The door opens to the figure of Hajj Abdel ’Alim’s wife. She is taller than father and has a face that is white and beautiful with tiny black moles scattered over it. The hair on her head is wrapped in a scarf that starts at the middle of her head and goes down to her neck. There is a pigtail coming out from under it. She is carrying a child in her arms.
“Please, come in, Bey”—(she pronounces the title like all the fellah women do)—“You’re one of the family.”
Father and I go in. It is a wide hall with no furniture at all. There is a room in front of us where Sofia, the sister-in-law of the hajj is standing. Behind her you can see a bed, raised on high brass posts. Father speaks to her: “Good health to you.” She answers coldly: “Good health to you too.” He ignores her tone and follows Aziza to another room. We stop at the door. The same kind of bed is there with a child lying on top of it. Father says: “I’ve just come to check on you. Do you want to send him food or anything?”
“The Lord preserve you, Bey. Selim has taken him food and money.”
Father turns back towards the front door and I follow. “Inshallah he’ll come out today. Anyway, if there’s anything you need, tell me.”
“May the Lord always keep you in our lives, Bey.”
We leave the apartment. We go out to the main street. We head toward the closest tram stop. We get on. We change cars at ’Ataba Square. We take the new one to Abdel Aziz Street by the big fire station. The tram turns around in front of the Omar Effendi department store. We get off after two more stops. We cross the tracks to the pavement across the street. We stop in front of a huge building with crowds of people gathered in front of it. Father puts his hand on his chest right over his heart. I ask him: “What’s wrong?” He says: “There are lots of pickpockets around here.” We go up a few steps that pass through stone pillars. We walk into a large hallway full of people. A vendor is sitting cross-legged at the base of a marble pillar. In front of him is a tray with falafel patties, loaves of pita, and small plates of salad. He is surrounded by people eating.
At the next column is a cross-legged man with many women around him, squatting on the ground hugging their knees. He wears a gallabiya decorated down the front with black thread. An old fez sits on his head. A student’s satchel made of canvas sits in front of him with papers stacked up on it. He has an fountain pen in his hand. We go up the steps to the second floor. We cut through the crowd until we’re in a hallway with large rooms that are closed up on either side of us. Father goes up to each door and reads the paper sign nailed to it. We go on searching but it is no use, so we go back to the stairs. We’re surprised by a woman pulling off her cloak, followed by her black gallabiya. Underneath she is wearing a man’s shirt and yellow trousers from army salvage. She pulls a bench up from under the people sitting on it and uses it to attack people standing around her. A man in a gallabiya and skull cap tries to stop her, but she knocks him back with a head butt. We run down the steps and stop near the entrance to the building.
Dr. Mandour shows up wearing black trousers and a grey coat. He says: “Is everything alright?” An assistant comes up to him carrying his black lawyer’s robe. Father says: “We read your article in the Wafd al Misri newspaper. What happened between you and Akhbar al Youm?” He laughs: “Nothing. I called it a piece of yellow journalism because it’s a British publication that set out to make the case for the king against the Wafd Party. It’s always calling him the just ruler, the great governor, or the leader of the faithful.”
I sneak over behind the writer. A squatting woman dictates in front of him as he writes. The pen must not be absorbing any ink because he keeps dipping it into the ink bottle after every few words. He scolds her every now and then. After the writing is done, he waves for her to go over to his co-worker, who holds up a small piece of brass shaped like a ring. The woman leans over and hands him the paper. He shouts at her: “Your name?”
She answers: “Aida.”
He says: “Give your complete name, woman.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean your name, followed by your father’s name and your grandfather’s name.”
She takes out a paper rolled up in her chest and gives it to him. He unwraps it in a hurry and reads. He scratches her name into the piece of brass. The writer takes it and presses it into a small box. He studies the stamp, and asks: “Are you Aida Girguis Estafanous?” She answers with a southern accent: “Yes.” He presses the stamp down on the paper and hands it to her. She gives him money. He says to her: “Give it to the head clerk.” He points to the man standing nearby. His fez is taller than everyone else’s and his reading glasses have dark lenses. He takes the paper from her and goes with her to the falafel vendor. She buys him a loaf of bread and a few pieces.
I hear father’s voice calling my name, so I run over to him. He shouts at me for leaving him alone. We head over to the other side of the building. There is a pack of country women sitting on the ground with their children. We go into a big, crowded room. She sits in the front row next to my grandma. She wears a black silk coat and she has a sheer grey scarf wrapped around her head. She is taller and wider than she was the last time I saw her. Grandma looks over her shoulder, worried. A strange smile is painted on her face. She looks at me without blinking. Her pale brown face is surrounded by a faded, off-white scarf. Mother notices me. I can’t tell if she knows me or not. She suddenly talks to me in a very normal voice, like we’ve never even been separated: “How are you?” She doesn’t ask me to sit next to her. She turns back to pay attention to the judge. She listens to a sheikh in a caftan and turban wearing reading glasses. I turn around looking for my father. He waves to me from the entrance to the hall. I go to him.
We squeeze ourselves on to the end of the bench pushing over the others sitting there. We notice Selim sitting up in the front row. The judge’s stand is up at the front. Lawyers gather in front of him, including Dr. Mandour in his black coat. They’re talking to each other, but we can’t hear them. Hajj Abdel ’Alim is standing behind iron bars. The judge says something that makes the lawyers all stand back. The clerk calls out for the other accused people to come in. All of a sudden, the hearing ends and the judge disappears through a door behind the judge’s stand, followed by his helpers. The people sitting down get up and walk over to the cage holding the accused. The prisoners start calling out to their friends and relatives. Hajj Abdel ’Alim notices us. He seems very happy and not scared.
We leave the courtroom and head out to the right. After a short walk, the Abbadin Palace comes into view. Alongside I can see the wide square stretching out in front of it. We stand in rows from the early morning all the way through to the afternoon. The school official is leading us. We’re wearing the blue shirts that they’ve passed out to us. They look like nursery school uniforms. We wait for the appearance of the king to celebrate him on the anniversary of his coronation.
We turn to the left and go down a street with lots of shady trees. We stop in front of a fancy building. A Nubian doorman meets us. We get into a clean elevator. It goes up slowly without making a sound. I sit down on a seat fastened to the wall. We stop at the fifth floor. We knock on the door of Tante Zeinab’s apartment. Her black maid Zahra opens the door for us. She welcomes us and pulls me to her chest. She kisses my cheek. I know her whole story from father. She was owned by Tante Zeinab’s family before the Khedive Ismail outlawed slavery, but she had no idea who her family was or where she had come from, so she stayed on to work for Tante Zeinab.