by Ahdaf Soueif
They say this is the hottest month of the year, but the heat has never bothered me. I lie in my bed with the ceiling fan whirring lazily above my head and when the sheet underneath me gets hot I have the pleasure of stretching out my leg and feeling a new, cool patch under my skin. When the children come — I mean when the boys come, or one of them — we could go to the Red Sea. The days will be hot but the nights will be wonderful. We could even go down to Tawasi for a few days, then drive across from there. I did that once, with their father a long, long time ago. A time so happy that later, in my Spartan years, I came to view it almost with distaste as though its sweetness were excessive.
I did not sleep well and this morning I woke at eleven and wandered out into the living room into a day that felt heavy with indolence. I drew the shutters and sat on the arm of the sofa watching the minuscule flecks of dust suspended in each bar of sunshine that drifted through the wooden slats.
It was early afternoon when I went back to my table and opened my grandmother’s and Anna’s journals once again, and it was as I settled my son’s bronze cat on the corner of the page that the intercom went and Tahiyya’s voice warned me that Am Abu el-Maati was here and could she bring him up?
And there is the familiar figure in his ‘best’ galabiyya of dark blue wool and his grey scarf despite the July heat. The white imma is wound tightly around the close-fitting brown felt cap and the eyes — a legacy from a Turkish seigneur somewhere down the years — are as shocking blue and bright as ever. He stands leaning on his old, thick stick, a little stooped, but still tall and solid. You expect him to open his mouth and utter prophecies. When I shake his hand it is like holding the bark of a tree. Behind him, Tahiyya is bringing the covered baskets out of the lift one by one.
We sit in the living room and Tahiyya goes to make tea, picking her way gracefully through the baskets arranged on the kitchen floor.
‘Cairo is filled with light,’ I say. And he places his hand on his heart:
‘It’s lit up by its people, ya Sett Hanim.’
We sit in silence for a while, our eyes fixed on the floor.
‘A precious step, Am Abu el-Maati,’ I say.
‘May He make your standing ever more precious, ya Sett Hanim,’ he says.
Am Abu el-Maati is getting old. With every passing year the network of wrinkles on the brown face becomes a more detailed etching of the times he has lived through. I don’t know his age, of course, but he’s been around for ever. His father was my father’s chief man on the farm, and when my mother and I moved to Cairo Am Abu el-Maati came up to see us four times a year. He brought news, the accounts and our share of the produce: baskets of chicken, eggs, butter and grapes, mangoes, dates, whatever fruit was in season. And always loaves of freshly baked peasant bread. And when, from time to time, we went to Minya, there he would be at the train station, waiting with the parasol to shade us into the small carriage and drive us to Tawasi.
A month after I came back for good he was on my doorstep, and around him the baskets, looking just as they had twenty years before: each one crammed with food and covered with a large white napkin, its striped blue edges wedged in tight at the sides. When I had asked how he’d known I was back, he had smiled and said, ‘It’s a small world, ya Sett Hanim.’
Tahiyya brings in the tea and I make her sit with us. Our village is not her village, but it’s a village after all and getting news from it makes her happy.
‘What news, Am Abu el-Maati?’ I ask.
‘All good, praise be to God.’
‘And the family, how are they? All well, please God?’
Am Abu el-Maati has two daughters and three sons. He had four but one was killed in the war in ‘67. One of his sons fanned in Iraq but came back after the Gulf War with nothing except his life — and that was precious enough. Another is working in Bahrain, and the oldest is ‘in the sea’ with a merchant ship. The widow, wives and the youngest of the children all live in our village. His two daughters were married in Minya city itself but one has been widowed and come back to Tawasi. She works in the clinic.
‘Praise be to God,’ he says. Bit by bit I get the news: the births, the deaths, the arrivals, the departures, the feuds, the weddings.
After he finishes his tea and puts his glass down he says, ‘Won’t you come to us for a while, ya Sett Hanim?’
‘I’d like to,’ I begin and then I say, ‘Is there something?’
‘Not at all,’ he says. We pause.
‘It’s just there are a few little things — if you came it would be good,’ he says.
‘What sort of things?’ I ask.
‘Well …’ He draws out his handkerchief, coughs into it gently, folds it and puts it away. ‘There are a few problems.’
‘What sort of problems?’
‘The school,’ he says, ‘they’ve closed it.’
Mustafa Bey al-Ghamrawi, my great-grandfather, was a firm believer in education. In 1906 he had been the first to put up money for the new National University, and, together with his nephew Sharif Basha al-Baroudi, he had set up a small school in a village on the family land and put the revenue of ten faddans in trust for it. His son, my grandfather Husni al-Ghamrawi, had added an adult class to teach the fallaheen to read and write. My father, Ahmad al-Ghamrawi, had in turn added a small, basic clinic, staffed by a nurse and a midwife -and now by Am Abu el-Maati’s daughter. When Abd el-Nasser built a primary school for the village, our school held literacy classes for the adults. And in ‘79 extra classes were added for the children to try to make up for the plummeting level of the education they were getting.
‘Closed it? Who closed it?’ I ask.
