Cairo Stories Read online

  After I graduated from law school, my mother and Greg, who, for some time, had been wanting to travel to Egypt, asked me whether I cared to go with them. My mother said she hoped I would, since after all, part of my origins lay in Egypt. They invited Tony to join us, but he declined. The fact that they had decided not to travel with a tour group did not sway him. He had no interest in revisiting the past, he told them. At the time, I had a girlfriend who was keen on Egyptology. So off we went to Egypt, the four of us. We went to Cairo, did the Nile cruise to Luxor and Aswan – the highlight of the trip – and spent two days in Alexandria. I liked what I saw of Egypt. Its people have a good sense of humour. In a curious way, Cairo reminded me of New York though I have yet to meet someone who agrees with me. I have been told that Cairo evokes Paris or Rome, as many of its downtown buildings were built by French and Italian architects. The city may well have resembled Paris or Rome in the past; I do not see the resemblance now.

  Did I feel at all connected to Egypt? No, I felt no connection to it, which disappointed my mother, who had imagined me succumbing to some ancestral pull. There was a naive, idealist side to my mother that could either charm, or, irritate and drive one to take the opposite viewpoint. Still, I don’t think I was suppressing feelings just for the sake of being contrary. No emotions surfaced.

  It so happens that our whirlwind visit to Alexandria coincided with one of the Muslim feasts – the one when sheep get slaughtered, and those who can afford it give meat to those in need. The historical sites and museums were closed. All we did was wander through the city and walk along the sea, alongside large crowds of festive-looking strollers, many of whom – particularly children, teenagers but also young adults – hailed us with loud greetings: if it was not ‘Hello!’ it was ‘Welcome to Egypt!’ or ‘How are you?’ I gathered that our well-wishers couldn’t speak much English beyond that.

  Our guide in Cairo had recommended to us a fish restaurant catering to an Egyptian clientele – not a tourists’ haunt. At the end of our first day of roaming through the city, we set about finding it, wondering whether it would be open during a feast when the tradition is to eat red meat. The directions we had were very sketchy but we found it, and it was open, and we had a superb dinner that evening. We miraculously stumbled on the restaurant, after a long walk from a fort that lies at one end of the western side of the Corniche – a walk through a maze of streets and alleys in what was clearly a poorer part of Alexandria. It might even have been the neighbourhood in which Tony had grown up. We didn’t have the name of his street. He had told us that the name had changed, and he didn’t know its new name.

  Over dinner, Greg raised the inevitable subject of Alexandria’s cosmopolitan past. The four of us agreed that Cairo seems more cosmopolitan than Alexandria, so things must have changed a great deal since the days when Alexandria had the reputation of being the more cosmopolitan city. But what does ‘cosmopolitan’ really mean with reference to a city, my mother then asked. Durrell’s world may have been cosmopolitan, but what about the world of the poorer Greeks (the world in which Tony had grown up), the poorer Italians, Muslim, Coptic and Jewish Egyptians? Had their world been cosmopolitan? Like all discussions in which people talk about what they hardly know, ours went round in circles, until we all concluded that it would have been great to have had Tony participate in the discussion, though I somehow doubt that he would have.

  So what made me think that a man who had grown up in cosmopolitan Alexandria (whatever that term means) and had lived in New York and big European cities would, at the end of his life, adjust to an old people’s home in Roseville, Minnesota? What was I thinking? I suppose I took it for granted that he was an adaptable sort, whose anchor was his work and intellectual pursuits, for whom externals did not matter so much, a man used to moving from place to place, who could give meaning to his life between the four walls of any room. In any world. For whom language would not be a problem in Roseville. Because of his Spartan ways, his solitary nature, his being internally motivated, I thought that he would be fine, wherever he was, as long as he had books and work to do (he still does translation work).

  Evidently, I was very wrong. So what do I do now? Frankly, were he to give me any indications that he wants to return to London, I wouldn’t stand in his way. I would even offer to organise his getting re-established there, though I worry that he might remain depressed, once there.

