Out of Egypt

by André Aciman

  “Madame Marie—” By now my father had lost his patience altogether, explaining that my failure to study Arabic could easily be construed as a seditious act against the present regime. Everyone had to study Arabic.

  “But none of the other European boys studies Arabic,” I interjected.

  “Well, those who are leaving may not have to worry about Arabic. But since we’re not planning to leave,” he continued, “let us at least pretend that Arabic is important to us. Now let me see the latest assignment.”

  I opened my briefcase and produced an Arabic book whose pages had not even been cut yet. I told him I had to learn a poem by heart.

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  I tried finding the page in question but because the pages had not been separated, I wasn’t able. “It’s on page 42,” I finally remembered.

  “The class is on page 42 already and you’ve not done any homework yet?” he asked as he helped me separate the pages with a penknife.

  The poem was accompanied by an illustration of a young Egyptian soldier waving a scimitar at three old men clothed in three tattered flags. The first was wearing the Union Jack, the second the bleu-blanc-rouge, and the third, a bald, short man with wiry sideburns, a large hooked nose, and a pointed beard, was shabbily draped in the Star of David.

  I looked at the twenty-line poem and found myself sweating as I stared at words that were literally swimming on the page.

  “My eyes are burning,” I said.

  Madame Marie inched her way closer to me and looked at the poem over my shoulder. It was her way of avoiding my father’s glare.

  “I can’t read,” I said.

  “You can’t read?” he started. “Let me understand. You not only don’t know the poem but you aren’t even able to read it?”

  I nodded.

  “So how do you plan to learn it by heart if you can’t even read it?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered, continuing to look down at my book only to realize that I had begun to tremble. I wanted to conceal the shaking by staring more intently at the picture, but my breathing was too shallow, and my chin shook as though it were held by loose wires. I caught myself slurring a few words. I knew there was no turning back, I was almost certainly going to cry.

  “What’s the matter now?”

  “Nothing,” I sobbed.

  My father saw the picture.

  “I don’t care how you do it,” he said, “but by tomorrow morning you’ll have to know this poem by heart.”

  “How is he going to learn it if neither you nor I can even read Arabic?” asked Madame Marie.

  “We’ll get Abdou to help him.”

  My father yelled out Abdou’s name. Seconds later, a knock was heard on the living room door. Abdou was carrying a saucer on which wobbled a glass of water. The water was for me; he had heard me crying.

  “I want you to help him learn a poem by heart.”

  “But I can’t read.”

  “Does anyone know how to read Arabic here?”

  “There is my son Ahmed,” said Abdou. “Do you want me to call him?”

  “Call him, call him,” yelled my father. Then, turning to me, he added: “Go have dinner now, and we’ll see what happens once Ahmed arrives.”

  “All the same, children should not be taught such ugly things,” whispered Madame Marie to my father, referring to the picture.

  “Ugly or not ugly, he’ll do what everyone else does.”

  Half an hour later, visitors arrived. Our downstairs neighbor, Madame Nicole, who was Belgian, came with her Egyptian Coptic husband. Our other neighbor, Sarina Salama, who was Jewish, showed up with her daughter Mimi, and their friend Monsieur Pharès, the painter. Drinks were offered. Mohammed was sent out to buy salted peanuts. Everyone had gathered to decide which film to see that evening. The choice was between Sayonara and Gunfight at the OK Corral. My mother, Madame Salama, and Mimi refused to see a western. Sayonara sounded wonderful, but gunfights and gunshots—out of the question! My mother asked whether Abdel Hamid, Madame Salama’s millionaire Egyptian lover, would want to join. “He’ll come, but only after the theater lights are out. I have to buy him a ticket—me buy him a ticket!—and leave it at the ticket booth in the name of Monsieur César.” “But isn’t Marlon Brando Jewish?” interrupted Mimi, referring to the government’s policy of not showing films with Jewish actors

  —which is why Cleopatra never opened in Egypt. Edward G. Robinson’s films were banned as well, as was anything starring Paul Newman, thought to be Jewish. Ben Hur, The Ten Commandments , and Exodus also were never shown in Alexandria; they portrayed Jewish themes. Kirk Douglas, however, was so prototypically American that it would never have occurred to the censor, nor to anyone else in Egypt, including us, that his real name was Issur Daniilovich. Monsieur Pharès snickered at Mimi’s comment, adding that it was just like Jews to think all famous people were secretly their brothers.

