The Cairo House

by Samia Serageldin

  Gigi had been unbearably disappointed. The recurrent hollow feeling overcame her. Without Tarek she felt empty, incomplete, like an amputee. But she knew that Mama was right. She was glad, for his sake, that he was adjusting to her absence. He no longer cried when she called him on the phone, he chatted about school friends and about the latest toy Grandma had bought him. As for Mama, Gigi knew that Tarek now filled the vacuum in her life, with Papa and Gigi both gone.

  Gigi would have waited indefinitely. But she had run out of time. Luc had applied, a few months before, for the post of correspondent in the United States. A month ago he had learned that he had been given the assignment. ‘We have to get married, now, Gigi, so you can come with me. Just as soon as your divorce is final.’

  The brief civil ceremony in the town hall was set for tomorrow. Today they were to have a marriage contract performed according to Islamic law, as soon as Luc’s conversion was accepted.

  ‘I’m surprised at how simple it is, really, compared to conversions to other religions,’ Luc was speaking in an undertone although it was unlikely they would be overheard in the empty waiting room. ‘I study the basic tenets, I get interviewed by the priest –’

  ‘Not a priest!’

  ‘No, that’s right, there are no ordained priests in Islam, only lay ministers. Then I pass the test, I bear witness to the faith, and that’s it!’

  ‘Oh, absolutely! Islam is anything but exclusive. There’s a catch though; it may be an open door, but it’s a one-way turnstile. Going back isn’t an option.’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  ‘Yes, but what about your mother?’

  ‘She might not like it at first, perhaps. But she’ll come around – elle se fera une raison.’

  ‘Oh, Luc, I don’t know. What are we doing? How will I ever tell Mama about this? She’ll never understand, she’ll never accept it.’

  ‘Give her time. She’ll come around eventually.’

  ‘No, you don’t know her.’

  ‘At any rate it’s better to present everybody with the fait accompli.’

  ‘I’m not sure. Perhaps we should have waited –’

  She was terrified at the thought of burning her bridges. How would she ever be able to go home again? Luc took her hand; it was cold.

  ‘Gigi, we discussed this. I leave in a few days. You can’t go home. Do you want to stay here in Paris alone?’

  A door opened at the far end of the waiting room and a man came in wearing a caftan and a flat turban. The sheikh was middle-aged, swarthy, with a slight paunch. He smiled as he greeted them in a Moroccan dialect that was nearly as incomprehensible to Gigi as it was to Luc.

  ‘Now then. Are you ready?’

  13

  New Hampshire

  If you examined the turning points in a life, could you pinpoint the precise twists of the kaleidoscope that set the pattern? What if she had not run away to France? What if she had never met Luc again? What if she had not followed him across the ocean to the northern town of snow-capped steeples and ice hockey that she has called home for the past ten years? Sometimes the sea changes in a life can be sudden, and at the time, can seem temporary. Ten years can go by like an interlude, a sharp zigzag in the flat line of experience, a detour around an insurmountable bump in the road.

  Gigi went downstairs and turned the thermostat up to seventy-five degrees. In the mud room she put on snow pants, pulling the suspenders over her shoulders, and zipped up her ski jacket. She slipped on wool socks and moon boots. She tucked her hair under a knitted cap and slipped on thick mittens. Then she picked up the shovel propped against the back door and trudged in the calf-deep snow around the house to the front door. She started to shovel the snow off the steps. The front door was rarely used; even the mailbox was at the end of the driveway. Usually Gigi did not bother to clear the path or the steps; it was enough work shoveling out the driveway every day and keeping the path to the mud room door clear. But this evening they were giving a party for faculty colleagues, and the front door needed to be accessible.

  As she worked some part of her mind momentarily stood apart, observing, and had difficulty recognizing the Gigi of old in this woman in moon boots. Even to herself she had become something of a stranger; her native language no longer came naturally to her tongue; the memories of her old life seemed to have taken place in another dimension.

