City of the Sun

by Juliana Maio

  “You just missed lunch, missy,” Joe reprimanded loudly.

  Lili rushed to her father, smacked a loud kiss on top of his head, shutting him up, and went around the table kissing everybody on the cheek. She was a mountain of energy.

  “Roommate!” Lili wrapped her arms around Maya and pulled a chair next to her. “I hope I didn’t snore last night.”

  “No, but you walked in your sleep,” Maya said. “Just kidding!”

  Lili laughed and turned to her mother with an urgent question. “Mamie, did my copy of Marie Claire arrive yet?”

  Embarrassed, Maya hastened to answer first. “Yes, and I’ve been flipping through it. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not.” Lili took Maya’s hand in hers. “Last month I saw the most beautiful wedding dress there. Did I tell you that’s where I want to get married—Paris?”

  “Are you getting married?” Vati inquired, refilling his glass with the wine on the table.

  “Heavens, no. I’m only eighteen, monsieur.”

  “You’re already eighteen,” Allegra corrected. “At your age, I was married and big with you.” She gestured toward her belly.

  But Lili chose not to dignify her mother’s comment with a response and turned back to Maya. She pushed a strand of hair away from Maya’s face. “You really should let me do your hair and makeup one day. Isn’t she so pretty?” Lili gushed.

  “She’s beautiful,” Soussou, the little one, agreed.

  “You have to watch out for the boys in this country,” Joe said.

  “They stick like olive oil!” Allegra added.

  Maya let her hair fall back over her face. She used to enjoy compliments, basking in that luscious tickle that made her feel like she owned the world. But now, they sounded patronizing to her. She knew she looked awful. It should be obvious to everyone that she was in mourning, that her fate had been sealed, and that she was destined to be the mother to both her brother and her father.

  “Maya looks like our mother,” Erik said, shoving a piece of pita bread into his mouth, the only thing on the table he would eat.

  “That’s not true,” Maya protested, though she wished it were. With her flaming red hair and almond-shaped green eyes, her mother had been a legendary beauty in Düsseldorf. At least Maya had inherited her oval face and the cleft in her chin. She had to settle for much duller hair and ordinary green eyes.

  “We used to say that Maya had the beauty of her mother and the charm of her father, but that was when father was more charming,” Erik remarked, winking at his sister, and drawing some laughter.

  What was the matter with Erik? Couldn’t he see that she was squirming inside? Uncomfortable at being the center of attention, she changed the subject and said, “I see Yom Kippur will be arriving early this year.”

  “Yom Kippur is my favorite holiday,” Lili said with conviction. “No breads, no sweets. Nothing to eat at all. The only day of the year that I’m sure to lose weight. I think God created it for us women.”

  Maya cringed, anticipating her father’s reaction to Lili’s superficial remark.

  “Yom Kippur is the holiest of our holidays,” Vati said solemnly, almost choking on his wine. He put the glass down and turned to Loulou. “Now I have a holiday question for the Bar Mitzvah boy. You know what Passover is about, right?”

  “It’s when you eat matzo?” Loulou hazarded.

  Joe rushed to answer for him. “Passover is to remind the Jews of their exodus from slavery in Egypt and of their deliverance by God to the Promised Land.”

  “And who is the oldest character in the Bible?” Vati asked the boy, holding up his hand to prevent Joe from interceding again.

  The boy’s eyes went wide with panic.

  “Come now, Loulou, you know this,” his father encouraged.

  “Jesus?” he ventured timidly.

  Vati squeezed his eyes shut in frustration, and when he reopened them, he didn’t look at the boy. Instead he stared glacially at Joe. He set his napkin down. “I slept badly last night. I am very tired,” he said. “I need to go to my room.” He stood up, holding the table for support.

  Allegra rose, her cheeks blushing but her manner still polite. “Please stay. We have coffee yet to come.”

  “I’m sorry, I must rest,” Vati said and left the room.

  There was a long, awkward silence. Mortified, Maya didn’t dare look up.

