It was her voice but not just her voice. It was her accent and the undulations of
her moods reflected in her diction. Not of extremes, not dark and moody but playfully
lurking on the merry, prowling on the joyful, permanently anchored on the lively. I
never really knew her well and did not inquire if her not quite English accent was due
to a foreign mother or grandmother. What I did know was that her grandfather was a
pre-revolution Prime Minister of Egypt. This became, almost, her official title in the
young, rich, educated, and progressive social circles she moved in, though she
deserved better than that. She deserved to be known for something more than her
familial pedigree. But there is no doubt, it added glamour to her glamour. A mystique
to her unconventionality, a dazzle to her light-hearted love affairs.
I must have been sixteen when I first met her. My mother was a prodigiously
dynamic person. A dressmaker, who not only expanded her original metier to include
a number of women's boutiques but also developed into one of the leading fashion
designers in a country that was waking up from the slumber of feudalism and was
developing a moneyed, educated, professional and business middle-class that looked
to Europe for an education in a new life-style. Not to speak of the high-pressured,
highly seductive post-war American influence backed by the dollar, its technology
and the culture of the glamorous Hollywood dream world. My mother was the first to
dare the fashion show in our conservative, barely rousing, still vacillating, revolution-
gripped country. Amina Okasha, or Amy, was her first model. Oh, there were others,
lovelier than her and I loved them all but Amy was the primus inter pares.
It was her voice but not just her voice. Not even the near-English accent when
talking English, French and Arabic. An Arab, a Moslem, articulating her native
tongue, without affectation, like an English Arabist. In that voice. That voice. It
cannot be explained, for words cannot describe sounds, nor notes, human voices. It
was more than the voice, it was the personality of a whirlwind for she left you
breathless, of a vanquisher for she left you enslaved, of a brilliant star for she left you
a dreamer. At sixteen, that was all I could do. All I could be. A breathless, enslaved
dreamer. And she was not even beautiful. Oh, unutterably attractive, but not beautiful.
Not as beautiful as she seemed, as her luminous personality made her out.
In those days, after my father's death and the blooming of my mother's
entrepreneurial and artistic energies, we lived in an apartment building in downtown
Cairo. Our living quarters, one floor above the atelier, which occupied an entire floor.
Four flats, interior walls torn down, a labyrinthine arrangement of corridors and
rooms, kitchens and bathrooms. There was an office with a lone employee, a Copt,
Habib effendi, who wore the red tarboush long after the revolution banned it, a keeper
of accounts and the agendas of my mother's appointments, of the stocks of cloths and
the sundry materials of the trade. There was also an extra desk for my homework for I
could not bear to stay alone upstairs. In the other rooms, legions of girls and women
were working, sewing by hand or on hand and leg-driven sewing machines. One or
two cutters of cloth and dress patterns, the stars of the enterprise, together with the
supervisors and fitters completed the picture with the big maestro, my mother herself.
It would have been very difficult for a graduate of a Business School to draw a flow
chart of the enterprise. We muddled along well enough. Until the shows began and the
beautiful girls entered our lives and filled them with glamour and mine with
restlessness and relentless longing.
34
My mother, who since her early forties renounced men for this mad rush to
success, was not altogether happy with my increasing involvement in the business,
especially the artistic aspect of it, the designing of dresses. I believe she feared that I
was in the classic environment that evolved homosexuality. The absence of a father,
the strong, domineering, businesswoman mother and our preoccupation with beauty
and femininity in a milieu of giggling, gossiping women was bound to divert my
normal sexual orientation. She kept insisting that I should study engineering. I kept
insisting I would be a couturier. In any case, I was a mediocre student who hardly
ever used his special desk for homework. I was always at her side when she, at her
drawing board, was furiously working out ideas. Throwing in a suggestion, now and
then, to have it soundlessly ignored, to see it resurface a few sketches later. I also
started sneaking in at fittings until she started calling me in herself. She was
encouraged by the lack of any obviously deviant, tell-tale body language in my
bearing.
