The Cairo House

by Samia Serageldin

  The words hit me like a punch in the stomach.

  22

  Insomnia

  The Pasha has set the date for the family gathering. We would meet at the Cairo House the following Tuesday. As I drove Tarek home after his weekend stay I asked him if he remembered the house.

  ‘Didn’t Grandpa Shamel take me when I was little? On a feast day? I remember being given those shiny coins. I don’t remember much else about it.’

  ‘Oh, but you should! It was your grandfather’s home. It’s where I was married. Come with me on Tuesday. If the house is sold soon, you might not get another chance to see it.’

  ‘I don’t know, Mummy. Won’t it be all grown-ups?’

  ‘Sure. But you look so grown-up yourself. I’d be so proud to show you off! And I do want you to see the house again, and meet the Pasha and the others.’ I drew my fingers through the curls at the nape of his neck. He needed a haircut. ‘Do it as a favor for me? Otherwise I’ll have to go all on my own.’

  ‘Will I have to wear a suit and tie?’

  ‘Not if you don’t want to.’

  ‘Okay.’

  That evening I wandered around the apartment. For once I had no particular engagement. I switched on the television set; unlike many homes in Cairo, there was no satellite hook-up, only local programming. The first channel was showing a repeat episode of Dynasty. The second had a talk show on which a sheikh from the Azhar University debated whether or not a belly dancer’s ‘wages of sin’ were acceptable funding for a Ramadan ‘Table of the Compassionate’; the dancer in question, Fifi ‘Abdu, was interviewed in rebuttal. The news in English was on the third channel: after the mandatory journal of Mubarak’s activities that day the anchor moved on to international news, followed by the world-wide weather report. There were severe snowstorms on the American Eastern seaboard. Kennedy Airport was closed. I wondered what it must be like in New Hampshire.

  I felt unbearably restless. I thought of going for a walk and immediately dismissed the idea. It was perfectly safe to do so, but the narrow sidewalks were pockmarked with potholes and obstructed by parked cars, and the air was heavy with the exhaust from passing traffic. If Ibrahim saw me leave without the car he would immediately offer to hail a taxi for me or to accompany me wherever I was going. It would be hard to explain that I wanted to walk, and alone.

  Suddenly, for no special reason, I was homesick: for snow, rain, changing skies, pure air; for a long walk on a Fall day; the brilliant russet and gold of leaves that change color; the snow-muffled silence of the woods when I went cross-country skiing; my neighbor’s yard in Spring, a triumph of tulips and daffodils; even the stone rabbit coyly nestled among them. I missed the ease and simplicity of shopping malls: their clean, controlled, virtual reality environment, their indoor ‘sidewalk’ café tables with purely decorative parasols. I missed the Sunday paper, with its crossword puzzle and advertisement inserts; the bounty of libraries and bookstores; rock music on the car radio; cruise control and instant parking. I longed for a world in which you did not constantly lose the battle against dust and bakshish; for release from the pressures of traffic and people; for freedom from watchful eyes, for anonymity, an uncomplicated existence.

  I was homesick for cosy evenings back in New Hampshire: alone, but with the edge of solitude blunted by the presence of Luc nursing a drink in the next room; a pile of unread papers, mail, magazines and books on the table competing for my attention with the multitude of channels on television, the new CDs by the stereo, the computer with its screen-saver image of undulating dolphins, a reproachful reminder of work uncompleted. From the media to junk mail: a world of sensory overload.

  In Cairo you make your own entertainment. I understood why people here were so gregarious, why they clustered in homes and cafés, why they were on the phone twenty times a day. I thought of Leila and other women I had grown up with. Their lives were one endless round of social obligations and engagements.

  Every day there were a dozen courtesy phone calls to make: an aunt was unwell, a niece fell down and chipped a tooth, a friend had a baby. Every week brought its quota of visits of congratulations or condolences and its standing lunch engagements: Friday at your mother’s; Saturday at your mother-in-law’s; Sunday it was your turn to receive your mother and mother-in-law. Every month brought its complement of weddings, engagement parties and dinner invitations. Every year the winter and summer holidays came around, and there was the beach chalet or country cottage to air and dust, and more entertaining.

