The Cairo House Read online

  There was a short silence at the other end. She could hear Mama whispering with her hand over the receiver. Then she was back. ‘Papa says he’ll send you a ticket tomorrow, darling. How soon can you come?’

  ‘As soon as I hand in my last term paper, the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘All right, dear. We’ll be waiting. But don’t get too upset. All newlyweds go through these misunderstandings. Coming home for a while will do you a world of good.’

  ‘Mama? There’s something else. I’ve been feeling so sick lately. I want to throw up and I sleep all the time.’

  ‘Oh, Gigi. You’re pregnant.’

  Gigi could read the reproach, then the resignation, in her mother’s voice as clearly as if she could see her expression.

  ‘Come home till you feel better, dear. But whatever’s wrong between you and Yussef, you’ll have to work it out. If you’re pregnant, you’re in no position to do anything else. You’ll have to go back to him.’

  Then it was Papa’s voice at the other end of the receiver. ‘Gigi? It will be so good to have you back home for a while, darling. And what’s this I hear about a baby? Take good care of yourself, and of my grandchild, until you get here!’

  Gigi put down the receiver and started to cry.

  7

  Cairo

  If you examined the turning points in a life, could you pin-point the exact twists of the kaleidoscope that set the pattern? If you could go back in time and change course, would you? Or would there be some part of the past that you would be unwilling to give up for a second chance? A child, it has been said, is your hostage to fortune: henceforth your choices are never free.

  Gigi felt Tarek slip into bed beside her and cuddled him against her sleepily. She nuzzled his soft brown curls and pudgy cheeks. His cheeks were red and chapped today and Gigi promised herself not to kiss him all day till they were healed. She sighed. It would be a hard resolution to keep.

  She stretched in bed, her own familiar girlhood bed. She had been back in Cairo only a few weeks, but she already felt as if she had never left. Perhaps it was because she knew she was home for good this time. Over the past five years of living in England, she had come home for visits every year or so, first alone, then after Tarek was born, with the baby. But now that both she and Yussef had earned their degrees, they were home for good. The political climate had changed for the better since Nasser’s demise.

  Gigi was glad to be home. In her five years with Yussef, she had sometimes been very lonely. But Tarek had filled the emotional void in her life; between them the active child and her studies had kept her busy. She had confided in no one about her problems: living in England as they had, distance had facilitated discretion in a way that would have been impossible had their marital relationship developed in the goldfish bowl of societal scrutiny and in-law interference that were the norm for a newlywed couple in Egypt. Part of the reason for her reserve was that she understood the mind set of Mama and Tante Zohra well enough to know what they would be likely to think: any reasonably attractive and intelligent woman had only herself to blame if she could not deploy her feminine wiles effectively enough to manipulate her husband into dutiful devotion. She would be even more to blame if it turned out that, with a husband entirely susceptible to her charms as a woman, she refused to resort to these same feminine wiles out of sheer, wrongheaded, hurt pride and dashed romantic expectations.

  At any rate, confiding in Mama, Gigi had learnt, was a risky proposition. She always seemed to have her mind made up before she had even listened to you, and then she was apt to go off half-cocked, either quick to blame or, sometimes to worse effect, quick to defend with immoderate, mother-tigerish loyalty. In any case she could never be counted on to keep anything to herself; she would immediately try to enlist public opinion, in the form of Tante Zohra et al, in whatever issue happened to be at stake.

  Papa was a different story. Gigi had always found it easy to talk to him; he listened attentively and could be counted on to be absolutely discreet. But her marital problems were one subject Gigi was reluctant to broach. She could guess at the turmoil it would stir up in her father: outrage that his little princess had been treated so cavalierly, remorse that he had not seen it coming, a conflict between powerlessness and interference. Papa was not one to blow off steam; he would keep his own counsel and let his frustration eat away inside him. Much as she was tempted to confide in him, Gigi was reluctant to shift her burden onto his shoulders now that his health was a cause for concern.

