CHAPTER XXII : CAIRO, THE WEDDING, ALEXANDRIA, LONDON.
I managed to sleep eventually and next day, bright and early, I took a cab to the West London Air Terminal and from there boarded the bus for the airport. I checked in at the Olympic Airways counter and waited for the boarding announcement in the passenger lounge. These movements and the surrounding hubbub kept my mind to some extent off Diana but now and then the sting struck and poisoned my thoughts and drove me back to my speculations. Luckily, under the circumstances, they did not last long. I had arrived in England with a propeller driven DC-6B airliner and now the jets had come into service shortening travel time considerably but still a flight to Cairo was hopping from one airport to the next in Europe. It was Paris, Rome, Athens and finally Cairo. We boarded the Boeing 707 and at the intervening airports spent my time in the transit halls, which were much the same along our itinerary. Crowded, noisy, with my fellow passengers meandering from one tax-free shop to the next looking for bargains. As we moved eastwards towards the Middle East there was a gradual, general deterioration of order, of cleanliness, and a heightening of noise and decibel levels of airport and airline employees and passengers. The apex, of course, was at the Cairo International Airport. It was already dark as the plane cruised over the brightly lit city and from the small window I tried to pick landmarks which would allow me to figure out the landscape, but was unable to pinpoint any section of the city I knew. Even the majestic Nile was nowhere to be found. The disorder started as soon as the airplane touched down and despite the cabin crew’s pleas to the passengers to keep their seats until the plane came to a standstill, most of them jumped up and began pulling their hand-held baggage from the overhead racks as soon as the plane bumped onto the runway creating a commotion akin to panic. The disorder continued all the way from passport control with the supercilious police officers ignoring the disorder and without looking up stretched their hand to grasp the nearest passport shoved before them, to the warlike retrieval of luggage as it arrived on small trailers, to the customs where sour faced officials diligently searched your baggage for hidden treasures, to the operatic-voiced porters who grabbed your luggage unasked to transport it outside. And the one-upmanship which no socialist revolution could efface. The rich and powerful throwing their weight around ignoring queues and the rights of others and pushing shamelessly to finish their business as quickly as possible. The underprivileged voicing liberally the honorific titles of authority, of bey and pasha, that the revolution had abolished. Yes, it was an Egypt I had almost forgotten and made me smile but also shiver.
Mother, father and Annie were waiting outside. We fell into each other’s arms kissing and talking twenty to the dozen. Happiness and delight overflowing. A little beyond, more discreetly, but broadly smiling, was our chauffeur Hanafi. When the repeated hugging and kissing of my loved ones ended, he came over and grabbed my hand with both of his to wish me welcome with an ingratiating politeness. He took my suitcase from the porter and we moved to our car in the parking lot and off we drove with father sitting next to him and us three in the rear seat. We crossed a small stretch of desert and entered Heliopolis on our way to the city center where our apartment was located. Heliopolis and Cairo looked clean and orderly but only because at night the circulation was reduced and the dirt not apparent. At home we left Hanafi to put the car in the nearby garage and bring my suitcase upstairs to our fourth floor flat. Yes, we did have these small amenities in Egypt. I kissed our longtime manservant who seemed shorter, chubbier and darker than I remembered and we sat in the living room for an update of the coming event, Annie’s marriage. Annie was blooming, happy and relaxed. Her marriage was to take place in Cairo at the end of June. Tasos had agreed to that so that his colleagues from the embassy and the friends he had made in Egypt could be present. Father invited his parents for a week in Cairo to attend the ceremony and do the basic sightseeing in this thousand-year-old city.
