8

The Break

The Pasteur Institute, unlikely as it may seem, became a welcome refuge, and I was happy Occupying two acres in the 15th arrondissement, the institute had a forbidding aspect. A high wall of faded reddish brick surrounded the multi-structured complex, including a barn where the goats and other animals were kept. Students’ assignments, in three-month intervals, were determined by lottery I drew the hematology department first and was assigned to Dr. R., a Russian woman in her fifties with a thick accent. She was heavily made up, and her dyed curly blond hair was held on top of her head by a wide comb. I enjoyed listening to her swear in Russian whenever one of her curls loosened from the comb, which was often. She was trying to find cures for certain blood diseases in young children. My job the first week was to mount the billy goats and draw blood. At first I was clumsy and my white lab coat was more often than not covered with blood. Dr. R. clucked benignly each time I returned to the lab, where I assisted her in preparing slides. I had lunch at home and then walked to the hospital, where I had afternoon duty, drawing. blood again, this time from children. The métro ride home from the institute was pleasant, at least for me. Inevitably, a void was created around me—I smelled to high heaven of goat—and I could sit down in the crowded métro car and read my book or my notes. At home the problem of my bloody doctor’s coat became quite an issue. The coat had to be washed daily, and soon our housekeeper simply refused. The other problem was my grandmother. She made me eat lunch in the kitchen. “Tu empeste (You stink)!” she’d say in a disgusted tone. I felt like Cinderella but I liked my job. Soon Dr. R. taught me how to make slides, to draw what I saw in the microscope, and to count cells. I was looking forward to starting my studies for real, and hematology was a compelling field. Every week, Clément got an earful of complaints about me from my grandmother. “Who will ever marry her,” she told him. “Is this really what une jeune fille de bonne famille should be doing?” Clément tried to dissuade me from my studies, but I was resolute. Money was also becoming a real problem. When my father died, he left his fortune to be managed by his eldest brother, my uncle Albert. Egyptian law, however, was very strict about children’s inheritance. The government had created a department that was responsible for managing the child’s portion of all inheritances. It determined how much the child needed, and every month a check was deposited in the child’s account. This was done to protect the child, especially the male child, from a new marriage or an unscrupulous relative. An auditor, to be paid by the estate, was assigned to each account. When Nasser took over the government, exiling King Farouk, he ordered a review of all the orphans’ accounts. At this point, the new government declared that our family’s accountant had been underpaid for the last ten years and that adjustments had to be made. My uncle Albert decided that we should contest the finding. While the money trickled pitifully in, Clément was obliged to support both my brother and me, since these funds were so paltry. Marrying me off was the perfect solution. And so the rounds of prospective husbands resumed. Every eligible young man whose parents were friends of my family or even friends of a friend was paraded before my eyes. I disliked them all, including a pompous Rothschild in whom my grandmother put all her hopes, though I did enjoy—and take advantage of—dining out at fancy restaurants, dancing at clubs, and attending the latest plays and musicals. After several months, an incident at work solved Clément and my grandmother’s problem.

Students at Pasteur were told that they were going to need a physical and a tuberculosis vaccine. A few days after I had the vaccine I developed a fever, my arm swelled, and I felt quite sick. I called Dr. R., who immediately came to see me and sent me to have an X ray of my lungs. The results came a few days later; I had a touch of tuberculosis and had to be sent immediately to a mountain retreat for a few months. I protested, so Dr. R. came up with an attractive solution. She had Russian friends who lived outside Megève in a lovely old chalet; the husband was a retired doctor who agreed to take care of me. Within two days, to my grandmother’s relief, I was packed off to the Alps and Dr. and Mrs. Alexandrov.