The school has been running for ninety years, although it’s had rough patches. In ‘63, with Nasser’s land-reform laws, my father, although saddened by the loss of most of his land, saw a historical inevitability in it. My mother raged: ‘What more should we lose? Will we be thrown out of this country as well?’ ‘It’s different,’ he said, ‘it’s going to the fallaheen who’ve lived on it all their lives — not to strangers. And besides,’ he added, ‘what’s left will be enough for our children and grandchildren. What more do we need?’ I was a child and did not really understand what was happening. But I understood two things: that we were always to be responsible for keeping the school and clinic going, and that the land that remained to us was held in partnership with the fallaheen who worked it. There was to be no talk of rent. We had a share of the crop that came out of each holding, and we paid our share of the money needed to buy fertilisers or update the watering machines.
‘The government,’ Am Abu el-Maati says.
‘But why? Why should we have problems with the government?’
We are not an official school, just two supplementary classes to help the children with their work and one class for literacy used by the women. All the classes are held in the evening, after the day’s work is done. And the teachers are volunteers, really, who get paid a small sum for their work.
‘There are problems everywhere now, ya Sett Hanim, problems between the people, and between the people and the government. It’s been in the papers: battles with weapons, burning down the sugar-cane fields —’
‘The sugar cane was burned because the terrorists hid in it.’
‘They call them terrorists …’
‘Well, what are they then?’
‘They’re our children, ya Sett Hanim. Youth ground down and easy to lead astray.’
‘Ya Am Abu el-Maati, your daughter was widowed by them —’
‘Lives are in the hand of God. It was a battle, ya Sett Hanim, who knows who killed who?’
‘In any case. What’s this to do with the school?’
‘The teachers, the volunteers, they said they were terrorists and ruining the children’s minds.’
‘And the women’s class?’
‘That too.’
‘And the clinic?’
‘Everything.’
‘La hawl illah.’
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I stand up. I’m not sure what to do so I stand up. I walk over to the balcony and make a business of opening the french windows to let in the afternoon air. It has been some time since anyone presented me with a real-life problem. I walk back and sit down.
‘What do you think, Am Abu el-Maati? Were they teaching the children wrong things?’
He spreads out his hands. ‘They teach them nothing that they’re not taught in the government schools in town. You know, ya Sett Hanim, these are just helping classes. The children go after sunset, they do their homework there, and they study.’
‘The children can’t study at home,’ Tahiyya puts in. ‘There’s noise and there’s the little ones —’
‘It’s just tightening up on people. The government’s hand is heavy. And now, of course, there will be more problems.’
‘What problems?’ I ask.
‘Because of the new laws.’
‘The land laws?’
‘Naturally.’
A new set of laws is to come into force in September. It ends the rent freeze imposed on lands in the Sixties and allows landowners to demand rent according to the real value of the land.
‘But what’s it to do with us? The people all know I won’t move anyone from the land. And rent won’t be raised, because we don’t take rent. Everything will stay the same.’
‘May he put good in your path, pray God,’ Tahiyya says.
‘They say the teachers have been inciting the children. Telling them the law is evil and the land belongs to those who work it. And talk runs; it doesn’t stay in our district. And you know the countryside is boiling —’
‘Are they Islamists or communists, these teachers?’
‘They speak of justice —’
‘But people have known about these laws for a while. The government announced them two years ago. They wait till the last minute —’
‘Ya Sett Hanim, the fallah tills his land and the government talks in Cairo. If he takes account of every word the government says, he’ll go mad. Most of it is talk in the air, it comes to nothing. And even if he believes that there will be a law like this — what will he do? What can he do?’
‘Will he put his children on his shoulder and leave the land?’ Tahiyya asks. ‘Where will he go? The land isn’t enough for the fallaheen as it is. See how each one is flung out somewhere far: one in Cairo, one in Kuwait, one in Libya —’
‘That’s why the government tells people to practise family planning,’ I say, giving her a look.
‘Yakhti ya Daktora —’ she tosses her head — ‘the ones who plan have as much trouble as the ones who don’t. The world doesn’t leave anyone alone.’
‘Am Abu el-Maati,’ I say, ‘aside from the school, are there any problems in our village. About the land laws?’
‘No, ya Sett Hanim. Everyone knows you are a gracious lady and you preserve the memory of your grandfathers. But it would be good if you came to us for a while.’
‘But what can I do about the school?’
‘Come and see. Talk to people. Talk with the teachers and judge for yourself. And when you come back you can talk to the government.’
‘Me, ya Am Abu el-Maati, I talk to the government?’
‘And why not? Why shouldn’t you talk to them? You’re here in Cairo and the whole world knows who your father was — a thousand mercies and light upon him. Your father was a Basha — even though they abolished titles, the whole world knew he was a Basha and a man of understanding.’