  I could not imagine keeping up on that frantic treadmill; you would fall off if you tried to slow down. So much of it appeared unnecessary to me, a cycle of escalating social obligations that could not be broken without throwing the slacker out of the social orbit altogether. The delicate web of this network was so sensitive to the most imaginary slight or oversight that it required constant maintenance and repair. I knew I could not live that way.

  My peers among my contemporaries were the privileged few, and yet they had not really gained ground in the past generation. They tried to fulfill the same social obligations as their mothers, with a quarter of the household help. Their higher education imposed the expectation of ‘doing something’ professionally, while in no way dispensing them from their family and social duties.

  I switched off the television set and looked out the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the Nile. The tall buildings that had sprung up around the villa made me feel claustrophobic. Wherever I looked the lighted windows made it hard to avoid the unwelcome intrusion into other people’s privacy. I could barely glimpse the river, but in my mind’s eye I saw the city stretched out like a vast, three-dimensional map, with lights glittering here and there, like markers, to pinpoint the homes of relatives and friends. The thought of going out was particularly inviting at night here: there was less traffic and, mild as the weather was even in winter, the city was wide awake till dawn.

  I glanced at the telephone. I could call Tamer. If he were home, it would take me twenty minutes to be there. I hadn’t had a chance to talk to him since Gina’s death.

  I picked up the phone to call him, then put it down. What had seemed so simple a few days ago now seemed fraught with complications. The serpent had entered the garden. For the next hour I vacillated, picking up the receiver half a dozen times only to put it down again.

  That night I felt as if I didn’t belong here, as if I spoke the language but didn’t understand it. In some ways the country seemed to have changed too much, in others not enough. Perhaps the feeling was brought on by Gina’s funeral and the gossiping women. Perhaps it was the layers of impressions building up: the Pasha’s detachment at the iftar; the Sirdanas’ all-Filipino staff in the midst of the fellahin; the sight of the women in Islamic dress all over town. Sometimes it seemed as if the country now belonged to the Infitah millionaires and the Islamists.

  Sometimes it’s like looking through a kaleidoscope: the individual slivers of colored shapes are the same, but the tiniest shift in the angle of the lens changes the composition to form an entirely new pattern. So it was with my mood that evening; a few days before I could not imagine leaving; now I felt there was no place for me here. I had been gone too long. I should claim what was mine, tie up loose ends, and leave. After the family council took place at the Cairo house, I would leave. I would have my say on the sale of the house, and do my best to convince Tarek to join me the following year. Then I would leave.

  I called Luc.

  ‘llo? Gigi! How’s everything?’

  He sounded distracted. I wondered if he’d started to drink this early.

  ‘You weren’t – napping?’

  ‘No, no. I’m watching television. We’re snowed in.’

  ‘I know, I saw that on the news. How’ve you been?’

  ‘Fine. There’s some fresh gossip to liven things up in the department. Apparently Toussaint Hopkins and Janet Glasser spent Spring break in Cairo. Together.’

  ‘I know. I met them in
Luxor. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. Listen, I’m coming home on Thursday. The family meeting is taking place on Tuesday, so I can leave by Thursday. I’m calling the airline tomorrow to confirm my reservation.’

  ‘Thursday? Good. Then you can take care of this. Mrs McMurty left a note on the kitchen counter with a list of things. Pinesol, Windex, I don’t know what else. I have it somewhere. What’s it supposed to mean?’

  ‘That we’re out of those things and we should replace them before she comes to clean again next Friday. Don’t worry about it, I’ll be back by then. So, don’t forget to pick me up at the airport?’

  ‘What time do you arrive?’

  ‘Eight-thirty in the evening your time, assuming there are no weather delays. I’ll call you from Kennedy. Would you bring my winter coat with you to the airport? I left it in the car, remember?’

  ‘Then it must still be in the trunk. Okay. Remind me when you call from New York.’