One would have thought, in that den of femininity I would become blasé.
Never did. I never lost my shyness and timidity even though, or perhaps because of it,
I was the mascot of the atelier. Even at sixteen, most of the younger girls called me
Khawaga or Messiou Tony, most of the older ones, just Tony or Nino from Tonino, a
diminutive bestowed by Amy that stuck like glue. Most of the younger girls were shy
and decorous, most of the older ones kissed me and ruffled my hair at least once a
day, to be rewarded with a shy smile and a blush. Most of the young models we hired
for the fashion shows were special, ignored me, and wrenched at my heart. Most
made me dream and ache and wonder if one day I would possess and love and kiss a
being such as them. If ever that day would come. If such a miracle were possible.
They seemed like the houris promised to Moslems who achieved paradise. As remote.
So far away, I would have to die first, to reach them.
When they came for fittings, I would stick around not only to assist the fitting
but in search of beauty, to look at the girl, to see a comely face, an allure of youth and
womanhood, a lovely leg or perhaps an accidentally exposed breast. My mother
understood, was reassured, and had me always there. The girls were usually aloof. It
was perhaps strange that they generally came to this profession as a hobby. They were
from the higher classes of our society. The more developed and modernized section,
for the middle and lower classes were neither educated nor rich enough to provide the
poise needed, nor considered the profession respectable. Amy, too, came from the
very top but all of a sudden she needed the money she earned, very badly. The
revolution had started demolishing all possible threats of opposition to its regime and
Amy's family apparently conformed to their definition of threat and its wealth was
duly sequestrated. Amy, at the time, was attending university as an avocation. Just
like her tennis and her ballet lessons and the cinema and parties in the evening. She
was bright enough to slither from one year to the next studying during leftover time,
her many activities restricting its availability somewhat. When the sequestrations, the
excision of wealth from the enemies of the people took place, Amy turned to
modelling to be able to maintain the façade of her former lifestyle and the fact of her
good spirits.
It was Marti, my mother's younger sister, who introduced Amy to my mother
when my mother started looking for young, attractive girls to model her clothes. Marti
had met Amy at ballet school and they had become fast friends. I am at a loss how to
describe Amy. I am afraid of doing her injustice. For how can you transmit to your
reader, personality, an aura of radiance, the change in atmosphere when she entered a
room, the way she drew all eyes. The lilt of a voice. The wrong pronunciation. The
35
laugh that made you happy. She must have been twenty-one or twenty-two at the
time. A slim girl of just over average height, white skin and jet black hair, large eyes,
the crinkles at the edges permanent from so much smiling of that large mouth with the
perfect teeth and ineffable sweetness. Well, somewhere in that first half-hour we lost
our heart to her. I lost my head as well but it was quite an achievement to win over, so
fast, my hard-nosed mother. And so, Amy was in and out of the atelier at least once a
day and with increasing frequency when the shows approached. Mother hired many
other beautiful creatures and, as I said before, I loved them all and daydreamed about
them and imagined making love to them. The longings were so intense, it is
impossible to forget them even now. But Amy, I singled out. She used to come in like
a tornado, throw a foreign-sounding Salamou Aleikom to the girls and plunge in the
labyrinth of rooms and corridors in search of my mother. If she spied me on the way,
she would hurriedly give me a kiss with a, Hello big boy, or a, Hi Tonino, and that
was all. No further familiarities, no sweet-assed fussing about. It was I who followed
her to hear her talk with my mother in her fascinating English-accented French, in that
warm indescribable voice and frequent bursts of laughter. To her, for the rest of that
day, I was transparent. After the first greeting with the hurried kiss she no more
looked at me and even at times, unconcernedly, undressed in my presence. Such were
the bonuses of sixteen-year-old aspiring couturiers. At school, one day, I told this to
my best friend and he replied, What do you expect, they get fucked, they are used to
it. It was an introduction to a contempt that is contemptible. It distressed me for a long
while.
