The wedding was super. A girlfriend of my youngest daughter Nataly was getting married and Nataly was the maid of honour. Besides the expenses that she was, by tradition, expected to participate in for the wedding, was the not inconsiderable one of making herself as attractive and beautiful as possible. She did a good job of it. A wonderful, long, strapless satin dress and high heels, her hair arranged in an elaborate bun with a few stray strands of hair in what the French call
"négligence calculée" and a professional makeup job transformed her into an ethereal creature. A real star. If I were not her father, I would have fallen in love with her. The bride, too, was beautiful, as all brides are apt to be. They are painted and polished, yes, but the happiness of the occasion gives them a special glow. It is, after all, their crowning day. And the groom, madly in love, unable to hide his feelings, was entering, all smiles, into what some cynics call a necessary evil. The ceremony in church was presided by the Patriarch of Alexandria who is the head of the Orthodox Church for the whole of Africa. He was a friend, or to be more precise, a friend of my wife. He was slightly younger than us and she had known him, in Cairo, since he was a schoolboy.
Later, at the wedding reception, my wife and I went to the Patriarch's table to pay our respects. To say hello, really, as one would to a friend. I went along grudgingly for I was vexed with him. A few months earlier, at a funeral of a young Bishop, Father John, who was very dear to us, I stood in line to kiss his hand. He did not recognize me in the commotion and just as I arrived in front of him, somebody addressed him and he turned sideways to reply while at the same time extending his hand to be kissed. Which I did, much to my disgust both for my meekness and this unseemly gesture, this distortion of the humility that Christ tried to teach us. We had not seen one another for some years. I was present at his enthronement in Alexandria but had not met him since. At his table he received us happily and was extremely hearty. That went some way towards placating me. He complimented me on my looks telling me I looked just the same, not one year older. Well, that was all that was left.
My good looks. And my memories.
At his enthronement he had requested from the Foreign Minister the presence of my wife to coordinate the organization and the elaborate protocol involved in the ceremony. My wife, a whirlwind of energy and organizational ability, was serving at a Greek embassy in Europe and was dispatched, on the double, to Alexandria where two Heads of State, many diplomats and untold delegations from all the Orthodox churches would be present, all, needless to say, touchy and jealous of their standing.
Where, a seating to the left or to the right of the one anticipated can cause a diplomatic incident. And where if one, at least, expects such behaviour from the ambassadors and politicians where trivialities are pet causes of bickering, one hardly expects it from God's representatives on earth. But then, the Church is also an Organization and its members have become politicians though they would vehemently deny it. Politicians with special pretensions. Politicians who expect to be respected for their connection to this concept we call God and to a humble teacher of love and righteousness called the Christ, the son of God, the offspring of the non-carnal union 83
of God and a virgin. Politicians who have long destroyed our belief in their holiness and who have terminally lost our respect.
The Patriarch's enthronement took place a few months before my own dethronement and flight from Egypt. It was a desperate time of my life, heaped with frustrations and disappointments, which, even now, finds very little sympathy from the people closest to me, my wife and children. The loss of one's fortune and livelihood is rarely excused. It is usually looked upon with derision and ridicule. For me, it was a time of unbearable loneliness and a thrashing about to find a solution, an exit from my predicament, which was my rapidly sinking business with all the heartache and anxiety that this involved. I had lived for the last five years on my own in Cairo. First, our two elder girls went to Athens to attend university, then my wife was transferred from the Greek Embassy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Athens and a few months later my youngest daughter left and I remained behind to continue a business that at that moment seemed viable. Of the many small and big bad decisions in my life, the decision to remain in Cairo was the worst. And not only because things turned sour. We often forget that our time on this earth is finite, all too short, and making money, in the end is not so important. Of course it is, but one can live with a little less just as well as with a little more. What is important is to be happy. At least, to try to be happy. How can one possibly be happy living alone, away from his family? It was wrong for me to stay behind on my own for the sake of a better income. That things deteriorated and eventually collapsed is beside the point. It would have been a bad decision even if things turned out well. Unfortunately the realization of these things always seems to come too late.
