El KAHIRA - LAST HOURS
Dawn arrived all too fast. A dawn that was not welcome, ceding its grayness to sunlight, to noise in the street, to Karima's arrival and her comings and goings. I shook my drugged Goddess awake and she woke up with a smile, always a smile, despite the drowsiness, despite the fatigue. Oh, that smile that never quenched my thirst for it. Her eyes were puffed from lack of sleep, from an excess of love. We had work to do. Judith was expecting us. We left the house after our revitalizing daily ablutions and a hurried breakfast and stepped onto the noisy street, cool but bright with sunshine. One of those enchanting winter days, ideal for walks in gardens and on riverbanks, the sea, the desert, holding hands and stealing kisses. We walked the few hundred meters, down America El Latiniya Street, to the American Embassy. We entered the main gate, past the six-foot-six, crew-cut coifed, spick-and-span marines, and into the consular section. The girl at the desk remembered us and without being asked called Miss Swann on the telephone. Miss Swann came out of her office and was very warm with Lizzie who introduced me to her as her husband. We shook hands.
'So you are the lucky man,' she smiled at me. 'Yes. I am indeed the lucky man.'
'How nice to see a married couple so obviously in love. And how rare.'
'The miracle is not that I love her but that she loves me.'
Judith Swann smiled.
'No, I don't think so. You suit each other perfectly. Please come to my office.'
She led the way. A woman nearing forty, tall, well built with shoulder-length blonde hair and a face that might have been pretty and pert in her twenties but was now slightly lined, showing the strain of a career, of the nomadic life of a diplomat, without husband and family, without emotional mooring. We entered her office, which was small but neat and luxurious in a classic, subdued style, with two leather armchairs for us to sit on.
'You look very tired Eva. I hope it is not due to bad news,' said Miss Swann to Lizzie.
'No. I have had no news since Saturday, when I phoned you. I just do not sleep well at night, Judith. I worry too much.'
'I don't blame you, my dear. I sympathize completely.'
'Have we any news?'
'About?'
'My visa.'
'Oh yes. Of course. That is all I have been occupied with this morning. I have managed to get you a tourist visa for a one-month stay. I am sorry I could not provide you with a longer period. The US Immigration is very sticky with its visas.'
'That's wonderful. That is all I need. Thank you. Thank you so very much, Judith. I am absolutely indebted.'
'Nonsense. I hope everything turns out fine. Have you booked your ticket?'
'Yes. I'm leaving tomorrow thanks to you.'
'I hope we shall see each other when you return. We could perhaps play tennis together. Do you play tennis?'
'No. I have played a few times but one can hardly call it playing tennis.'
'What do you do, then?'
'I exercise in the gym and I swim.'
'Of course, that is really the best. Where do you go?'
'To the Gezira club.'
'So do I! How come I never saw you there?'
'Perhaps because I go there only on weekdays in the morning when the club is practically empty.'
'How nice. You are very lucky not to be working.'
'It has its advantages.'
'You bet! In any case, we will find something or other to do together. I think we could be good friends.'
'I hope so.'
'Well Eva, here's your passport.'
'Thank you Judith,' said Lizzie and went up and kissed her. 'You have really been super. I do hope we meet again.'
'But of course we shall, my dear. I hope you have a good trip and everything works out well for you. Good bye and God bless you.'
I thanked Miss Swann as well and we moved slowly outside, saying good-bye to the girl at the desk. The passport safely in my pocket. One by one, the obstacles cleared. Things were moving well. So well, the ache in my heart became permanent. I would forget for a moment and then the nightmare would clobber me anew, wrenching my insides. I would look at Lizzie as in a dream, when the desired object is within reach but cannot be had. However hard you try to grasp it, you cannot. A dream of torment and frustration. But this was not a dream.
'Michael, my sweet, what's wrong?'
'Nothing. Nothing's wrong.'
We walked a little, silently, holding hands, towards Midan El Tahrir. 'She was nice, wasn't she?' asked Lizzie.
'Yes. Very nice. You're a terrific liar.'
'Oh come on.'
'No, I mean it as a compliment. I was dead scared you would make a slip.
Luckily we did not talk much.'
'She really likes me, doesn't she?'
'Do you think she's lesbian?'
'Goodness, what a thought!'
