His name was Rovertos. An unusual name for a Greek but not uncommon for a Cypriot. In Cyprus one still hears names like Roghiros (Roger) and Umbertos (Humbert).
His father originated from that island which has a legacy of Frankish names left over by the Crusaders and Venetians and which survived two centuries of Turkish domination.
Robbie was born in Cairo, grew up in Cairo and went to school in Cairo. His roots were in Cairo, like Fay, but unlike her he was permanently rooted there. He liked to say that he grew up in England, meaning that, that was where he matured and where the final formation of his adult ideas and beliefs was shaped. He had other, loftier dreams for his 119
life but, as we have seen, his scholastic mediocrity condemned him to a life in Egypt and work at his father‟s small manufacturing business. Contrary to the impression given above he was a hard and conscientious worker and he soon learned to manage the business.
He was quite realistic about his worth and had no illusions that he was very intelligent. He used to grade himself as the average man of the next century meaning that he was only average but possessed the education, the breadth of outlook that would be the gifts of the general population of the future as society became wealthier, better educated and overcame the ignorance, conservatism and religious fanaticism of the present. He knew he had a gift with words and despite his anxious preoccupation with women and sex, he never stopped reading serious modern literature and delight in language, something of which we gave no indication above. We might also have given the impression he was a loner, which is false. He had a circle of friends from school and from his London days that he cultivated and met both at the club and parties and outings for dinner. He was well liked by them because he was polite, considerate and tolerant. His one conceit was that he was good looking. He kept it to himself but its affirmation through the persistent stares of women and even men was, for him, always a source of secret pleasure and satisfaction.
We have given a picture of his life during the first few years after his return to Cairo. It did not change significantly for him as the years went by. His father died and he took over the reins of the business and henceforth most of the income. He eventually became wealthy but hardly changed his habits. He changed his cars often for he had two of them now but remained in his old bachelor flat and would not make up his mind to move to a swankier district or a more luxurious home.
His one addiction was physical fitness. The sporting life was his life. As the years went by, it seemed as if his physical prowess was increasing rather than diminishing. The fact was he was pushing himself ever harder. He was a fine squash player, fair at tennis, jogged ever faster for longer distances and swam for longer periods. His golf was respectable and so, surprisingly, was his bridge. Where he excelled, however, was with the opposite sex. As he grew older he cut an increasingly seductive figure despite his simplicity and lack of airs of a glamour boy. Or perhaps because of it. He was friendly, polite and modest as he worked his way through the birds-of-a-feather group. His affairs were well known and the birds seemed to be passing him on, one to another. He rarely got involved with unmarried girls. In Egypt, things got thorny with such relationships. He stuck to less complicated adulterous liaisons.
With Fay, the relationship held well for a number of years. There was a feeling of family and familiarity and, yes, of course, love and passion. Especially passion. Even if there was also the awkwardness of Teresa‟s presence in the background. Fay used to contact him often and used to give him notice well in advance of her arrivals in Egypt so that he would have ample time to disengage from the woman he was linked at the time.
She often told him if he did not want to do so for any reason it was quite all right. There was always a next time. That perplexed him every time. What kind of a person was she that she could either see him or not. Did she, finally, love him or not? She came to Cairo twice a year and usually stayed two or three weeks. Just the right amount of time, she used to tell him, so we do not get bored of each other.
“And with Teresa?” he once asked and her answer vexed him.
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“With Teresa we can never get bored of one another,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because with her there‟s no passion.”
He was not stupid but some things he could not understand.
When Marianne was twelve, her father died. He was already two years on pension but he developed prostate cancer and did not last long. Apart from Marianne, not too many people were sorry. She was a beautiful young girl who looked at least two years older than her age and promised to develop the faultless body of her mother. Robbie predicted that he would have a problem with her in a few years‟ time. The situation with Mona was unchanged. She continued being the spare tire. She was always there when Robbie was stalled with a flat. She was keeping well. She was a model of vigor and good health and her lovely body was unchanged. It never stopped bewitching Robbie. Hubby was dead but an impediment to her visits to Robbie, when he was available, did not cease to exist. It was now Marianne. She kept close tabs on her mother.
A few more years passed. Alas, operas and plays, novels and poetry would not be written or composed if the heroes reached a ripe old age. They have to die young with their passion intact. No, Robbie and Fay did not die young. Age eventually kills people but long before the final blow, it kills all in them that make life worth living. Despite their infrequent, twice-yearly encounters, Robbie and Fay‟s passion for each other first lost its luster and then faded. And it was fatal for their relationship because in the end it was only passion that had kept them together. It was not the companionship of the married couple and the sharing of a life, children and experiences. The last time they met to make love, it was Fay, the stronger of the two, who told him that she would not be coming back to him again.
