by Nadia Wassef
Finally, the world aligned in a way that agreed with Diwan. Nihal had maintained a close friendship with two ex-Diwaners. One, Amal, had taken over from Shahira as Zamalek’s manager for a few years, and the other, Layal, had been the assistant manager of Heliopolis. Even after both left Diwan, they continued to meet up with Nihal in Diwan’s cafés throughout the city. They reminisced about old times. They wondered, “What if?” And slowly, a new trinity formed. Nihal, the eternal believer in partnerships, was energized by their shared vision, oriented toward the future rather than the past. It was a happy coincidence of friendship and passion. In 2017, Nihal, Amal, and Layal joined Diwan’s board. The following year, to make space for this new vision, Hind and I offered our resignations. For the first time since we founded Diwan in 2001, we weren’t board members.
* * *
Where is everyone now? We lost some of them. During our early years, we coddled our staff and their brittle egos. As time passed, we became less tolerant. If any staff member threatened to resign, we would enact their threat then and there. We insisted that we were all part of the Diwan family, but we reminded staff that no one was indispensable. Samir, after ten years as my driver, threatened to leave. I don’t remember exactly what pushed him over the edge. His thick skin generally insulated him from anything I could’ve said or done. Nonetheless, he made the threat. I cut the cord. It was definitely long overdue. He calls every Christmas to ask about Zein and Layla. He advises me to strike a balance with my daughters between affection and discipline, as he knows that I can be a little rough-mannered. He tells me that his years building Diwan were among the most rewarding of his life.
Then there was Amir, book procurer extraordinaire. He was Diwan’s first employee. He had worked his way to head of Arabic-book buying, developing his own team of assistant buyers and data analysts. After fifteen years, he left to start his own publishing house. He broke the news to Hind, Nihal, and me with typical flattery: “This is your victory. You taught me everything I know. I’m continuing your work.” We wished him luck. In a gesture that defied social, gender, and class conventions, he kissed each of our foreheads. I cried. Hind read the gesture as the promise of a son not to let his mother down. When we told our mother about it later, she saw Judas and Jesus. I’d attended his first marriage and his second marriage, and paid my respects when his father died. Still, we never quite transcended our boss/employee dynamic. I knew him very well, and I didn’t know him at all.
Readers left remnants of themselves on our shelves. They took remnants away, too, in books and bags. While the bitter end of the Diwan bag changed Minou’s and my relationship forever, we remain friends. She continued to pursue her passion for photography and mixed media. She had several international exhibitions, and her work was acquired by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and Amsterdam’s Tropenmuseum. She lived between London and Cairo for several years before deciding to return to Cairo. She found that she couldn’t create work outside Egypt. The country was her muse.
Loss is a natural process, and sometimes even a joyous one. During Nehaya’s stint as multimedia and stationery buyer, she met a man named Dany, the general manager of a distribution company. He had an inextinguishable joie de vivre and could miraculously outtalk the gregarious Nehaya. I witnessed their first meeting, where he was trying to sell her stock and she was demanding a better discount. They realized they couldn’t intimidate each other. I left the room. I sent Nehaya’s then assistant, Dalia, to get Nehaya and bring her to me, under the guise of a “pricing emergency.”
“He’s flirting with you,” I said.
“What?”
“Flirt back. He’s nice. He’s funny. He’s not scared of you.”
“I don’t have time for this shit.” Nehaya rolled her eyes at me.
“Neither do I, but it doesn’t stop you making me read books about dating. Practice what you fucking preach.” I pointed her in the direction of the door with a warning, “Remember, I’ll be watching.” They married a year later. Dany got a job in Saudi Arabia. Nehaya left Diwan to join him. I hosted a dinner to celebrate their wedding.
“God help the poor bastard,” said Hind, watching Nehaya and Dany from across the room.
“For moving or marrying?” I asked.
“Marrying Nehaya. He’s going to need God and his fucking army,” chimed in Nihal, as we clinked glasses in agreement. Finally, I had persuaded Nihal of something: a well-placed swear word.
* * *
When I left Egypt, Egypt also left me. In London, I tried to find a job in bookselling, only to discover that a Cairo bookseller was an exotic proposition as long as she stayed in Cairo and ordered English books for the natives to read. Her experience didn’t translate. The English market was apparently much more sophisticated. I thought readers were readers everywhere. I was gutted, and I was furious.
“Darling, what I am about to say will ease your discomfort and set you free,” my mother said with somber gravitas. “You are nothing. Accept it. Embrace it.”
“Mum, you do know that I already feel like shit?”
“Be grateful that doors are closing. Others will open. Be humble. Accept being knocked down. Detach. You are nothing, and from nothing comes everything.”