  My mother leaned over to my father and softly asked whether they could take me to the movies with them. “Who’s ever heard of a boy his age going to the movies in the middle of a school week?” came his raised voice.

  We heard a gentle tap on the door. It was Abdou. “My son is here,” he announced. I caught Ahmed’s face peeking in from behind the door.

  “Good,” said my father, standing up and shaking Ahmed’s hand. He ordered Abdou to give his son something to eat, knowing he had been fasting all day. My father put his hand into his pocket and took out a one-pound note, which he gave the young man. Ahmed stepped back and refused the bill, saying he had not come for the money. My father insisted, saying he was very grateful that he had come during Ramadan and that he would be hurt if the young man refused him. Abdou’s son said, “Mush lazem, it’s not necessary,” while my father almost pleaded with him, “Lazem, lazem,” until Ahmed relented.

  Ahmed hardly had time to eat a morsel before he was rushed through the corridor and into my bedroom, where his father indicated a chair next to my desk. The young man removed his jacket, let it drop on my bed, then, changing his mind, picked it up and placed it neatly around the back of his chair. He sat down, bringing the chair closer to my desk, smiled, and blushed uncomfortably, his thin, olive-hued hand shaking as he flipped through the book in search of page 42. Seeing that the rest of the pages in the book had not been separated, without the slightest comment, he stretched back, put his hand deep into his pocket, and took out a small penknife, and with deft, decisive motions of the wrist, proceeded to separate the pages with his blade as he had learned from a local sheikh who had taught him to read and write. After cutting the pages, Ahmed held the book opened flat on my desk and pressed his hand up and down along the binding without hurting the spine, until the book yielded and stayed open on page 42.

  He blushed again, perhaps because our reversed roles made him feel awkward, but also perhaps because he suddenly realized that he would have to teach a Jew a poem vilifying Jews.

  He read the poem once to himself. Then, as my Arabic teacher would do in class, he spoke out the first few words, repeated them, and then waited for me to say them back to him. He did not explain the poem; no one ever explained the poems. They were always about poison, Jews, vengeance, and motherland. But he said the words with a slow, deliberate air about him, never correcting my mistakes save by repeating the words the right way, and always smiling each time I said something, as if I were doing him a special favor merely by mouthing unfathomable words in classical Arabic.

  In the space of an hour I had learned the poem by heart. “Read it to yourself before you go to bed and as soon as you wake up,” he said, as though prescribing medicine, for this was how he had learned almost all the Koran by heart. I told him that I did not know how to read very well. “Do you want me to teach you?” he asked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “It’s very easy,” he added.

  We spent the next hour learning how to spell the words in the poem. Then, before leaving, he made me recite the poem again. “
See how easy it was—and you were so scared,” he said as Madame Marie walked us to the kitchen. I thought I had concealed my fear quite deftly.

  In bed, I began leafing through the book before turning to the poem, staring at illustrations of brawny Arab youths lunging toward the liberation of Palestine with their spiky bayonets, while a thousand jittery Jewish noses took aim at the intrepid victors, who were trampling the flag of Israel. Dead bodies lay strewn upon the sand. Every page with a poem on it was accompanied by a similar drawing, except for the Mother’s Day poem, where the artist had sketched a sort of languid, middle-aged Egyptian mother lavishing her love upon seven children, the eldest of whom brandished the giant flag of Egypt in one hand, and the portrait of President Nasser in the other. He was wearing a cross between a cadet’s uniform and school apparel, with shirt sleeves rolled up to his shoulders.