“It is better now,” she said, “that there are some remnants of feeling, than quitting in disgust and despising each other later. I left my husband finally,” she told him, “and you are probably the last man in my life. I shall be living with Teresa. You shall always be welcome to come and see us. And my dear Robbie, let me tell you, the last man in my life was also the best man in my life. He has left me a good souvenir.” The realm of Marianne was dawning in Robbie‟s life. At fifteen she looked a dazzling eighteen and Robbie was already feeling the pangs of love. He was ashamed of his feelings. He was supposedly an experienced and active Lothario and when he saw Marianne he felt his mouth go dry. He was annoyed and jealous when she went to parties and when he saw boys waiting for her downstairs at the building‟s entrance. He bought her dresses and paid for a membership at the club and promptly regretted it because her retinue increased tenfold. He tried to initiate her into sports, firmly believing that a healthy mind is found in a healthy body.
When she finished her secondary school he undertook to pay for her education at the American University and a year later bought her a small car. He referred to her as his daughter but their relations were far from clear cut. She dropped the uncle from his name and was very affectionate and seemed to be annoyed when her mother and Robbie showed too much familiarity with each other. It was a trio whose emotions were developing and changing. Some were clear, some disguised and some could not be disguised. Mona was playing it cool and impassive wondering where it would all lead to.
She realized the advantages of Robbie‟s growing wealth for Marianne and had to weigh it against her ancient and continuing physical passion for Robbie. One thing was more than 121
obvious, Robbie‟s colossal infatuation for her daughter. Little by little he stopped his affairs at the club. He continued his sports but was hardly ever to be seen at the golf pavilion or the Bridge Club. He stayed at home in the afternoons and evenings and read his books and newsmagazines. And would phone Mona to ask whether Marianne was back and would she come to see him for five minutes.
When Marianne graduated from the American University she was a stunning twenty-three. Robbie remembered a quotation from a book he read many years ago. It said: The orgasm is nothing. It is the erection that is everything. He did not understand it then but he had reached an age when it was beginning to make sense. He was forty-eight and it started to worry him. A difficult decision had to be taken. It could not be postponed any longer.
He bought a luxurious apartment on the Nile, decorated it and furnished it and when it was ready, took Mona and Marianne for a visit. He showed them the master bedroom with its huge bathroom and veranda with a Nile view and told them that this would be his and Marianne‟s bedroom and another just as fine and told Mona that it would be hers. He showed them the rest of the house, the nursery and living rooms, the bathrooms and kitchen and asked them if they liked it and found the arrangements agreeable. He said the house was already in Marianne‟s name. It was a marriage proposal and a wedding present at the same time. Mother and daughter had to sit down in order not to faint. Then they smiled because they could not utter a sound.
As the reader will not fail to see, history repeats itself. Robbie was not unaware of that. He was, however, taking the risk.
15 / 9 / 2002
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A CASE OF SELF RESPECT
In those days I still lived at home with my parents. They were days of sloth and aimlessness. I had finished a BSc. course in Geology at Ein Shams University a few years back and after knocking about in a few government jobs, I settled down as a researcher at the National Research Institute. It was a lovely, spanking new building in one of the higher-class suburbs that were snaking out at an incredible pace on every side of an expanding Cairo: a typical project of socialist Egypt, all show and no substance. Marble staircases, well painted, unending corridors and hundreds of offices devoid of equipment, which were staffed by unmotivated, underpaid, time wasters like myself. As the saying was, the government pretended to pay us and we pretended to work. My specialty, my expertise was supposedly soil analysis. A soil analyst was required at the Institute at the time; I applied for the post and got the job probably due to the lack of other candidates. I was given my own office with a desk, a single chair and a bench equipped with a number of glass saucers and a sink with a cold water tap. A few months went by before the first soil samples arrived in small, numbered plastic bags and at the beginning I fretted and wondered how to go about the analysis. I bought out of my own hard-up pocket a large, splendid magnifying glass, a few basic chemicals and wrote my first reports with their help, the help of my nose and sense of touch of thumb and index finger. The reports were never claimed and as far as I know, they might still be in one of the desk drawers I shoved them in at the time. More soil samples came in by and by and I arranged them on the bench very neatly. Now and then, I dusted them and cleaned my bench. I did not bother to write any more reports. My lovely magnifying glass was the only serious thing in my office.