  When Gigi had moved with Luc to the States ten years before it had been on the understanding that it would be a temporary assignment. Eventually they found it easier to make a life together on territory that was neutral for both of them. As Gigi’s hopes that she would soon be reunited with Tarek faded, it no longer mattered to her how far she lived from Egypt.

  As the years slipped by and they metamorphosed to adapt to their new life in an alien world, they gradually became strangers to each other. Luc could no longer recognize in her the princess in the oriental palace; nor she, in him, the globe-trotting reporter who had fascinated her with stories of elephants in Africa. What remained was the habit of affection, the familiarity and irritation of routine, the sterility of a childless marriage.

  They had realized, almost from the beginning, that they would never have a child together. It was an admission that, in the final analysis, they stood apart, each in his own nature, like species that can mate but not reproduce.

  What bound them together, even more binding than a child, was the burden of the knowledge that they had burnt their bridges for each other. Reading an article about Wallis Simpson, Gigi had thought what a strain it must have been for the Windsors after his abdication: constantly to have to present a common front to the world; never to be able to admit they had made a mistake.

  Even to each other. There was a careful silence, now, between Gigi and Luc, when they were alone. Outwardly they exchanged the minutia of daily existence, the automatic gestures, the peck on the cheek, the wifely adjusting of the tie. Inwardly there was silence. Silence disguised, over long winter evenings, by the white noise of the stereo, the flickering screens of the computer and the television, the drink in his hand and the book in hers.

  Silence, and ‘space’; figuratively, but also literally. Gigi slept in the spare bedroom now, an arrangement that had never been explicitly discussed between them. She was a light sleeper and Luc’s snoring kept her awake. At first she would start off each night in the master bedroom, then, unable to sleep because of his snoring, she would creep away. But as soon as she had slipped out of bed he would fill the space she had vacated, stretch out his legs and arms, appropriate her pillow, spread himself across the queen-size bed so that there was no place left. Once when he had complained of her slipping away every night she had teased him about this. He had protested. ‘But I only do it to find the scent and the warmth you leave behind!’ He still had that kind of gallantry toward her, but it was a reflex, like good manners.

  Gigi straightened up and leaned on her shovel, catching her breath. She watched her neighbor’s car heading down the street, the chains on the snow tires crunching on the salted and sanded road. The woman waved and Gigi waved back with a mittened hand. She remembered the time she had first met this neighbor, the day after they moved in, when she had come knocking at the door with a cake and a basket of Welcome Wagon coupons. ‘I don’t know if you’ll have any use for this Honey Baked Ham coupon?’ she had asked, pointedly. It was only later that Gigi understood that the woman had wanted to know if she were Jewish. Here in the snowy New England backwoods, the hint of the exotic about her eluded placing.

  It was that same neighbor and her husband who came out in a blizzard a week later, boots and parkas over their pajamas, to help Gigi push her car out of the snow bank by their house when the car had slid on the icy road. Local townspeople, their code of neighborliness was reinforced by the remote location and the harsh winters. But once they established that you were not a candidate to join their church, they lost interest.

  Which is why the people at the party tonight were all university p
eople. There was a clear distinction in this place between town and gown. Over the ten years they had lived in this town where the accumulation of snow on the medians made it impossible to make a left turn between November and May, Gigi had made friends, even made a place of sorts for herself in the community. But she felt like one of those ‘sleeper’ agents that were popular in Cold War fiction. Even with friends like Janet Glasser she only showed one facet of herself. There was no place in this world of snow-capped steeples and ice hockey for her memories of dust and jasmine.

  Half an hour after she started clearing the path, she stopped to survey her handiwork, perspiring under her layers of clothing. The path was reasonably clear; just before the guests came Luc could take a broom to the steps to sweep off the fluff of snow that would have accumulated in the interim.