I sat for a while with my darling Annie in the living room. Even during the good and the less good periods with Diana when the specter of Edgar troubled me, I often thought of Annie after she left London and missed her direly. Had she been present, she would have been the only person I might have confided in. But even that was not certain for I was not given to intimate confessions. As we sat exchanging news, we hugged and kissed repeatedly. What a strange turn our brother-sister relationship had taken. From a relative apathy between us before London to this warm rapport and overwhelming brotherly affection afterwards. She asked me if I had gone to visit Aunt Agatha and guiltily I said I did not, but promised to see her as soon as I returned. She asked about Omar and my relationship with Diana. I told her that to all appearances Omar went back to his womanizing routine straight after she left. She laughed and said that anyway she did not always believe his declarations of love. Because, she said, when they were in bed he often told her he loved her. He was not aloof. He was gentle and in his lovemaking generous, constantly asking if she was happy, if she had an orgasm. Yes, she did not unquestionably believe his avowals of love but also did not unquestionably disbelieve them. She thought the fact that he was so good looking and easily sociable and able to have any girl he wanted, made him slightly arrogant and superficial in his relationships. She wondered if he would ever mature to be a sensible and compassionate human being. What about Diana? she asked. I said I thought everything was rolling smoothly and that Edgar was on his way out when, yesterday, I saw them together at South Kensington. She did not phone to give me an explanation nor to say goodbye. Annie smiled and caressed my cheek. I have the impression she is tied down in a knot with this guy and does not know how to get rid of him. He seems quite a ruffian from the little she told me before you started dating. But don’t fret, things will clear up once you’re back. Well, in any case, one way or another.
And Tasos? I asked. Annie smiled. Slow but steady is a good description. We have been meeting almost every evening. Getting familiar with each other. We have gone dancing in nightclubs both with his friends and on our own and he seems to be very much in love with me. And you? I asked. I like him because he seems a decent person and I think I shall eventually love him. It might sound cold-blooded the way I say this but he is no Omar. With Omar I held myself back in an effort not to get emotionally involved because I knew our affair had to end soon. His womanizing also helped to keep me in this perspective. With Tasos I am unguarded with the hope that my emotional attachment will strengthen. We kissed several times and he asked me to go to his flat. I told him, listen Tasos, we shall be married in less than a month’s time. I am not a virgin but I think we should leave this significant event for the first night of our married life. Let sex be something we shall be looking forward to. Not something already tasted. He was shocked but he smiled uneasily and agreed. I looked at Annie just as surprised. I really did not know I had such a wonderful sister, I said.
Mother came to us smiling. What are you two twittering about? Have you finished? It’s almost midnight. Your room is made up, George, and I have put your belongings in your drawers and some of your things to be washed. We got up and I kissed mother and Annie and after a quick wash went to my room. I looked around. Not a single item had been moved from its place. Three years went by and they were still there as if yesterday. My desk, my books, a poster of a famous painting of the races with the jockeys wearing their colorful silk jackets and caps and the horses’ necks straining to get ahead, my bed, and the cupboard with the clothes I left behind. I undressed and lay in bed in my underclothes and Diana came to me uninvited, troubling, and beloved. But she was a continent away. The impact was no longer jarring; it just led to a futile search for a likely explanation. A long recapitulation of our liaison and eventually sleep. I woke up to a cacophony of sounds from the street below. For a moment I wondered where I was but, yes, I was at home in Cairo. We lived on the central artery that went all the way to Heliopolis and other sections of the city. Leaning, overloaded buses with passengers hanging out of the doorway came and departed from the bus stop near the entrance of our building. Heavy car traffic and the liberal use of their horns reached up to the fourth floor where we lived. Street vendors with stentorian voices advertised their wares over and over again. One eventually gets used to this background noise but after three years at Queensgate it comes initially as a shock. Would I ever be able to live in this country? I had to know. I had to find out.
Father had left for work and Annie and mother were in their rooms and I went down to walk a little in Cairo’s streets for first impressions. Three years and nothing seemed to have changed. If anything I felt there was a noticeable deterioration in the city center. Socialism was anything but the boon, the blessing, it was touted to be. Buildings were neglected, cleanliness overlooked and the traffic of people and cars worsening. To my mind, socialism was a seemingly egalitarian policy whose undisclosed agenda was to emasculate the old and wealthy ruling classes and keep in power Abdel Nasser’s dictatorial army clique. New suburbs were created and were expanding to accommodate the inexorable birth rate and the new middle classes of police and army officers together with a new and expanding business class intimately linked to the centers of power were moving there, while slums were growing at the edges of the city where living conditions were not fit even for animals. It was in those days that this parallel development of new luxury hotels, of the rich getting richer and an expanding poverty with few employment opportunities that started the emigration of skilled and unskilled labor to the oil-rich Arab nations. This emigration was the safety valve, the stop-gap to an explosion of discontent but I firmly believed that if Egypt did not find a way to limit the frightening birthrate, the country would in a few decades be in trouble. Unfortunately, the fatalism of the Moslem religion and the sayings, everyone is born with his fate prescribed, in other words if a family had one child or ten it was all the same. God had made arrangements for the one as well as for the ten. And the second comforting motto, God does not forget anyone, not even a single cockroach in the sewers, defeated the half-hearted government attempts to induce women to use contraceptive devices and pills. The good life of the new crop of top officials, most of them army men, absorbed them infinitely more than the future of their country. I had lived wonderful schooldays in this country but could not envisage a future, my future here.