When my wife arrived in Cairo for the enthronement things were already too far gone. The failure was not sudden. For the first two years the going was smooth. I was able to send money to my family and I traveled often to Athens to see them. They also took turns coming for a week or two to keep me company and we kept in almost daily touch by telephone. Then with the economic downturn of the country, the slide downhill began. It was gradual and discouraged radical measures. One kept hoping that the hard times were temporary and that there would soon be an upturn in the economic scene. I need not enumerate the many reasons for my difficulties which may sound as if I am exonerating myself from any blame. Obviously, I was neither tough enough as a manager nor did I show much foresight. However, as a partial defense, I must say that as happens in such cases, everything that can possibly go wrong, usually does. There was such an uncanny combination of adversities that in the end I could no longer cope.
I feel so sorry and so guilty when I recall my wife's last two visits to Cairo.
She was also with me a few weeks before being dispatched for the enthronement.
They were pure misery for a woman for whom wealth and money always loomed large. I wish I could do something, even now, to compensate her for those wretched days. It does not seem likely I shall ever be able to. I had sold my car to pay some debts and I told her that it was being repaired and we moved about on our feet and in the ramshackle Cairo taxis. Even today she accuses me of having been dishonest with her to conceal the sale. She does not seem to understand that I did not wish to upset her by having her realize how desperate things were. Of course she suspected as much though I tried to be casual and composed. I always had the hope things would improve.
On that second visit I took her to the bus stop the next day and she left for Alexandria to assume her task, with a team of Church officials and some prominent members of the Greek community, of organizing the enthronement. I joined her a few 84
days later on the eve of the ceremony. I traveled by railway with a client who was to buy a shop I owned in Alexandria. After visiting the lawyer with my client and then the shop and my two demoralized employees, I took a cab to the Montazah Hilton where my wife was staying. She was not there. It was early afternoon and I loafed about opening the television set now and then until she arrived at midnight. I sat meditating for a long time on the room's balcony. We were high up and the view was superb. In front of us stretched the Mediterranean, a warm, inviting sea. Warm like the peoples it nurtures on its shores, vivid blue in colour with the characteristic large, foamy-white Alexandrian waves lapping energetically the sand, sending us a humid, cool breeze that made me go into the room for a jumper. It was early spring and the weather was still quite cool. To the right was the palace of Montazah, former summer residence of the Egyptian royal families and now a huge park with hotels and private beaches for the wealthy Egyptians.
I have lived in Cairo all my life but it is strange how Alexandria has always moved me in a way Cairo never did. Was it because of its Hellenistic history? Of the novels I have read about it? Of its cosmopolitan air and its large foreign communities?
Of the Greeks that flourished there, with their schools, stadiums, social centers, churches, cemeteries, their culture and newspapers, their poets and novelists? Was it because of a beautiful Italian girl I loved, one summer, at sixteen? Was it because of the sea? I do not know. All I know is that this aura, which gripped me, in the past, as I walked its streets, was moving into the realm of history. It was, of course, inevitable.
An independent country cannot be dominated for long by pockets of foreign nationals.
Little by little, as Arab nationalism was born in the wake of the colonial era, the foreigners who had lived there for three or four or more generations started thinning out. Conditions and laws, the relentless increase in numbers of the gentle Egyptians who lived practically since the Pharaohs under foreign tutelage squeezed them out.
Times were changing. The downtrodden were raising their heads, asserting their rights to their country. So what if the change was not to the taste of a few dreamers like myself? So what if the city had ballooned to four million inhabitants, had perpetually traffic-jammed streets, had expanded and deteriorated and had polluted beaches? The transformation was the sovereign right of its people. And if a city I loved had become exasperating and distasteful, hard luck.
For a long while, I stared at the beautiful Mediterranean. It had captivated my heart long ago and held it prisoner longer than any woman could. I had learned to swim in its waters. On that beach below. Long before the hotel was built. Long before the ozone layer thinned out and exposure to the sun made you prone to skin cancer.
We had a summer house close by, at Sidi Bishr, and we often visited this beach outside the walls of the palace. It was out of the way, clean and quiet and we had lovely picnics on its sands with family and friends. One does not realize how lovely those days were until one grows old and the days are gone forever. Nowadays, in the summer, with the overflowing, encroaching humanity, one can hardly find an empty spot on the sand to sit down. The rich guests of the hotel lounge and swim at the swimming pool with the sea not twenty paces away.
They were lovely and carefree those summers of my youth and adolescence in Alexandria. How lucky we were to have had the leisure to grow up easily and happily.
