Samia Serageldin - The Cairo House

Gigi had heard the curious story of how it came about that the government informant ended up driving her aunt around. One evening during the month of Ramadan Tante Zohra had been looking out of the window and had seen the man standing alone in the deserted street. It was sunset, and the calls from the minarets echoed all over the still city. The birds were twittering in the Indian jasmine trees and an eerie moratorium had fallen over the normally bustling traffic. Everyone was indoors waiting for the cannon to go off, announcing the breaking of the fast. Apparently no one had thought to relieve the poor Mukhabarat agent. Zohra felt sorry for him and sent someone to call him around to the back door for the Ramadan meal.

From that day on, the man bowed politely whenever he saw her waiting outside the door to her villa, while the doorkeeper tried to hail a taxi. Her husband, Makhlouf Pasha, was wheelchair-bound since his massive stroke. She herself had never learned to drive and now could no longer afford a chauffeur.

One day when she was late and having trouble stopping a taxi, she had a brainstorm. She beckoned the man over and suggested that he could drive her where she was going in her own car, which was sitting idle in the garage; that way he would know her exact whereabouts at all times without having to chase after her. The man fell in with her plan immediately and that was the beginning of a long, mutually profitable association. It was one more instance in which the Kafkaesque shadow of the police state was undermined by the irrepressible common sense of the people.

Gigi dragged her hairbrush through her hair hard enough to make Madame Hélène wince, then slipped on a headband. She washed her face but decided against changing out of the dreary uniform of the Sacré Coeur school.

She skipped down the stairs and stopped short just behind the Aubusson screen that separated the two salons. She had remembered to unroll the waistband of her skirt, which she had rolled over twice while dressing in the morning in an attempt to shorten it. Papa was very old-fashioned about things like that and called any hemline above the knee a ‘miniskirt’.

‘Gigi’s too young,’ she heard her father say.

‘She’s eighteen.’ Her aunt’s voice. ‘Her cousins were engaged or spoken for at her age.’

‘Fine. I have only one daughter. I’m in no hurry.’

‘That’s evident. Look, I’m not talking about marriage yet. I’m just asking you to consider an engagement. At least you would have some peace of mind – you know what I mean.’

‘I’m not worried about anything like that with Gigi.’

‘I know she’s very sheltered, but if you think just because of that –’

‘Not at all. Girls who get into that kind of trouble lack attention and affection at home, they look for them in the arms of the first boy who turns their head. I know Gigi; underneath her bubbly ways she’s a cool, self-sufficient girl.’ Gigi could hear Papa puffing on his pipe, the way he did when he was thinking. ‘Besides, she really is too young. She should wait until she finishes college. She’s a bright girl and should do very well in her studies.’

‘All the more reason why she won’t have any trouble studying for her college degree while married. The boy is suitable from every point of view, and these days, what with the situation in the country what it is –’ She sighed. ‘You should be glad to see her get away, to have her study in Europe. You should think of her future, of her own good. Things are going from bad to worse over here. If things were different, if we weren’t under sequestration, a girl like Gigi would have her choice of suitors, but these days…’ She sighed. ‘Really, Shamel, we’re only talking about an engagement. But it’s not as if we could take our time about this. Yussef is only here for a couple of weeks, then he’ll be going back to England. His father is putting a lot of pressure on us to arrange a meeting right away.’

Yussef? Gigi tried to guess whom they were discussing.

‘His father is a hard man,’ Papa was saying. ‘A hard man in business, a hard man with women. Twice divorced, and his wives complained bitterly during their marriages. No, Kamal Zeitouni is a hard man. I don’t know if I want to hand over my only child to a son of his.’

Yussef Zeitouni. Gigi remembered being introduced to him at a wedding, and running into him again on feast days at her aunt’s. His mother Zeina, Kamal Zeitouni’s first wife, was a friend of Tante Zohra’s.

‘It’s not always like father, like son,’ Tante Zohra was remonstrating. ‘Besides, do you want her to marry one of those pious young men who’ve never been with a woman before?’

‘And have him experiment on my daughter? Allah forbid!’

‘At least let me arrange a meeting between Gigi and Yussef –’

Gigi had been standing awkwardly behind the screen, too embarrassed to interrupt once she realized she was the subject of the discussion. But now she heard her mother coming down the stairs and decided it was time she made an appearance in the salon.

Yussef, Kamal Zeitouni’s son by his first marriage, was now in his late twenties and lived in London, where he was studying for a doctoral degree. Since Tante Zohra’s visit, Gigi had met him again several times at formal teas and dinners that common acquaintances had arranged. She found him as she remembered: good-looking, tall, with his mother’s sweep of raven hair. He had come to the house for lunch, twice. After lunch they had made strained conversation in the salon while Madame Hélène sat discreetly in a corner, ostensibly engrossed in her embroidery.

Normally the next step would have been a formal engagement, followed by a few months of courtship during which the engaged couple, still more or less chaperoned, came to know each other better. Either one could break it off at some point before the wedding, and some of Gigi’s friends were already on their second engagement. But the circumstances were different in this case. Gigi knew that she had run out of time to make up her mind: she needed to give an answer before Yussef left for England. If it was favorable, he would be back in a few months for the wedding, after which they would leave immediately for Europe.

Papa assured her repeatedly that the decision was entirely hers; it was his prerogative to veto any of her suitors, but he would never influence her in anyone’s favor. Mama seemed to be favorable. Gigi’s girlfriends thought Yussef was handsome and that she was lucky to be going abroad not just for a honeymoon, but to live and study.

Gigi kept stalling; she felt she didn’t know Yussef at all, a reasoning which made Mama impatient. What she could not tell her mother was that she had only the vaguest notion of what marriage was about and did not feel ready for it, regardless of the suitor. Indeed the idea that her parents actually expected her to marry so soon came as a surprise, tinged with a slight sense of betrayal.

Tante Zohra took the matter in hand with her usual decisiveness. ‘Gigi dear, I have an idea. I know it’s hard for you to exchange more than a few words with Yussef with people around all the time. Why don’t you go spend a couple of days at my beach house in Agami? Yussef could come to visit, without all the pressure, in peace and quiet. With your governess, of course, to chaperone; and take Tamer along too, so it won’t seem too obvious. Leila has to study for an exam, but Tamer can go, he never studies anyway.’

Ever since their father’s sudden death nearly a year ago, Tante Zohra had raised Gina’s children, Leila and Tamer. Gigi got along very well with Leila, a level-headed girl only a year younger. Tamer, on the other hand, alternated between uncommunicative sulks and obnoxious high spirits. Gigi was a little disappointed that it was Tamer and not Leila who would go along on this trip.