When I returned home I suggested to Annie that we go to the club for a while until lunchtime. We hailed a taxi and off we went in that smelly, ramshackle but very cheap mode of transport. The traffic was hectic and the driver relieved his tensions by leaning on his car horn, just like most of the other short-tempered, sweating drivers, and by listening to a monotonous chant of the Koran on his extra-low fidelity car radio. They were his weapons, one for attack, the other for defense. The Gezira Sporting Club was an oasis of calm in a chaotic and disorderly city. It was a Thursday and not many members were around. Tomorrow, a Friday, the official weekly holiday, the situation would be reversed. The city would be calm and the club in full commotion. The young and old people of the wealthy classes would congregate there. Some to play sports, such as tennis, squash, a swim in one of the pools or a round of golf and tall, sociable drinks at the bar or the Golf Pavilion. Some to meet friends, the older teenagers to flirt with girls and the elderly to drink a beer or lemonade in the cool shade of a tree. I asked Annie to visit the club because I intended to use it extensively while in Cairo. I needed to shape up physically. The only sport I did in London was a little walking, exercising my jaws by masticating food, and developing my formerly retarded sex drive. We walked slowly to the squash courts and I greeted my old trainers and told them they would be seeing more of me in the coming days. Then we walked to the Lido, the sitting area around the small pool and suddenly a bunch of old school friends jumped up from their easy chairs and crowded around Annie. I was practically ignored but I felt terribly proud of Annie’s popularity and the love of her friends. I retired to the shade of a sun parasol, sat down, and ordered a beer. As I was sitting alone, I thought of Diana. She was drifting away. Would, as Omar predicted, would I be over my passion for her by the end of my two months’ stay? Did I want it this way?
Annie left on Friday at noon for a long weekend in Alexandria with Tasos and some of his friends. Where will you be staying? I asked. At the Palestine Hotel, she answered and added with a smile, in separate rooms. On Friday I spent my morning at home. I wrote a short letter to Diana. It went like this: My darling Diana, I left London in a state of utter confusion after our encounter at South Kensington Station. Not to say, a broken heart. You cancelled our appointment, our last appointment before my departure to see Edgar Mackenzie. You see, I learnt his name and finally saw his mean and callous face. Is that what you want? Somehow I felt you were not happy just then. Why are you not straightforward with me? Why have you kept me oscillating between the certainty that you love me and the uncertainty that you may not? I shall not press you but if you wish to write to me I shall be more than grateful. My address is at the back of the envelope. Annie is fine; getting ready for her wedding at the end of the month. She sends you her love and, of course, so do I. George. I enclosed it in an envelope and would send it first thing Saturday from the post office near our building.
In the early evening I sat with my parents in the living room as Mohamed served my father his daily couple of whiskies with peanuts and small snacks. He rarely had a meal at dinnertime and thought of these snacks and drinks as a sort of slimming diet, which was, of course, a misconception. George, he said, I have a question to put to you which does not require an immediate answer. Uh, oh, I thought, by now my mind was conditioned to these indirect and seemingly trivial questions. They were never very insignificant and my answers rarely satisfied them. Yes, father? You know the Zouganelli family, of course. Yes, father. You also have met the daughter, the young Lina. Yes, father. Yes father, yes father, but you haven’t seen her recently. You’ve been away three years, now. She has become a lovely young lady. A really beautiful girl. Beautiful face and gorgeous body. She finished the French Lycée this summer and the parents are looking around for a husband. Her father approached me at the Greek Center and asked me about you. Father, I protested, I just finished my first year at university, isn’t this talk slightly premature? Oh, but George, you won’t get married straightaway. We’ll just get you engaged so that we won’t lose the girl and you can get married in a year or two. She can even come to England during your last year. Zouganelli has plenty of money; he will not spare the expense of providing for the rent of a flat. Father, I do not think I can make any sort of commitment just now. Okay, okay. After the wedding you shall go to Alexandria with your mother for a few weeks. Lina will be there. Just have a look at her. That’s all I want.