To exercise our bodies and minds agreeably through swimming and reading. To experiment with our awakening sexuality innocently by flirting and dancing and kissing. A middle way between prudishness and total permissiveness. To walk the streets of a city you loved, to hear, next to Arabic, the handful of languages of the larger foreign communities, Greek, Italian, Armenian and also the languages of the 85
élite, French and English. To feel the spirits of Kavafi, E.M.Forster, Lawrence Durrell and Stratis Tsirkas accompanying you in your stroll, filling your soul with beauty, emotion and passion. To think of Alexandria's history as you passed the districts called Cleopatra, Soter and Camp César. And of the seven wonders of the ancient world as you walked the Corniche on the eastern harbour and thought of the ancient Pharos that gave light and guidance, just as the ancient Library, a storehouse of learning in the Alexandria of the Ptolemies, the intellectual center of the ancient world, was a source of light and guidance of another sort. To enjoy its clubs, cinemas, restaurants and unique, far off beaches where the sea was a luminous turquoise and the sand as fine and as white as flour. And years later, when I was courting my future wife and we were very much in love, it was to Alexandria that we gravitated to enjoy a measure of privacy and our love.
To the right, I could see inside the walls of the Montazah palace. Just the gardens and a stretch of the beach to the left, dotted with concrete cabins which were rented yearly at exorbitant rents. Any social claim of belonging to the crème de la crème was null and void if one did not possess a cabin at Montazah. The gardens were superb. They were well kept and many of the rare trees from the time of the monarchy were still thriving. Further inside, but not visible, were the two main buildings of the palace, the Haramlek and the Salamlek, one of which was converted to a luxury hotel.
The Haramlek was the abode of the royal females and the Salamlek, the offices and reception quarters of the monarch. Another big luxury hotel was built inside the premises, the Palestine, and it was there, nearly thirty years ago, that we, as often as possible, consummated our passion for one another. We registered in two different rooms for social orthodoxy and spent our turbulent nights in one. In the lovely gardens we took our romantic walks but for swimming it was always Agami of the turquoise waters and white sand. Agami which was practically a desert with just a few villas, a few cabins, one single hotel cum nightclub which collected the well-to-do youth of the day, during the summer nights and whose crowning glory was the beach and the sea, has now become a city of apartment blocks and hotels and traffic jams.
Yes, once again, hard luck.
My wife came in at midnight. She had been invited to dinner after all the meetings, conferences, arguments, protestations and quarrels were over, by one of her colleagues and was, now, literally worn out and ready for bed. Next day was the big day. Still, she managed to give me some idea of her three or four hard-working days, of her trying to pull into shape and coordinate all the different and unwieldy demands of the various groups who would be attending the ceremony. She asked me how I spent my afternoon. I told her I sat mostly at the balcony, looking at the sea. Didn't you get bored, she asked? No, I replied. I was thinking of the past and the present.
There is a saying that goes, the past is history, the future a mystery, the present is a gift. I was thinking, in my case, the saying does not hold. I can certainly dispense with the gift of the present, the future is not only uncertain but does not augur anything good and my only comfort and source of strength and happiness is my past. Oh, cheer up, she answered, tomorrow is the enthronement. Let us hope there will be no dethronement, I muttered. What do you mean, she asked? Oh, nothing, I said.
Nothing.
Next day was bright, sunny and warm. A perfect enthronement day. The Presidents of Greece and Cyprus would be arriving by special flights to Alexandria with their delegations composed of the clergy, members of the two governments and journalists. Most of the Church people from Eastern Europe had already arrived. Our hotel was overflowing with church regalia, long beards and crosses. We woke up 86
early on that day of March, had breakfast, dressed meticulously and took a cab to the city which was a few kilometers away. The church of the Annunciation was already crowded, despite a cordon of security that tried to screen out idlers and parasitical spectators. The whole staff of the Greek embassy was there as well as all the prominent members of the Greek communities of Cairo and Alexandria My wife greeted a host of former colleagues and acquaintances and then we moved on to the church where the team of organizers were holding the fort, trying to keep a semblance of order and were assigning seats. I was left on my own for a while admiring the beautiful church which was splendidly decorated with flowers and carpets and then my wife placed me at the seat of a guest who would not be attending. I was a VIP by default and had a perfect view of the proceedings.
The various ambassadors started dribbling in and were led to their places as well as the representative of the Egyptian president and the Governor of Alexandria.