‘Ya Am Abu el-Maati, I don’t know anyone in the government.’ I see myself going to look for ‘the government’. I wouldn’t know where to begin. There is a big ministry compound in Shari’ el-Sheikh Rihan. I see myself going there and I am pulled up short by the memory of Mansur. Mansur was my friend and he was the car-park attendant at Shari el-Sheikh Rihan between the American University and the ministries. For years I went to the American University to attend concerts, to see films, to use the library, to meet friends. As I crossed the intersection with Shari el-Qasr el-’Ayni, I’d be scanning the street ahead and he would emerge, short and stocky, stockier as the years went by. There he would be, his arm uplifted, his coloured woven cap on his head. ‘Leave it just. Leave it,’ he would say. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘How are you, ya Mansur?’
‘How are you, ya Sett Hanim?’ The keys would change hands. And later, when I came out, there he would be again, with my keys and a few courtly words, pointing out where he had parked the car. Mansur was famous. He acquired two assistants; but he was always the one who had the keys. He was the one who was always there, until one day the bomb the Jama’at meant for el-Alfi, the minister of the Interior they hated, had found Mansur instead. And now all that was left of him was a pale brown stain on the wall of the university. A stain that would not scrub off.
‘I don’t know anyone in the government,’ I say again.
‘If you can’t speak to the government,’ Am Abu el-Maati asks, ‘who can? Me?’
‘You’d be better at it than I would be —’
‘Done,’ he says. ‘My hand in yours. We’ll go to them together.’ His face breaks into a wide, clear smile and I notice the gaps between the big teeth.
‘God give you light,’ Tahiyya cries. ‘By the Prophet, I’ll make Madani go with you. To support you.’
If she lifted her hand to her mouth and trilled out a zaghruda, this would be a scene from el-Ard.
When Am Abu el-Maati had gone, Tahiyya and I sat on the floor among the baskets distributing the food: some for her family, some for me, some for the men wielding the heavy irons in the steam of the ironing shop across the road, some for the policemen — boys, really — who stand all night leaning on their rifles in the shadow of the bank on the corner —
‘Enough, enough, are you going to give it all away?’ she protests.
‘I wouldn’t finish this in a year, ya Tahiyya,’ I say. Time was when I cooked for four and often more. Time was when I chafed and grew fretful and said, ‘I can’t bear this business of having to think of supper every night.’ Time was when I dreamed of all the things I could do, all the lives I could lead if I wasn’t tied down, beset, beleaguered. And time was — I’m glad to say — when the clasp of small arms around my neck and the feel of a soft face against my own stilled the restlessness and made me grateful and glad for the moment.
‘Tomorrow the young Beys will come to visit and fill the house for you again,’ Tahiyya says, reading my thoughts.
‘Inshallah,’ I say.
‘You know you should marry them off here,’ she says. ‘You rejoice in them and they stay near you.’
‘Nobody marries anybody off any more,’ I say.
‘Truly,’ she says. ‘Each one acts with his own head.’
‘Why don’t you come with me to Minya?’ I say when we’ve finished. ‘Smell the air of the countryside?’
‘And the kids, who do I leave them to?’
‘Bring them.’
‘And we leave Madani alone?’
‘Can’t he come too?’
‘And the building? We leave it without a doorman? They’d fire him.’
‘In any case, see. You’re very welcome, all of you.’
‘May you live long, ya Daktora. Another time.’
Isabel, I thought. She’s going away for August. But if I go soon — as I should — she might like to come with me. See the countryside. See what’s left of the old house. I imagine opening up the darkened rooms, washing down the pear tree in the near corner of the garden, sleeping in my mother’s old bed. I imagine treading the old, familiar path through our orchard, into the open fields and to the village. Would it make problems, taking an American there? No, she’s discreet and sensible. And who would I say she is? If I just say she’s a friend, people will grow suspicious and clam up. But if she is family — we can say she’s my brother’s fiancée. That should amuse her. I jump up and go to the phone.
12
May you enter favoured,
and leave beloved.
Ancient Egyptian prayer
Egypt, 6 July 1997
‘And so,’ I said to Isabel, as we started along the Upper Egypt road, ‘there they were; on the twelfth of March 1901, asleep on two diwans, facing each other on opposite sides of the haramlek drawing room of the big house of the Baroudis; these women who were to become our grandmothers.’
‘You like telling stories,’ Isabel said.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I suppose I do. I like piecing things together.’
‘Your brother must know you very well,’ she said, pulling down the sun screen, peering into its small mirror to adjust her headscarf.
Yes, I suppose he does. My brother likes piecing things together too, in his own way. On the phone from the States he’d said:
‘Did you like my gift?’
‘It’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘Did you look into it?’
Only a little bit. Enough. I thought you might be interested.’
‘Oh, I’m completely immersed. How much did you look at?’
‘Not much.’
‘But enough?’
‘Enough for what?’
‘Enough to know about Isabel.’
‘Our long-lost cousin. Yes, I worked that out.’
‘But you didn’t tell her?’
‘What was I supposed to do? Lift my head from the box and announce, “And here are some of my grandmother’s papers too”? Come on —’
‘Listen,’ I say, ‘did you look at the objects, the things?’
‘No, no, I just glanced at the papers —’
‘Well, there’s a kind of tapestry there, a long strip of woven fabric, and I think it matches the one you’ve got hanging in your study.’
‘What’s hanging in my study?’