I was lucky to be living at home and to have my living expenses taken care of by my parents, for the twenty-seven pounds I earned doing nothing, even at that time, did not go very far. I had to amuse myself somehow and even with the penny pinching I still had to borrow a few pounds at the end of the month from my mother. After all I had so much time on my hands and idleness generates overheads. I went to the Institute about three times a week to show my face, collect my occasional soil samples, sign the register and chew the fat with the few friends I made and some I knew from University. I would go there by bus after the morning rush hour which did not mean in comfort but at least 123
inside the bus instead of hanging halfway out or squeezed like a sardine and leave a couple of hours later to go to the club. Oh yes, despite my penury I was a member at the most exclusive sporting club in town. With the rich boys and pretty girls and the huge American cars going in and out, pretending I was one of them. I joined other little groups of wastrels with unlimited time on their hands, swimming in the pool in summer and playing a game of tennis and, by God, yes, quite a bit of golf, as well, with borrowed clubs. I was a fine golfer, was available and was much sought after as a partner. The golfers were, in a sense, the elite of the club.
It was a time of great social upheaval. The rich were being demolished, their fortunes and land expropriated and nationalized. A new class of privilege and clout was emerging mainly from the ranks of the army and the police. Power-hungry, greedy and arrogant they were, but not golf players. They had too much inferiority to espouse a leisurely elitist game and too little time for the many opportunities they had to cope with.
Luckily, there were not too many around in our club. The government had provided them with their own flashy clubs and courts and swimming pools. It could not provide them with class. Pig‟s hair cannot be turned to silk. For all the showy luxury of the establishments and the arrogance of the members, the aura of the second-rate was palpable. It was manifest in the officers‟ plump, vulgar, cantankerous wives and noisy, ill-mannered children accompanied by girl child-servants. Little girls of ten to thirteen years of age, badly dressed, badly treated with the trademark white kerchief covering their hair. The little bonniches, forgotten even by God.
The golf players were the old-money, leisured few. The very few who managed to hold on to their money and the many that had been stripped of it but kept up the show, kept up hope and their old habits. I was simply leisured, educated and adrift, rubbing shoulders with these fading elite in the golf pavilion, where they socialized, drank their cocktails and exchanged their hate and derision for the regime. Due to my golfing prowess I was accepted and befriended though I could not share the lifestyle of my friends. I could not share the outings at the nightclubs, the girls they courted, their excursions and escapades. Even at the club I pretended I did not drink so I would not be offered a drink and have to offer in return.
Do not imagine I was complacent with this state of affairs. It was all I had in front of me. I knew I was wasting my life. I wanted to get out of the rut and was waiting for the opportunity. What opportunity? I had no idea. I was waiting for a miracle. Are not the idle, the lax and those lacking in ambition always waiting for a miracle? I was twenty seven, already almost three years at the Institute, wondering when the time of reckoning would come. When a Senior Director or an Under-Secretary of something or other would call me and ask me what I had been doing these last three years. Ask to see my reports and send me to jail for wasting the country‟s money. For all the thieving and hustling that was going on in the country, surely a pip-squeak like me would be the perfect scapegoat.
In my saner moments I did not think it likely. But a diffused worry and guilt was forever hovering in my thoughts keeping alive a miniscule, implausible hope that one day I would leave this comedy behind for something more worthwhile. So many years had gone by so fast. Where was I heading? Would I stay in Egypt? To do what? Take over my father‟s grocery? Marry; live in boredom and dejection, to wallow in mediocrity?
Add more children to the overpopulation?
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My short and long term worries, the serious and less serious, were overshadowed by a worry of no real consequence but one that consumed me and at times drove me close to madness. My human nature and age of twenty seven. My sexual virility and sexual starvation. I was in the prison of my penury. I did not accept my station, my prospects and I could not rise above them even though I lived as if I did. It was an empty bit of make believe that made me dream a little, kept my ambitions smoldering but ultimately frustrated me. Oh, the frustration of my empty pockets, my empty life, my absent love, of the shameless female bodies of my fantasies that I would not embrace. The lovely girls at the club I would never kiss, hold in my arms and feel the tremor of their passion. So many times I insincerely wished I were ugly and unattractive so I would give up hope of being accepted, desired, but the fact was that they were not indifferent to my looks those boldly staring girls and it was I who had to feign indifference. For how would I tackle them? Where would I love them? Kiss them? Smell them? Do all the crazy things I dreamt about? Things to excite them and enslave them. Things born of a feverish mind and galloping imagination. Where, without a flat? Without a car for a drive away from prying eyes and the welcome discomfort and privacy of its back seat. I never craved to become rich. There are more important things in life. But I learnt early on, the pain of an empty pocket.
