I Think of You: Stories (2 page)

By Abdin Palace, there is another house that I remember. And another set of grandparents. I don’t go there as often as I go to Grandfather Morsi’s, but when I do go, it is to stay a few days. There are no uncles here, only two aunts, and it is much quieter and darker than in the other house. Here, I call my grandmother Neina and I would not dream of climbing onto her back while she prayed. However, sometimes at night she will take the net off her hair and it will fall down her back long and soft, black threaded with silver. Then she will let me kneel on the sofa behind her, and brush it carefully and gently.

Yes. To everything there is an order and a pattern. And the pattern and the order are good. Time, from one birthday to the next, runs gently by, overflowing with an abundance of
pleasures. If there are fears or griefs, they are minor and I am always able to be comforted by the grown-ups.

It is my birthday, I am five years old. In the morning I go with my grandfather to Groppi’s to order a three-tier chocolate cake with colored sugar rabbits and five blue candles. I also get a bar of Swiss chocolate. In the afternoon I go out on an errand with my aunt Soraya and spot a cart loaded with wooden bathroom clogs. I want a pair. “No,” says my aunt. “Daddy won’t like it.”

“But I can keep them in the Spoiling House,” I say, already practicing subterfuge. Eventually she gives in and buys me a pair. “I want to wear them now.”

“You can’t wear them in the street. They’re only for the bathroom.”

“I’ve seen people wear them in the street.” I look around. A little beggar girl is coming toward us wearing a pair. “There!” I cry. “There! She’s wearing clogs!”

“But she’s a little beggar girl,” protests my aunt. It is no use: I am sitting on the pavement, unbuckling my shoes. I clatter proudly back to my grandfather’s in socks and clogs. When evening comes I am surrounded by uncles and aunts and presents. My grandmother has made me a pink tulle bridal dress with a long veil and train. I wear it happily. But I also keep on my clogs.

Then there are all the festivals. On the Prophet’s birthday the streets are filled with bright stalls selling sweets. Sugar
knights on horseback for boys, sugar dolls for girls. The doll stands, arms akimbo, in a flared dress and a high bonnet of colored and silver paper. She has painted black eyes and eyebrows and red cheeks and lips and stands in glory on the sideboard till the ants get her and she crumbles into decay beside her knight.

And Ramadan lasts a whole month. A month of winter evenings spent around the fire cracking nuts and roasting chestnuts. A month of exotic sweets and communal breakfasting at sunset. Of waking up at four in the morning (even though I do not fast) to join in the last meal before daybreak. Later to be tucked up again with a fresh hot-water bottle. A month of playing with a colored lantern with a real lit candle inside and singing special songs with my nanny and aunts.

And at the end of the month comes the small Eid. So the last few days are dedicated to cake-making. My grandmother and the women of the family sit around on the floor in a circle, chatting. Between their knees they hold the large copper urns and in them they knead the dough for the cakes. They roll the dough into little balls and stuff each one with some dates. Then they flatten them and lay them on huge black oven trays. Each cake has to have a pattern engraved on it with special pincers, and this is where I join in. I crawl around the trays making patterns with my silver pincers. On a few I am allowed to draw faces. When the cakes are all done, the servants balance the huge black trays on their heads and carry them to the public oven.

For the Eid you always wear new clothes. They are specially made and on the eve of the feast they are laid out ready
to be worn in the morning. The big Eid lasts four days. Weeks before it, Grandfather buys a sheep and it is tethered to the iron railings on the balcony. Going to my grandfather’s house becomes extra special: there is the sheep to ride and play with. But then, on the eve of the Eid, they tell me to say good-bye to the sheep. They tell me he is going back to his mother. He has enjoyed playing with me, but now it is time for him to go home. I go to sleep in a huge bed with springs and a feather quilt and when I wake up he has gone. I miss him. But I agree: a sheep should be with his mother. And I am consoled by the new clothes and by the fireworks they buy me. Catherine wheels make brilliant arcs of light, torpedoes go off with a deafening blast, Snaps catch fire in your hand when you scrape one against the wall (only the wall of the back staircase, nowhere else), and sparklers throw off a breathtaking profusion of stars and moons.

