Out of Egypt

by André Aciman

  The chauffeur picked up the suitcase and proceeded down the winding service stairway. Vili followed him, but he had not taken two steps before he suddenly collapsed against the banister. My grandmother exclaimed “Santa Madonna!” A second later, seated on one of the grimy metal treads of the stairway, Vili exploded in a loud sob.

  “I’ll never see Mother again,” he began weeping, swaying like a drunkard, his face resting in both hands. “How can I go without saying goodbye, how can I do that to her, how?” I noticed that his lip was bleeding. “Blood!” I shouted. “It’s nothing,” he said, brushing the blood away with his palm as he resumed crying. The chauffeur had left the suitcase on the floor below and had come back upstairs to help him. “No, leave me here a second.” My grandmother asked me to fetch a glass of whiskey. “Ask Elsa, she’ll understand.” I asked Hisham instead, who immediately poured a glass for me. I walked back along the corridor with the huge glass. No one asked me anything. When I made it into the pantry, I stopped. There was no one. I hid behind a pillar and spat into the glass. Then I stirred the spit with my finger.

  “What a dog’s life,” Vili said after drinking the contents. “All these years, and now this.”

  “Adiós,” he said.

  His elder sister and I waved at him until the shape of his gray hat and of his hand disappeared all the way downstairs through the half-lit concentric turns of the winding banister.

  “And now we must tell no one,” warned my grandmother.

  We shut the door of the kitchen behind us, walked through the pantry, shut the pantry door, and suddenly we were back among the guests. “Where were you?” asked my father. “Don’t ask,” gestured my grandmother. Then, seeing he was beginning to look perplexed, she said, “Vili left.” “So soon?” he asked. “He left for good. Understand?”

  The only one who did not know the truth for the next two days was my great-grandmother. She had been told a lie so the festivities would not be disrupted.

  “He’s in Cairo,” they said in the end. “The king wanted to see him.” No one had ever told the old lady that the king had been deposed a few years earlier.

  Still, she knew something was amiss.

  “He isn’t dead, is he?”

  “Dead? Who, Vili? He’s as indestructible as Bismarck. Not like the other one.”

  The “other one” was my grandfather.

  “No, the other wanted to die,” added Dr. Alcabès, our relative and family homeopath. “I told him we could save him,” he added as we were sitting at the third and last luncheon of the centennial. “But when he heard what the cure involved, he wanted no part of it. ‘Cover me that I may die,’ he said, quoting a Turkish proverb. So I told him, ‘Albert, this can lead to only one thing!’ Do you know what he said? ‘Well, that’s got to be better than letting you open me up, scrape me clean of my favorite organs, and leave me as hollow as a bell pepper. No thanks.’”

  “He was a poor soul,” said my grandfather to my mother as we made our way through a narrow passage in between the graves on Yom Kippur a few weeks later. We had just been to lay flowers on his mother’s grave and were now headed toward my grandfather’s. The Saint had not come with us, perhaps because she feared to run into the Princess with whom she was still quite angry.

  I knew the way to my grandfather’s tomb from previous visits to the cemetery with my father and sauntered ahead, avoiding the low slabs. When we arrived, I saw my father waiting for us at his father’s tomb.

  He was all alone. The Princess had not come either.

  “The poor man,” said my grandfather after reflecting a moment. “We never got along, though God knows I never nursed any ill will toward him. But—” he said, meaning all that was water under the bridge.

  “Can I recite a few words?” he asked his son-in-law, careful not to seem at all pushy when it came to religious matters.

  “Yes,” said my father, with a look of forbearing irony that almost said “if you really must.”

  My grandfather spoke the words softly, slowly, almost meekly, with diffidence and an air of mild apology one never expects from the faithful. He reminded me of my mother, who despite her anger, her fierceness, her blustering cry when she lost her patience, would always remain meek, uncertain, and kind.

  When he was done, he gave his daughter a look and she immediately spoke two or three words of Hebrew, after which she said “Amen.”