  When she had come back to Egypt, she had decided to make a fresh start in her marriage, for Tarek’s sake. Gigi had never had a nesting instinct, she had never seen herself reflected in material things. But now she clutched at the idea of a structure, of roots. She had resigned herself to putting away her dreams of emotional fulfillment and intellectual companionship, as one puts away the outgrown, embarrassing things of childhood. If she and Yussef were to have a life together, she would have to fill the empty husk so it would not collapse over the void inside, fill it with furniture and family and friends. Together with Leila Tobia, who had recently become engaged, she poured over French decorator magazines; they chose nearly identical built-in bookcases to be ordered at the cabinet-maker’s. They looked around their parents’ homes and other familiar interiors as if they were seeing them for the first time. They attended auctions and estate sales, sharing the excitement of bidding and acquisition, and combed the souk for antique silver and intricate passementerie.

  Tarek wiggled restlessly. She sat up.

  ‘Let’s go see if Grandpapa Shamel is awake.’

  Tarek was already pattering in front of her toward Papa’s room. She followed him.

  Papa was sitting up in bed. Gigi still registered the change in him every time she saw him. He had lost weight, although, big-boned as he was, he would always look solid. His coloring had turned sallow, his hair was gray and thin. He looked a decade older than his fifty-odd years. As she leaned over to kiss him she caught a whiff of staleness, of age, so different from the combined scent of aromatic pipe tobacco and fresh cologne that she associated with him. A tray full of prescription bottles of all sorts and a thermos carafe sat on his bedside table.

  Far more than the sporadic spells of internment, it was the years of enforced inactivity and stress that had turned him into an old man while still in his prime. When he had his first heart attack, when the severity of his condition was confirmed, he secretly welcomed the diagnosis: he finally had an occupation, a justification, a job description: invalid.

  ‘Did you sleep any better, Papa?’

  Papa stroked Tarek’s head. ‘Couldn’t get much rest tonight. I’ve been up since five.’

  ‘Did you come in and close the windows in my room?’ She knew Papa roamed the house, when he couldn’t sleep.

  ‘Yes, I did, and in Tarek’s too. It gets chilly at dawn. Well, ready for breakfast, Tarek?’

  Tarek nodded eagerly. Even at four he realized that it was a special treat to have breakfast with Grandpapa on the weekends, just the two of them. They were the only ones in the house to get up so early. He would watch his grandfather dress; his clothes were always laid out on the clotheshorse for him the night before. Then they would drive downtown, to Groppi, pâtisserie-confiserie, and order breakfast. Before they went home, they would choose a selection of small cakes to take home for lunch.

  ‘Tarek, run to Khadra and ask her to dress you. Hurry up, Grandpapa’s almost ready.’ Khadra had come to work for Mama the year after Gigi’s marriage, and was now a sturdy young woman who had lost her country ways.

  Gigi handed her father his trousers. ‘Papa, there’s no need to get any gâteaux today, Tarek and I are having lunch at Zeina’s, remember?’

  Since they had come back from England she had hardly seen Yussef. At first, they had stayed at his mother’s, but Yussef spent most of the day with his father. Kamal Zeitouni, along with a great many other entrepreneurs, new or established, was making the most of Sa
dat’s new ‘Infitah’ or ‘Open Door’ economic policy to launch import-export ventures. The Egyptian consumer was avid for imported goods after two decades of Nasserite ‘socialism’ during which nothing had been available but generally shoddy, domestic substitutes produced by a public sector as inefficient as total protectionism could make it.

  One of Kamal’s ventures involved importing medical equipment from Europe and hiring Egyptian technicians to install and run it in Saudi clinics. His old friend, Prince Bandar, had paved the way with the necessary contacts. Two weeks ago Kamal had sent Yussef to Jedda in connection with the deal. He was staying in one of Prince Bandar’s guest-houses.

  Since Yussef had been gone Gigi had used the excuse to move back home. But every Friday she took Tarek to have lunch at her mother-in-law’s. Today, after lunch, they would visit her father-in-law as well. Gigi and Tarek were to spend a week with Yussef in Jedda. She could not take Tarek out of the country without his father’s signature on the passport; failing that, the paternal grandfather’s signature was required.

