An episode
Nadir and Nadeem enrolled in the College of Engineering at Cairo University. Nadir took on extra work and thus earned some money. Sometimes he tutored classmates, and other times he worked at a computer repair shop; during the summer he contracted with a private company and worked throughout the months of his holiday from nine in the morning until nine at night. He seemed happy, so I didn’t interfere. Hamdiya objected that sitting in front of the computer so much was bad for his eyes – it distressed her that he had gone to an eye doctor and discovered that he needed eyeglasses. ‘No one in our family,’ she said anxiously, ‘has had glasses: neither your father nor I, nor Nada nor Nadeem. It’s because of the computer!’
Pretending to be in earnest, Nadir replied, ‘I got my bad eyesight from my French grandmother!’
Nadeem enrolled in the school of architecture, as planned. He threw himself into his studies, which he loved. He did a great deal of reading in the history of art and architecture. During the summer holiday he couldn’t find work, but during the summer after his third year his brother recommended that he work with him at the computer company where he himself was employed, and Nadeem agreed to this.
My relations with the twins were smooth and pleasant, and there were no problems in my relationship with Hamdiya. When we disagreed and I lost my temper with her or she talked irrationally, we would quarrel, but in general the row would be a passing thing, lasting no more than a few hours and leaving neither of us with hurt feelings.
Then came the event that broke all the rules.
I was sitting in front of the television. The programme was a talk show featuring a former prisoner I believed was a colleague of my father’s. I called Hamdiya and the boys to listen to the discussion with me. The man (who was close to eighty years old by then) was recalling his fifteen years of incarceration in the military prison, as well as the Citadel, Liman Tora, and Mahariq. He didn’t speak at length about torture, but rather went into detail about the improvements at Mahariq Prison: the theatre they had built, the technical workshop, the newsreels they produced, the educational sessions, the school they set up to teach literacy skills to prison guards who could not read or write, and the pictures that were drawn or engraved by artists upon the prison walls and doors.
The host asked him, ‘You alluded once to the incident when a prisoner bowed his head and licked the dust – do such things really take place inside a prison?’
‘Of course.’
‘Did you experience this?’
‘Of course.’
His face registered a calm that was unimaginable to me. Was it old age and the remoteness of the past, or wisdom attained at last?
The announcer asked him, ‘Did your father cry when he saw you, a fine and promising doctor, with your hands in shackles?’
‘No, he didn’t cry.’
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You don’t remember anything of this first meeting with your father?’
‘I remember that I tried to make things easier for him. I could imagine how difficult it was for him to see me with my legs in irons – there were iron shackles on both my legs. I didn’t want him to keep silent, with me silent as well – I wanted to break the silence, so I began speaking lightly of the shackles. I said, “I’ve got used to them.” I said, “And besides, we’ve hit on a trick that allows us to take them off when we’re on our own.” ’
‘And what did your father say?’
‘He didn’t say anything. Only I noticed as he was leaving . . .’
A slight tremor in his face.
‘I noticed . . .’
It was difficult for him to speak, so he stopped, then tried again.
‘I noticed, as he was leaving . . . I noticed that his shoulders were a bit stooped.’
The doctor hung his head. The camera moved off. I looked at the boys, unable to read their expressions. They were watching ancient history, you might say. Besides, they had no knowledge of the relationship between father and son.
I spent the night telling the boys about their father and his experience of prison. I talked at length about this, then expanded into a discussion of oppression in our country. Hamdiya did not take part in the conversation, but sat with us, listening in silence.
The following morning, as soon as the boys had left for school she said, ‘Why do you talk to the children about these things? It’s past and gone – why dig it up?’
Her words startled me. I said, ‘First of all, because it’s better that the boys know the story of their father. Second, because we talk about our country’s history, and I don’t want them to be like deaf people at a wedding, with no idea what’s going on around them.’
‘You’re opening their eyes to politics, and politics is the way to perdition. I don’t want them to go to prison like their father, I don’t want armed security officers knocking on our door at dawn and taking them off to prison, like what happened to you.’
I smiled and said, ‘Times have changed. We’re in the ’90s now. Don’t worry – the ones getting put in prison now are the Islamists, and the boys don’t have any Islamist leanings!’
What did I say to make her so angry? Her face was flushed, her voice high and shrill: ‘I want the boys to concentrate on their studies and finish school in God-given safety, and I want them to live a normal life! I don’t want their father’s life for them – or yours!’
‘Enough, Hamdiya!’