  I hung up. Luc had sounded so matter-of-fact. It had not occurred to him that there could be some question about my coming back, only about the timing.

  I switched the television on, then off. I looked out of the window again, then I drew the curtains. Finally I got undressed, to put an end to my vacillation. I found some old books and picked a familiar novel by Stendhal to reread. As the hours ticked by and the night grew quiet I heard the intermittent drone of the doorkeepers’ voices through the window. Ibrahim was apparently entertaining a few neighboring doorkeepers on the bench in front of the house. They would be smoking cigarettes and drinking endless small glasses of strong, sweet tea as they kept watch through the night. The voices were low but I could tell that they were speaking in Nubian, called Berberi in Egypt.

  For the first time I wondered if these men were homesick too. The Nubian doorkeepers of Cairo form a caste apart. They migrate north from their far-flung villages in the Nubia and the Sudan, leaving wives and children behind, and take up a monastic life in the basements, stairwells and garages of villas and buildings all over the city. Twice a year they travel home to Upper Egypt, presumably to provide for the next generation of their profession. This entire confrèrie seems to be related to one another, forming a formidable basement grapevine running through the streets of the capital. Nothing escapes the watchful eyes of the Nubian doorkeepers, and they are the first resource of the police. But like everything else in Egypt, that institution too is changing and will one day be a thing of the past.

  But that night as I tried to fall asleep, there was something comforting in the steady drone of the voices of the watchmen.

  I slept very fitfully, and by dawn I was wide awake when the faint rumbling announced the arrival of the zabaleen, the garbage collectors. I got up and stood at the window. The clip-clopping donkey cart materialized out of the dawn haze. The shawl-wrapped figure sitting on top of the piles of rags and plastic bags reined in the donkey and jumped off. It was too small to be an adult, but I could not tell the gender in the half-light.

  The child pried open the can and started to haul out the bags and newspapers, stopping every now and then to examine an object, then toss it away. It sorted aside some magazines and a bunch of half-withered roses. It snapped off the stem of a rose and stuck it behind an ear. It had to be a girl. Next she emptied what looked like orange peel and fruit rind into a bucket. For what purpose, I wondered in horror, thinking of the rat poison. I remembered that the zabaleen, many of whom were Coptic, raised pigs on the peelings from the slop buckets.

  My impulse was to run down and warn her. Then I heard Ibrahim’s clogs on the courtyard cobbles, and his voice raised in greeting to the child. No, Ibrahim would never have put poison in the garbage cans, no matter what I told him to do.

  The child hopped back on top of the pile of garbage on the cart, took up the reins and cracked a whip. The donkey started up, stumbling, and the cart ambled down the street.

  Monday morning I read in the paper that there had been a landslide in that part of the Mokkatam plateau where the garbage collectors live in shacks amid piles of rubbish. The mountainside had collapsed under the sewage and waste of the zabaleen and their pigs.

  23

  The House

  Tuesday morning when I went to pick up Tarek he waved to me from the second-floor balcony and came down a few minutes later. He was wearing dress pants and shoes, a shirt and a blazer. No tie, but he’d had his hair cut. I leaned over to kiss him as he got into the car.

  ‘Thanks for dressing up, darling. You look very handsome and very grown-up.’ I thought he looked considerably older than sixteen, like Tamer at his age. ‘Do you know, in the States you can start to drive at sixteen. You don’t have to wait to be eighteen for a driver’s permit the way you do here.’ I couldn’t resist an opportunity to point out the advantages of coming to America.

  ‘Mummy, I already know how to drive. Papa lets me, quite often, when I’m with him in the car.’

  We drove over the bridge and along the Nile Corniche to Garden City.

  ‘So, Mummy, this offer for the house. Is it a good thing?’

  ‘I’m not sure, sweetheart. I need to know a little more about it, and to see how the others feel. As for me, well, I don’t even live here. And it would be nice to get this settled. Perhaps invest my share in something profitable, abroad. I ought to try to liquidate what I own and tie up loose ends here in Egypt – not just my share of the house, whatever else I can. With Mama gone, you’re my only reason for coming back here. And I’m hoping soon you’ll join me. But I’m really glad you’ll get a chance to see the house before it’s sold. Your grandfather was born there, I was married there, I have so many memories there. You can’t imagine what it was like, especially during the heyday of the party, all the people, all the excitement, all the optimism.’