Starting the following day, Saturday, I gravitated to the club daily, quite early in the morning. I started by playing a little squash and then swam in the club’s big pool. My physical condition was poor but with exercise the improvement was quick and encouraging. Soon I started jogging around the club’s racetrack which was used alternately with a new racetrack in Heliopolis for horse races. I also had access to a few horses that belonged to a friend and were stabled at the club and enjoyed a few afternoons of horseback riding. In addition to the sports I met a few friends from school. They were not close and mostly a year or two younger than I but we often sat for a drink at the bar and a sociable chat. Two weeks passed like a dream. My days were usually full and it was only at night that I thought of Diana. She was, decidedly, drifting away in the sense that she came to mind less frequently than the first days. But she was always with me at night when I was alone in my room. I tried to imagine, to reconstruct her face, to remember precisely its contours. Not her blue eyes which were luminous and were the first thing you noticed, these were continuously with me, but the shape of her nose, her mouth, some of her expressions, her gaiety and her uninhibited sexuality, which Edgar Mackenzie unleashed.
In the third week of June, Tasos’ parents arrived from Athens. They were an elderly couple, slightly older than my parents, well-educated and polite. A little befuddled too at this Middle Eastern Arab country with its crowds, noise and heat, its dirt and poverty. On the occasion of their arrival I met Tasos for the first time in Cairo. The whole family went to welcome them at the airport. We were hearty in view of this new alliance of our two families and I was also heartened to see Tasos’ rapport with my sweet Annie. The familiarity between the future spouses was progressing and this was mainly on Annie’s side where the reserve was formerly more evident. The parents seemed to have taken a liking to their future daughter-in-law as well, and addressed her as, my girl, my daughter. It was a week of multiple lunch and dinner invitations, of sightseeing trips to the pyramids, the Sakkara necropolis, a visit to Cairo’s exceptional archaeological museum and a Cairo-by-night outing at the Auberge des Pyramides for a show of foreign showgirls and the essential oriental belly dance. The marriage arrangements were proceeding on schedule. The invitations sent in good time, the wedding dress completed, the church and priests booked and a hall reserved at the Nile Hilton for the reception. The couple would leave for Athens the following day with the parents; the former for a Greek island honeymoon and the latter to resume residence in Athens after the happy event.
Finally, the big day, Saturday the 30th of June arrived. The two families, one reasonably large, the other tiny, friends, relatives and guests were either inside the church of St. Constantine or outside at the forecourt. By nine o’clock Annie had not yet arrived and though it was already dark, the heat was still uncomfortable and most of the guests awaited the bride on the forecourt. Tasos seriously dressed in summer suit and tie talked and joked with his colleagues with smiles and laughter. Most of our relatives were present. I had not seen them these last three years and, in any case, our only contact was at the occasional wedding or funeral. Annie arrived a quarter of an hour later with father, driven by a suited, smiling, perspiring Hanafi. My eyes were locked on Annie. My God, what a beautiful bride she was. Fresh, beautifully made up with a simple wedding dress without a train or a veil. Just superbly coiffed, hair pulled back in a loose chignon and two lovely pendant earrings just barely suspended below her ears. She got out of the car without help and smiled at us. She walked on father’s side to the church entrance and amid hand clapping was delivered to Tasos.
The ceremony was long and tedious and ordinarily I would have spent it outside the church, but not at Annie’s wedding. I kept looking at her calm, smiling demeanor with emotion and a lump in my throat. When it ended, after the rice throwing of Isaiah’s Dance, the taking of pictures and the distribution of sugared almonds wrapped in tulle, we departed in small groups and went directly to the Hilton. Annie and Tasos had booked a room in the hotel and went upstairs for Annie to change into more convenient clothes. The rest of us drifted to the reception hall and picked up drinks and cocktails from the plentiful variety available. We dispersed in small groups at the tables and talked merrily with music piped in and the merciful air conditioning cooling us off. Mother and father, the hosts, moved about greeting people until the bride and groom arrived. The only silly note was the wedding march which was piped in the hall as they entered it. But that was okay. I begged Annie to forego the other typical tutored manifestations of marital adoration such as the first drink of champagne with glasses held by the couple, their arms folded over each other’s, and feeding the first piece of wedding cake each one to the other’s mouth. The food was served, a multi-tiered wedding cake sliced and served, and dancing and drinking continued until the newlyweds departed round about midnight and the guests began a slow withdrawal homeward. Later, at home, stretched on my bed, I thought of Annie and I thought of Diana. Never before had they shared my thoughts in equal proportions. With Annie because it was a very special day, a day of loss and happiness. With Diana because the puzzle continued; not a single letter arrived.