I played tennis with Antoun Alekian for years, even before it became a regular weekly routine at the club. Ever since we were at school together. We were good friends as well and in a sense extended the saying, opposites attract, to persons of the same sex.
No, we were not gay, just very good friends. But so absolutely, symmetrically opposite that we almost made a perfect fit. Again the allusion to homosexuality is misleading. The perfect fit was our friendship and though some of the opposites helped it, some were just surprising. His father was Armenian and his mother Lebanese while my father was Lebanese and my mother Armenian. His father was a jeweler and his mother owned a fashionable Maison de Couture. My father had a grocery and my mother did not work.
Where are the opposites? Obviously, they were rich, we were poor. Well, not exactly indigent but by comparison. And another thing, they were divorced while my parents were a pair of cooing pigeons. Touny whom I called Tony was short and fat and funny looking while I was well built, on the tall side and, if I may say so, reasonably presentable. Whereas I am introverted and rather quiet, Tony was a boisterous extrovert, funny and garrulous. At school I was liked by our fellow students, he was loved. I was a good student and a fine athlete; he was hopeless on both counts. I went to university; I doubt he would have been admitted to kindergarten again, which does not mean a thing because in life I was a near failure while he turned out to be a very successful businessman. He entered his father‟s jewelry business and branched out into diamond trading traveling in and out of Egypt reputedly with the precious merchandise illegally in his pockets. People called him a smuggler but I say their accusations were sour grapes for he was not ever caught out. Finally, that funny little ball of a man had all the women he could manage while I pined away with daydreams.
We both loved our games of tennis. For his size and build, Tony did not play too badly. That is not to say he played well. He played a fun game and in doubles I was always his partner. His shouts and jokes and curses, his funny shots and labored efforts kept us in stitches and a crowd of spectators never failed to gather to watch him playing.
After the game we would go to the club bar for ice-cold beers and it was the only time I 125
ever drank at the club. The good humor and laughing never stopped. And he was generous with me my little funny Touny. He knew my situation and did not expect reciprocity for drinks and lunch invitations and occasional forays in the Cairo nightlife.
On the contrary he was forever telling me he was not doing enough for me. Do you need money Freddy? If you need the garconnière or a car for a chick you will let me know, won‟t you? Je t’aime bien mon vieux. Why don‟t you like me as much? Why won‟t you do me the favor of using me a little just so I can feel you love me too? Your detachment kills me. So what do you do for dames? I have plenty. I can introduce you to some or have you tied your pipi in a knot? But I had my self-respect. I could not let him know of my abjectness. I just smiled and kept quiet.
I knew both his parents well. In our junior school days I was constantly in and out of their house. In fact it was Mr. Alekian that proposed me for membership at the club and paid the quite substantial initial fee. He liked me and was happy his crazy, bubbling son had a calm and serious friend. His mother Mona Namour, ex-Alekian, was a large, handsome woman, taller than her husband, who passed on to Tony most of her temperamental characteristics but, alas, not her physical ones. Tony lived with her after his father left the house but he was affectionate with both his parents. This was another contrast, for I was rather remote with mine. I always asked him about them and one day, after our game, he told me he was going to the atelier and would I like to go with him to see his mother. It was a good opportunity for I had not seen her for months. A statuesque artificial blonde, she was exuberant and sociable and her large breasts fascinated me.
Lebanese women of her class were liberated and her conversation was lively, earthy and pregnant with innuendos delivered with a smile. I half expected her to make a pass at me every time I saw her but that never happened. She seemed a teaser rather than a seducer of young men though she had a reputation of frivolity and a married lover who was devoted to her.
In the diagrams of life, triangles are much more complicated and interesting and perhaps more numerous than straight lines. Tony never failed to confirm this though the triangles he drew faded away rapidly for he was forever initiating new ones.
“Listen,” he told me on the way to the atelier, “if you see a girl you like let me know. I‟ll bring her to you on a platter.” His mother employed perhaps a dozen girls. “I have been through all of them,” he continued. “Most of them are married. You may wonder at this dissipation, depravity, call it what you like, but it is understandable if you realize the misery of their lives: the unruly children, the callous husbands spending most of their time at the coffee house, the struggle to make ends meet, the unlikelihood of an improvement in their lives, their non-existent self respect. I am a break in their drudgery.
I do not take them seriously and they don‟t take me seriously either. They know it shall not last. But they like the fun. I make them laugh and this is their medicine. Believe me it has almost nothing to do with sex. In any case I rarely bother to satisfy them sexually. If you have many women you are like a cock in a hencoop. A quick poke and its over.