  Breaking the tension, Erik turned to Soussou, seated next to him, and said, “What do we have here?” He leaned forward and produced a coin from behind the boy’s ear.

  “How did you do that?” Soussou asked, wide-eyed.

  “Magic!” Erik said. “Now watch this.”

  While the children sat transfixed, Erik placed the coin on top of his hand and began to cover it with his handkerchief.

  Maya was grateful to Erik for containing the damage Vati had done. She looked from Allegra to Joe and wiped the corner of her mouth with her napkin. She excused herself and followed her father.

  When she entered his room she found him carefully smoothing his prayer shawl on the bed.

  “How can you be so rude to the people who are helping us?” she demanded, biting hard on her lower lip to calm the fury she felt inside.

  “The boy wants to sing in the church choir. He probably knows his catechism by heart!”

  “It’s none of our business how they educate their children.”

  “I think it is, when they have a daughter who appreciates Yom Kippur as a diet day. ‘Religion is learned in the home!’ Ha! And what a bourgeois the mother is.”

  “Bourgeois!” Maya felt the blood rushing to her head; she could barely contain herself. “She could not be more gracious. Look at the meals she’s served us.”

  “Cooked by her servant, no doubt.”

  The door suddenly opened and Erik entered. “What was that about?” he demanded between clenched teeth. “We can’t fight you and the world at the same time.”

  Vati did not answer and resumed smoothing his prayer shawl. His eyelids almost covered his eyes, which were small and frightened.

  Maya sighed, resigned. “He drank wine and he’s tired, Erik.”

  “We are all tired,” Erik replied.

  Maya picked up her father’s prayer shawl and moved toward the door. “I’ll iron it later.”

  These clashes with Vati exhausted her. She had stopped in the hallway to compose herself when she heard the hushed voices of Allegra and Joe drifting in from the kitchen. They were arguing.

  “Would you help me, please?” Lili appeared at the end of the corridor, dragging an enormous cloth bag.

  Maya rushed to help her, and together they emptied the brimming bag’s contents onto Lili’s bed—well-worn uniform pants and jackets from the Free French army. Many were missing buttons, some had broken zippers, and most had tears.

  “I’ll be sewing until late tonight,” Lili apologized. “I hope the light doesn’t bother you.”

  Maya didn’t know what to say. She’d been so quick to judge this girl. Now she just wanted to hug her. She sat down on Lili’s bed and pulled a jacket from the pile. Its collar was torn. “It will go faster if I help you,” she said. “And I can tell you about Paris.”

  As they began to sort out the work, the door opened a crack and Joe peeked in. He was holding Maya’s lost copy of The Wall.

  “An American gave me this for you. There’s an envelope inside.”

  CHAPTER 11

  In the small foyer of the Daher orphan asylum, simply furnished with a wooden desk, two chairs, and a worn oriental rug, Mickey handed the superintendent the photo of Erik Blumenthal. The little man studied it carefully, his sad eyes rendered even sadder by his shabby gray suit. His wife, a full-breasted, dark-haired woman, pressed close against him to look.

  “A German Jew,” Mickey explained. “The people at the Ben Ezra Synagogue said you’d taken in some families from Western Europe.”

  “Not so. Who told you that? The five families we have
all come from Yemen. I don’t recognize him.”

  “In Yemen they beat Jews just for passing on the right side of a Muslim,” his wife whispered to Mickey indignantly as she looped her arm around her husband’s for protection.

  Mickey folded the photo back into his wallet. He’d spent over two weeks searching in vain and felt enormously frustrated. But he nodded politely and thanked the couple for their time. On his way out he almost stumbled over a long line of shoes against the outside wall. Somehow he hadn’t noticed them when coming in. There were about twenty pairs, most of them badly worn, and he surmised they belonged to the arrivals from Yemen. There was a poignancy about them, as if they told the whole miserable tale of the people who wore them. How many miles had they walked? It seemed fitting that these shoes had wound up at an orphanage.

  The giggling of two girls in the courtyard caught his attention. They were hopping over a simple hopscotch pattern, their dark braids flying high. Wherever there is laughter, life can flourish, he thought.

