Samia Serageldin - The Cairo House

I started to say something and Mama put her finger to her lips. It was then that I became aware of the tension in the air. I turned to the television set. I couldn’t understand every word that was being said, but the virulence in the tone was unmistakable. There were repeated references to ‘the enemies of the people.’

Over the next few days many inexplicable things happened. When I asked questions I was told not to worry and sent to Madame Hélène. I overheard snatches of anguished conversations, whispered phone calls. I gathered enough to understand that, the day after the speech, at dawn, all my uncles, including the Pasha, had been taken away to an internment camp. That night Papa brought out a little overnight case. He packed some underwear, toiletries and medicine, and put the case under the mahogany sleigh bed in his bedroom.

One morning all the servants were gone, except for the cook and Ibrahim the doorkeeper. I found Mama sitting on a stool in the butler’s pantry, talking to the cook.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she was saying, ‘but you know we can’t afford you any longer. You won’t have any trouble finding a job as a chef with one of the hotels. You’re a first class cook and you’ll have the best references.’

The cook stood in the doorway to the kitchen, dramatically baring his scarred chest and declaiming that he had been with my parents since they first set up house and that he owed them the flesh on his shoulders. I assumed he was referring to the terrible accident in which he had incurred the burn scars on his chest. He had been trying to light the gas stove before the Feast the year before when the stove caught fire and he was wrapped in flames. Papa had ventured into the blaze to turn off the gas, taking the risk that the entire cylinder would blow up in his face. The cook was rushed to the hospital, where, despite the severity of his condition, his eventual recovery was assured. Mama had been very sorry for him at the time and only much later made the remark that the fire probably started because the cook was so lazy about keeping the stove clean from grease.

‘What I need for you to do,’ Mama was saying that morning as she sat on a stool in the pantry, ‘is to find a suffragi -cook for me, someone who doesn’t need a kitchen boy, a marmiton, to help him. Of course I don’t expect him to cook very well. It doesn’t matter as long as he will settle for the salary I mentioned and won’t mind doing some housework on the side. Help with the heavy cleaning, that sort of thing.’

The next morning, when the cook arrived, Mama went into the kitchen.

‘Did you find someone?’ she asked.

‘I found you a cook who will be happy with the salary, doesn’t need a marmiton, will peel the vegetables himself and will even mop the kitchen floor!’ the cook concluded triumphantly.

‘Well, where is he?’

‘You’re looking at him!’ The cook beamed, slapping his chest.

But Mama was just as stubborn as the cook, and adamantly refused the sacrifice. Eventually a ‘ passe-partout ’ was found. Dinners were no longer served the usual way, with the head- suffragi bringing around each dish in turn to your left and serving you himself. Meals were served ‘family style’ instead: the dishes were all placed on the table at once, and we passed them around and helped ourselves. I, for one, was pleased: it always looked so much cosier in American movies and on television when I watched families sit down to dinner.

Madame Hélène stayed. She would not consider looking for another position, at her age.

Later that week four men in dark suits came to the house, clutching pens and clipboards. They were solemn and almost apologetic as they dispersed through every room of the house, making careful notes on every piece of furniture, every object, every bibelot. They even went into my room and counted my dolls. At the end of their tour they handed Mama a copy of the inventory they had made. When they left, one of them drove off with one of the two family cars. They also took the revolver that Papa kept to take on his trips to the estate, in case of highwaymen on the road.

Mama looked at the list and then at Papa. She started to laugh. ‘Just look what they’ve written down. They have no idea what anything is, or what value to put on anything. We could sell any of the carpets or any of the vases, and replace them with fakes, and they’d never know the difference.’ Then she looked at me and changed the subject.

At the end of the month, when the servants had to be paid, Mama’s younger brother Hani came to pick her up. She wore sunglasses and she was biting her lip as she slipped a bank passbook into her handbag.

‘I wish you didn’t have to go through this.’ Papa put his hand on her shoulder as he saw them off at the door.

‘It’s all right, really. There’s just a chance – it’s such a small account, they might have overlooked it.’

I went up to my bedroom and cornered Madame Hélène, who was writing a letter to ‘ le petit Luc. ’

‘Why is Uncle Hani taking Mama to the bank? Why not Papa?’

‘Because he would be recognized. All the family’s bank accounts are frozen, and your mother’s as well, because she’s married to your Papa. All the family keep their accounts at the Banque du Caire. But Maman has one small savings account that she’s had since she was a minor, in a little bank, I don’t know its name. And of course the account’s in her maiden name. So perhaps the sequestration authorities don’t know about it. Madame is going with your uncle to try to cash it. Let’s hope the bank would not have instructions to freeze the account, and that they would not realize who she was married to.’ Madame Hélène shook her head and sighed. ‘Who would have believed all this? It’s like what happened to us during the war, my husband and I. I never thought I would hear that word “sequestration” again.’ She sighed. ‘Now please don’t tell Madame I told you all this, she said you were not to be allowed to worry about these things.’

Mama and her brother came back an hour later. She looked at Papa and shook her head. Before Uncle Hani left, Mama handed him a small, velvet jewelry box.

‘It’s platinum and pearl, I don’t know what it’s worth, but see what you can do. All my valuable things were in the bank vault. I had taken out all my best pieces for the Bindari’s wedding last month, if only I hadn’t been in such a hurry to put them back in the vault…’

‘What’s that you’re giving Uncle Hani?’ I asked.

‘One of my bracelets, the clasp is broken, it needs to be taken to the jeweler’s to be fixed. Kiss your uncle and run upstairs now, darling, I think Madame Hélène is calling you.’

Later that night I looked for my parents to kiss them goodnight. Mama’s bedroom was dark but the French doors were open and I heard their voices coming from the verandah. Before I reached them the word ‘divorce’ made me stop in my tracks and hold my breath.

‘I mean it,’ my father was saying. ‘You heard Nasser’s speech. If I were to divorce you right away you could keep your property. But if you stay married to me, you lose everything. It’s not fair to you. Most of my brothers are married to their cousins, their wives would be subject to the sequestration decrees anyway in their own right. But you wouldn’t be. Nabil and Zakariah’s wives wouldn’t either, but they have no money of their own. But you do. No one would blame you if you asked for a divorce, it would be understood that you were doing it for the child’s sake. I would be the first to defend you if anyone said a word against you.’

‘Don’t let’s discuss this. There’s no point.’

‘I want you to think seriously about this before it’s too late. You didn’t marry me for love. You married me because I was one of the most eligible bachelors in Egypt. Things have changed.’