The chalet was a two-story wooden house filled with mementos from Russia. In the living room, photographs of the entire family in ornate silver frames were placed on every piece of heavy, velvet-upholstered furniture. Mrs. Alexandrov, Tania to her friends, was a short, round, bosomy lady who greeted me with warmth. “I will take care of you,” she said in a heavy Russian accent. “Bubbola, don’t you worry about anything.” Dr. Alexandrov resembled my grandfather, with a white mustache and a shock of white hair. I liked him immensely “You like opera?” he asked. “Yes, I do,” I responded politely. Immediately, the doctor jumped out of his seat. “I know Caruso. I have all his records,” he exclaimed as he placed a record on the player. I was enchanted. Today, whenever I listen to my CDs of Caruso, I remember my stay with the Alexandrovs. I was taken upstairs to my bedroom and ordered to rest until dinnertime. Unlike the stuffy downstairs living room, my bedroom was white-washed, with large windows overlooking the mountains and an old-fashioned four-poster bed with lots of pillows and the thickest eiderdown I had ever seen. As I lay down to rest, Caruso’s voice drifted up, and slowly I went to sleep. The days passed very quickly: I ate breakfast—thick slices of black bread slathered with fresh butter, hot cocoa—then a short walk. I rested again, had lunch, rested again, another short walk, and dinner. At night they told me stories about Russia, and Tania proudly showed me photographs of herself as a young girl in a ball gown. She described the balls in the winter in Saint Petersburg with a quivering voice. They had escaped in 1920 after the revolution and settled in Paris. They ran a small restaurant for the other Russian émigrés. Tania was an excellent cook, and very soon the restaurant became quite famous. Dr. Alexandrov was never allowed to practice in France, but he took care of all his Russian friends. When they retired, he bought the chalet in the mountains and took in guests in the winter and summer. Once in a while Dr. R. would send him a patient like me. I loved Tania’s food, especially her borscht. She often served it at the midday meal, followed by a red-and-white radish salad or some mushrooms in cream. At dinner we had flounder with scallions, shashlik with kasha, potatoes and green peppers stuffed with carrots. There were a lot of sweet desserts that I did not care for, so Tania always gave me fruit compote served with sweet cream. On Sundays we ate blinis with sour cream, and I could wolf down at least half a dozen, I gained weight and looked very healthy. No one in my family came to see me during these months but I did not care, as I loved being pampered by the Alexandrovs. Within four months Dr. Alexandrov decided that I was in good shape, and with tears in their eyes, the tender couple sent me back to my grandmother.

Blinis

This recipe takes time but it is worth the wait. Pour 1¼ cups of very warm water into a bowl. Add 1 package active dry yeast and mix well until the yeast is all dissolved. Add ¾ cup flour and mix well, cover, and allow to stand on the side of the range for about 3 hours. Then add 1¼ cups buckwheat flour, mix well, and let stand for about 1½ hours. Heat 1 cup milk; add the milk to the flour mixture, and beat the mixture with a hand beater. Beat 2 egg yolks with a pinch of salt and 1 teaspoon sugar until light yellow. Gradually beat 2 tablespoons melted butter into the egg mixture, add to the flour mixture, and mix well. Then beat until stiff 2 egg whites with a pinch of salt. Fold in ¼ cup heavy cream. Then fold the egg whites into the flour mixture, and let stand for about 1½ hours. Butter a skillet and drop tablespoons of the batter onto the skillet. When the blinis are brown on one side, pour a little melted butter on top and flip the blinis. Cook until that side is brown. Serve the blinis with sour cream, caviar, or smoked salmon. Makes about 25 blinis.

As I entered my bedroom in our house in Paris, I saw two letters on my dresser, one of which was stamped with the Pasteur Institute’s logo. I was afraid to open them, sensing that they contained bad news. The letter from Pasteur stated that they could not take me back by order of the government. I was crushed; I had worked so hard for nothing. The other letter, from the Ministry of Education, explained that the funds for my studies at the institute were being withdrawn. I had become a risk, and the government no longer wanted to foot the bill for my recovery. I could, like other students living in Paris, go to the Sorbonne at their expense but not to Pasteur. I sat on my bed, feeling cursed, damned, jinxed. Everything I wanted was always taken away. As I stared at the walls of my bedroom through my tears, I knew I could no longer stay in that house. I had to go out on my own, but where? My mother’s house was out of the question. She had made it clear that she wanted to be alone with her new husband. I called Clément to tell him what happened. “Wonderful!” he gloated. “You can now act like a real young lady should and choose something more in keeping with who you are.” Who I was? I had no clue and felt inconsequential. All I knew was that I could not expect any help from him except in the form of money. “You must come and see me tomorrow. We will have lunch together and discuss your future.” As I hung up the telephone I looked up, and there was my grandmother, imperiously glaring. “You are not going back to the institute,” she said with relief. “Thank goodness … it took weeks to get rid of the goat smell in your room!” Without a single word to console me, she departed. I left the house and went for a walk on the Avenue de la Grande Armée, a majestic, tree-lined path to the Arc de Triomphe. The arch was illuminated, shimmering against a backdrop of violet dusk, and I remembered the day I had seen it for the first time. I was eager then to start a life with my “real” family. But three years later, I was alone. I stood near the arch for a long time, looking at cars passing by, people coming home from work, young women hanging on the arms of their boyfriends. I finally returned to my room, refused supper, and cried myself to sleep.