A word about possessions. My father, a well-off businessman but not of extravagant wealth, had two cars, a small Fiat for work and a Chevrolet for play. Hanafi was his personal driver, a ridiculous situation for so small a car. But he used him for errands and sat next to him in his business displacements. We also owned a very modest villa at a seaside suburb west of Alexandria called Sidi Bishr. At that time Sidi Bishr was just beginning to be built up and much of it was occupied by ramshackle Bedouin houses and tents. Our villa was next to such a site in a housing development called Cité Plakotaris where Greeks proliferated. It was a three minute walk from the beach and we spent many a summer happily vacationing for a full three months. It was there that we went, a week after the wedding, with mother.
Father provided us with the Chevrolet and a temporary chauffeur who was free in summer because his employers, an elderly English couple, spent their summers in England. Soliman was Sudanese, black but not Negroid, with pleasant features and always wore a suit and tie in the warmest weather without the slightest hint of perspiration probably because he was so thin. Something I picked up from him, inadvertently, was to appreciate Sudanese music which was so much more congenial to my ear than the lamenting and lamentable Arabic chants. When he waited for interminable hours in the car for us, he always switched on the radio on Sudanese music and when we entered I always asked him not to switch it off. Another thing worth mentioning about Sidi Bishr was the girl we hired temporarily in summer to help in the housework. She was a girl from the Bedouin site next door. One of the most beautiful girls of her race I have ever seen. Her name was Sigawa, the first and only time I ever heard that name in Egypt. Of normal height and well built, her skin color was that of a well-tanned European. Teeth, intact and shining, and a face that apart from her beauty had a rare sweetness. Black hair that had a reddish hue probably due to the use of henna. In her late twenties, she was married off to a much older man, probably virile for the present but not promising for the near future. She did not seem to have children and my admiring eyes secretly followed her every move but just that.
Mother and I arrived at Sidi Bishr at noon on a Monday after a three-hour desert road trip. As we approached the city we felt the considerable Mediterranean humidity, which is direly felt in the first few hours until one gets used to it. Soliman parked the car and went looking for a room at the nearby popular neighborhood. I went next door and called Sigawa who never worked anywhere other than at our house in the summer months and she came to help mother sweep the house and put some order after a winter’s shutdown. I had not seen her for three years and she was as lovely as ever. She was shy and would not look at me and, in any case, there was no possibility of any kind of flirtation between us. Apart from her shyness and the Bedouin culture of female effacement, the social divide was too vast and the presence of mother forbidding. She was, nevertheless, for me, a presence that offered a passive sort of pleasure just to have her circulate in the house. For a while I had nothing to do and went for a walk to the beach. I had brought along a few books but with the ongoing clean-up I could not find the necessary quiet to concentrate. The summer crowds had not yet arrived in force and the beach was pleasantly empty. On my way back I bought some kebab and kofta for lunch and in the afternoon went to the souk for food supplies.