Another main event in life is the yearly migration to Alexandria. In July the whole family packs beachwear and bundles into cars and we set off on the long desert road to the Mediterranean. In Alexandria there is a two-story wooden house standing in an acre of sandy ground with palm trees. This is the “chalet.” It is where I live during July and August. It is a short walk to the beach and we stroll it in our swimwear. On the beach they set up brilliant parasols and deck chairs and rugs. My aunts teach me to swim. My father and uncle throw me to each other in the water, occasionally dousing me in the surf. On the days when my grandfather comes up from Cairo he teaches me to play backgammon on

an intricate inlaid board. He teaches me the classic maneuvers and the set moves. And he gives me silver money when I beat him.

To everything there is an order and a pattern.

Parental decree forbids servants and relatives to tell frightening stories or threaten abduction by the ghoul or the bogey or the man with the skinned leg. So I grow up in ignorance of the more menacing figures of folklore. I know Cinderella well, and am repeatedly ecstatic as the glass slipper is fitted to her dainty foot; I have unbounded confidence in Clever Hassan, who always comes out on top; and I know that the real story of Little Red Riding Hood ends with her and her grandmother emerging triumphantly from the wolf’s belly. The wolf is so overcome by this miracle that he is transformed into a domestic pet and they all live together happily ever after.

Divine Order. Evil is a passing naughtiness; mighty forces work for the good and all stories end happily.

I endlessly make up tales surrounding the pictures in the books I cannot yet read. I pore over a bookful of Rodin sculptures and my parents are delighted with the sunny little fables I produce. My life is woven into my tales and my tales become part of my life: aunts and uncles are characters in a storybook and Hansel and Gretel join me under the desk in my grandfather’s shop. I invent characters who become my friends and perform a play with them to an assembled family
audience. “The child has such a lively imagination,” they say, and surround me with admiration and love.

My parents’ books become increasingly fascinating. I pick up even the ones with sparse illustrations and ask questions: “Who is this?”

“A man called Vathek.”

“Where does he live?”

“He’s not real. He was invented by a man called Beckford.”

“Where does
he
live?”

“He lived in the last century, in England.”

My father’s books are still out of bounds.

Then there comes a break. My mother is absent and I live in the Spoiling House. After many weeks I go on a long journey across the sea alone with my father. We land in a cold dark wet windy place with a lot of people and a lot of trains. We sit in a café drinking hot milk. Then my mother’s face emerges out of the rain. She is wearing a light green raincoat. She runs into my father’s arms and I embrace her legs. She bends to pick me up and she is laughing and crying at the same time.

Now I remember a new home. It is much smaller than the ones we’ve left behind and not so pretty. But there is a fire in the living room wall. Everything here is much colder, much darker than I’m used to. There is no one; no one except my parents. And I don’t see very much of them, for I am sent to school. My parents are pleased that I find my feet and learn
the new language so easily. I miss my aunts and uncles and grandparents. But now I like my new friends. I like sitting on the floor on a huge sheet of paper and painting gray castles and soldiers in red and black uniforms. I like cuddling up to Miss Eve at storytime. I like taking a goldfish home for the holidays. I miss the sun. But I like the evenings when I sit at my mother’s feet in front of the fire. She reads and writes and I look at pictures. There are no sugar dolls, no Ramadan lantern, no Eid, and no sheep. But instead there is Father Christmas and a stockingful of presents.

A new routine is introduced: I am initiated into a semi-grown-up role. Once a week my parents go out in the evening and I am left on my own. My mother gives me my bath and my dinner, then tucks me up in bed with a hot-water bottle. Both my mother and father kiss me good night. A small night-light is left burning. I don’t mind at all. I tell myself stories till I fall asleep. In the morning the brownie will have visited me and left a chocolate or a packet of sweets under my pillow. He always comes when my parents go out in the evening. He never forgets. I try to wait up for him but I always fall asleep.