The next day at lunch (I could not stay away from food for long), while I was enjoying a velvety onion soup topped with a layer of melted Gruyère, Clément threw a bombshell at my feet. “I am sending you to Egypt,” he said. “You have to go there. Albert is contesting the government’s edict about accountant fees and they need you in Cairo.” I would have been thrilled by his proclamation two years ago, but now my grandparents were dead and I wanted to stay in Paris, to study or to work. “I don’t want to go,” I said in a self-assured voice that surprised me. “I want to register at the Sorbonne and take a degree in …” What did I want to study? I really didn’t know. “… English and literature,” I finished, thinking of Jimmy in America. Although I had not heard from him in more than a year, I knew I had to learn English. “It is only until the summer,” he explained. “Next fall you can go to school if you still want to. Now go back home and pack your bags and all your belongings. I will give you a studio in one of my apartment buildings. Leave them there and go to Cairo.” I looked at my uncle in astonishment. What had happened? He was actually going to let me live on my own? I decided not to ask but to do what he told me and quickly move out of the house. “You will leave in a week. I bought the ticket; this time you fly.” With sudden gusto, I gobbled down my veal chop stuffed with herbs and devoured a tarte Tatin.

That evening. I announced to my grandmother that I was moving out. “Une chambre de bonne avec salle de bains (a maid’s room with a bathroom),” I said proudly My grandmother was lying in bed, and I stood at the foot, thinking how wonderful it was going to be to leave her oppressive presence. Out of the blue, she spoke harshly. “Pars! Tu reviendras car tu finiras sur le trottoir avec un gosse sur le bras ou à l’Assistance Publique (Leave! You’ll come back, since you’ll end up walking the streets with a kid in your arms or on welfare).” I took it as a challenge and vowed to myself that I’d be good, so that no one would speak ill of me.

Onion Soup

Peel and thinly slice 4 large sweet onions. In a large skillet melt 1 tablespoon butter with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Add the onions and sauté over medium heat, stirring often. When the onions are light brown, add 6 cups chicken or beef broth and simmer the onions for another 5 minutes. Correct the seasoning, adding salt and pepper. Toast 4 thick slices of country bread. Divide the soup among 4 earthenware soup bowls. Cut 4 slices of Gruyère into ½-inch pieces and divide the cheese among the bowls. Place a slice of toast in each bowl. Put 1 or 2 slices of Gruyère on top of the soup. Dot the cheese with a small piece of butter and bake in a preheated 375-degree oven for 10 minutes, or until the cheese is golden brown and bubbly. Serve immediately. Serves 4.

As I was packing my clothes and my few belongings, my brother came in. “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “I know it is difficult here but you just have to stand it for one more year. You know she has a lot of diamonds, and they will be yours one day. She told me.” “Diamonds?” I said. “You can have them. I’m leaving.”

My studio was on the eighth floor of a very elegant building on the Avenue Foch. The room was small with one window, a tiny bathroom, a bed, a desk, and a chair. Clément was there with me to introduce me to the concierge. Concierges in France are the queens of dwellings. They control the mail, know who comes in and out, and keep abreast of all the gossip about each tenant. This concierge was to look after me, meaning, I understood, to report to Clément what I was doing, where I went, and especially who came to the attic to visit. I knew I had to behave; if not, this small studio would be taken from me and I would end up like Cinderella for real, back at the hearth. My first night there I slept like a log.