  ‘Looking forward to seeing Yussef again?’ Papa asked as he buttoned his shirt.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Papa.’ She hesitated. At that moment she wished she could confide in her father. But she thought better of it and just shrugged when Papa looked at her questioningly. ‘It’s just that I don’t see that much of Yussef anyway when he’s here. And since we’ve been back, we’ve had no privacy.’ That was true enough. At Zeina’s Gigi couldn’t make a phone call without her mother-in-law listening, couldn’t tell Tarek what to do without her interfering. Kamal called Yussef at all hours of the day and night with errands to run. Sometimes they were things the driver could have done just as well, like picking up a prescription or dropping off a letter, but his father seemed to need to have Yussef at his beck and call all the time. Once he had called at one o’clock in the morning, for something unimportant, she couldn’t even remember what it was. Zeina had come into the bedroom to wake Yussef, she had hardly even knocked. When Yussef had free time, he went out with his friends, without her, just as he had in London. She was used to that, but not to the absence of privacy and lack of independence.

  ‘But Yussef seems quite happy living at his mother’s and having her fuss over him, and he never seems to stand up to his father, no matter how unreasonable he’s being.’ Gigi handed Papa his keys, his wallet and a handkerchief. Papa sat down on the chaise longue to tie his shoelaces.

  ‘Don’t you see, Gigi, Yussef can’t stand up to his parents till he can be truly independent, earn his own living. That’s not possible if he stays here in Egypt; he works for his father. He couldn’t even afford a decent apartment without his father’s financial support.’ He pulled on his cold pipe, preoccupied.

  ‘I know. It’s all right, Papa, don’t worry about it.’

  Tarek burst into the room, his navy and white outfit crisp, his curls damped down and brushed, his little face one big grin of anticipation.

  Gigi leaned back in the stiff petit-point armchair. It was covered in the same pale lemon slipcovers as the rest of the suite in her mother-in-law’s salon. The last time she had seen the furniture without slipcovers had been at a party before her engagement. She vaguely remembered that the petit-point design represented a hunting scene. She wondered if the elaborate velvet draperies on the wide windows could be drawn. It was the middle of the afternoon but the electric lights were on. The windows were kept permanently closed against the pervasive dust and the harsh light. Zeina’s home had the airless, hushed atmosphere of a museum, Gigi thought. She wondered if it had been like that when Yussef was growing up.

  In the foyer Tarek was pretending to play football, sliding on the hardwood floor and throwing himself in front of an imaginary goal. Gigi called to him. ‘Tarek, don’t slide on the parquet, you almost knocked over that little table.’

  He stopped and plunked himself down beside Gigi.

  ‘Mummy, I’m hungry.’

  ‘Go get a banana from the sideboard in the diningroom, but don’t let Zeina see you, she’ll be very disappointed after all the special dishes she’s having prepared for you.’

  Gigi heard her mother-in-law’s footsteps in her satin mules, less nimble than she remembered them. Zeina came in, smoothing her neat black hair and adjusting the sleeves of her cardigan.

  ‘We’re almost ready to sit down to dinner.’ She straightened the delicate table Tarek had displaced. ‘I have to supervise everything myself, even with Om Khalil. Thirty years she’s been coming to this house to make pickles, she should know my ways by now. How many times have I told her, first you scrub the cucumbers under hot running water, then you peel them, then you rinse them, then you seed them and slice them. What do you think she was doing? She was peeling them without scrubbing them first. Where’s Tarek? Oh, there he is. Gigi, how could you let him snack before dinner? I never let his father snack, he had such a small appetite in the first place. Well, dinner’s served. Om Khalil is going to have to wait on us, I lost my suffragi last week, it’s getting harder to keep help these days.’

  Gigi followed Zeina into the dining room, wondering if her mother-in-law’s fussiness had anything to do with her difficulty in keeping her staff. They sat down and Om Khalil started to serve them.

  Gigi unfolded her napkin. ‘Everything looks delicious, Tante Zeina, you shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble. Tell me, is there anything you want me to tell Yussef when I see him? Or anything you want me to bring back for you?’

  ‘I’m worried about Yussef, Gigi, his voice sounded scratchy the last time he called. I think he has a bad cold, but he’s not taking antibiotics. You really should be with your husband, taking care of him, that’s a woman’s place. A wife should make herself indispensable to her husband.’

