‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s all such boring food.’
‘Let me check with Khadra.’ Leila left the room.
‘She’s such a good girl, Allah knows,’ Tante Zohra confided. ‘Always checks on me on her way home from the hospital, although she must be so tired, poor thing. And of course her husband and children are waiting for her.’ Tante Zohra looked at me with the shrewd eyes I remembered. ‘She’s very unlike Gina, isn’t she? But you know the life she leads is so different. They turned out well, you know, Gina’s children. Tamer too. It’s Allah’s grace, when you think of what they went through. After Gina left – and their father was always so busy – they were at my house more often than in their own. But I’ll say this much for Ali – busy as he was, he always let them know he loved them. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he called them every night before they went to bed, at the same time. After he died so suddenly – Oh, that was awful, Allah rest his soul – well, I raised them. I never needed to worry as much about Leila. She’s like her father, you know. Focused, pragmatic. Nothing derails her.’
That was true. I remembered Leila studying for her exams, the year her father died in such suspicious circumstances. I had admired her for that. She just forged ahead with life, instead of vacillating and soul-searching like I did.
‘Tamer I worried about. Leila was a little older but Tamer was just a boy,’ Tante Zohra continued. ‘He kept things inside, you couldn’t reach him. People say I spoiled him, but that’s not true. They say he crashed the car I gave him for his graduation from college, but there’s more to that story than he’ll admit. I have my suspicions. Oh, nobody tells me anything, they think I don’t know, but I know more than they think.’
Tante Zohra seemed lost in her thoughts for a minute, absent-mindedly tucking loose strands of hair under her turban. Her black hair needed to be re-coloured, it showed white at the roots.
I wondered how Tante Zohra felt about the proposed sale of the Cairo House. Apparently a very good offer had been made, through Kamal Zeitouni. This had caused a considerable rift in the family. According to Egyptian inheritance laws, every one of the Seif-el-Islam brothers and sisters, or their heirs, had a share. But in practice it was the Pasha, as oldest brother, who had lived in the house all his life; for the past forty years, he had been the only occupant. Offers to buy the house had trickled in over the years, but had not been seriously entertained. The unspoken consensus was that it would not be sold till the Pasha died. But the years passed and he outlived several of his younger siblings. Their children and grandchildren were growing impatient. Now Kamal Zeitouni’s proposition had brought matters to a head. The Pasha himself had called for a family meeting in two weeks to consider the offer, and to take votes. As Papa’s heir, I was one of those with the most at stake.
‘Tante Zohra? I’m going to have iftar at the Pasha’s tomorrow.’
She looked at me with alert eyes. ‘You know about this business of the sale?’
‘That’s what I was wondering – I mean, how do you feel about it?’
‘Well, I have to think of my grandchildren. Nazli’s children and the others. Decent apartments in Cairo are so expensive nowadays. And some of them need start-up capital for a variety of projects. But on the other hand to see the house go to strangers, or be demolished to build a hotel in its place – I don’t know. As long as the Pasha is alive…I would be for waiting. But after his death, there’s no telling – that woman he lives with could claim to be his common-law wife.’ I was intrigued by her reference to a woman, but Tante Zohra had closed her eyes and her speech came slower, slurred. ‘I don’t know. I’m too old to care. I’ll sign any way the Pasha wants me to.’
‘Tante Zohra, are you getting tired? Can I get you anything?’
‘No, dear, I’ll be fine. Since you’ll be having iftar with the Pasha tomorrow, would you mind taking him the envelope on the secrétaire over there, it’s money for the Ramadan soup kitchen that the party sponsors.’ She sighed. ‘Ah me, only last year I sponsored a Ramadan soup kitchen myself one night at the mosque nearby, we had two hundred people come to eat. This is the first year I haven’t done it since the sequestration decrees were lifted. But it’s Allah’s will, my health isn’t what it used to be.’
I took the envelope, rang for Khadra and bent over to kiss Tante Zohra good-bye. On the way out I met Leila in the corridor. She walked me to the door.
‘How’s Gina?’ I asked. ‘Does she call often?’