  As he started down the narrow street, surprisingly dark because of the clotheslines that hung between balconies, obstructing the sun, he heard someone calling after him.

  “Mister, mister, wait up.”

  Mickey turned to see a young man in a pristine white suit running toward him.

  “My uncle is the superintendent of the orphanage,” he said. “He told me you are writing about the Jews here and are looking for a certain refugee from Germany.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “My name is Bernard Agami. I work at the UK General Electric Company, and a German Jewish engineer has just joined us. His name is Hans Nissel.”

  A ray of hope. Mickey hastily pulled out the picture of Blumenthal.

  “Not him. Sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too, but maybe he could be of help. How long ago did Mr. Nissel join you?”

  “Three months maybe.”

  “Straight from Europe?”

  “I don’t know. He’s not very talkative.”

  Mickey mulled this over for an instant. “I’d still like to meet him,” he said, wanting to learn how Nissel got here and who might have helped him.

  “The company is in the Coptic part of the city, right off Mari Girgis ferry station,” the young man offered. “It’s best to go by river bus. It’s easy to get lost here. I’ll walk you to the station if you’re ready to go now. I’m sure Mr. Nissel will want to help his fellow Ashkenazim. They’re a little out of place here. Many of us tried to sponsor German families, but internal politics made that impossible.”

  “Are you talking about LICA?”

  “Yes! How did you know?” The young man’s face was animated. “My father was a volunteer for LICA here in Cairo.”

  “Why did they stop helping? No one seems to be able to explain this.”

  “It was because of the teachers’ union. It was four years ago. I was just graduating from the lycée.”

  “The teachers’ union?” Mickey asked incredulously.

  “That’s right,” Bernard confirmed. “They were afraid that Jewish teachers with better education and European credentials would put them out of work. Then the other unions started worrying, too. Even the king got involved and asked the president of our community center to intervene and put a stop to the resettlement.”

  “Mr. Cattaoui?”

  “Yes, he wanted to have good relations with the king. You already know a lot about us,” Bernard said.

  Now Mickey began to understand why nobody wanted to talk about this. “So Cairo’s Jewish community closed its doors to its German brothers?”

  “Well, yes,” Bernard conceded, “but we didn’t just abandon them. We raised money to send them to Palestine instead. Please be fair to us. We did our best.”

  “Don’t worry. I think your community is holding up remarkably well in the face of current circumstances, and I will say so in my article.” Mickey shook hands with him and thanked him as they arrived at the river station.

  “We take a lesson from the Sufis,” Bernard grinned. “‘Dance, when you’re broken. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance, in the middle of the fighting. Dance, when you’re perfectly free.’ Nice poem, no?”

  Egypt’s greatest treasure was the Nile, and Mickey was happy to put aside Erik Blumenthal and his investigation for thirty minutes as the ferry zigzagged back and forth across the river to pick up and deposit passengers. He drank in the sights, passing obelisks, fishing boats, yachts, social clubs, restaurants, palm groves, and finally a midriver fountain before arriving at the Mari Girgis station.

  He made his way to the UK General Electric Company, located only a few blocks from the river, next to Cairo’s children’s hospital.

  In her prim BBC voice, the woman in horn-rimmed glasses at the reception desk informed him that Mr. Nissel was on holiday, which Mickey found rather incongruous with the war on their doorstep, and he pressed her to give him the man’s phone number and address. The story he was writing for the Foreign Service Journal was of such importance that even the American Embassy was assisting him in his research. He’d been persuasive enough for her to excuse herself for a moment to ask her superiors. However, when she reemerged, her lips were pursed and the answer clear.

  “Sorry,” she said. “But we cannot divulge any information regarding our employees. You know us English, we are …”

  “… sticklers for rules,” Mickey finished her sentence. Still, he was not ready to give up. He pulled out his notepad and ripped off a blank sheet. “I’m going to leave my number with you. If you see Mr. Nissel, or even better, should you happen to call him yourself, would you please give it to him and ask him to contact me?”