  Gigi ignored the undercurrent in her mother-in-law’s pleasant voice. She wondered what Yussef had been telling her.

  ‘Tarek, did you try the kibbeh?’ Zeina had turned her attention to the boy. ‘Your father used to love kibbeh. But that banana must have spoiled your appetite.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Tante Zeina, Tarek eats like a wolf, one banana won’t spoil his appetite.’

  ‘Takes after his grandfather Shamel,’ Om Khalil chimed in as she removed a platter from the sideboard. ‘I remember him well as a youngster. Had the best appetite of all his brothers, and they were big eaters, mind you, the Seif el-Islam men.’

  Zeina looked at Om Khalil in alarm, clearly reminded of her reputation for the evil eye. It wasn’t only the domestics who believed that it was enough for Om Khalil to remark on a child’s rosy cheeks for him to wither and sicken, or for her to blink her sharp eyes at the brilliance of a chandelier for it to fall and smash to pieces. Zeina changed the subject in a hurry. ‘These stuffed vine leaves are too salty. They must have been preserved in brine. I had specified fresh vine leaves, I must speak to the cook. What is it, Om Khalil? I wish you wouldn’t hover when we have company.’

  Om Khalil twisted the ends of her kerchief in her bigknuckled fingers. ‘Well, Sitt Gigi, when I heard you were going to Jedda to see Yussef Bey, it was like a sign, I told myself Allah wants me to go visit the Holy City…if you’ll take me with you.’

  ‘I suppose it’s no problem to arrange a day trip for her to Mecca, it’s not the pilgrimage season,’ Zeina added, ‘but I don’t know, she doesn’t have a passport, and you’ll be leaving in a week.’

  ‘Of course, Om Khalil, I’d be glad to take you. The passport might be a problem though.’ Gigi did not especially look forward to Om Khalil’s company but it would have been ungracious to refuse such a pious request.

  ‘Why don’t you ask Kamal when you see him this afternoon?’ Zeina suggested. ‘He has ways of arranging these things.’

  Gigi had arranged to meet her father-in-law in his office in town. Two male clerks were working at the fax machines. The female receptionist made a lot of Tarek while Gigi went into Kamal’s office. He put down the papers he was studying and greeted her with a
peck on the cheek.

  ‘Well, Gigi, how have you been? How are your parents?’ He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyelids. ‘When are you going to join Yussef?’

  ‘Next week. Uncle Kamal, before I forget, I want to ask a favor of you, for Om Khalil actually. She wants to come with me for the week I’m spending in Jedda, but she needs a passport.’

  ‘I suppose it can be arranged, if you’re willing to take that old witch with you. Where’s Tarek?’

  ‘He’s with the receptionist outside.’ They could hear Tarek giggling as he tried to photocopy his hand on the photocopying machine.

  ‘Hm. Well, are you all set for your trip?’

  ‘I think so, except that I need your signature on Tarek’s passport to take him out of the country.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that, Gigi. It’s not a good idea to take the child. You’ll be staying in Emir Bandar’s guesthouse. I know what the lifestyle there is like. There’s nothing for Tarek to do over there, and he’s an active little boy. He’ll just distract Yussef. I want him to have his wits about him, this deal’s important.’

  ‘Uncle Kamal, I’m really counting on taking Tarek. I’m sure Yussef wants to see him.’

  ‘He’ll see him soon enough. Leave Yussef to me, I’ll call him tonight.’ He put his glasses back on. ‘Let Tarek stay here with your parents. Do him good to get away from your apron-strings for a while. You’re too attached to that child, Gigi, you’ll turn him into a mama’s boy.’

  ‘Not Tarek.’

  Kamal did not miss the inflection in her words. His eyes narrowed, the same way he had looked at her at her wedding. Then he turned his attention back to the papers he was holding. ‘Well, it’s high time you spent some time with Yussef. All I can say is, in his place I wouldn’t have been so accommodating about having my wife stay behind like that. No, he doesn’t take after me.’ He looked at Gigi, who was trying to suppress a smile. ‘Don’t imagine I don’t know what you’re thinking, Missy. You’re telling yourself: “And a good thing too!”’