Leila hesitated, then seemed to make up her mind. Her words came in a rush. ‘Mother is dying of cancer. She’s in a hospital in Lebanon. She can’t even call anymore, she’s under morphine all the time. Nana doesn’t know, we don’t want her to know. We pretend that Mother has called when Nana was asleep or praying or in the bathroom.’
‘Oh God, I’m so sorry!’
‘Well, we pray it won’t be long now, because Mother’s suffering so much, even with the morphine.’ Leila rubbed her red eyes with a tissue. ‘I’d better get back to Nana. Don’t forget to come on Sunday if you’re free.’
15
The Dervish
Around eight o’clock this evening I heard the dog barking. Domino II looked like his namesake and already treated me as if I belonged. Perhaps I reminded the poor brute of Mama. Since her death Ibrahim took care of him. The barking was followed by Ibrahim’s heavy, slow tread on the stairs. He was wheezing by the time he rang the doorbell. He announced that a bey was there to see me.
‘I know, I’m expecting him. It’s my cousin Tamer. Will you ask him to come up?’
Tamer’s quick steps followed and he was at the door. His face was more angular, his hair darker, less curly, receding slightly at the temples. He looked older; it suited him. He was wearing a soft sports coat over a crisp shirt and jeans.
‘Hey!’ He bent down to give me a peck on the cheek. ‘How are you?’
He had a new car, a sporty Japanese model. He went around to the driver’s side and started to unlock the door. ‘I’m sorry I can’t unlock the door on the passenger side,’ he started to say, ‘but –’
‘That’s all right, I’ll get in on your side!’ I assumed his car had been in an accident and that the passenger side door was stuck. I remembered that Tamer’s cars always seemed to have idiosyncrasies related to the traumas they had suffered. I slipped in ahead of him on the driver’s side and wiggled across the seat under the steering wheel and then settled into the passenger seat, yanking down my skirt, which had ridden up my legs.
Tamer got into the car and turned on the ignition. He looked amused. ‘As I was saying, I’m sorry I couldn’t unlock the door on your side first to let you in, but this car has a security system so that the driver’s door has to be unlocked before any of the others.’
‘Oh! Then why did you let me make a fool of myself, not to mention getting a run in my pantyhose?’
‘Well, you didn’t give me a chance to explain, and – I must admit I was enjoying the view.’
I made a fist at him. It was funny how the dynamics between us tended to fall into the old pattern.
‘Where would you like to go?’ he asked.
‘Anywhere we can sit and talk. You know where I haven’t been in years and years? Khan-Khalili. The souk. Could we go there?’
‘Sure.’
Tamer parked in a narrow alley not far from the souk near the El-Hussein Mosque. The streets all around the mosque were bright with strings of Ramadan lanterns swaying in the evening breeze. At one end, a banner proclaimed a ‘Table of the Compassionate’ over a huge awning, one of the thousands of privately-sponsored soup kitchens that spring up all around the city for the duration of the month of Ramadan; no one need go hungry, at least during the holy month.
As I followed Tamer down the street leading to the great mosque, we stepped around country people encamped on the ground. It was the Night of Power, towards the end of Ramadan, the sacred night when prayers are answered and worship is rewarded a thousand times over; these f
ellahin had made the traditional pilgrimage from their villages to the city to spend this holiest of nights on this hallowed ground. To them it was no desecration to set up their cooking pans and bundles of blankets on the threshold of the Great Mosque, nor did anyone try to prevent them.
Skirting the mosque, we plunged into the maze of narrow alleys of the Khan-Khalili, past the glittering shop windows with their dazzling array of silver and gold, glass and ivory, wood and leather. We ran the gauntlet of good-natured solicitations with a smile and a shake of the head. It was axiomatic that prices went down as you penetrated deeper into the darker, danker alleys of the souk where the tourists rarely ventured.
In a dusty boutique I stopped to examine a turquoise hand-blown glass jar with a cloisonné medallion portrait of the Ottoman Sultan Abdelhamid. It was gorgeous and rare, but I decided not to try to bargain for it. I had no idea what a fair price would be if it were genuine, and if it were an imitation it would be worthless.