Anyway, one can never satisfy a woman. They are insatiable. So you become selfish and look only after yourself. Then you give them a few pounds and they are happy. I bet most of the times it is also a sort of revenge for the treatment they get from their spouses, for having to work all day for a miserable wage and also to be saddled with the unending household chores. So I see them a few times and then I move on. I get bored. I need a change.”
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“Oh boy. Quite a Casanova. I wonder if he, too, was a Speedy Gonzales.” Tony laughed.
“I bet he was,” he said. “And, you know, all I have to do is give them a nod and they‟ll come running for more.”
“For the quickies or the few pounds?” I asked.
“For both. And the laughs and jokes and my crazy antics, my vulgar games and language.”
“You are educating me, my friend, in the female mentality.”
“Perhaps I am wrong,” he said and laughed. “You can never be sure about women. Sacha Guitry once said that most women are whores and even the ones that are not would like to be.”
“Wow, Tony, you really are becoming an intellectual!”
“Yes, yes,” he said smiling. “I told you I had all of my mother‟s girls. Well, not exactly. One or two are too old to bother about and there is one woman who is driving me mad. She refuses to go out with me. She is a widow and the more I see her, the more she attracts me. Her name is Gamila but she is Lebanese and insists on being called by the Lebanese pronunciation, Djamila.”
“Perhaps she has a man,” I ventured.
“Yes, but so what?”
“Well, every rule has an exception.”
“Shit. Does it have to be Djamila?”
I had not been at the atelier before. It was a flat at the Khedive buildings of Emad el Dine Street. Old, imposing constructions past their prime and run down from socialist maltreatment and the diminution of rents, with big rooms high ceilings and wide corridors. The girls were gathered in two very large connecting rooms where a wall had been obviously removed. A large rectangular table in the middle with fashion periodicals, lengths of cloth, large pairs of scissors, boxes of pins, spools of multi-colored threads and buttons. A few mannequin torsos without heads, with dresses on them were stacked next to a wall together with three Singer manual sewing-machines and two ironing tables, each with an electric iron. When we entered the atelier, pandemonium broke loose. There was a chorus of cheerful greetings welcoming „Touny‟. So many faces I could not take them all in. Young, old, pretty, ugly, with smiles, with a jumble of words for Tony and Tony going round kissing left and right. He babbled right back twenty to the dozen, joking, teasing, caressing, and showing genuine affection. Monette strode up to me, sticking her lovely tits to my breast kissing me three times, one cheek luckier than the other. A lone woman in black, sitting cross-legged, calmly was continuing her stitching hardly looking up at the commotion. The exception to the rule, I guessed.
“Freddy, you naughty boy, I haven‟t seen you in years. I am very angry. How you neglect me!”
“Madame Mona, I think of you all the time.”
“Monette, my boy. Monette. Everybody calls me Monette. And don‟t give me that crap. Touny tells me you are at the club every day. La dolce vita, yes? And plenty of girls? No time for old hags like me.”
“Oh please, you don‟t have to fish for compliments. You look younger and more attractive every time I see you.”
She laughed.
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“Thank you, my dear. You are a very sweet liar. You are also a terrific golfer, I hear. I wish I had the time so you would teach me a thing or two.”
“About golf?”
“Yes, and anything else you think might interest me.” A smile.
“I can teach you golf but as for the rest, I think you can teach me much more than I can teach you.”
She laughed again.
“Okay, it‟s a deal. You teach me golf and I‟ll teach you the secret of happiness.”
“Buddha said the secret of happiness is giving up all earthly desires, pleasures and possessions.”
“He seemed to have enjoyed his food, though. In all his statues he is nice and chubby and his serene facial expression attests to a full stomach. I am afraid my secret of happiness is quite the opposite. It is the acquiring of healthy, pleasurable vices.”
“Like exercising your body regularly?”
She laughed heartily.
“Something like that,” she said.
Tony came up to us.
“Mother, stop flirting with Freddy.”
“Mind your own business, Touny. But come along with me I need to talk to you.” I was left alone for a few minutes. Standing awkwardly and stared at by a dozen pairs of eyes. One pair was calmly engaged guiding a pair of hands in the stitching of a dress. The head was bent, shoulder length black hair drawn and tied behind; a milky white complexion and features partially revealed: forehead, a cheekbone, a chin, a nose, an eye. There was an indefinable something that made for beauty. You could put your finger on it. You knew it without understanding it. After some whispers and giggles the girls went back to work. I looked at Djamila. One day science will be able to measure the energy of an intent look. It is palpable