For the next three days we set off at around eleven for the Sidi Bishr beach on foot, hired a parasol, beach chairs and swam and sunbathed cautiously because the Alexandrian sun can be treacherous. Mother kept looking around to see if any acquaintances were around. It can get boring sitting with nothing to do. Between us, we had exhausted all the impressions and gossip of Annie’s wedding and speculations on her future happiness, and periods of long silences became more and more frequent. They were neither boring nor embarrassing but a little conversation whiles the time away pleasantly. I suspected that she was also on the lookout for the Zouganelli clan. The third evening she called them and found out that the family went to Mandara for swimming, a beach further to the west, just outside the former King’s palace grounds, in which the new, super-luxurious Palestine Hotel was built. The next day Soliman drove us to Mandara and we found the extended Zouganelli family, Lina, her mother, older married sister and various cousins and children. We were welcomed heartily and responded in the same vein, took off our clothes and sat next to them. There were no cabins or changing rooms on this beach and we had our bathing suits beneath our clothes. Lina sat with a girl cousin and two friends her age together with a bunch of younger children under a parasol slightly apart. She came and said hello when we arrived and returned to her group. She was a beauty just as my father had described her. A fully developed, well-shaped body much in Annie’s outline and style and a beautiful face with an exquisite smile. She was attractive and she knew it and her manner was discreetly flirty with a lot of smiling. Did she know she was offered to me? That’s a horrible way to put it but it was a fact. I wondered if it was fair this almost frantic search to accommodate her in an arranged marriage. Of course, her family had her best interests at heart and, of course, Lina would have the final say. There might be some pressure one way or another but not overwhelming. She would ultimately decide but still her freedom was limited.
The human race through the different cultures and religions was still seeking the correct manner to propagate the species and the methods varied from complete freedom in the West to revolting force and subjugation of the female in the Third World. Revolting force that included physical force, killings and the cruel, cold-blooded and sadistic genital mutilation. Was Sigawa a victim of this crime? I sometimes wondered. The equally beautiful Sigawa, in tatters and barefoot, sweeping our house, a woman from another tribe was one more of the many masterpieces of nature that man debases and subjugates with his useless, egotistical and destructive strength. I sat slightly apart from the ladies and these thoughts circled in my mind. This girl Lina would be married without tasting the sexual freedom and experiences that a girl like Diana would. In the last analysis, she may be the happier of the two but a significant issue remained: oughtn’t she have the chance to love more than one person, her husband, in her lifetime even if that choice caused problems and pain? What would Germaine Greer answer to this? Well, she did. She said, security is when everything is settled, when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life. I was sure Lina was never conditioned to think in this way. The denial of life for a free spirit is the comfortable and satisfying life of another.
Finally, Lina’s group moved to the sea for a swim and my mother urged me to go and keep an eye on them. I waded in with them and little games and splashing and dunking began among the children and the other girls. I was in close proximity and intervened whenever the games became too violent or a child was picked on repeatedly. But in general, there was much laughter and fun. The bigger girls then went in deeper into the sea for a swim and I marveled at their good spirits, their laughter and shouts. Eventually I herded the small fry out of the water to their parasol and joined the girls inside where huge waves lifted us high up and down and went on to roll over and break into foam further down towards the shore. I began talking to the girls, asking their names and information about them. I asked them why such attractive girls as they, were alone and not surrounded by a bunch of boys. It’s too early in summer, they replied. We shall have our group round about August. And what do you do? I asked. Do you go dancing or to night clubs? No, no, we are not allowed to stay up that late, they answered, we swim in the mornings and usually go to the San Stephano cinema at night. They change the film every day and all the young people are there. Anyway the film does not matter much. There’s too much noise, commotion and shouting. We go there to meet people. The cinema finishes at twelve and the Zouganelli driver takes us home. Do you have boyfriends? I asked. They smiled and giggled looking at each other. They were not disposed to answer that question. Neither a yes, nor a no.
I returned to the two Zouganelli parasols after a while and had to answer a few polite questions about London and my studies and the ladies went back to their conversations of mild gossip, shopping, clothes and families. The girls came out to their parasol and to the children who were now playing on the sand, digging holes, transporting sea water in small buckets for castle constructions, quarreling now and then and running to the adults to report their grievances. I sat on the sand with my back resting on a small beach chair laid on its side. My eyes were on Lina. What a gorgeous girl she was. And yet I could not envisage life with her. She was tied down to her family with very strong bonds. The family would be her center of gravity with any husband she might accept, all through her life. I was sure she was a virgin. But then I was sure of Annie’s virginity and it turned out not to be so. Still, I had the impression Lina, unlike Annie, was more sheltered by her family and less flirty than Annie. I had not seen her in mixed groups and surely boys would be all over her but her opportunities for sexual experimentation, I was sure, were almost nonexistent. Meanwhile, Diana kept intruding in my thoughts and I kept thinking of Omar’s advice that this was a golden opportunity to break up this sick relationship of a woman with two lovers, which to his mind was d