'I mean, the way she sort of fell for you.'
'What d' you mean fell for me? She simply liked me.'
'Not so simply, is my guess. Oh, well. What shall we do now?'
'Whatever you want, my sweet. This is Cairo. You're the boss.'
'So how about seeing a little of Cairo? The picturesque and the historical, mosques and architecture. You have seen the glory of the dead. Do you want to see the squalor of the living?'
'Yes, I would. An education for your ignorant nympho.'
'My beloved nympho….oh please. I cannot joke just now.'
'Take it easy, Michael. Don't you see? We are moving towards our goal. It is extraordinary, the way things are working out for us. They couldn't be better.'
I hailed a cab. It would have been impossible to find parking space in the packed streets of Khan El Khalili. The taxicab was an ancient Fiat with a long but low passenger cabin. A vehicle designed specifically to be a taxicab. It had two folding seats in front of the main back seat just behind the driver's compartment. A wooden frame and sliding glass panels isolated the driver. I told him our destination and the taxi moved off with a terrific groan and vibrations, which changed in tone with every gear shift but with hardly a variation of speed. It was in its infirm old age, as decrepit as its driver. One well suited to the other. For neither the driver would manage in a newer car nor the car survive with a younger driver. When one finally conked out the other would be doomed.
We traversed the Opera square, Midan El Opera, with the small and beautifully ornate Opera House built by the Khedive Ismail for the ceremonies of the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Past El Ataba Square and up El Azhar Street until we reached the square where we disembarked. It was midday. The hustle and bustle in full swing, the noise in full blast. Humanity in peak, purposeful activity. Trying to make a living, trying to survive. The continuity going back centuries in that particular patch of Cairo.
'This mosque, there, Lizzie, is the Sayedna El Hussein. It is quite well known but of no historical interest because it is relatively recent. On the opposite side of the street is the famous Al Azhar mosque, which is part of the prestigious Azhar University, the principal university of Islam. Built in the latter part of the tenth century, it is quite splendid and vast with five minarets and I forget how many columns. You see how far back in time Cairo exists? In fact, it is when the Arabs spread over North Africa in the seventh century that they adopted Cairo as the center and capital of their empire. Before that, it was a settlement created by the Persians at the start of the sixth century B.C. when they conquered Egypt and later the Romans used it as a military headquarters.
This bit of Cairo must have changed little since the Middle Ages.'
'Goodness, I'm getting dizzy with all this scramble and rushing around. Hey Michael, will you look at that!'
The spectacle was ordinary though it never ceased to amaze me. A man riding a bicycle, balancing on his head a flat frame of interwoven lengths of wood forming a rigid platform of about a meter and a half by one, packed to a hazardous capacity with many layers of the flat, round, baladi bread. With one hand he held the frame and with the other the handlebars of the bicycle and was weaving his way with the skill of an acrobat and a super-gifted cyclist through the dense crowd. He made his perilous approach audible to the pedestrians with the sound of a kiss multiplied to a few hundred decibels. I could not help laughing.
'Yes. Isn't it incredible? I also love that cheeky sound with which he avoids prospective accidents. His bicycle bell, so to speak.'
Lizzie laughed.
'Has he ever fallen off, I wonder?'
'I never saw a spill. They have this fantastic skill of mounting and getting off the bicycle. As you see, their speed is low and they manage to stop and land on their feet if a minor accident occurs. In any case, if ever a spill occurred they would simply put the bread back again dusting it cursorily if at all.'
'Can you imagine him rolling in Scolley Square in Boston? Such a different world!'
'Corina initially was puzzled that the foreign communities like the Greeks and Italians and Armenians were not assimilated with the local population in Egypt. But you see Lizzie; the differences in culture and especially religion were too great to be disregarded. On top of that, the poverty and illiteracy of the populace gave the foreigner a sense of superiority and an arrogance, which made him disdain the average Egyptian. Islam is a strong and dominating religion and I cannot decide if it has formed the Arab soul or has in fact suited it. Probably the latter. It seems to me, and I may be wrong, that it would never suit the West. The authoritarianism of Islam and the inherent affinity towards it of Arab political structures do not predispose the Arabs to democracy and individualism, which are after all western ideals since Classical Greece. There is between the two a bridgeless gulf in cultural and political tendencies. Don't you feel that way too?'