‘Looking for anything in particular?’ Tamer asked.
‘One of those old Turkish military medals. I thought it would look beautiful, framed.’
A little boy asked what we were looking for. Tamer told him and he immediately directed us to: ‘Haj Zein’s – second alley down on the right.’ The boy ran ahead, presumably to inform the shopkeeper that he was sending business his way.
In the tiny shop Haj Zein pointed to worn stone steps leading to a second floor room. ‘The medals are in the drawers of the cabinet upstairs. Take them out and look around. If you find something you fancy, just bring it down, we’ll have a look at it.’
I started up the steep steps, ahead of Tamer, and bumped my head against a step that was hidden by the cloth curtain hanging from the top of the stairs. I slipped back against him. He steadied me and touched my forehead. ‘Ouch! That must hurt.’
In the tiny, deserted room we found the dusty trays of jumbled medals in a glass-topped display cabinet and pored over them together. There were Turkish, Persian and British medals among the plethora of Egyptian ones of all periods.
‘Look at this.’ Tamer picked up a heavy, silver Yemeni dagger from one of the display cases. He grasped the intricately carved handle and drew the long blade out of the sheath. I reached for it.
‘Careful.’ As he released it into my hands his fingers touched my palm. The sudden tingling caught me unprepared; his hands were so familiar, after all, the long fingers, the scar running from his left thumb to his wrist, a legacy from the riding accident in the desert. I weighed the dagger in my hand and passed it back to him.
I sifted through the medals in the drawer. ‘What do you think of this one?’ It was a crimson enamel medal set in a frame of gold leaf and semi-precious stones. We took it and made our way gingerly down the steps.
‘Turkish?’ I asked Haj Zein.
‘Farsi,’ the Haj answered.
‘No, it’s Turkish!’ I had no idea what difference it made, if any. This slightly silly tourist banter was meant to cover up the unexpected awkwardness a few minutes earlier.
After considerable repartee Haj Zein declared, with a great show of exasperation, that he would be willing to accept anything over a hundred pounds. I had insisted that I wouldn’t pay a piaster over a hundred. Tamer allowed us both to save face by plunking down a pound of his own over the hundred. Haj Zein gave the medal to a boy to polish and wrap. While I was settling the bill he offered Tamer a cigarette, then lit up himself. He shook his head soberly.
‘Did you hear what just happened? There was another incident. A bomb blew up a tourist bus in front of the church in Abassia.’
‘When? Just now? Was it on the radio?’ Tamer asked.
‘Not yet, but it will be soon. I heard it from the street. They must be crazy, those Gamaat islamiyya people.’
‘They want to ruin the country, so they can take over.’
‘Allah preserve us! Well, I’ll tell you one thing. They’re going about it the right way, if they’re trying to ruin the country. Have you looked around the souk? Where are the tourists?’
We filed out of the narrow doorway of the boutique and headed towards the Mahfouz Café, so-called in honor of the novelist and first Egyptian Nobel laureate. He had been a regular, decades before, when he used to sit at one of these small tables to pen the novels that were redolent of the smells and the sounds of these alleys: the scent of mint leaves in small glasses of strong tea, the tinkling teaspoons, the jingling anklets of the women swaying their hips under their black shawls. Mahfouz, now aged and blind, had been attacked by a knife-wielding assailant only a few days earlier; on account of his allegorical novels that had been interpreted as subversive of Islam, or because of his support for the peace with Israel, or both.
There had been a brief, rare shower while we were in Zein’s shop and the cobblestones looked washed, the rain collecting sluggishly in the gutters. The complex, smoky odors of the street were suddenly cut by the full, sharp aroma of Turkish coffee. I had an inexplicable impulse to breathe it all in, to explore an entire world I had found impenetrable in the days when Papa had tried to get me to read Mahfouz’s novels.
‘Can we order a water-pipe?’
‘Sure.’ Tamer didn’t react as if I were playing the tourist.
‘What flavor?’ the waiter asked. ‘Honey, apple?’