And then the Church delegations started arriving. Patriarchs and their retinues from Rumania, Bulgaria, Russia, the Ukraine. Strange Slav faces with unfamiliar ceremonial attire, some in white, others in black or sky blue, with equally outlandish headgear and heavy gold crosses hanging from their necks. Tall, burly individuals looking more like warriors than priests and perhaps that was what they basically were, to have survived the atheistic communist regimes of their countries. I find the renaissance of Christianity in the former communist countries inexplicable. Why, after learning to live without their opium, did the people return to it? It is said that the richness and beauty of the ceremonial in the Orthodox Church appeals to the Slav love of colour and drama. Perhaps. Next, Baba Shennouda, the Coptic Pope, arrived and then we heard the sirens of the official procession bringing in the two Presidents.
The church was bursting at the seams but the Presidents and their ministers squeezed in and took their places amid sporadic clapping and the enthronement ceremony began. A bevy of priests looking splendid in their finery of red and gold-embroidered gowns, golden crosses and silver-covered bibles took their place and the psalmody began. It is very rare that I manage to understand what the psalms are all about for very few of the priests have clear enunciation. Perhaps, that is just as well, for when I do understand, I am usually astounded. Still, the chants had a certain grandeur because of the occasion and one could look at it as a live representation of history, a ritual that has not changed in a thousand years.
While the chants were being intoned, Petros, the new Patriarch to be, a Cypriot by his birth, forty seven years of age, the youngest priest to ascend the throne of Alexandria, started on foot in the midst of his priests and bishops to walk, simply clad in an unadorned cassock, the short distance from the Patriarchate to the Church. He was a short but handsome man whose eye was liable to twinkle in the presence of a pretty woman. Which is not all that bad considering that the higher echelons of the clergy, in our days, consider the vows of celibacy to entail abstinence from just the female sex. As he entered the church the populace stood and shouted Axios, Axios, which means worthy and deserving. In church, a Bishop who was, in the past, his teacher was presiding the ceremony of the enthronement and proceeded to ritually confer his vestments in the midst of chants and prayers. When he was fully decked out in his majestic ceremonial garments and held his crosier, he was finally, officially our new Patriarch and in a round of speeches he received the congratulations and wishes and presents from the two Heads of State and the different Orthodox delegations.
Then he left the church and although I have no sympathy for priests I could not help feeling in that splendidly attired man the loneliness of office, of his new 87
responsibilities, mitigated, perhaps, by the new glory and respect that this office conferred to him.
After the ceremony the people were directed to the Greek stadium where a festive luncheon was organized for all the guests. It was a joint effort with money provided by the Greek communities of Cairo and Alexandria and the Orthodox Syrians and the wines supplied by the Cypriots. The whole of the stadium was covered with tents under which innumerable tables were laid out, with a very long table at one end where the Patriarch and his official guests would sit. About a thousand people were present and the lunch was a huge success. The food was delicious and plentiful, the wines were excellent and the service and organization worthy of my wife's abilities. She hardly sat down during the lunch, nor did she taste a bite. She contributed considerably to the well-being and high spirits that coloured that happy occasion. At the end of the lunch a round of speeches concluded the festivities of the enthronement and after the Patriarch and his guests departed the gathering started to disperse.
We were amongst the last to leave. The range of acquaintances of my wife is vast and the greetings and farewells can become unbearably prolonged and exasperating. She is sociable to a fault and is an accomplished small-talker with a joke and a little something to say to everyone. Outside the stadium we could not find a taxi and her exhaustion caused her to become irritatable. I was distressed. It seemed as if my bad luck extended to such minor matters as finding a taxi and contributed to our bad humour. Perhaps she had started realizing that being with me, henceforth, meant submitting to all kinds of inconveniences, humiliations and irritations. Eventually we did manage to get a cab and we returned to the hotel and into bed for a late siesta. We woke up at nine in the evening, packed our belongings and left the hotel. Due to increased traffic on the road, we arrived at the bus stop just as the Alex-Cairo bus was leaving the station. One minute earlier and we would have been on it. The next departure was in an hour. I bought the tickets and we went to the waiting room which was dirty, cold and uncomfortable. She complained that she was cold and when the new bus took its place we asked the driver if we could wait inside, as my wife was unwell. He unlocked the door and let us in. I could not help feeling guilty. As if everything that went wrong was my fault. At eleven we departed and three hours later we were at home in Cairo. We only slept a few hours because she left very early the next morning for her post in Europe. I wanted to accompany her to the airport but she said there was no point in taking a taxi there and a taxi back. She left on her own.