  “Voilà, Monsieur Albert,” said my grandfather, staring at the stone. Then, with the timidity of a man who had never felt at ease with his son-in-law, he touched my father on the shoulder once, a gesture of hindered sympathy that he did not wish to prolong for fear of overstepping his bounds.

  “I feel for you,” he said. “None of us is going to stay much longer in Egypt, and, frankly, it hurts when I think we’ll have to leave our loved ones behind, me my mother, and you your father.

  “They would have been happier to lie where they were born, with their loved ones. Your father had once asked me, ‘What did I come to Egypt for if everyone will be leaving soon, leaving me stranded all by myself, twiddling my thumbs in my grave, the last Jew on this parched, half-baked strip of dust teeming with dirty feet?’ He hated Egypt and he’s buried in Egypt. ‘What could be worse than being buried in a cemetery where you know nobody, Monsieur Jacques?’ he would ask.

  “And I tell you what. Worse than dying is the thought that no one will ever come to your grave, that no one will come wash the letters of your name. Everyone remembers for a few months, a few years, on anniversaries, and then, a generation later, they forget you. And the earth might as well make dust of you, for you’re as good as unborn—you never were born—even if you live to be a hundred.”

  My father did not reply, though the allusion to the centennial did not escape him.

  On our way out of the cemetery, the four of us greeted other Jewish families who had come to pray for their dead. My grandfather was going to synagogue and had asked whether we would join him for the service.

  “Not today,” said my father.

  “I’ll come,” said my mother.

  This pleased her father who, otherwise, would have had to go alone.

  It was a typical Alexandrian autumn weekday morning. One could even have gone to the beach. My father said we would take a walk in the city; it was still too early to sit anywhere for a cup of coffee.

  And then it must have hit him like an inspiration. “Come,” he said, and we walked faster along the Boulevard and after a few turns finally ended up on Rue Chérif, where we stopped at an antiques dealer. My father looked inside, hesitated, then opened the large glass door. We heard the sound of chimes as we walked into a store filled with objects that reminded me of my great-grandmother’s home. Two saleswomen were busily laying out velvet pads bearing coins in the shop window.

  “May I help you?” asked one of them.

  My father hesitated, then said, “Well, not really.”

  The woman, who could not have been older than thirty, seemed baffled. My father was nervous.

  “Frankly,” he started, looking out the window, “I am here because you knew my father and I know he used to speak to you about my son, so I thought maybe you might want to see my son.”

  “I knew your father? I don’t think so,” she said with an almost haughty ring in her voice as she arched her eyebrows. And then, before I quite knew what had happened, I saw her face redden, and a misty dampness swell in her eyes.

  “Of course,” she said, finally laying down the black velvet pad she had been holding all the while since seeing us walk into the store. “Of course,” she repeated, nearly slumping on an antique chair, the backs of both hands flat against her thighs. “So this is the small boy. Let me see,” she said, kneeling down to my level. “But he looks just like him.” And turning to my father, “How nice to meet you too,” she said. “You’ve no idea how happy this visit makes me.”

  “I thought perhaps it might. He would often say you wished to meet his grandson, so this
morning, seeing we were free, I thought why not, and, well, here he is.”

  “What a coincidence, though. I was speaking about your father only yesterday,” she continued as baffled as ever, touching my hand with her finger. “Wait, I must tell my brother Diego. Diego,” she called out, “come and see who’s here.”

  A man a touch younger than his sister appeared from a back room.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “Take a good look before saying yes like that,” urged his sister.

  The man screwed his eyes on both of us.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”

  “But this is the grandson.”

  “What grandson?” he exclaimed as though losing his temper.

  “You sent him the ivory balls and you don’t recognize him.”

  “Oh, my God!” he exclaimed, bringing a palm to his mouth. “He mentioned the boy several times, but who would have thought—”

  He asked me whether I played billiards. I shook my head. He asked if I still had the balls he had given my grandfather for me. Yes, they were in my room, I said. What color were they? I told him.