I hadn’t realized that water-pipes now came in flavors. Since my arrival in Cairo I had been struck by the variety in the supermarkets, on the newspaper stands. Variety had been in such short supply in the days of state-controlled production under Nasser’s ‘socialism’: one kind of car, one kind of sofa-bed, one government-controlled newspaper, El-Ahram. A monopoly on everything, even the name: every other product seemed to bear a variation of the name Nasser: Nasr cars, Nasr sofa-beds, Nasr City, Nasr sesame halva.
The water-pipe proved an unsatisfactory experience; I wasn’t able to actually smoke it, but the glowing coals and pleasant aroma were companionable. I didn’t feel self-conscious, although ordinarily only a tourist or an Egyptian of the ‘common’ type would smoke a water-pipe. Here in the souk, they were used to both.
A syrup peddler circulated among the customers of the café, splendid in his gold-embroidered caftan, a longnecked brass jug balanced in each hand. I snatched up my camera. He saw me and stopped, posing with courteous but unsmiling dignity. When I had taken the photo he nodded and moved on, not expecting a tip or a Polaroid.
As the shops closed the café filled with people smoking, drinking tea or coffee, playing checkers, talking. They were relaxed as people can be in cafés outdoors, in ancient cities of the south, where time is a friend to rendez-vous with eagerly at the end of the day. I felt my pulse slow down.
The call of the muezzin rang out slow and sweet, a long-drawn out echo that seemed to suck the breath out of me and suspend it somewhere in the air with the last, endlessly vibrating note. Laylat-al-Qadr, the Night of Power; here in the café, it seemed as if it were indeed a miraculous night of forgiveness and compassion, as if the whole world shared the simple mysticism of the peasants camped on the steps of the mosque and the easy-going tolerance of the merchants of the souk. It was easy to forget that only hours before and minutes away, the faith of the fanatics, of the sword and the law, of the house of peace and the house of war, had struck again.
A drumbeat started up and a small procession wound its way to the courtyard. First a couple of musicians with tambourines and drums, then a man wearing a pleated white skirt, a red embroidered vest, a sash and a high fez. The musicians set up a plaintive, hypnotic chant and the dervish began to whirl, slowly, dreamily, his dark eyes fixed on a point in the air, the white skirt billowing around his waist. ‘Allah, the merciful!’ The drums beat faster, the chant became more urgent. ‘The Compassionate!’ The dervish whirled faster. From the voluminous sleeves of his white shirt he drew out two long, gleaming knives and held them pointed straight up, one in each hand, as he whirled faster and faster. The small crowd that had gathered around him d
rew back to a safe distance, like leaves blown back by a whirling fan. The drums were frantic now, and the dervish a blur of white and glints of silver.
‘He can’t keep it up,’ I murmured. ‘He’s going to fall on those knives and hurt himself.’
Some people moved away, sat back down at their tables and picked up their drinks or their pawns. But I couldn’t take my eyes off the dervish.
‘Let’s go,’ Tamer said finally. ‘He can keep it up all night. At least he can try. What a form of worship! Well, why not? Perhaps his prayers will be heard, tonight of all nights, the Night of Power.’
We made our way back along the narrow alleys. We no sooner reached the car than, as if by telepathy, a minadi materialized and hurried up, tipping his cap and making a show of wiping the windscreen.
Tamer started the car and headed slowly down the narrow, one-way alley, parallel-parked on both sides. Just then another car headed towards us from the opposite direction. Both cars stopped; neither backed out. Tamer reached out and folded down his side-view mirror and the other driver did the same. The two cars began to inch past each other, the drivers signaling each other on, while bystanders offered tactical advice. I held my breath. Our car barely scraped past the other, then with a sudden gunning of the accelerator we broke out of the bottleneck. I heaved a sigh of relief; driving in Cairo, even as a passenger, unnerved me.
On the overpass of the Sixth of October Bridge a police checkpoint was set up, stopping cars with suspicious license plates or passengers with the trademark beards and skullcaps of the Islamists. The policeman looked into our car briefly, then waved us past the checkpoint. A few minutes later we had arrived at the villa and Tamer dropped me off and drove away. Ibrahim came up to the gate.
The Cairo House Page 18