effect, at your service.’

  Gigi stared at him, trying to reconcile the man before her with the photo of ‘le petit Luc’ that had sat on a dresser in her bedroom by her governess’ armchair all her life. He looked disconcertingly familiar: the same thatch of blonde-streaked hair sweeping down to thick eyebrows, the same square, smiling face, except for the short moustache, darker than the hair on his head. He was not very tall, but sturdily built.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gigi was a little embarrassed. ‘But she always called you that. She was so proud of you. You look like your photo.’

  ‘I have one of you, too, that she sent me, somewhere with her letters.’

  ‘Oh no, which one?’

  ‘With your parents, standing behind your mother’s chair. You must have been nine or so. She considered you her family.’

  ‘We loved her like family. Do you know what happened to her?’

  ‘No. I only knew she must have passed away when her letters stopped coming. Then when I was given this assignment to Cairo, one of the first things I did after I arrived was to make inquiries at her old address, but no one knew anything.’

  ‘I know. I looked everywhere. At the Italian Hospital, everywhere. Here, let’s go into the study. I’ll tell you all about it.’

  It would be an unseasonably hot day. It was only six o’clock in the morning and already the haze in the sky bore the threat of heat. As Gigi started up the car Ibrahim the doorkeeper hurried up and saluted, surprised to see her up so early. She wore a black shirt because she was still in strict mourning for her father until the first anniversary of his death. Her riding breeches were khaki, but that couldn’t be helped and in any case she was unlikely to meet anyone to whom it would matter.

  As she pulled out of the garage she thought, for some reason, of the chaotic days following Nasser’s death six years ago. She had heard of incidents of thugs harassing cars with passengers that were not in mourning. Tante Zohra went about, wearing a black shirt with a white skirt, reasoning that they could only see you from the waist up as you sit in the car.

  The political climate of the country had changed dramatically in the intervening years. The very idea that Sadat had flown to Israel to make peace had been unthinkable. But the about-face seemed to have been too radical and too abrupt for many. The man in the street watched Sadat grinning his unnervingly face-splitting grin on television, hand in hand with ‘my friend Kissinger’ and ‘my friend Begin’; he looked at the shop windows suddenly full of imported goods he could not afford; he watched the overnight millionaires of the Infitah glide by in their shiny new Mercedes; he waited for the promised trickledown prosperity to reach him. There was a general malaise in the country, the tension before an impending storm.

  The morning’s unseasonable heat reminded Gigi that the season of the Khamaseen, the fifty-day winds, had started: the dreaded sandstorms could sweep out of the desert any day, blinding, stifling, filling every orifice, every pore. Each year the desert launched its storm troops to reclaim the city for the sand dunes, and the dust-whirl winds laid siege to the city, seeping under the most tightly sealed doors and windows, invading every nook and cranny. There was no predicting when they would start or stop, or start again, till the fifty days were over. Then they retreated back to the desert for another year, leaving the inhabitants to scoop up the red dust by the shovelfuls.

  Gigi hummed John Denver’s ‘You fill up my senses, like a storm in the desert,’ as she drove to the Tobias’ apartment in Dokki. The drive took ten minutes instead of the thirty it would take in normal traffic. Tamer was not waiting for her in front of the garage as they had agreed. It was not like him to be late.

  In the past few months they had gone riding together often. Her status was precarious until her divorce became final; she dared not allow the slightest pretext for tongues to wag. Her younger cousin was the perfect escort: whenever she did not want to be seen alone somewhere, she would ask him to come along. Other times he was the one who would call to ask her if she wanted to go riding or to the Gezira Club.

  Gigi looked at her watch. It was six-thirty. She would have to go up and fetch Tamer. It was Om Khalil, with her kohl-smeared eyes, who opened the door. Gigi was taken aback, with the familiar childish sense of foreboding.

  ‘Sitt Gigi, what are you doing here at this hour?’

  ‘I’m going riding with Tamer. Is he up yet?’

  ‘Tamer Bey? He must be asleep, I heard him come home at dawn. He keeps impossible hours. Eh, well, young bones never ache, as they say!’

  ‘Let me see if he’s awake.’