  She picked up the paper hesitantly.

  “No rules broken,” Mickey said with a playful wink. “Just some help to your Yankee friends.”

  The ride back downtown was not as much fun as the ride up. The river bus was jammed to capacity this time and running late. He was hoping to go home to shower and change before his dinner at the Continental with Hugh, but he first needed to see Jacques Antebie, who had updated the refugee list. The community center was only a few blocks from the Shepheard’s Hotel, and Mickey wondered whether he should stop by the office of Joseph Levi, the hotel accountant who was the uncle of the girl he’d met there. He had returned the book along with a note a few days before, but she had not yet responded.

  Mickey closed his eyes. His thoughts veered back to his investigation. Looking for Blumenthal in shelters was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Hadn’t Einstein said the simplest solution is usually the best? If I were a thirty-year-old physicist doing cutting edge work in my field, where would I want to go? The answer came to him immediately. I’d want to go someplace where I could continue my research. A scientist breaking new ground must be very excited about his work, eager to make his next discovery. Mickey needed to learn who else was working in Blumenthal’s field of study and see if they could shed some light on what the man’s next move might be. He resolved to visit the Al-Ahzar University science department’s library as soon as possible to look for recently published articles on quantum physics.

  He sighed, wondering how long Erik Blumenthal would elude him.

  CHAPTER 12

  Ataba Square, the wide-open plaza at the west end of the city, was easily Cairo’s foremost commercial center, buzzing all day long with soldiers and merchants. But this evening when Mickey descended from the arabya Hantour, the horse-drawn buggy he’d taken to the Continental Hotel, he encountered a very different crowd. Men in linen suits and women in pearls emerged from Rolls Royces and Bentleys arriving at the hotel in battalions. Valets, dressed all in white, scurried frantically to assist this influx of Cairo’s high society.

  Buttoning his white evening dinner jacket, newly acquired from Antoine, the tailor Dorothy had sent him to, Mickey merged seamlessly into the glamorous throng. His hair was freshly washed and combed. There was no trace of the scruffy guy who had walked the streets only
hours earlier. He caught sight of his reflection in the hotel’s glass doors and struck a pose with his hand in his pocket. Not bad.

  He wound his way through the crowd toward the elevator at the far end of the ornate entry hall, admiring the autographed pictures of celebrities and politicians that adorned the walls. Maurice Chevalier, Josephine Baker, Clark Gable, Winston Churchill, and Charles de Gaulle had all been photographed alongside a small Egyptian man with a broad smile—the owner, Mickey assumed. He lingered for a moment, getting a kick out of enjoying the same playground as the world’s elite.

  He stepped out of the elevator and stood breathless at the sight of the colonial Eden in front of him. The rooftop had been converted into a garden lush with foliage, where guests dined at immaculately set, white-linen-draped tables. The sun was setting over the many domes and minarets of the city’s medieval district, illuminating Al-Azhar, the grandest mosque of them all, with a halo and bathing the terrace in an orange glow. Waiters drifted by carrying martinis and platters of hors d’oeuvres, accompanied by the soft sound of a flute being played in some unseen corner, while suffragis scurried to light the candles that adorned each table. As the sky darkened, hundreds of fairy lights entwined in the foliage sprang to life, provoking a chorus of “Ahhs” from the admiring guests. Mickey joined them, transported into another world—a glamorous, exotic oasis far away from the harsh reality of the war.

  “Mickey!” he heard someone calling. Was that Hugh? He scanned the terrace but could not find his friend and turned toward the packed bar, which was now standing room only. The place swarmed with young men in dapper service uniforms on leave and eager to spend their back pay. They buzzed around women in chic evening dresses perched on barstools.

  “Mic-key, you son of a gun!” Finally he spotted Hugh waving wildly at him and grinning just as wildly. He was sitting with two sexy girls in their early twenties.

  “So damn good seeing you!” Mickey cried out joyfully.

  “Finally,” Hugh responded as the two men engaged in a long hug as if to ensure that this was real.