I flew to Cairo a week later. The noise from the crowds at the airport was almost deafening, and soldiers with guns were milling about everywhere. I had to wait endlessly on the customs line, and when it was my turn, the customs officer looked at my French passport and asked me to follow him. I was taken to a small room where two policemen were sitting at a table. “Why do you have a French passport?” I was asked in Arabic. “I don’t understand Arabic,” I answered in French. “You don’t, but your family is Egyptian. What happened to you?” I tried to explain that my Arabic was poor, that I had been living in France, and that my mother was French. They finally let me go. Outside, trembling, I was accosted several times by men in dirty clothes offering me rides in a taxi and hotel rooms. I finally spotted my cousin, who pushed everyone aside, grabbed me by the arm, and took me to his car. Egypt was now ruled by Nasser. Soldiers were everywhere in the streets, and traffic was abominable. Cairo had changed since I’d left; there seemed to be more people in the streets than before. We passed a new, enormous building. “It’s the new police headquarters,” my cousin explained with a sigh. “Life has been more difficult since the revolution. Lots of people have left. Government is chaotic now and rules change every day.”

The house was there, as lovely as I remembered, with red and white bougainvillea growing on the fence. Mohammed, the protector of the house (the house, my cousin explained, needed protection from the mob that now roamed the streets), greeted me with arms waving and a huge toothless smile. As I entered my grandparents’ apartments I was suddenly filled with sadness. I had been so happy here with them, but now my uncle Albert and his wife were living in their apartment. They greeted me warmly, and soon I felt more at ease. My room was unchanged, and from the balcony I could still touch the mango tree that my grandfather said he had planted when I was born. Then I drifted toward the kitchen. Ahmet our cook was still there. As I looked at him, I remembered how wonderful he had been to me. When my mother left me with my grandparents, Ahmet had taken me into his kitchen. He had adopted me, and whenever I was lonely or sad he had always found a way to cheer me up. When I was a young child he would plop me on the marble counter and give me the spoon filled with the chocolate mousse he was making or, behind my grandmother’s back (she objected to a jeune fille de bonne famille in the kitchen), he would fill a small pita with hot ful medamas that he made for the kitchen staff. Today, he looked older and thinner but his smile was as warm as I remembered it. He hugged me and told me I looked beautiful but too thin. He would cook for me all the dishes he remembered I liked. I was home! I promised myself that this time I would ask him to teach me how to prepare some of his dishes, like his broiled quail stuffed vine leaves and pickled garlic. This time I knew I could help him in the kitchen. I realized very quickly that things were not the same. When I was a child, there were many servants, chauffeurs, and gardeners. Now Ahmet was working in the kitchen with just one helper and there was just one servant who cleaned and served. “Don’t worry,” I said excitedly, “I am here and now we can cook together. You can teach me, and if I am good maybe you will give me all your secrets? I want to learn all the Egyptian dishes.”

Ful Medames

This dish is traditionally cooked overnight and can be made with canned Egyptian small fava beans. Egyptian pickles are a mix of turnips, onions, and hot peppers and are available in Middle Eastern groceries. Cover 1 pound dried Egyptian fava beans with water and soak overnight. The next day, drain the beans and place in a large saucepan with 1 head of garlic, cut in half. Add 2¾ pints water and bring to the boil. Lower to a simmer, add 6 eggs in their shells, the juice of a lemon, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook the beans for 12 hours, or until tender, checking occasionally and adding water if needed. Prepare 6 individual bowls. Place 1 tablespoon chopped spring onion, 1 tablespoon olive oil, ½ tablespoon lemon juice, and salt and pepper into each bowl. Peel the eggs and place one in each bowl. Spoon in the ful and serve with Egyptian pickles and toasted pita. Serves 6.

Ahmet laughed, and the sparkle in his eyes returned. “You are so much like your grandmother. Egyptian recipes? All right … maybe we will cook a meal together for Vita’s birthday next week.” Vita was my favorite cousin. He had been away in Europe but was coming back to see his parents. The following Monday we went together to the market. Ahmet showed me how to choose eggplants for babaghanou; from there we went to buy quails for dinner. The quails were so much smaller than in Paris. I remembered how my grandfather and I had a little game of who would leave fewer bones on the plate after eating three quails. Returning to the house, Ahmet sent me away. “Let me prepare the birds and the vegetables,” he said. “Then when I start cooking you can come back. Remember how your grandmother wanted you out of the kitchen? Well, she was right. You know, I miss her a lot, especially our daily arguments.”