A few years passed, happily, busily, in perpetual motion for my mother and
the business. Happily for me too. The 1956 tripartite aggression against Egypt,
following the nationalization of the Suez Canal, closed the English school I attended
and when it reopened months later, I refused to go back. My mother was terribly upset
and told me she had no wish to have a semi-literate, ignorant, shallow, diplomaless
dressmaker of a son. I told her that was exactly what I wanted to be and we signed a
truce, or rather, her capitulation. Because by now I had become her right hand and the
right hand had the upper hand. And she knew that though I would stay diplomaless, I
was neither semi-literate, nor ignorant, nor shallow. For I used to swallow and digest
an inordinate amount of print. Literature, popular science books and newsmagazines.
There was a slow but continuous turnover of our models, some leaving for
more respectable careers, others to get married but there was also a constant influx of
new faces drawn by the glamor of the business and creeping respectability of the
profession. Amy was with us for a few years but as the years passed one sensed a
restlessness and dissatisfaction with her lot. She had dropped out of college and had
become a good-time party girl, moving from one man to the next. She never ceded her
place in my heart as my favorite model and with the passing years, my transparency
became somewhat more opaque. She noticed me more and we had friendly chats
whenever she was at the atelier. Once or twice we went together to the cinema on a
friendly basis for our age difference was still an insurmountable obstacle to a
romantic liaison. Another time we met at a party. Hell, I was growing up, and yet, I
must have looked awfully lost and forlorn because she came and sat with me. After
talking for a while and when too many silences punctuated our smiles, she searched
and found a pack of cards. She took some time arranging the sequence and then
started spinning a magic tale, in her enchanting voice, her beguiling smile and crazy,
unbelievable accent, flipping the cards to illustrate events and predict the future in a
performance such as I had never seen before. By the time she finished half the party
was her audience.
36
“Now let's dance,” she told me.
“I don't know how to,” I pleaded.
“I know that! Time to learn, you ninny,” she said pulling me by the arm.
That was our Amy. The one I loved. Another bond between us was a jalopy
she owned. I often took it to my mechanic, to help her out, and was always rewarded
by a hug and a delicious kiss when I returned it in running order. Once, after fixing
her car, I took it to her house and went upstairs for a coke. The house was practically
empty. I did not ask where all the expensive French furniture, antiques and paintings
had gone. I understood. They had been sold, piecemeal, to keep her going. But things
were getting tight, there was not much left to sell. I asked my mother to increase her
salary and the hard-nosed businesswoman told me if I was so concerned, why did I
not give her part of my earnings. So I shut up.
Around that time, Marti, had a marriage proposal from a Greek-American who
was visiting his aunt in Egypt and she left her steady boyfriend who did not seem to
have any plans to settle down. She flew to America after an engagement ceremony in
Cairo and within two months was back. She did not like the middle-class life of the
East Coast of the U.S. It was nothing like the movies. But mostly, she did not like it
that her fiancé seemed to have too many female acquaintances and was absent far too
often on mysterious duties. In Cairo, she did not make up with her previous love but
collected her mother, my grandmother, and left for Greece, permanently. Meanwhile
Amy started dating seriously the scion of a well-known Greek family with interests in
clothing imports. The revolution, by its policy of encouraging the local industries had
given a death blow to all importing enterprises and Amy's boyfriend decided to move
on to Greece. Before leaving he proposed to Amy who accepted and they got married
a few weeks before leaving. I attended the wedding and unhappily wished her well. I
was losing my favorite model, my newfound friend, perhaps my future lover. A girl
that lit up my life with her radiance, her lively personality, her humour, her beauty
and incredible sweetness.
More years passed by and I fear that, like most people, we fell into the trap of
thinking that success and the accumulation of wealth is what is most important in life.