  * * *

  Tony’s Letter to Paris

  Paris,

  My withdrawing into a shell must have been very hard on you. I owe you an explanation.

  For the last couple of months, I’ve been waking up every day around four in the morning and, more often than not, cannot go back to sleep. I toss and turn in bed, thinking that, since sleep eludes me, I should get up and read, or work on some translation but, instead, I lie awake in bed – till seven, eight, or even as late as nine – beset by the same questions: should I be going back to London? And, could I manage on my own there? Today, rather than just feeling overwhelmed by the questions and the prospect of having to make a decision, I managed to think through some of the practical implications of going back – and decided that it might well be the thing to do, if only because I miss the hubbub of city life.

  It’s curious that I should have reached that conclusion today, for, just yesterday, life here stopped feeling as bleak as it had been feeling. Yesterday was the first day since I have been here that I’ve been in the mood to do something. In fact, two things: play chess and learn sign language. While smoking on the porch in the late afternoon, I saw two men play a game of chess, pulled my chair next to them, and watched them play. They did not seem to mind; nor did they seem to mind my smoking. They were playing in utter silence. It took me a while before I realised that one of them was completely deaf. Both were good players – equally good, although the deaf gentleman was more daring. He made, by far, the bolder moves and had an unusual strategy that immediately grabbed my interest. Unfortunately, the strategy did not win him the game.

  As you know, I myself am not a particularly good chess player, but I have always liked the game, and watching these two men play a good game rekindled my interest. Actually, more than that; it made me aspire to become – if at all possible – a better player. As for the idea of learning sign language – an odd-sounding idea – it comes, in large measure, from my having had my fill of hearing the sound of my voice and people reacting to that sound. You must be wondering what I’m talking about. If, after reading this epistle which promises to be longer than I originally intended, you end up with some sense of why I grew profoundly weary of hearing myself speak soon after I arrived in Roseville, I will have explained to you, I think, a great deal about myself. I know, of course, that sign language is not the answer to my problem, but I am interested in finding out more about it; in finding out, for example, what range of thoughts one can communicate through it, whether it permits communicating very abstract ideas. It surprises me that I never, previously, paid any attention to the existence of that language.

  But back to yesterday, when, from a state of wanting to do nothing, I inched towards a state of wanting to do a couple of things. That it no longer seems so difficult for me to envisage returning to London is probably due to this welcome rush of life in me. Mind you, I am not quite ready to go. I would like to give Roseville more of a try. I’ll stay here long enough to improve my chess skills (assuming that the two gentlemen are willing to play with me) and long enough to learn and practise sign language.

  I am mightily relieved that the black mood into which I had sunk has begun lifting. Relieved for both of us. When I saw myself slipping into it, I was more upset for you than for me. The thought that you would be blaming yourself for my unhappiness bothered me greatly. That thought should have been enough to pull me out of my despondent state. I was unable, however, to stem the tide. I felt immensely tired, as if I had been running a marathon, or the way I imagine people feel at the end of one. They probably don’t feel th
at way at all. They probably feel all invigorated, renewed, refreshed and ready for another long run.

  The prospect of moving again does not seem quite so daunting any more. I tell myself that, after all, I am not so old. Only seventy-two years old, which counts as young in Sunny Homes.

  Paris, you have gone out of your way for me. Well above and beyond the call of whatever duty you may think you have towards me; I personally consider you have none. Unfortunately for you, your reward was to see me become morose and virtually mute. True, I am taciturn by nature. But, I don’t think that being morose is part of my nature. Moroseness is a different thing, though it is easy to mistake one for the other.

  What must have been particularly galling to you was my unwillingness to discuss my reasons for feeling so low, which you must have interpreted as reflecting anger at you for suggesting I come here. You might have found it easier had I exploded and blamed you for Roseville’s antiseptic, somewhat sterile environment (my need for busy streets, noise and even a bit of dirt harks back to my childhood); had I blamed you for the perpetually jovial air of its people – be it the staff in Sunny Homes, the staff at the library, the waiters and waitresses at the restaurants, or the receptionists at the doctor’s office (they are all very, very nice but do they have to talk as if one was always in need of cheering up which, I suppose, I am, but don’t care to be constantly reminded of?); or had I blamed you for being surrounded, in Sunny Homes, by people in a sad state of decrepitude.