I left and went to read in the garden for half an hour and then silently crept back into the kitchen. Ahmet was plucking the quails and softly singing to himself. As I came in I said, “How will I learn how to pluck quails if you don’t show me?” Ahmet laughed and handed me a tiny quail. “Pull the feathers in the opposite direction and cut off his feet.” I tried and it seemed difficult at first but quickly I got the knack of it. While we were plucking the quails, Ahmet talked about his future. “I miss your grandmother so much.” Ahmet sighed as he told me that money was tight but appearances had to be kept. “I cook what I want, but it is not the same without her. Next year I will go back to my village … but,” and he smiled, “now that you are here we can talk about dinner together.” We then marinated the quails in limes and olive oil; we broiled the eggplants and peeled the garlic. The smell of the kitchen was enchanting and made me dizzy with hunger. “I need something to eat. Will you make me a sandwich of ful medamas?” “Like old times,” he said as he handed me a small pita filled with ful and pickles. I asked Ahmet about Ibrahim, his son. “He works at the hotel in town. He is waiting for me to go back to our village in the Sudan. Your uncle promised him the job of guardian for the house. He hates to cook. He got married, you know? His wife is a good cook, but not like you,” and he smiled affectionately at me. “I have to teach you how to make sanbusaks but I also want to teach you French recipes.” I agreed to everything he said as long as he kept his promise to teach me all he knew.

It seemed to me that from the outside, the revolution and the new regime had not affected my family, but in reality it had. Business was bad, and the government was harassing the Europeans and the Jews. New regulations on import-export were piling up on my uncle Albert’s desk, changing every day. When, after a few days, I tried to find out what was going on with my trial, my uncle told me that he was taking care of everything. It wasn’t for a young woman like me to bother with these details. I was here to meet people, have fun, and hopefully get married. Now I understood why Clément had sent me back to Cairo. I was nineteen and had to get married or I would become an old maid! So I didn’t ask about my uncle’s legal appeal again. Instead, I was dragged to the Sporting Club each morning to go swimming and flirt with boys who happened to disapprove of bikinis, to my dismay. In the afternoon, my aunt took me shopping. According to her I needed lots of new dresses to go dancing in. My cousin Renée, who was my age and also unmarried, told me to be careful. “Don’t go out alone with a man more than twice,” she warned me. “If you do, they will announce your engagement. Try to go in a group or with me.” Every Friday I was invited to dinner with one or another member of my family. There was always a young man there, and often he invited me out on the balcony to look at the stars, announcing that his future wife would get a large diamond and lots of servants to do her bidding. I was unimpressed.

I wanted to visit the Convent of the Sacred Heart, but I hesitated, not wanting to offend my family. I knew that they would not understand and worse, would feel betrayed by me. With the new regime, even though Jews had lived in this country for three hundred years, they were treated like foreigners. Unfortunately they looked European, their children did not speak Arabic fluently, and they all had gone to French lycées. Some of the preeminent families, foreseeing what was going to happen, had already left the country. My family felt strongly that they were Egyptians and should stay. Today there is no one left there.

Time in the kitchen with Ahmet was the best part of my day. I learned how to make sanbusaks, wonderful small pastries filled with cheese; mulukhiyya, the green herb soup; stuffed vegetables with rice and meat; and my favorite dessert, loukomadis, tiny fried balls of dough rolled in honey My aunt, who prided herself on her European roots, adapted French recipes by using Egyptian spices. She taught me how to stuff a whole green cabbage with chopped lamb, herbs, and a dash of cumin, and to prepare a chicken basted with lime juice and garlic.