  By eight o’clock the hallway closet, the screened front porch and the mud room were full of steaming coats, scarves and boots. Most of the guests had brought their dress shoes in a bag and changed into them before going into the living room. Luc was struggling with the fire, which kept threatening to sputter out. Gigi circulated with platters of stuffed mushrooms and miniature quiches.

  ‘These are wonderful, Gigi,’ Janet Glasser called over her shoulder as she bit into a quiche. She turned back to Toussaint Hopkins, the chair of the Romance Languages Department. ‘So, tell me, what do you intend to do with your review of John Newley’s monograph on Garcia Marquez?’

  ‘Oh, damn with faint praise, that sort of thing…I mean, quite apart from anything else, he doesn’t reference me.’

  Gigi circulated with the tray.

  ‘Sixteen inches – at least sixteen inches accumulation by morning, that’s what I heard. The state police has already closed the roads.’

  ‘No, he didn’t get tenure. Uncollegial, you know, the usual stuff; fact is no one can stand his wife –’

  ‘The Faculty Wives Club needs help on the refreshments committee, Gigi, are you interested?’

  ‘Gigi, is there any more hot cider?’ Toussaint Hopkins held up his cup.

  ‘I’ll get some.’ Gigi took the empty punch bowl and looked around for Luc. He was by the fireplace, holding a drink in one hand and poking and worrying the fire with the other. Smoke was backing down the flue into the room. Gigi sighed.

  ‘Luc, why don’t you just let it die out? It’s warm enough without it, and the smoke is starting to annoy people.’

  ‘I almost had it going. Get me a broomstick or something, Gigi, I think there’s a bird nest blocking the flue. Remember when we had that bird caught up there in Spring?’

  Gigi carried the empty punch bowl to the kitchen. She added another jug to the cider simmering in a stockpot with cinnamon sticks and cloves.

  Toussaint came in, empty cup in hand. ‘Ah, there’s the cider.’

  He ladled some into his cup and leaned on the counter, running his fingers through his thick gray hair. ‘Would you like to attend the symposium on Montaigne on Friday? I know you’re no seizièmiste, but you might enjoy it.’

  ‘Of course, I’d love to.’

  ‘How’s your dissertation getting along, by the way?’

  ‘Fine. I’m almost done writing up.’ She tipped the stockpot and started pouring the steaming cider into the punch bowl.

  ‘Good. Do you need some help with that bowl?’

  Toussaint carried the bowl out to the dining room. Gigi was wiping the counter when Janet Glasser walked in.

  ‘Where’s Toussaint? I thought I saw him go in here. Never mind, it doesn’t matter, I just wanted to ask him something. Let me get some water.’

  Janet filled a glass at the sink, holding back the long brown hair, gray at the temples, that hung halfway down her back. It occurred to Gigi that Janet’s perennially long hair was one of the badges of her generation and education; shorthand for an entire Seventies sensibility: beige, pewter, oatbran, liberal, erudite and environmental.

  ‘Gigi?’ Janet took a last sip of water. ‘Is everything all right?’

  Gigi shrugged. She was arranging cheese puffs and salmon rolls on a platter. ‘Oh, I guess I miss Tarek, that’s all.’ Janet was one of the few friends who knew that Gigi had a child.

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘A year ago, when he was in Italy with his father; I flew over to Rome to meet him, but it was only for a week. I haven’t been to Egypt for over three years now. Not since I went back for Mama’s funeral.’

  Her mother’s death had been a shock, coming as it did after a violent but mercifully brief bout with illness. The first two years after Gigi had married Luc, Mama had not wanted to have anything to do with either of them. Gigi had understood the rigidity of her mother’s principles but also her sense of grievance: not only had she lost the daughter she should have been able to count on for support in her widowhood, she was left to face the whispered censure of the social circle in which her standing had always been unassailable. But with time Mama grew less bitter. Gigi realized that Tarek had supplanted her completely in her mother’s affections; in fact she was content to have Gigi stay away, so she could keep the child to herself.