One night after I’ve fallen asleep I am suddenly wide awake. I sit up in bed and there, by the wall, I see him. He is a cross between a tiny man and a hamster. He is running quickly, upright on two legs, and he wears a little green suit and hat. He has a human face with a black mouse snout and pointed pixie ears. I know instantly that it’s the brownie and I sit very still so as not to frighten him away. Then I wonder about his gift. I slip my hand under the pillow, but there’s
nothing there. I twist around to look and make sure. Still nothing. When I look up, he has gone. I know he will be back with my present, so I sit up to wait for him. The next thing I know it is morning and my mother is waking me up. There is a bag of licorice under the pillow. Over cornflakes I tell my parents that I’ve seen the brownie. At first they smile; then as I describe the scene in detail, they start to look anxious.

“You couldn’t have, dear.”

“But I did.”

“You must have dreamt it.”

“But I was
sitting up
in bed. I wasn’t asleep.”

“You couldn’t
really
have seen the brownie.”

“Why?”

“Because … well, because he can only come when you’re asleep.”

“But I
was
asleep. Then I woke up and he ran away.”

They stop arguing with me but they still look uncomfortable and I cannot understand why.

An important event now takes place: I learn to read. One day, all of a sudden, the black marks around the pictures make sense and I am reading. Now every day on the way home from school, we stop at the public library and get me a book. Also, once a week I buy
Playhour
and
Robin.
I want to do nothing but read. I read and I read and I make up more sto-r ies. I go r ight through
Little Gray Rabbit
and
Noddy
and Hans Christian Andersen and my world is peopled with fascinating characters and bursting with adventure. Pinocchio and Squirrel go with me everywhere. I take to saving up my pocket
money and buying comics. The brownie stops bringing me sweets and brings me books instead. Every book is a treasure trove and I play a part in every story.

One week I go to get my
Playhour
and am attracted by another comic. The cover shows a man in a black cloak and a beautiful blonde lady. The lady is tired, so he is carrying her and smiling. He has horrid teeth. Over the picture is written
Vampires.
I don’t know what that means, but I already have a penchant for the romantic. I buy it. Something tells me my parents won’t approve, so I smuggle it in and hide it among my toys till their next going-out night.

This time, not only don’t I mind: I positively
want
them to go. When they do, I sit up in bed and read by the night-light: “The undead … those monstrous characters who feed upon the blood of the living … In Transylvania, Count Dracula’s castle lay shrouded in blackest night.” Here is new material indeed for my imagination. That night (after carefully rehid-ing the comic), I have a nightmare. An octopus is trying to catch me to drive a stake through my heart. I can see my mother, but she cannot see me or hear me scream. Luckily my parents have come home. They wake me up and comfort me and I tell them about the octopus but not about the stake. My father tells me that if I am afraid I’ll dream of something, the thing to do is to remember it consciously before I go to sleep. Then I won’t dream of it. For nights afterward I religiously intone “Octopuses and vampires, octopuses and vampires” before I go to sleep. It works. I don’t dream of them. I also don’t buy any more vampire comics.

My mother has a problem with me. I am finishing my books too quickly. We get home from school and long before bedtime I have finished the books from the library and am demanding more. In desperation she lets me browse among her books. I pick out a heavy red and gold volume of the
Arabian Nights.
“It’s all right,” she assures my father, “it’s only the Lane edition.” And I enter yet another new world. A world of Oriental souks and magic and djinnis. I am fascinated by the way djinnis can emerge from lamps, bottles, jars—in fact from anything. The world has undreamt-of possibilities. During the day I am at school and in the evening I am sunk completely into this firelit world of magic.

The week rolls around and it is going-out night again. I have my bath and my chicken soup and get into bed. My parents tuck me in and kiss me. I lie on my side in bed, gazing at the wall. The night-light is burning. Slowly, slowly, the wall begins to move. I stare at it. It splits down the middle and swings slowly and silently open. In front of my eyes appears a giant black djinni with a shaved head. All he wears is a Tarzan-like swimsuit in leopard-skin, and his bulging arms are folded across his bare chest. Behind him appears the vampire in the black cloak. He is grinning widely and his long teeth are dripping with blood. For long seconds I am mesmerized; then I unfreeze. In a flash I am out of bed and on the chest of drawers under the window.