'I do feel it very intensely that I am in an alien world. A world with a long history and culture but so exotic, in the sense that it is totally foreign and strange to me. Something I never even imagined or thought about in our self-centered America.'
'And yet you ignored it and married into a foreign culture,'
'Oh, don't make me sound dumb. I did not ignore it. I simply did not know it.
Moreover, the situation was different. Abdou was living in our country. Educated in our universities. Had adapted to our ways. At least temporarily. I had the same feelings of alienation once in Arabia, but less so because I led a very secluded life and had not much contact with the locals.'
'Come this way, Lizzie. Let us first visit Khan El Khalili. It is here in the old city that centuries-old hand crafts, such as hand-beaten bronze and silver work, leather and carpet making are carried on sometimes right on the narrow streets but more often in small back rooms and apartments above the shops that sell the wares. Their methods and designs have probably changed very little across the centuries.'
We walked slowly hand in hand along the narrow lanes with the shops of souvenirs and carpets, leather ware, silverware and articles made of bronze. Pots and platters, decorative and utilitarian. Furniture shops with tables inlaid with mother of pearl and screens in arabesque style. Jewelry shops with earrings, rings and necklaces with semi-precious stones. We walked slowly which was perhaps not the optimum speed to negotiate so crowded and narrow a path. We were bumped continuously and besides had to cope with the shopkeepers lounging at their shop entrances calling at you, 'Welcome, welcome, welcome ya mister.' 'Bery cheap, bery good leazer.'
'Change money?' Moreover, if you happened to step inside to look at something that interested you, a coffee or a soft drink would materialize instantly and the shopkeeper would not accept a demur to his courtesy. His offer of refreshment was hospitable, implacable and well thought out. After drinking his coffee while exchanging friendly small talk it was infinitely more difficult to leave the shop without a purchase. Much more difficult to bargain as well.
At most shops, one could ask to see the workshop and the shop owner would lead you into tortuous corridors and up into rooms where the artisans would be working furiously, each in his little crowded corner hardly sparing a glance to reply to your 'Salamou Aleikom’. On the way out you noticed that many of the rooms were living quarters where whole families occupied each a single room and where the smells of cooking and perhaps of a common unsanitary toilet assailed you. Can one expect personal cleanliness in these conditions? Had you gone to the roof you would have found inhabited attics next to chicken coops and rabbit cages, which compounded the vast variety of smells.
Out in the street, we continued our stroll in a throng of barefoot children, of tourists, of men in galabeyas and pajamas, of women wrapped sometimes suggestively in black milayas, their walk a ritual of provocation and coquetry. Strolled through the odors of spices, through occasional swarms of flies to meet further down with a lone burro facing a wall, motionless in utter resignation and indifference to his surroundings. Lizzie smiled at me, tickled the top of his head between the two donkey ears and asked him, 'Hey, guy, how's it going?' She did not even get a bat of the eyelid and on we went in this strange world within our world, so close and yet so remote and unfamiliar.
Now and then a car would pass by, narrowly miss scraping its sides on the walls of the shops. The pedestrians would squeeze to the edges of the path, sometimes retreating into the entrances of shops without a murmur of protest. A car owner was an important person. Still, you had to wonder at the brazenness of the driver. Further down, we came across a much wider street with spice vendors and bakeries, grocers and butchers and shops of every trade. The merchandise spread on the street and hawked with an infinite variety of stentorian voices. They had to be loud and booming to rise above the buzz of the milling masses. I held Lizzie tightly. I did not want to lose her.
Did not want her stolen from me.
'Enjoying yourself, my Goddess? Not quite mount Olympus, I'd say.'
'Well, it's an experience, an education.'
'In a nutshell, what would you say shocked you or shook you most?'
'In three words? Are three words a nutshell?'
'Well, let's say, a nutshell with half a nut inside. But three words can be an essay if they are well chosen.'
'Crowds. Noise. Smells. Does that compose an essay?'
'Um, yes. I think you have the gist of it. There is also poverty, ignorance, friendliness, dirt, beauty, ugliness, and since the list can go on and on, I end on a positive note: and sunshine and blue skies.'