But she launched into a long, bizarre monologue on her own sacrifice and her patience with my interference in every matter large or small pertaining to the boys. ‘I said to myself, “Be patient, Hamdiya, keep an open mind, Hamdiya, let God guide you, Hamdiya . . .” ’ And on and on. Then she hurled her final thunderbolt: ‘In the end, I am their mother, and the mother has a stronger connection to the child than a sister does – especially one who’s not a full sister!’
I left the room, shouting, ‘From the first moment I met you I knew instinctively that you were stupid. But I didn’t know you had no manners!’ I left the house, slamming the door violently behind me.
I stayed away from the house the whole day, and only returned home when it was past midnight. She had gone to bed. I kept this up for a whole week. I didn’t say anything to the boys. On returning home late, I would find them studying in their room. They asked why I was out so much, and I said, ‘I have some extra work for a couple of weeks.’
One night I came home and found them waiting for me. Nadeem opened the conversation. ‘Mama said that you had a row, and that you’re angry with her.’
I didn’t respond.
‘What happened?’ Nadir asked.
I didn’t respond.
Sometimes it happens that families quarrel, but then the waters flow once more in their regular course.
The waters didn’t return to their usual course, not because we hadn’t got past the words we had exchanged – we appeared to have got past them and gone back to our accustomed ways of interacting – but because the rift interposed itself all over again when the boys came home from university and talked about the student demonstrations protesting the Hebron massacre. These were the first major demonstrations to take place during the period of their university studies. (They had been in high school at the time of the student protests against the first invasion of Iraq in 1991.) Over dinner, the two boys began to tell the story of the students’ rally.
‘We heard that there was a demonstration,’ said Nadir, ‘and students began to trickle out from the College of Engineering, individually and in groups, heading for the main campus. Nadeem said he was going to join in. I said that security forces would crack down on the demonstration and we’d get nothing out of it but abuse. He left me and went out of the building, while I went to my lecture. I couldn’t concentrate on what the teacher was saying, so I asked to be excused and went out to catch up with Nadeem.’
Hamdiya interrupted him. ‘Nadeem, what were you doing putting yourself and your brother at risk?’
Laughing and flexing his arms to show his muscles like Popeye, Nadir continued, ‘As his older brother, I wanted to protect him! The truth is, I didn’t set out to participate – I meant just to look for him, but I found myself in the middle of the demonstration. I went out through the gate of the college and saw hundreds of security men with their helmets and protective gear, forming a wall to close off the passage between the university and the road leading to the Egypt Awakening statue and the Israeli embassy. I saw demonstrators surrounding the monument outside the campus, and others – a great many more demonstrators – behind the gate, which was closed. I walked toward the College of Applied Arts, so as to go back in by one of the side gates, but I found all the gates locked, and security forces surrounding the whole university. I began retracing my steps parallel to the wall, but before turning right into University Street, I decided I would jump over the wall on to the campus. I looked to my left to make sure there were no officers, and then I climbed the wall. One of the soldiers from central security saw me – a dark-skinned little chap – and he shouted at me, “That’s forbidden, Effendi!”
‘I smiled at him and said, “I have lectures to attend – have a good day!” And I leapt over the top, fast.
‘I started looking for Nadeem among the students milling around behind the fence. The ones who were closest to the gate were trying to open it. I saw a female student climb the gate, holding on to the bars with both hands and chanting in a loud voice, while the other kids answered the chant. Then new chants rose up behind us, when a crowd from inside the campus – maybe they’d been making the rounds of the colleges – turned up and joined the students who were massing at the gate.
‘The area extending inward, from the gate to the Central Celebration Hall, and lengthwise, from the College of Humanities to the Law School, was packed with demonstrators. I was searching all over for Nadeem, when the police started firing canisters of tear gas, and I found myself running with others who were fleeing. I didn’t see when the students succeeded in opening the gate, or how I got to the university dormitories across the street, or how I came to be holding stones and lobbing them at the soldiers, who were pursuing us with truncheons, even though we were choking on the tear gas they had fired at us. I called out “Palestine for Arabs!” and ran; I said, “Call off the government dogs!” and threw stones; I said, “You sons of bitches!” and started to cough.’
Nadir was laughing; so was Nadeem. I was laughing (and laughter released the tears I’d been holding in ever since Nadir had begun to talk).
Nadeem spoke up. ‘Nadir was under attack in University City, and I was under attack over by the Egypt Awakening statue.’
‘No,’ Nadir interrupted him, ‘you’ve got that wrong, Nadeem, sir! I was under attack, but I was fighting back. I was at the head of the most powerful fighting force in the Middle East!’
Hamdiya didn’t laugh. Her face was pale and drawn, with a faint, bluish tinge.
It was the predicament of a mother sharing the responsibilities of motherhood. I disagreed with Hamdiya, but the split that would drive her to move out and go to live with her sister was still to come.