  Suddenly I was seized with panic, the thought cramping my chest. What if I forgot the poem I had learned that night? I immediately repeated the first few words to myself. No, they were all in place, nothing forgotten.

  Later that night, I was awakened by the light patter of rain on my windowpane. With intense joy and gratitude, I listened to the peaceful springtime showers on the streets of Cleopatra, realizing, from the sound of the rain, that the water was not dribbling down the slats of my shutters and pooling along the windowsill, but tapping directly against the panes themselves. To please me, Abdou had gone against my mother’s orders and left the shutters wide open so that light might stream in at dawn and fill the room and remind me of summer mornings at our beach house at Mandara. I wondered why she was always set against leaving the shutters open, especially when you could see lights from nearby buildings reflected on the ceiling at night.

  I turned on my shortwave radio and listened to a French song.

  Hours later, I heard Mother tiptoe into my bedroom. I judged from the rustle of her clothes that she had rushed to see me while still wearing her coat. They had danced—I knew she liked dancing—and when she bent down to kiss me, I made out the scent of wine on her breath. I was happy for them.

  As soon as I awoke the next morning, I scanned my mind to see if it still bore traces of the poem. To my utter surprise, I found that the poem hadn’t budged.

  When I walked into the dining room, I saw my father eating a soft-boiled egg. He was wearing a bathrobe and had just come out of the shower. Next to him was seated Monsieur Politi, also eating a soft-boiled egg. Abdou was standing behind my father, pouring tea from the teapot, obviously eager to hear his son complimented.

  My father asked about my late-night tutorial. I told him I had learned the poem by heart. He asked me to recite it. I shook my head. Then, turning to Abdou, he asked, “Does Ahmed want to give him private lessons?” Abdou said he could have asked for nothing better, except that his son was soon to be inducted into the army and would not be free for another two years. “Pity. We’ll have to find another tutor.”

  Never would Arabic be as easy as it was that evening with Ahmed.

  During a short recess that day in school, I made fun of Amr, who, like many Arabic-speakers, had never learned to distinguish between b and p in English pronunciation. That morning Miss Gilbertson had tried to teach him the difference. From. her mean and benighted point of view, it must have seemed that Amr was refusing to learn out of spite. She called him up to the front of the class, took out a piece of paper which she tore into very tiny confetti, and put five or six of these pieces into her palm. She then brought her hand close to her mouth and uttered a loud b. Nothing happened. “Now see the difference,” she warned, and produced a p sound, at which the confetti went flying from her palm. “Here, you try it.” She placed little pieces of torn paper in Amr’s palm. “Say buh,” she said. “Buh,” he repeated. Nothing happened. “Now say puh.” Whereupon Amr said, “Buh.” “No, puh,”she insisted. “Buh,” he repeated. “No, you fool, it’s puh, puh, puh.” She began raising her voice, blowing all the confetti out of both their palms. “Buh, buh, buh,” he repeated, trying very hard to please her, and then, seeing she was upset, produced a last, defeated, hopeless—“Buh.”

  By then the class was beside itself, some of us falling from our seats with laughter. Even Miss Gilbertson, who never laughed and who had a malignant stare permanently riveted to her face, was smiling broadly, first giggling at each of Amr’s failed attempts, and finally bursting out laughing herself, which gave the class license to break into an uproar, while Amr stood befuddled and crestfallen until it occurred to him that there was no reason why he shouldn’t laugh with the others, which he did.

  At recess, I ran into Amr and jokingly asked him to “Blease bass de bebber.” He knew I was making fun of him and called me “Kalb al Arab, dog of the Arabs.” This was too offensive, and I lunged at him, both of us tussling on the playing field until the headmistress, Miss Badawi, hurried over and separated us. “You should not be fighting,” she yelled. “But he insulted me,” I argued. “He called me ‘dog of the Arabs.’” She did not give me time to finish my complaint. “But you are the dog of the Arabs,” she replied in Arabic, smiling, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  Stunned, I was almost sure I had misconstrued her words. I was even about to protest again. But I said nothing and went to the bathroom, where Michel Cordahi, a native Frenchspeaker who came from one of Egypt’s wealthiest Christian families, helped run water over my scraped knee. I cleaned myself as best I could and arrived in Arabic class with my legs still red from the fall.