From Khan El Khalili we took the El Gamaliya Street to get the feel of the ancient part of Cairo, to see the ancient Arab houses most of which were still inhabited. To see the many mosques beautifully decorated with characteristic Arab designs of very great age. The ancient mansions and palaces such as the Musafirkhana where the Khedive Ismail was born. The khanquas, or convents. The wakalas of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as the caravanserais were called. The madrassas, the Koranic centers of learning. The tombs, mausoleums and fountains. The Bab El Nasr, Bab El Futuh and the Bab El Zuwayla, entrances to the medieval fortifications of Cairo. To return via Mouiz Eldin Allah Street in a truly architectural promenade in the past. Then a cab to the Citadel, a fortress built by Salah El Din or Saladin, as the infidels knew him. Built on a spur of hills above the city in 1166, it was the residence of Egypt's rulers. We visited the small palace where Mohamed Aly lived in the Citadel and the mosque he built in the compound with the tall, thin, elegant minarets inspired by the Turkish ones at St. Sophia in Istanbul. The sight of which evokes such a romantic aura of the quintessential Islamic East. Of Harun El Rashid and Baghdad of the Alf Leila ou Leila, the Thousand and One Nights.
'Lizzie, it was here that Mohamed Aly invited the leaders of the rival Mameluk clans to a banquet of reconciliation and slit their throats. A radical remedy to a chronic headache.'
'Gee. A nice guy! Offering terminal hospitality.'
'I suppose they were all nice guys. Politics has always been a ruthless game. At that time, it was just a little more savage. Hey, Lizzie, it is past three. Are you getting hungry? My hunger is turning fierce.'
'My hunger is turning sexy.'
'Why, my love, my little beloved nympho, we must feed all your appetites. But since we're here, I suggest we see one or two of the mosques in the vicinity.'
'My legs are beginning to tire.'
'Funny how some parts of your body tire quicker than others.' A smile.
'It is a gift of Allah.'
'Brace yourself. Just one or two mosques to round off the picture.'
At the foot of the Citadel, we visited the mosque of the Sultan Hassan. This fourteenth century mosque is a masterpiece of Arab architecture, austere and majestic. Inside the mosque, the decoration is sparse but rich, with tall columns and arches of unsurpassed elegance and a large cupola with stalactites. Opposite this mosque is the El Rifai mosque, equally stately and in no way betrays the fact that it was built quite recently, in 1912. A ten-minute walk took us to the Ibn Tulun mosque, constructed in the ninth century making it the most ancient Moslem monument of Egypt. Of sober architecture, simplicity and harmonious dimensions, it is richly decorated and this contrasts with the austerity of the monument. A peculiarity: the minaret, in the shape of a telescope has a spiral staircase on the outside circling around it.
'So, Lizzie, shall we call it a day?'
'Well, if we don't, my legs will. And another thing. I'm just about ready to pee on myself.'
'Hold it, my love; we'll soon have you safely in a toilet.'
'Not so safely if we don't hurry up.'
Luckily, a taxi brought some tourists to the mosque, we took it over and I asked the driver to take us to a well-known fish restaurant near Ataba. The restaurant looked dilapidated with rough wooden chairs and tables covered with glossy white paper instead of a tablecloth but the fish was reputedly fresh and the prices pricey. Directly we entered we asked for the toilets and were led to them passing outside a large kitchen where a battery of big blackened, grimy pans were gurgling on a huge stove emitting the stink of oil and fish being fried. The waiter showed us our respective toilets, one for women, one for men. The ultimate luxury. I smiled inwardly when I entered it because the toilets were native squat toilets, just an enameled footrest and a hole in the ground. The smell was ammoniac and socked you hard up your nostrils. Not just ammoniac either. So how could I not love my Lizzie when she came out some time later with a smile? A girl that would not abandon her luminous smile or her good humor.
'That was quite an experience,' she said.
'Let's go sit down, my love and you can tell me all about it.'
'Are you sure you want us to have lunch here?'
'Sure. Unless you don't.'
'Well, perhaps the food is good. In any case, it cannot be as bad as the toilets. It would have shut its doors long ago.'
'I was told the food is very good. I think that perhaps they might have those giant shrimps. And do I need them!'
'What about me?'
'It was a good idea, today's outing. It took my mind off things and you got a feel of the good and the bad of Cairo. A little of its living past, to use a cliché, and a little of its present living: the poverty, the misery and the crushing overflowing humanity.'