  “What a man, your father! I’m sure you know.” Then, upon silent reflection, he added, “No, I suppose you can’t know. One never knows when it’s one’s father,” he said. Then, as though spurred by a sudden whim, he asked, “May we give him something?”

  My father, still unable to believe there were people who venerated his father without being related to him, was growing more strained and uncomfortable, as though he suspected the brother and sister of bad faith, or simply of having been so easily duped by his father into loving him so much that they could only have been dolts.

  “I’d prefer not,” he said.

  “Oh, a little something hurts no one.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “But, monsieur,” said Diego, “I am making this present not only to your son but to your father. Please allow me.”

  He pulled out an old brown drawer bearing a lion’s mane on each knob and opened a small jeweler’s box in which lay a gold tie clip studded with a rounded turquoise.

  “It’s for you,” said the sister.

  She handed me the small box.

  “May I kiss him?”

  “Of course,” replied my father.

  “He was a very special friend, you know.”

  My father did not reply. He began to show an interest in an old clock. But the young lady interrupted his inquiry, saying he should not feel obliged to purchase anything simply because we had received a gift.

  “But the next time you happen to be here and have a free moment, please bring the boy.”

  Brother and sister saw us to the door and we exchanged goodbyes. On our way to the coffeehouse on the Corniche, I clutched the little box tight, refusing to hold my father’s hand when we crossed the street for fear he might ask me to let him take it. Which is exactly what he did.

  “Here, I’ll keep it in my pocket for you,” said my father, gently taking it from my hand. “It might be better not to tell anyone about it.”

  Then, trying to sound casual, he looked up at the clear sky, thought a moment, and, looking straight ahead, said, “I hope they’ll give us the same table.”

  4

  Taffi Al-Nur!

  My mother noticed something strange about the city as soon as we stepped out of the wool shop that evening. An unusual darkness hung over the crowded bus terminal in the main square; people fretted about the streets, cluttering the sidewalks as they waited for buses that arrived more overloaded than usual, tilted under the weight of passengers who were hanging onto doorways, some holding on to fellow passengers. Suddenly, the lights of Hannaux, the city’s largest department store, went out, followed immediately by those of the Hannaux Annex to the right. The crowd gave a start as someone remarked that even Hannaux had put out its lights. Then St. Katherine’s lights went out.

  Everything was dark now, and we guided our footsteps by the unsteady, sporadic illumination of car headlights. Other people seemed to be doing the same. Suddenly, men wearing galabiyas came rushing, almost bumping into us. They were chanting slogans.

  My mother held my hand and began to hurry toward Rue Chérif, walking faster and faster along the sidewalk until we caught sight of a grocery store on an adjoining street. Its Greek owner was standing outside the doorway holding a long metal crank in both hands, as though about to fend off looters with his improvised weapon. When I looked through the open door, I saw that the shop was packed with customers, most, like us, having wandered in seeking shelter.

  From outside, the Greek lowered the rolling shutter till it reached knee level. Then, bending under the shutter, he crept back into his store, rested the long crank against the doorjamb, tugged at his apron, smoothed its crinkles and, rubbing his hands together as though all this were just another rainstorm that might as well be weathered in good cheer, proceeded to take the next order.

  The grocer had no intention of closing early on this autumn evening. Shoppers normally filled the streets after work, when the sidewalks throbbed with a chaos of lights spilling out of busy coffee shops and stores, especially now that the days were shorter and shops stayed open long after it got dark. Through the store windows you could watch women trying on gloves, and salesgirls forever folding and stacking sweaters in rainbow assortments of colors. I felt the nap of my sweater rub against my chin, there was something warm, wholesome, and kind in this soft, autumnal smell of new wool that presaged long, tearoom evenings, holiday shopping, and Christmas presents. I let the wool rub my chin again, thinking of tarts and hot chocolate at Délices, Alexandria’s largest pastry shop, where Aunt Flora was to meet us that evening, and my father a while later, and where we would huddle together under the muted orange spill of evening lights at our usual table overlooking the old harbor while waiters delivered family orders on very large platters.