  Actually, none of this took me off guard. You had made a point of giving me a realistic account of what to expect. You had not hidden from me the downsides of the move. But shrugging off your cautionary words, I latched on to your suggestion the way one latches on to a lifebuoy. During my last arthritic bout in London – a particularly bad one – I was in quite a state. So, when you broached the possibility of my moving to Roseville and outlined the pluses and minuses, I embraced the idea, without giving the matter much thought, without even considering that, if I was prepared to live in a Sunny Homes type of facility, I might want to move into one in or around London. ‘Why not Roseville,’ I said to myself, ‘as long as I have books, CDs and a quiet room in which to work?’

  A couple of days after I arrived, it became clear to me, watching the streets with only cars zooming by, that adjusting wouldn’t be so simple. Still, I tried to put on a brave face and focus on the positive side of my move, namely, your presence, as well as the fact that people are welcoming, and that my every need is taken care of. Then – and this was what triggered the downward slide – I was confronted with the fact that people here don’t understand me. Yes, people in Roseville do not understand me. To be more accurate, they do not understand me when I first speak. I have to repeat what I am saying, painfully slowly, for them to understand. That is what really got to me. Were it not for the puzzled look on people’s faces and the incomprehension in their eyes every time I opened my mouth, I honestly don’t think that I would have ended up feeling as weary as I did.

  It wasn’t the first time I encountered difficulties in being understood as a result of my accent, although in recent years, I’ve been spared that experience; London has become such a hotchpotch of people that accents there don’t seem to matter any more. For sure, it was not the first time, but it was, as far as I am concerned, one time too many! At this stage in my life, I didn’t want to be making the effort of having to translate my English into a more understandable English. I imagine you must be thinking: but wasn’t this a bit of an overreaction? In an objective sense, it was. I myself was, to some extent, taken aback by its intensity, and yet I can account for it. That such a small thing should have had that sort of impact on me had a lot to do with my having experienced life – my entire life – as an exercise in juggling languages; with my being aware, almost always, of the particular language I happen to be speaking. One reaches a point when one no longer wants to be aware (or even worse, to be made aware) of the fact that one is speaking a language. One just wants to speak it, if you know what I mean.

  Perhaps talking about a subject you raised with me long ago will help me explain myself better. The one time you asked me to describe to you the Alexandria of my childhood, I dodged the subject, intimating that I found it difficult to talk about that Alexandria without sinking into a sentimentality I am uncomfortable with, and, therefore, I preferred not to speak of it. I am generally uncomfortable with shared nostalgia. My experiences are mine; I can only treasure them if I think of them as unique. The few times – very few – I found myself talking about the Alexandria of my childhood, I had the impression that I was sullying cherished memories: trying to put childhood reminiscences into words, I would hear myself spout the same kind of nostalgic, romanticised account of that bygone Alexandria that countless others have given; and would end up feeling I was losing my Alexandria. Yes, I am possessive about my nostalgia. There are those who, less proprietorial, feel radically different about it, finding great satisfaction in the knowledge that their personal experience was shared by others. I am not one of them.

  Not so long ago I turned down the opportunity to translate a collection of essays on Alexandria of the olden days. When approached by the editor I was tempted to accept; to see how it would feel like to be transported back into my childhood. However, no sooner had I started reading the essays than their exalted tone put me off. They all extolled the virtues of Alexandria, the magnificent Cosmopolitan. It didn’t take me long to decide that I didn’t want to be working, day in and day out, on writings that so glorify the Alexandria of days gone by. The writers – on the worthwhile mission of defending a certain cosmopolitanism – were, in my opinion, far too lavish in their praise of that Alexandria. Had they at all explored some of the difficulties associated with its much celebrated cosmopolitanism, I would have accepted the work. However, they simply ignored – totally ignored and not just glossed over – anything that might detract from their idealised portrayal.