  When we arrived at the Pasha’s there were several cars already parked inside the grounds. The front door was open, which signaled a formal occasion. Tarek followed me inside the long hall. After the sunshine outside we squinted while our eyes adjusted and shivered slightly as we stood on the chilly marble floor. In the half-gloom Fangali materialized from behind one of the rose marble columns.

  ‘Good morning, Sitt Gigi, the Pasha’s in the study. Most of the family has arrived.’

  As we followed him down the hall I nudged Tarek and pointed to the second-floor gallery.

  ‘Maybe later I’ll take you upstairs and show you the room where I changed into my wedding dress before the wedding party. Such a scene! Mama and Madame Hélène – do you remember her? – helping me dress, and the hairdresser trying to fix my hair and pin on my veil. He couldn’t find a convenient outlet for the curling iron near the dressing-table, I remember, and there was a scramble to find an extension cord. And Om Khalil and the maids standing outside the door letting out a zaghruta every few minutes.’

  We followed Fangali down the hall. The tall wooden double doors to the study were ajar, leaking light and voices. There were a dozen people in the room. The Pasha presided, alone, on a high-backed, silk-upholstered sofa at one end; Lamia El-Salem was conspicuously absent. I made my way over to my uncle and drew Tarek forward.

  ‘Uncle, this is Tarek. I wanted him to come with me so he could meet you. He didn’t remember much about his visits when he was little.’

  ‘Well then I’m glad you brought him. How old are you now, Tarek? Sixteen? You could pass for twenty.’ The Pasha smiled but he seemed distracted.

  I looked around the room. Tante Zohra wasn’t there, of course. I shook hands with her daughter Nazli and the third sister. They were both in deep mourning for Gina.

  ‘How is Tante Zohra?’ I asked Nazli.

  ‘Mama has been very unwell since Gina’s funeral. But she wanted us all to be here. Except for Mimi, she never goes out, you know.’

  Leila, austere in black and wearing no makeup, sat next to her aunts. Tamer stood behind her chair. They were there as Gina’s heirs, I realized. I hugged Leila and turned to greet Tamer, only having
time to whisper in his ear, ‘I’m so sorry about your mother! I tried to call you.’ He gave me a quick smile and squeezed my hand.

  I recognized my third uncle, Zakariah, as he slumped in a large armchair. He had shrunk and his once flaming rusty hair had faded to peach, blending with his freckled skin. When I went up to kiss him he didn’t recognize me until I was right in front of him.

  ‘My goodness, Gigi! And this is your son? I can’t believe it. Where is it you live again? France? Oh, America? Do you like it there?’

  Zakariah, in the way of some younger brothers, was overshadowed by the Pasha’s personality. I felt pretty sure that he would go along with whatever his eldest brother decided. Next to him sat my fourth uncle, Nabil. He had not aged much and still had the same dour expression I remembered.

  The Pasha, his two brothers and Tante Zohra were the only surviving original owners of the house. The heirs of their deceased siblings were represented at this gathering by the oldest male in each family. Many of the faces were barely recognizable to me. Papa having been the youngest of his brothers and sisters, most of my cousins were considerably older than I, almost another generation. Growing up I had only seen them at weddings, funerals, and feast days. We nodded and shook hands, murmuring conventional greetings. These middle-aged strangers looked gray and tired, as if they wanted this to be over with. They seemed to me a diminished generation, less vital, even physically smaller, than their fathers. Their drab clothes contrasted with their uncles’ dapper suits, carefully chosen ties and matching pocket squares. It made me reflect on the hidden costs of the war of attrition the Revolution had waged against my family. It had taken its most insidious toll on the solidarity of this once cohesive, proud clan, reducing them to disputing the crumbs of their erstwhile fortune.