  Under the disapproving gaze of the old woman Gigi made her way to his room and knocked quietly. Nothing. Not daring to knock any louder she opened the door and went in. Tamer’s long frame was sprawled over his bed; he wore only swimming trunks. She shook him by the shoulder; feeling something grainy on the smooth skin, she licked her finger and tasted sea salt. There was sand in his dark curly hair and his tanned back was pink and raw in patches where the skin had flaked off. She guessed that he must have taken advantage of the unseasonably warm weather to go to a beach party in Alexandria or Agami, three hours away by car.

  She shook him again. He opened his eyes, looked at her blankly, then, remembering, he groaned. ‘I’m dead. I just got to bed. Can’t you go on your own?’

  ‘You know I can’t.’

  ‘Are we supposed to meet that French guy?’

  ‘Luc. Yes. We’re late already. Please?’

  ‘All right. Get out and I’ll dress. I’ll meet you downstairs.’

  Gigi drove while he slumped in the seat beside her. Already traffic had picked up on the road to the Pyramids in Giza, the road that Khedive Ismail had built in honor of the Empress Eugènie’s visit, along with the Opera House where Verdi’s Aida was first performed. The road to the Pyramids was now punctuated by trees pruned into a pyramid shape, no doubt the inspiration of some tasteless tourism official.

  At the stables, Haj Hassan came to greet them, his sharp gray eyes under his turban unchanged over the years she had known him since she was a child. Only the crew of grooms he ruled changed from year to year, the little boys who could ride bareback almost before they could walk growing into youths who could speak passable English and a smattering of other languages, since their business was mostly with tourists.

  At the moment two boys were saddling up the horses for a heavy-set, middle-aged Austrian couple. The woman asked if she could ride bareback, it would be so romantic. Haj Hassan’s stern look quelled the lewd remarks in Arabic with which the grooms greeted this request; he declared that it was not advisable. The couple were led away by one of the grooms.

  Haj Hassan had known Gigi and her cousin since they were children; he would allow them to ride on their own without a guide. He knew Tamer to be a good rider, but he had misgivings about the mare he had requested: she was very high-strung and com
pletely unused to traffic. He finally let Tamer have her with the warning that he must stick to the desert and avoid the road completely. Gigi he knew to be timid and a poor rider; he chose a gelding.

  ‘He’ll follow your cousin’s mare; you’ll be all right,’ he reassured her. ‘The frenji was here only a while ago,’ he added, his eyes shrewd, and she flushed. The frenji – the Frenchman – did Haj Hassan know she was meeting him?

  She had gone riding with Luc once before, with Tamer. She had seen Luc many times over the past months, but never alone. He had dropped by her desk in the international department at the El-Ahram newspaper. They had met at a series of open-air concerts on balmy spring nights: it seemed to be the year for entertainers past their heyday to give concerts in Egypt. Under the banyan trees at the Gezira Club, Dalida vamped her way through old favorites like ‘Ti Amo’, and ‘Que sera, sera’ before bringing down the house with ‘Salma ya Salama’ – a Nubianinspired refrain for a French song sung by a Cairo-born-and-bred Italian. Aznavour growled and purred to enthusiastic applause – even when he sang of Armenians massacred by Turks. The Egyptian public was starved for Western culture after the long years of deprivation behind the Iron Curtain. The only cultural dividend of Egypt’s status as a Soviet satellite under Nasser had been the annual performances by the Bolshoi at the Cairo Opera House. But Egypt’s reward for Sadat’s abrupt about-face to the West had come in the form of massive economic aid, a flood of imported goods and Frank Sinatra lipsynching ‘My Way’ at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

  Now Tamer took off at a canter and Gigi followed, for once not complaining about the pace he set, till they reached the meeting place. They were late. But Luc was there, smiling, smoking a cigarette. His horse tossed its mane to shake off the flies.

  Before they set off again he adjusted her stirrup straps, which were too long, and his fingers inadvertently brushed the inside of her thigh; they were both awkward for a moment. He mounted his horse and they took off at a trot. Out in the open desert, the sun was already fierce, but the wind in their faces kept them from feeling the heat. Tamer galloped off on his own.