  We had gone to buy my first winter uniform. That afternoon, my mother had come to pick me up at school. She had waited in a taxicab parked on Rue des Pharaons, outside the school grounds, and as soon as she saw me had asked the cabdriver to honk a few times to draw my attention. I got in the cab as everyone else was lining up for the school bus. Mother let me sit on the jump seat in front of her. She kissed me from behind once the driver had closed the door.

  We ordered the uniform in less than an hour. Most everyone at school purchased their uniforms from the school concession. Mother wanted to have mine made by her mother’s tailor. The Princess suggested a compromise. Hannaux, apparently, sold school uniforms, less ostentatious than tailored clothes, but not those lopsided things others wore. We also had to buy a winter coat. I wanted the kind everyone else in class had, a coarsely woven cavalry twill trench coat whose belt came with a large leather buckle with two prongs and two rows of holes. My mother examined some of the coats and decided our tailor made better winter coats. We were not poor, she said.

  Then, as the sun was setting, we had gone to an Armenian store to buy hanks of wool for sweaters that Aziza would knit for us in the weeks to come. I was told to choose my own colors. I hesitated awhile. Then I chose salmon. My mother said the color was not right for me, she wanted me to choose navy. But the owner of the store congratulated me on my choice of color. “Like father, like son,” he said to my mother. “My husband never wears salmon,” she protested. “That may be, madame, but it’s his factory that dyed this wool, and look,” he said, taking another spool from one of the lower bins, “no one but your husband can get these colors out of wool, no one,” he said as though my father were a Michelangelo, able to free the most resplendent hues from an ordinary Egyptian fleece. Pleased by the praise, my mother decided I should have a salmon-colored sweater as well. Compliments were paid back and forth. Then we said goodbye, left the store, and had barely taken a few steps toward Place Mohammed Ali when suddenly the lights went out.

  Ten minutes later we were packed inside the crowded Greek grocery store. At some point, the ow
ner was forced to turn off all the lights in his shop; an Egyptian running the length of the side alley, banged on the rolling shutter, screaming “Taffi al-nur—put out your lights—taffi al-nur!” Everyone had to obey. “I don’t want trouble,” said the Greek as he implored his customers to forgive him.

  In the dark, I held my mother’s hand. She did not know about the wail that had cut through the evening clamor of the city and hovered overhead, a loud persistent blare that had come from around the Attarin district, one of the poorer neighborhoods of the city, and which someone said was a siren.

  “But what’s all this,” complained a woman in Italian, “one can’t see a thing in the dark.”

  “Wait,” said the grocer. We heard the rattle of the shutters and the sound of the metal lip finally striking the ground. Seconds later, someone turned on a weak light in the rear of the shop.

  “E bravo!” shouted one of the customers. Everyone else joined in the clapping, and business resumed as usual.

  “Soon it’ll be over and we’ll all go home,” said someone.

  “At any rate, how long do you think it could possibly last with them,” said someone else in French, mocking the Egyptian forces.

  “A day or two at the most?” guessed another.

  “If that,” said a fourth voice. “The British will clean this whole mess up for us, give the Egyptians the well-deserved hiding they’ve been begging for ever since nationalizing the Suez Canal. And in a matter of weeks things will be back to what they always were.”

  “Inshallah,” said a European in Arabic—“If it please God.”

  We made our way to the cashier, where my mother asked if we could use the telephone. The cashier said others were waiting in line for it. “We’ll wait too,” she replied. She gestured to the man in line ahead of us—could she possibly call first, seeing as she had a child with her and so many packages. The man shrugged his shoulders, saying the situation was urgent for everyone, not just her. “Imbecile!” muttered my mother under her breath.