“I don’t know what kind of shit you’ve been reading, but please stop.”
“It’s a fabulous book that Nihal gave me.”
* * *
Speaking of closed doors: Number Two and I had met in 2009. I was sure that this time I had gotten it right. We married in 2010. Five years on, with my recent move to London, and his work in Dubai, we found ourselves in a commuter marriage. It survived for another year. Then, in the summer of 2016, on our way out of a Bruce Springsteen concert, he suggested we divorce. (Once a die-hard fan, I can now listen to only two Springsteen songs.) He returned to Dubai. Zein and Layla were flying back from their summer vacation with Number One in the United States. I checked the time, waited to ensure that they were safely on the plane, then called him, planning to discuss how best to tell them.
“I’m glad you called. There’s something I need to talk to you about,” Number One gushed.
“Me, too. What’s up?”
“I’m getting divorced. I need to tell the girls.”
“Again? Are you fucking serious? So am I. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”
“There are worse things than divorce.”
“Do you realize that between us we will now have six divorces? You four. Me two. What kind of example are we setting?”
“Resilience. Endurance. It doesn’t matter. What matters to Zein and Layla is that we’re okay. So, put on some makeup, maybe some heels, go and pick them up from the airport, and look happy. Be happy. Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.” Number One was right.
A week later, I flew to Dubai, met Number Two at the Egyptian consulate, and signed the divorce papers. I took the next flight back to London, in time to take Zein and Layla to the West End theater production of Aladdin. I wished I could have put the genie back in the lamp. I didn’t want a second divorce. My problem was with the number, not the action. I could justify the first divorce: I hadn’t known any better. But the second? Either there was something wrong with me, or I just really sucked at matrimony. After two pregnancies, I got my tubes tied. After two divorces, I made the vow: never again. Number One made the same vow. A few years after the revolution, he moved back to America; became a serial monogamist; continued to teach history, play in a rock band, and obsess over his daughters’ academic and social lives; and has now started writing his first novel. After reading this memoir, he told me that I’d written my very own self-help book.
When I started writing, I didn’t want to write the story of Diwan. Hind agreed that it was a terrible idea. She suggested I do it anyway. The writing of this book has been an exorcism of sorts. After twenty years as Mrs. Diwan, I hope I’ve managed to get divorced, which, as I learned, is not the same thing as failing.
* * *
If Zamalek is o
n an island in the middle of a river surrounded by a desert, England is also on an island, one with shit weather. On this island, I feel like neither an immigrant nor part of a diaspora. When I was sixteen, I read Camus’s The Outsider. I saw myself in the title. Today, the knowledge that I don’t belong anywhere liberates me. The books on Diwan’s shelves stayed in place and moved, were bought and left behind. I see myself in them.
London became my home primarily because Hind had moved here. After fifteen years in Diwan’s kitchen, with too many cooks and three head chefs, she came here to go to culinary school. When she graduated from Leiths School of Food and Wine, then Le Cordon Bleu, friends asked her if she wanted to be a chef. She’d demurely reply that she was a cook. I thought of Fatma and Abla Nazeera, and I chided her for making herself smaller than she is.
Hind has moved on from Diwan. When she visits Cairo, she spends a lot of time in her garden. In an unconscious nod to Voltaire, and under the experienced eye of Abbas, her driver of the last twenty years, Hind started planting herbs, then vegetables. Last Christmas in Cairo, she presented me with one fruit of her labors: a watermelon the size of an orange. I suggested she fail better. She has. “We must go and work in the garden,” Candide reminds us. The value of hard work instilled in us by our father makes this life, with its disappointments, bearable.
* * *
My relationship with Diwan is more fluid than Hind’s. I cherish Diwan without attachment, as I do Number One. Like motherhood, Diwan made me and then broke me. More important, Hind, Nihal, and I have maintained a relationship that exists outside of Diwan, regardless of Diwan. Nihal has read drafts of this book. For once, she had something in common with Minou. I sought their blessing. Nihal was Nihal: “I trust you. If that is how you saw it and felt it, then that is how you must write it.” And Minou was Minou: “Just because you are some fucking fascist bitch doesn’t mean I am. In life, people tell you what you can and can’t say. I stick to art.” I don’t own this story. I only own my point of view.