'Poverty, yes. But not misery. Overall, the people seem cheerful and ready with a smile and a laugh. They take life as it comes. They accept it and strive to survive.'
The waiter arrived and confirmed that giant shrimps were available, which we ordered together with some fish, fried potatoes and salad. No wine list though. The regulars were not wine drinkers. Barely beer drinkers. He would get us two beers from the grocer next door.
'We used to call them sex vitamins, those giant shrimps.'
'Who's we?'
'Corina and I.'
'Oh.'
'You silly Billy. Do you really get upset or just pretend whenever I mention Corina?'
'I just pretend.'
'Good, because you really did demolish her. Wiped her out of my mind. Out of the mind of the big heartthrob.'
She was sullen for all of two seconds and then smiled.
'What were we saying?' I said. 'Nice restaurant, this. Do you like it?'
'I haven't been to Chez Maxim to be able to compare. In the last analysis, the appraisal shall depend on the food. One cannot fairly grade it on its toilets.'
'Oh they're decent enough.'
'Sure, decent enough! Except that the smell would appall a corpse. I went in splashing in an inch of water and I thought I was in the wrong place until I saw the hole in the ground and I figured it out. Then I started wondering how to pee with the trousers I'm wearing. It was impossible to take them off with all the water on the floor and no place to hang them. Eventually, I did relieve myself peeing on my clothes as well, getting wet all over and I used my hanky to dry myself a little. I threw it in the hole and flushed it away.'
'Good Lord! You'll clog up the system.'
'Yeah, yeah, very funny.'
'You came out smiling, though.'
'You didn't expect me to cry, did you?'
The waiter brought us the beers from the grocer and asked for the money to go pay them. Two brown, dripping liter bottles with the oval paper badge, a yellow star on a dark blue background, already awry ready to peel off. He opened them not bothering to dry them and a small wet circle accumulated at their base on the table. The service not quite five-star. I poured the beer. Miracle of miracles, the Stellas were not completely flat. They strained and gurgled as they tumbled into our glasses and managed to produce a tolerable amount of gas and foam. The socialist revolution did manage to provide these simple pleasures. The happiness you felt when your beer produced a little unexpected froth. We drank up.
'Oh that was good,' said Lizzie. 'I was so thirsty.'
'So was I. Pretty good beer.'
'The only thing going for it was that it was nice and cool. Boy, I'm starving. I could eat you alive.'
'Please don't put ideas into my head. My appetite is just as ravenous. And alive, is the only way I like to eat you.'
Again a smile. Oh my God, look at her! A heavenly smile in a fifth-rate restaurant in Ataba. Wearing wet shoes, damp underwear and the radiant smile of a Goddess. Down from presidential suites and private airplanes to swollen feet and broken down taxis, being served by a tough looking waiter in a T-shirt and a white soiled apron in a joint with glossy paper for tablecloth, a hole in the ground for a toilet and the fragrance of fried fish perfuming our hair and clothes. With a man she loves, with a man that worships her, a man that makes her smile that tells her she is free.
Getting to know the sights and smells of Cairo. A momentary diversion before flying away with plans and dreams, which may or may not come true. To fulfill her destiny. To tear my heart apart.
'What's wrong, Michael?'
'Nothing, my angel.'
'Please don't be sad. Time will fly.'
'Not as quickly as you will.'
'But time will fly! We'll soon be together.'
'Yes, my love, I know. I'm sorry.'
'I loved our tour today. I never realized Cairo was such a cultural heritage. I never knew it had such a large number of mosques. I never imagined its history went that far back. Of course, Abdou tried to educate me insofar as Arabs were concerned or at least to crack that near total ignorance we Americans have about the Arabs. But history in the guise of little stories is altogether different to seeing the solid remnants of the past. The buildings, the handicrafts, the superb decorations of the mosques and the distinctive Arab motifs, so strange and exotic to the Western eye but so very beautiful.'
'Yes, my sweet baby. I am so glad you liked what you saw. I love it too. But then, I grew up with it. It is part of me. Most European cities have their vieille ville, the original old city. Cairo's is older than most but unfortunately so carelessly kept. Egypt is a poor country and conservation needs money and awareness. Both of which are in short supply.'