But then each one makes his own happiness as he sees it, as best he can. It's just that
the years flew, oh pleasantly enough, but with hard work and hectic rhythms, and
suddenly you realized that something had slipped you by. What? One cannot tell. It's
just a feeling. Of something missed, of something not achieved. Is it the eternal
human search for what cannot be had? Is it the need for something more when you
have all you need? My mother was getting old. She seemed fulfilled. But was she?
Without love, without a companion? And I, reluctant to raise a family and, in a sense,
push her aside though this was her fondest hope. So we kept on, a fight for more of
what we amply had. We took time off for a few hurried holidays, separately, usually
to Greece, to see grandma and Marti. From Marti I always asked news of Amy. I was
always told that she was happily married but did not have any children. I did not try to
see her. She might remind me of happy days, of something that was lost. I also
traveled to Europe to attend the big fashion shows, to refresh my ideas for, now, I was
the main designer in our business. On such a trip to England, in the lobby of the hotel
where I stayed, I fell upon a face from the past. A classic case where you muse about
the smallness of this world. It was Nick, Marti's onetime American fiancé. He was in
town on business and we met later in the evening for a drink at the bar. He asked
about Marti and we talked about her and about this and that. He was, he said, happily
married with two children and, I imagined, probably happily philandering. He asked
about Amy.
37
“Did you know her?” I asked, surprised.
“Sure.”
“How come?”
“I met her at Marti's house,” he answered. “We happened to leave the house
together one day and she offered to drive me home to my aunt's. Funny car she had,
ha ha. On the way, I invited her for a drink and we went to the bar at the Hilton. We
hit it off fine and drank an awful lot and we drove to her flat in Heliopolis, got laid,
and then she drove me right back to town.”
I finished my drink in a hurry, said good bye and left. Well, that's the second
time I see you Nick, I thought, and it's definitely the last. But why was I so upset?
What did I care? For ancient history. The fact was, I did. I had a certain opinion of
Amy. I had certain feelings and this story threatened them. Again I did not want to fall
into the trap, or should I say, the normal male reaction of calling her a bitch. I just
wanted to forget about it. And I did, for a while.
A few months later, I had finished some chores at our shop in the Hilton and
went to the pizzeria for a snack before returning home. With a businesswoman
mother, one did not always find something to eat at home. So I was playing it safe. I
was alone, perusing a book I had just bought from the hotel newsstand and vaguely
remarked that two gentlemen entered the shop and sat in the booth next to mine. Apart
from the tables and chairs conventionally placed inside the pizzeria and a sumptuous
salad bar in the middle, all along the walls were little wooden booths with seating for
four. Two persons tucked inside the booth and two others, exposed on the other side
of a small table. The wooden part of the partition reached the shoulder height of the
seated person and a small curtain took over the task of concealing the neighboring
customer thus providing a modicum of privacy without, however, suppressing his
voice. The waiter took my order and I kept on reading the publicity superlatives on
the book covers, inside and out, and at some point realized that my neighbors were
talking in Greek. When the pizza and lager arrived and I put down the book, I found
myself following what was being said next door. I really had no choice. Despite the
piped music and the slight hubbub, the voices came on loud and clear. They even
diverted my attention from my taste buds. I was not enjoying my meal. And I couldn't
care less for voice number one and voice number two. But there was no respite.
From their conversation I deduced that voice number one was a local. Funny I
should not know him. But then, his voice seemed older than I was and I was never in
the thick of the Greek community, always on the fringe. Voice number two had left
Egypt years ago and had started his life anew in Greece. They were obviously close
friends who had not seen each other for some years and were exchanging news and
views of that time of their life they were apart. Oh who cares? Why don't they shut up
or, at least, lower their voices? Let me enjoy my pizza, for heaven's sake. But on they
droned, with voice number two doing most of the droning because voice number one
was doing all right. Plenty of money, things running smoothly, the factory working
day and night. He was basking in self-satisfied silence. It was poor number two who
seemed to be in straights and was not so much complaining, as analyzing his
difficulties, both business and marital.