A month after my arrival, Renée and I decided that we should both find ourselves something to do besides shopping. My great-grandfather and my grandfather had founded orphanages for poor Jewish children, so we presented ourselves to the provost of one of these, asking for jobs. We were hired on the spot. Three times a week we left the house to go “shopping” and ended up at the orphanage, and nobody at home was the wiser. We brought the children, housed in a dreary, decrepit building, candies and cookies and taught them French songs and poetry. I felt that I was doing something worthwhile, but my uncle discovered our secret only three weeks later and called us into his office. “You cannot go back. You understand, Colette, people think we have lost our money. We can’t let them believe that, so you can’t work … no more teaching.” I tried to argue that it was volunteer work, but Albert was intransigent. I went back to swimming, shopping, and parties in the evening. A week later, my uncle got a message from the city’s chief of police asking for my hand in marriage. I laughed when I heard but my uncle said it was no laughing matter. The man had been at the airport when I was detained and had fallen for me. In his proposal he promised that he would take only one wife, and that I need not become a Muslim. My uncle said that we had to be very careful how we turned down his proposal. The entire family gathered in my uncle’s apartment to discuss the matter. It was dangerous for all of us, my cousin Bernard said. We could be in real trouble, depending on how we responded. I will never marry an Egyptian police chief, I thought. I will run back to Paris. After all, I’m French and they can’t keep me here. It was Tante Marie who came to the rescue. She suggested that we accept the marriage proposal, adding that my future husband should know that there was syphilis in the family. We waited impatiently for his answer, which came a week later. To the family’s relief he withdrew his offer. For a few days I became the butt of family jokes. “When you go out, cover your face or if you don’t the chief of police will catch you and …”

Renée and I tried to find something else to do. In Cairo there was a large Jewish hospital where I had had my appendix removed when I was young. I knew the surgeon, a friend of my father, so Renée and I asked him if we could work as volunteers, helping the nurses. This time Albert was supportive although he insisted that we be driven to the hospital every day instead of taking public transportation. Most of the Europeans had left the city, and the streets were filthy. Cairo’s infrastructure was collapsing and had lost the pulse of a thriving metropolis. Luxury departments were poorly run and losing money. Houses were not repaired, and transportation like the trams were now in poor condition. Most of the expensive villas were abandoned by their owners. But I still found places I had once loved. On the way home from the hospital, I’d make the chauffeur stop in front of a ful medamas or falafel stand and buy a sandwich filled with the tasty beans or fried chickpeas, to Renée’s horror. She’d cry, “Colette, you are going to get sick. These stores are so dirty!” I never did.

My assignment in the hospital was in the operating room. I loved watching the doctors as they cut. I wasn’t squeamish; I’d come home at night wanting to tell everyone all the gory details while digging into Ahmet’s fish wrapped in vine leaves and served with a tahini sauce. Two months later, because of an incident on the Israeli-Egyptian border, there was unrest in the street. The hospital, Jewish owned, was attacked by a mob, police were everywhere, and my uncle, fearing for our safety, forbade us to go there again. We were back once more to shopping and parties. I was secretly plotting to go back to Paris when fate took my side.

One night at dinner, I was seated next to a tall blond man of about thirty who did not seem Egyptian. During dinner I learned that his parents were Hungarians but that he had been born in Cairo. He had gone to school in France before the war and was an architect. He talked to me about an Egyptian architect called Hassan Fathi, who was using ancient Egyptian architectural forms in building modern houses. If I was interested, he would be happy to show me some of these buildings. This was the first time in months that I met someone who interested me, so for the next few days, I allowed Philip to take me around. I had never really looked at Cairo before. My world had always been the surroundings of Garden City with its luxury villas, the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Zamaleck, and the Sporting Club. Philip took me to the Dead City, in the heart of old Cairo, a village of four-hundred-year-old tombs and ancient dwellings with children running around half-naked. I visited for the first time old mosques and the pyramid of Saqqara, a magnificent stepped pyramid. The only ones I had seen were the famous three pyramids at Giza, which now had a gate around them and a musical extravaganza at night. I had a very good time with Philip, and at night I went dancing with him. We spent hours in the Egyptian Museum, where he recounted the stories of ancient Egyptian history. My family was ecstatic, and Tante Beca wrote my mother in Paris that finally, soon, she hoped, I would be engaged to be married. My mother, upon receiving this news, wrote to her best friend, Alice, in Boston that I was getting married. Alice ran an art store in Cambridge. Jimmy, who was then studying architecture at Harvard, happened to know her. The day my mother’s letter arrived at the store, Jimmy came in to buy supplies, and Alice told him the great news. Jimmy, as he would tell me later, ran out of the store and sent me a telegram, which read: “Don’t marry anyone but me. I love you.” The telegram was like lightning hitting me. I hadn’t heard from him in many months, and though I had not forgotten him, I thought that he had forsaken me. I showed the telegram to my aunt. “I am going back to Paris,” I said. “I want to marry Jimmy. You must help me convince Uncle Albert.” My aunt decided that the best way was to go and see a sheik, who was a well-known clair-voyant. She said he could tell the future. The next day we drove outside the city to a small village. We stopped in front of a stone house with open windows and an inner courtyard filled with goats and pigeons. A young barefoot Arab boy led us to a small room where a man in a long robe was sitting on the floor munching on roasted melon seeds. We sat on cushions, and while my aunt explained in Arabic why we were there, I stared at him. The man was old, with deep lines in his face and deep-set dark eyes that were looking at me. If I looked back at this man, right into his eyes, maybe I could convey to him my wishes. The sheik asked my aunt for a handkerchief that belonged to me. As he sniffed the handkerchief he said to my aunt not to keep me here any longer. I would end up far away on another continent with a tall dark-haired man. She would never see me again but I would be happy and it was the will of Allah that I go. It was written in the stars.