'For instance, I never knew the Arabs had conquered part of Spain. It was Abdou who told me.'
'Not only that. The Arabic language itself was confined to central and southern Arabia but as a result of the Moslem conquests in the seventh century it became the language of the Middle East, of Northern Africa as far as Morocco and the northern Sudan.'
She drank a little beer and looked at me. 'I shall miss you too, you know,' she said. 'Oh, time will fly.'
She smiled.
'I do so love you.'
'Please Lizzie, don't.'
'Go on, then.'
'Yes. The great Arab expansion of the seventh century began with the faith of Islam. There was an amazing burst of vitality and energy among the Arab people. The rulers who succeeded Mohammed, the Khalifas or Caliphs, were capable and ruthless military leaders. In spite of continual fighting, the Arabs increased enormously in numbers. They killed large numbers of their enemies and divided their womenfolk amongst themselves. Their society and religion permitting they were able to reproduce rapidly and to keep large armies in the field. Moving west, they reached the Straits of Gibraltar and at the beginning of the eighth century crossed into Spain. In the east they gradually overran Persia, much of central Asia and western India.'
Lizzie smiled.
'What's the smile for, my love?'
'I was thinking of someone else's burst of vitality and energy.'
'Oh, that's never in a vacuum. I had someone else's fullest encouragement and cooperation. Not to say demands, not to say incendiary stimulation.'
'And you still do!'
'Better return to the Arabs. Are you still interested?'
'Yes, my sweet.'
'Of course, with their military conquests the Arabs, spread their religion and culture. At a time when Christian Europe was still in the Dark Ages of gloom and barbarism, the Arabs were directing their great vigor and zeal to science, medicine, literature and art, as well as fighting. They absorbed the culture mainly of Greece but also of Persia and made it their own. The Arab cities of Baghdad, Cairo and Cordova were centers of a brilliant civilization.'
The waiter arrived with two plates, knives and forks, warm, crispy baladi bread and the salad. He placed them unceremoniously on the table, poured in our glasses what little beer remained in the bottles and took the bottles away. I asked him if the grocer perchance had some white wine and he smiled amused and shook his head. I gave him money for another two bottles of beer although we were already feeling slightly bloated with what we drank. Before going to fetch them, he brought us our food. Two platters: in one were two delicious looking grilled fish and in the other about ten giant shrimps.
'Oh boy, oh boy. How does that look, Lizzie?'
'Scrumptious, as Sarah would say.'
'Good old Sarah. Help yourself, Lizzie. We'll drink to her health when the beer comes.'
'Yes. Although she deserves a toast with something nobler than a gasping Stella.'
'We'll buy a bottle of champagne on our way home to toast her in style.'
'Mmm, it's delicious. Makes you forget the toilets.'
'Yes. Excellent choice of a restaurant, after all. And here comes the beer. What more do we want?'
We were silent for a few moments, concentrating and enjoying our first sensations of taste. Looking at each other. Our last hours together. Not even a full day left. I filled the glasses with beer and proposed the toast.
'To Sarah, a brave, faithful friend to whom we owe not a small part of today's happiness, tomorrow's misery and our future hopes.'
'To Sarah. Cheers.'
We clinked glasses, drank a sip and went back to our delicious food. 'You didn't have to mention tomorrow's misery. In a toast one brings up pleasant things.'
'You're right. Unfortunately, it is part of our love. Always has been.'
'And about to stop being.'
'Yes my darling.'
Every time she drank some beer, it was an occasion to look at me and smile. I could never take that smile for granted. I could never ignore it. Its novelty never wore out. Its sweetness never became commonplace. It strummed a chord in my heart and set vibrations going. But the warmth that filled my heart with every smile was now turning to apprehension. I was constantly thinking of tomorrow. There were moments of silence and I could see she was enjoying her food. I wondered how she felt. About leaving me. Going back to Boston.
'A penny for your thoughts,' I told her.
'I was thinking of the Arabs. How did it all end?'
'And I was thinking of you. Doesn't a one-track mind eventually become boring?'
'Sometimes. You could never bore me, my sweet. You know so many things.'
'Oh hardly. Anyway, about the Arabs, nothing ever ends. There are discrete periods of history, which we can study and talk about but life goes on. Arabs are still here, devel