  The reconciliation, when it came, was tepid and gradual: it had been years before Mama agreed to meet Luc; and then only in Europe, she refused to have him to come to Egypt. But at the end she was resigned to the situation. It made Gigi sad, in a way, because it was part of a general sort of resignation, the way people get towards the end, when nothing matters as much – a kind of detachment sets in.

  ‘I remember.’ Janet put down her glass. ‘That must have been a difficult time for you. You weren’t yourself for a long time. I’m just glad that you’d more or less made up with your mother before you lost her.’

  ‘Yes. I’m so grateful for that.’ Gigi finished arranging the platter and wiped her hands on a dish towel. ‘You know, I’m thinking of going home during the holidays.’

  ‘Really? To see Tarek?’

  ‘To see him, plus there’s some business involving the inheritance from my father that I need to attend to. But I’ve been thinking. Tarek’s so grown up now, you wouldn’t believe it! He’s sixteen, he’ll be going to college next year. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he could go to college here in the States? That way I’d finally have him with me, or at least I could see him whenever I want to!’

  ‘Oh Gigi!’ Janet gave her a quick squeeze around the shoulders. ‘You’ve been dreaming of this for a long time, haven’t you?’

  Gigi nodded. Ten years of waiting and hoping. Putting each day to bed with a sense of dissatisfaction, of unfinished business. The unbearable ache of the first months of separation dulled to a sense of something missing, of never having permission to be happy. Ten years of putting her life on hold, of arranging her existence, year in year out, around the rare occasions when she saw Tarek. Living for those times. Never a day going by when she did not think of him, wonder where he was, what he was doing, if he thought of her. Dreaming of a future for them together. The photos, every few months; always a pang mixed with the joy, because they reminded her that time galloped on, that the child grew day by day, a gangling teenager already when the photo she had been kissing goodnight was of a gap-toothed little boy.

  She had never given up hope, and she felt that now was the time. ‘I’m not even sure Tarek will want to come here for college. But if I can talk him into it, and if I can convince his father to give his permission, wouldn’t it be wonderful?’

  ‘It certainly would! How long will you be staying in Egypt this time?’

  ‘Oh, a few weeks; it depends. It will give me a chance to get reacquainted with the country, in a way. On my last trip, what with the shock and the funeral arrangements and everything, I didn’t have time to turn around.’

  ‘That’s interesting. Because you know there’s going to be a symposium in Cairo right around then, on francophone writers, in fact I was looking for Toussaint right now to talk to him about that. Gigi, can you keep this to yourself? Toussaint and I �
��’

  Luc came in. ‘Gigi, do we have any more red wine? In the cellar? But Gigi, it will be much too cool. People always underestimate the importance of bringing wine to the right temperature,’ he grumbled as he headed down the cellar steps.

  Janet smiled at her. ‘Talk to you later.’

  PART III

  THE RETURN

  14

  Cairo Revisited

  I close the album of photographs. Business or pleasure?’ the landing card inquired. How do you answer: I have come back to claim what’s mine. To find out if it is still mine to claim. To find two children I left behind: one is the girl I once was. The other is the little boy I left ten years ago, Tarek. The future and the past. Between them they hold the key to the question I have to try to resolve: where do I belong? Where is this chameleon’s natural habitat?

  I look around the small two-bedroom apartment built on top of the villa in Zamalek where I grew up. Since Mama’s death the villa has been rented to an American company which has transformed it into offices. The company had asked for permission to build a small pied-à-terre on top of the villa for visiting executives. I had asked if I could use it for my stay in Cairo this time; it was currently unoccupied and they had had no objection.

  It feels strange to be home and yet not home, to be the guest and the landlord at the same time; to look out of the window at a familiar view and then turn back to an unfamiliar room. The few pieces of Mama’s furniture which I kept to furnish the small apartment look out of scale and out of place. The large, velvet-upholstered sofa and armchairs crowd the room like overdressed house-guests living in reduced circumstances.