“But,” he said, “I am lucky in one thing. I am in love. I have fallen in love
with a wonderful girl. Here,” he added, “I have her picture.”
A silence, an opening of a wallet, a shuffling of paper, a silence once again,
and then voice number one,
“Yes, yes, very nice. But what about Amina?”
38
I just managed not to expectorate the beer I was sipping. I choked it down and
pricked my ears.
“Oh, I still love Amy,” voice number two explained. “I mean, she is my wife,
but Vera is something else. She is so bright. She is brilliant. She is the director of the
American publicity company that has recently opened a branch in Greece. And you
know, Amy is giving me a very hard time. She is never satisfied. Forever
complaining. Still thinks she is living in the shadow of Okasha Pasha. All this
bitching gets you down.”
I finished my pizza, paid my bill and left. Getting up, I threw a glance at the
two men. I definitely did not know voice number one and just barely remembered
voice number two although I had been to his wedding and had half-heartedly
congratulated him.
So Amy was on her way out. I could not pretend I was sad. It was probably
good riddance to bad rubbish for her. But what would she do? And then I remembered
Nick and thought that, perhaps, she too had someone on the side. I worried a little
about it, but in my life I also had bigger worries and just as the small fish are eaten by
the big, so are the small worries gobbled up by bigger ones.
A few months later, my mother went to Greece because grandma was dying.
She was by grandma's side in her last few days and when she died, I flew in for the
funeral and flew out again to attend to the business which was making us rich and
famous but not that much happier. My mother stayed on a couple of weeks longer to
keep Marti company and when she returned, she told me that one evening, Amy and
her husband came to offer their condolences. They spent most of the evening
bickering between themselves in public, self-centered, embarrassing everyone around.
Amy, she said, had lost her sparkle and her smile and although she had kept well
physically, she was a different person. So much for my happy princess with the
beguiling voice and the half-English accent. Well, perhaps we have changed too, like
Amy, and do not even suspect it.
Across the years that followed, the obvious happened, Amy was thrown aside
by her inconstant husband. Vera, I gathered from the news that trickled to us through
Marti, was superbly successful in her career, though not, I thought, in her choice of a
husband, whom she was soon obliged to feed, clothe and keep in style and also pay
for his ex-wife's alimony. But perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps, she was very happy.
Who was I to judge and on what evidence? As for Amy who had me worried for a
moment, back then, she was counting her blessings and was constantly saying, partly
as a joke but undoubtedly also in dead earnest, “May God keep our Vera, the provider
of our daily bread.” She had become a native Greek speaker with an English accent
and spent much of her time playing bridge and probably bickered no more.
By and by, as we all must, my mother died, as someone who is dear to me
said, at a viable, dieable age, leaving me a rich and puzzled man. Wondering if all the
rush was worth it. I never married. I had a few liaisons, a few affairs, but my true
passion was my work. It was her death that shook me to my very foundations. That
made me stare, wide-eyed, astonished, at the folly of my life. On an impulse, I sold
my business, sold my lovely new flat on the Nile and moved to Greece. For a while I
stayed at Marti's place. She had married and divorced and lived alone. I used her
home as a base, for I traveled widely for the first few years of my liberation from a
comfortable, addictive and inexorable workaholism. Getting to know our world. From
the jungles of Africa and its endangered species, to those of the Amazon and its
endangered forests, to the Arctic regions and their endangered ice. I saw our planet"s
teeming and suicidal, multiplying legions, its peoples of all hues, white, brown, black,
39
and yellow. Of all eyes, slit and round, brown, blue, green and gray. Of all noses,
broad and flat, thin and pointed. Of all lips, thick and sensual, thin and hard. Of all
statures, from pigmy short to Masai tall. I saw the whole of our polluted, endangered
earth. And then at fifty-five, I had to t