Mission accomplished successfully. Otherwise, many, many question marks.
I was glad to be, once again, on my own. The loneliness was not pleasant but I could not bear to have my wife suffer the many miseries that were now part of my life. I returned to the hectic eight-to-eight, six-day week routine at work. I do not mind hard work but this was something else. It was a day-to-day fight for survival.
Not that things would collapse. No. We were limping along. We were deteriorating slowly but inescapably and every day I had to confront a thousand people who had claims on me. Satisfy some of them, put off some others, bribe the government people that threatened action, desperately try to collect the week's wages of my employees and so on, and on, and on. I was in a state of confusion and uncertainty that is so contrary to my character. I hate to plead and cajole and to have to swallow hard words and insulting insinuations. But this was my daily fare. I had to act carefree and jaunty as if everything was under control when absolutely nothing was. I, who would rather die than lie, little by little became an expert liar. I lied to my clients, my employees, 88
my family. I believe, circumstances shape your behaviour if you are not a fanatic.
And your virtues fade away if your survival depends on it.
At the end of the week, on Saturday afternoon, I would heave a sigh of relief.
Another week gone by, by hook or by crook, and I was still in one piece. I would go home happily, have a shower to cleanse myself physically and ritually from the dirt of the day and I would prepare myself either for dinner with my friend Jack or a visit to another friend, Nelly. Once in a while, I would go to the Greek-Egyptian Friendship Association with my elderly relative Charilaos, who was like a big brother to me in those days. Or else just sit on my wonderful balcony overlooking the Nile, with a glass of whisky and relax, looking at that great, silent, life-giving river streaming by in its never ending journey to the sea. Sometimes feeling lonely, sometimes unlucky, sometimes hopeful, believing that things were bound to change and my many problems solved. I suppose this was typical of a state of mind of a disturbed person.
Strangely, Sunday was the worst day of the week. I woke up early and went for a walk along the banks of the Nile. I would return home an hour later for breakfast, passing by the Bakery of the Marriott for some croissants and then would lie in bed to read a newsmagazine or the Ahram Weekly, a fine English language, Egyptian newspaper. But sometime later, feelings of utter loneliness would literally engulf me, gripping my heart and choking my throat, causing me to breathe spastically and rapidly. Loneliness had ceased to be just a mental state. It had become a physical malaise. I had to get up and walk to and fro to regain my normal rhythm of breathing. To calm down, I would usually call some people on the telephone or my wife and daughters. Two daughters in Athens, one in Brussels and my wife in Luxembourg. After the telephone calls, I would relax a little and try to read until lunchtime. I would sip a glass of whisky and soda before lunch and later, early in the afternoon, I would go down for another walk. In those days I was too tense to take a siesta and I could no longer stay at my empty home. Again the walk was centered on the Nile. I loved the Nile and I deplored that its banks were strewn with rubbish. Cairo would be so much more appealing if it were a little cleaner. How many cities have such mighty rivers bisecting them, opening up their townscape, providing it with airiness and overwhelming beauty? Cairo was the gift of the Nile but it also had the Nile as a gift. I criss-crossed its bridges and enjoyed the view of the feluccas and the rowing skiffs and the odd motorboat pulling a water skier. My second walk of the day would last at least two hours. The intention was to exhaust myself completely before returning home. On my return, a hot, strong cup of tea, a shower and little reading till bedtime, until sleep relieved my thoughts preparing me for next week's ordeal.
For the past two years I had been trying to sell my business. An almost impossible task given the poor economic situation of the country. Given also the weak markets, the ferocious competition in our field and the relatively large number of people we employed. People were wary of people. They would not easily let themselves get saddled with numerous personnel. About a year before I left, I had some very poor offers. I was not sharp enough to grab them. I thought I was being unjustly taken advantage of. I refused them. A year later, there were no offers at all.
The situation was critical. The ship was letting in water. It was sinking. That summer, a few months after the enthronement, I spent a few weeks in Limnos with my family.
A pleasant enough holiday but with a gnawing apprehension constantly at the back of my mind. I returned to Cairo but I did not last long. A few weeks later, I had taken just about all I could stomach. I decided it on the spur of the moment to pack up and leave Egypt for good. Perhaps it was not the most honourable thing to do, to abandon business, employees and debts, both governmental and private, but my virtues and 89
morals faded away at that moment. It was the best decision of my life. It was my dethronement and my salvation.
10 / 9 / 2001
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