My aunt was astonished, and I was elated because now I knew that even if Jimmy did not come back for me (though I knew in my heart that he would), I would be able to return to Paris to study and to start my life. On the long way home my aunt said nothing, and we both rode in a silence heavy with our private thoughts. At dinner that night my aunt told Uncle Albert that he had to send me back. The trial with the government was going nowhere and I no longer needed to stay. I had a place to live and I could go back to the university. “She can have a job and work if the money disappears.” The next few days were hectic. My aunt insisted that I have a trousseau, “just in case this tall young man comes.” We bought towels with my initials, linen tablecloths, and sheets, which I still have today and which my daughters covet, to my surprise. I was given a big send-off party. My aunt surprised me with a new dress for that going-away party. The dress was beautiful, and that night I went to Tante Marie’s room to show her my dress. “You look lovely; I will miss you,” she said, and after spitting three times she suddenly, before I could do anything, cut off a piece of my dress. “No, no, don’t do that,” I cried out, but she said in a very firm voice, “Colette, it is to protect you from the evil eye. I want to be sure that you are going to be happy.” Today, like Tante Marie, I make my children spit three times when news too good to be true arrives. For that party the food was incredible. All my aunts went to work with Ahmet. There were five types of dips, stuffed vines leaves served with yogurt, Ahmet’s famous leek chicken, a galantine of duck, tiny roasted quails, and Tante Fortune’s best dish—a magnificent array of vegetables stuffed with rice and nuts, and redolent of cumin and garlic. There were five or six desserts, including one of my favorites, prunes cooked in tea and stuffed with walnuts, served with thick heavy cream. I said goodbye to all my friends and to Philip, who seemed unhappy to see me go. I knew I would never see them again. Renée was going to follow me to Paris a few months later. She also had not found a husband in Cairo. She would later marry an Englishman, have five children, and work hard to keep her family together. I never saw her again after that summer.

I would have to wait twenty years before I returned once again to Cairo. This time I went back with my daughter Juliette, who was writing an article on Egypt’s millionaires. We stayed in a hotel in the middle of the Nile. As I looked out of the window at the traffic below, I realized how much Cairo had changed. There were skyscrapers, new highways, and the Nile was clean but there were no felouk, these beautiful ancient boats gliding on its surface that carried merchandise and people up the river. The boats were now moored in front of the hotels and used only to take tourists for a small ride back and forth. I went out that evening to look at my old house. I had a hard time finding it, as it had been sold to a rich Egyptian who had taken my grandfather’s apartment and transformed it into a bank. The mango tree, however, was still there. I felt sad looking at that house where I had been so happy. But it was time to let go of all my memories, and leaving Garden City, I joined my daughter. In the next few days, I just took her around to my favorite haunts—the restaurant in the market where we used to eat roast squabs, a stand for a ful medamas sandwich, and my favorite falafel store. On our last day we ended at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. Time had not been gentle to the convent. The government had taken most of its land but the school was still the best in Cairo, and the chapel that I often imagined in my dreams was still there. So I placed a bouquet of roses on the altar as the brides had done for so many years and we left for New York.