50
Egypt, Where …
We left Abu Dhabi for Cairo the first week of September, 1993. No sooner had we stowed the bags and the plane taken off than I closed my eyes. I was on my way to Egypt for the first time in my life; Egypt, where my mother said that Sadiq and Hasan had gone. She lived and died repeating that and believing it. As soon as Cairo appeared at a distance of a three-hour flight, my mother came to me, she possessed me, her deranged mind stuck to mine. Sadiq and Hasan are over there, in the earth of Tantoura, I know; so why am I associating myself with my mother’s fantasies, so that it seems as if no sooner than the plane lands on Egyptian soil and I stamp my passport, I must go out into the streets to search for them? As if what my mother’s imagination had created had become a plant that grew with the passing years, clinging to the earth with a heavy growth of roots. I tell myself, my mother died forty-three years ago; we buried her in Sidon and her tomb is known. I tell myself, Sadiq and Hasan and my father died forty-five years ago; the young men buried them under the threat of arms, in the earth of Tantoura, with no marker for the grave, or sign. Perhaps their bodies have worked free, becoming part of the sand and Indian figs in the village. But my mother, strange, she has come with me. I shoo her away, I push her, or I speak reasonably and say to her, “You’re dead, there in Sidon, what’s brought you here? Why did you bring them? They are back there, leave them to the almond trees in the village, leave them to the olives, they’re enduring, they live a thousand years.”
“Are you sleeping, Mother?”
I open my eyes and shake my head.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“I’m not asleep, Maryam.”
I close my eyes and see my mother, all of her. I hear her repeating, “Sadiq and Hasan fled to Egypt,” repeating, “I will go to Egypt and not come back until they are with me.” Why are you coming to Egypt with me, Mother?
I had never seen a city the size of Cairo. I had seen it time and again in films, and before the films I was familiar with the name and some of its features. My father would say, “I heard that on Radio Cairo,” or Umm Jamil would sing:
O Egypt, with all my beloved,
You are so far from me!
If my horses cannot reach you,
I’ll go to you on my own two feet.
It was a song I use to sing to myself secretly, when I became engaged to the boy from Ain Ghazal. I told myself that I would not find anything there strange, that I knew it; but I did find it strange. The crowds alarmed me and the chaos confused me. Life there struck me, in its strength and its vitality. Maryam wanted to see a thousand things. I said, “We’re moving to Alexandria in five days, you can come back a second time and a third and a fourth, just look at the most important things now.” But Maryam wanted intensive tourism, she wanted to see the pyramids and the Citadel and al-Azhar, she wanted to visit the Egyptian Museum and the Islamic Museum and the Coptic Museum. She wanted to go to the tomb of Gamal Abd al-Nasser, she wanted to see Cairo University where Hasan studied, she wanted to ride a boat on the Nile at sunset. “I can’t, Maryam, I’m dying!” She drags me with her and goes on with her touring. I follow her despite the exhaustion, pleased by her joy in what she sees. Maryam doesn’t walk, she flies. I’ve never entered a museum before in my life, nor taken a tour. I repeat, Cairo is big. If my mother had visited it, she would never have imagined that she could find her two boys in it. Did she think it was a little bigger than Tantoura, or than Sidon? My mother never visited Haifa or Beirut, and saw no more of Damascus than a mosque she stayed in and a neighboring medical clinic. Maybe she had seen an old film with Abd al-Wahab or Asmahan and saw two or three streets, with no more people in them than you could count on your fingers. I was fatigued by Cairo, by Maryam’s reckless program, by the clamor and the crowding. But I loved the Nile. I loved it and was amazed: as large as a sea, and calm, with no noise, no waves, no air filled with its smells to announce its presence before you see it. It doesn’t seem to need it, for it inspires awe in abundance, in and of itself.
When we took the train to Alexandria I watched the land spread out like the palm of a hand, in neatly drawn rectangles and squares of cultivated land. No olives or almonds, fewer trees and a lot of planting. I thought, the land of Egypt goes with the river, a carpet beside a carpet; even its wildness has order and logic. She said, “They went to Egypt.” Like every mother, she wanted every step her boys took to be safe. Her imagination rushed to her aid, with land like a carpet.
On the outskirts of Alexandria Maryam began to sing “O Alexandria, how wondrous your sea” in a whisper, so I laughed and followed her, distractedly. I was looking at my watch. I had never taken a train before in my life, and Sadiq had warned me: “The Sidi Gaber Station is not the last one on the line. The train stops there only five minutes or maybe ten, and then goes on to the last station. The trip takes two hours and ten minutes; get ready before you arrive. Pick up the things you’ve put near you, you and Maryam, and ask a worker to get down the large bags you’ve given him; he’ll set them down for you as soon as the train arrives. At the station you’ll find the friend I told you about. I told him to make sure to be there waiting for you; he’ll take you and Maryam to the apartment. Here’s his telephone number; if you want anything, call him. Assuming that for any reason you don’t find him, then ask one of the porters to take your things on his cart and go with you to the taxi stand, outside the station. You’ll give the driver the address, and you have the key to the apartment. The building has seven floors and our apartment is on the fourth. As soon as you arrive call to let me know.”
Sadiq was laying out what we would and would not do. Maryam said that he was treating us as if we were children; he scolded her with a look and went on speaking.
When I got up from my seat in the train, Maryam said, “Mama, everyone is still seated in their places, they’ll laugh at us.” But I got up and she followed me. She was right, because we stood near the door of the carriage for a quarter of an hour before it was announced over the loudspeaker, “Sidi Gaber Station.” Five minutes later the train stopped. Maryam was laughing.