  Before the recitation was to start, Miss Sharif briefly went over the poem and had the class name all of the Arab nations in the world. The poem itself was a long, high-minded, patriotic ode dedicated to the unity of the Arab world. It calumnized almost all the nations of Europe and, in its envoi, stirred all Arab boys and girls to free the last two Arab countries from the yoke of foreign dominion: Algeria and Palestine. France was suitably anathematized, as was England. Finally, by way of perorating her little speech, Miss Sharif inveighed against the Yahud, the Jews, throwing her fist in the air in an imitation salute, and sending the adrenaline rushing through my body each time she mentioned the word. The students responded to Miss Sharif’s battle cries, asking questions and voicing their agreement, which only intensified the vehemence of their outrage. Handwritten posters in colored ink, which the students had brought in, hung along the walls of the classroom, decrying imperialism, Zionism, and the perfidy of the Jews.

  Something ugly and dangerous prevailed in class whenever the Yahud were mentioned. All I could do was stiffen helplessly and wish that some unknown force might come and take me away, that the ceiling might fall on Miss Sharif, that a terrible beast might squirm its way out of the sea and yawn at our classroom door. Without budging from my seat, I would try to make myself scarce, stare into the void, and drift away.

  While Miss Sharif was speaking to the class about Nasser’s vision of a united, Pan-Arab nation, I waited for the inevitable. She had warned I’d be the first to recite the poem that day, and I already knew that at the end of her prefatory remarks she would go to her desk, search for her glasses in her handbag, open her book, and, turning her gaze to the window, as if her thoughts had wandered a bit and were still hovering on VC’s giant, green cricket field, would suddenly call my name. I waited to hear it any moment now. Quietly I tore out a very tiny corner of my notebook and drew a Star of David on it. It might bring me good luck. Not knowing what to do with the star, and not wishing to leave it lying about in my desk or in my pockets—which were always subject to summary inspection before the entire class—I put it in my mouth, moved it around a bit, and then let it stick to my palate, where it rested, untouched by my tongue or by my teeth, as Michel Cordahi had told me he did with the Host.

  Once again I searched through my mind for the words of the first verse. They were still there, all of them, like children who haven’t shifted a limb since being put to bed hours earlier. I contemplated them almost lovingly.

&nb
sp; Then Miss Sharif called my name. A shot of adrenaline coursed through me, along with a cold, numbing spasm.

  I went to the front of the class, cleared my throat, cleared it again. I would try to deliver the poem fast and be done with it. I spoke out the title, recited the first verse, which merely restated the title, and, rather pleased with myself, was already searching hard for the third line, when all of a sudden the poem disappeared.

  I recognized some of the phrases the boys in the front row kept whispering to me, but I was unable to put them together. Besides, knowing that Miss Sharif must also have heard their taunts and whispers, I didn’t know whether to acknowledge them with a passing smile or merely stare into space, pretending I hadn’t heard them.

  “This is an important poem, the most important poem in the book,” she said. “Why didn’t you study it?” I did not know why I hadn’t studied it. “I don’t know what to do with you any longer,” she said, working herself into a temper. “I don’t know, I just don’t know—oh, my sister!” She exploded in a rage, ready to strike me any moment now. “Oh, my sister!” she yelled again, letting fly all the colored chalk with which she had drawn a map of the Arab world. “We shall have to go to see Miss Badawi.”

  It was only on our way to Miss Badawi’s office that it finally dawned on me, on this nippy, sunny morning, that she would almost certainly resort to the stick, maybe even the cane.

  Much, much worse, however, was the fear that my father would come to know of my crime and be furious that evening. Once again he would tell me that in failing to remember the poem I was probably showing government informants that in my parents’ home no one took Arab education very seriously. This was almost sure to ruin my parents.