* * *
Whenever I return to Cairo, I shop at Diwan. When Ahmed finds me on any of the shop floors, he feels compelled to try out his upselling techniques. I curb my instinct to adjust displays or rearrange books in alphabetical order; I do not wish to trespass. I don’t shop for books at my old haunts. Hag Mustafa and Hag Madbouli both passed away. Their sons have continued in their footsteps, taking over the family businesses. Even the Mogamma’, Cairo’s memory palace, closed down, its many departments redistributed to different administrations throughout the city and to a new capital being built on the outskirts of Cairo. Rumor has it that it will be repurposed into a luxury hotel. Bookstores opened and closed. Chains were built and dismantled. Diwan still stands. On March 8, 2022, the Zamalek store turns twenty.
Sometimes I wonder if loss is contagious. After my father’s death, I talked to him. Twenty years on, I still talk to him. The world he tried to prepare us for delivered the ugliness he had anticipated, as well as the beauty he had forgotten. Immediately after his death, we felt a hollowness in our lives. We looked for ways to fill it. Diwan filled it. Diwan’s shelves continued to supply his lessons, and other lessons in love, life, and dreams.
Every year, my mother, Hind, and I visit his grave at the foot of the Mokattam hills, and we scatter tuberose and red roses on the ground above where we had laid him to rest. Going, I collected the stories I wanted to share: I have four bookstores, I have seven bookstores, they’re now ten, back to seven. You have two granddaughters, I think I failed at marriage, but I succeeded at divorce. Twice. My mother takes out her rosary and prays for his soul. Hind explains to Ramzi and Murad where we are and what it symbolizes. I tell Zein and Layla to share their funny stories; their grandfather loved hearing tales of outspoken girls giving to this world as good as they got.
* * *
Diwan was nine years old in 2011, when Cairo erupted. She was eleven in 2013, when Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, was removed from power. She was fifteen years old when Nihal returned and revitalized her, with the help of two new business partners. My mother was right. Egypt is blessed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There is so much to be grateful for; and so many to be grateful to …
Caroline Dawnay, super-agent, at United Agents for her appetite for risk and her resilience.
Kat Aitken at United Agents for being this book’s most vocal advocate.
Georgina Le Grice, Lucy Joyce, Alex Stephens, and the fantastic team of foreign-rights agents who made so many translations of Shelf Life possible.
Mitzi Angel at Farrar, Straus and Giroux for seeing a narrative in the midst of anecdotes and recollections, and for believing in this book and its storyteller.
Molly Walls for editing the fuck out of Shelf Life and for teaching me how to write, and more important how to cut. I will miss our exchanges in the margins of so many drafts. FM/AM.
To everyone else at FSG, especially Hannah Goodwin, Na Kim, Lauren Roberts, Songhee Kim, and Peter Richardson.
To all the women who were impossible and yet made so much possible: the mentors, the difficult women I fought with, and the friends. You know who you are.
Samer El-Karanshawy and Ragia Omran for answering endless questions about language, laws, political movements, and history.
Amir al-Nagui, Shahira Fathy, Minou Hammam, Nehaya Nashed, and Nihal Schawky for remembering so much of what I had forgotten.
Shahira Diab and Samir Tawfik for their continuous encouragement and for listening to my many rants.
My mother, Faiza, for her quiet wisdom and for always suggesting I soldier on.
My sister, Hind, for being my harshest critic and my savior.
My nephews: Ramzi, for being the grammar police of our family, and Murad, for never giving me the chance to take myself seriously.
My daughters, Zein and Layla, for graciously accepting that my work took time away from them.
Egypt, my first love; and Diwan, my last love. Thank you for breaking me and remaking me.
To all those who made Diwan—her customers and her staff—thank you for everything.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nadia Wassef is one of the owners of Diwan, Egypt’s first modern bookstore, which she cofounded in 2002. She holds three master’s degrees: an MA in creative writing from Birkbeck, University of London, an MA in social anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and an MA in English and comparative literature from the American University in Cairo. Before cofounding Diwan, she worked in research and advocacy for the Female Genital Mutilation Task Force and the Women and Memory Forum. She was featured on the Forbes Middle East list of the two hundred most powerful Arab women in the Middle East in 2014, 2015, and 2016, and her work has been covered in Time, Monocle, and Business Monthly, among other publications. She lives in London with her two daughters. You can sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Author’s Note
PROLOGUE
1. THE CAFÉ
2. EGYPT ESSENTIALS
3. COOKERY
4. BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
5. PREGNANCY AND PARENTING
6. THE CLASSICS
7. ART AND DESIGN
8. SELF-HELP
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
120 Broadway, New York 10271
Copyright © 2021 by
Nadia Wassef
All rights reserved
First edition, 2021
Chapter-opening illustration by Drawlab19/shutterstock.com.
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-374-60019-8
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
www.fsgbooks.com
www.twitter.com/fsgbooks • www.facebook.com/fsgbooks