  A city of many languages: that is probably the most recurring theme of nostalgic evocations of Alexandria. And who can deny that there is virtue in speaking many languages? French, English, Arabic, Greek, Italian and, to a lesser extent, Russian, German, Hebrew, and Armenian. I have probably omitted some languages. Alexandrians of those days did not speak all of these languages. Many, however, spoke several of them. In my family, Greek, Arabic, Russian and French were spoken. By different people at different times. I spoke Greek with my father and uncle as well as at school; Arabic with my father’s helpers in the store, with the neighbours, and with the children I played with in the streets; Russian and French with my mother. English came later. I began learning the first rudiments of English only in the sixth grade. My mother hired a private tutor (a huge financial sacrifice, in our circumstances) for me to learn more than school taught me. The tutor had a memorable name: Ms Moneypenny. She tutored me almost gratis, so committed was she to my learning the language properly. Instead of the weekly session my parents could barely afford, Ms Moneypenny came, on her own initiative, three times a week for no extra charge. The readings she had me do were eclectic and included Enid Blyton, Wordsworth and Shakespeare.

  When I say that I spoke different languages with different people, that is only one part of the story. In the course of a conversation, or even a sentence, one would often switch from one language to another. Under those circumstances, how well can one know a language: speak it, read it, and write it really well? And, even if, thanks to a determined effort, one manages to master a language, to what extent does it become part and parcel of oneself?

  The very first time I met Ms Moneypenny, she asked me, ‘Paris, in what language do you think?’ I was twelve years old at the time. ‘I’m not sure,’ I answered, which was the truth. ‘Think about it,’ she instructed me. I thought and thought, yet thinking about it got me nowhere. So I came up with what I believed to be a sensible answer. ‘Perhaps a bit in Greek, a bit in Arabic, a bit in Russian, even a bit in French,’ I ventured to say in the be
st English I could muster. Not satisfied with this answer, Ms Moneypenny queried further, ‘What does it depend on?’ I was stumped. ‘Does it depend on the person to whom you’re talking, or on the subject matter of your conversation?’ She was implacable, but I would eventually grow to be very fond of her. I took a deep breath and said, ‘On what I’m thinking,’ dreading the thought that she might ask me to elucidate, and give her some examples. ‘Doesn’t it depend on a bit of both?’ she asked surprised. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m confused. It’s confusing,’ I burst out. ‘It must be confusing,’ she declared, and fortunately stopped interrogating me.

  I may be an unusually impressionable sort, for her question never quite left me. I have asked myself several times, over the course of my life, ‘In what language do I think?’ and also ‘In what language do I dream?’ When I lived in France, I believe that I ended up thinking mostly, but by no means exclusively, in French; and when I lived in New York and London mostly in English. So paradoxically, Greek, Arabic and Russian, the first languages I spoke, have become just tools I work with, although, occasionally, I find myself thinking a thought in Greek, Arabic or Russian. I very rarely can remember in what language I dream.

  In what language does one think? What is the language of one’s dreams? What accent does one have? Even in cosmopolitan Alexandria, one’s accent could be an issue – not a serious issue but, nevertheless, an issue. The children with whom I played in the streets, and for whom Arabic was a real first language, would occasionally make fun of my Khawaga accent. Other children – freshly arrived from Greece, or France, or Russia – would pass comments on the way I pronounced certain words in ‘their’ language. I’m not suggesting that I am representative of all Alexandrians of my generation. My linguistic background is rather more mixed than the average background. However, to be fluent in more than one language without being in a position to identify fully with any one of them and claim it as one’s own was not so uncommon amongst my fellow ‘cosmopolitan’ Alexandrians. My own lot was to end up having a universally foreign accent. Over the course of my life, I have so often heard people say to me, usually politely, ‘I can’t quite place your accent,’ that I have taken to answer automatically, ‘Neither can I,’ which sounds rude but is the truth.