Samia Serageldin - The Cairo House

Shamel splashed some water over his face and neck and came out of the bathroom. The room was quiet except for the sound of the fan, whirring clockwise in one direction, then counterclockwise back again. Ali Tobia was sprawled in an armchair, propping an open book on his bare, smooth chest. Maurice Baruch was slumped in front of the chess board, his head down on his arm, apparently snoozing. Shamel sat back down opposite him and moved a rook to the right. ‘Your move,’ he touched Maurice’s arm. The other ignored him. He turned to Ali.

‘Want to take over from Maurice? He seems to have fallen asleep.’

‘Leave me alone, will you, I have to study. Some of us need to earn a living, you know.’ Ali was an intern at the Kasr-El-Eini Hospital, not far from Garden City.

Shamel lit another cigarette. May was hotter than usual in Cairo that year. The three young men in the room had taken their shirts off. In the salamlek or ‘bachelors annex’ of the Cairo House, Shamel was free to entertain his friends as he pleased. The older, married brothers of the Seif-el-Islam family lived in the main house, while the unmarried, younger brothers slept in the salamlek, a separate small building a few feet away on the grounds.

Shamel poked Maurice again. ‘Are you going to finish this game or not?’

There was no response. Shamel reached over and shook his friend’s shoulder. Maurice rolled over onto the floor, the chair crashing down with him. Shamel dropped to his knees beside him and Ali leaped out of his armchair.

A few minutes later, Ali sat back on his heels and shook his head. The two men were pouring sweat from their efforts to resuscitate their friend. ‘It’s no use. We’ve tried everything. He must have been already dead when he fell.’

It was about a month later that Shamel stood, hesitating, one foot on the bottom step of the wide, curving marble staircase flanked by a pair of stone griffons. His grandfather had brought the griffons back from Italy, along with the Italian architect he commissioned to build the house. Seif-el-Islam Pasha’s portrait hung in the hall, with his formidable handlebar moustaches, his tarbouche, and the sash and sword of a pasha of the Ottoman Empire.

The grandfather had been the one to make the momentous decision to uproot the clan from their family home on the cotton estates in the Delta and establish them in Cairo. The Egyptian Cotton Exchange in Alexandria was booming. Seif-el-Islam Pasha and his brother-in-law left for Europe with a suitcase full of Egyptian pounds, to which they each had a key; they helped themselves at will as they toured the continent. It was in Italy that the Pasha finally saw the palazzo he would set his heart on. Within three years the family moved into the brand-new mansion in Garden City that came to be known as the Cairo House.

Twenty years later, he sent for his Jesuit-educated son from Paris, married him to an heiress and found him a seat in Parliament. It was time for men like him to lead the nationalist movement against the British and against the Albanian dynasty that ruled Egypt. His son died at fifty, but the old Pasha had the satisfaction of seeing his grandson chairman of the most powerful party in the country.

The wealthy heiress that Seif-el-Islam Pasha had chosen for his son’s bride was an only child; this unusual circumstance was a result of her mother’s gullibility. Her mother had been a beautiful redhead Circassian from one of the Muslim regions of the Russian steppes. The women in her Egyptian husband’s household could barely contain their spite against this lovely and somewhat dim-witted foreigner. When her first child, a girl, was born, they convinced her that, according to local superstition, her daughter would die if the mother subsequently had a male child. The poor woman believed them, and resorted to midwives’ tricks to prevent another pregnancy. Her husband, however, did not immediately take another wife, as the spiteful women had hoped. When he died unexpectedly, his daughter was the only heir to his considerable fortune.

At fifteen she was married off to Seif-el-Islam Pasha’s handsome son, and bore him thirteen children, of whom nine survived. Two babies had died in succession before the youngest, Shamel, was born. She insisted on having him sleep in a small bed in her boudoir until he was eight. That was the year his father died of a heart attack, and his older brothers decided that it was time for him to move into the bachelors annex with them.

Shamel strode up the stairs and stopped briefly in his mother’s bedroom to kiss her hand, as he did every morning. Then he crossed the gallery to his oldest brother’s suite. He knocked, just in case his sister-in-law was still in bed, and went in. There was no one in the bedroom. His sister-in-law must be up already, seeing to the needs of the household, and he could hear the Pasha washing in the bathroom. Shamel referred to his oldest brother, who was eighteen years his senior, by his title, as did most of the family.

The Pasha came out of the bathroom in his satin dressing gown. ‘Good morning,’ he smiled. ‘Well, well, it’s been a while since you joined us for breakfast. Shall I ring for some more tea?’

Shamel glanced at the breakfast tray with the flat, buttery pastry, the white slab of thick clotted cream and the clover-scented honey. It was his favorite breakfast, but he could not muster an appetite. He had lost considerable weight lately. He shook his head.

The Pasha reached for the first cigar of the day and sank into a comfortable club chair. ‘Your sister Zohra was complaining just last night that you haven’t been to visit her in a fortnight. What have you been doing with yourself?’

Shamel suspected that his brother already had a fairly good idea of the answer to that question. Not that the Pasha was in the habit of keeping tabs on his family. But the chief of the Cairo police reported directly to him; as a courtesy he routinely included briefings on the movements of any and all of the cars belonging to the Pasha’s address. Their special single-digit Garden City license plates identified them immediately to the police all over Cairo. Shamel had found this to be a mixed blessing. If he was in a hurry he could park his car almost anywhere without getting a ticket. On the other hand, the police report was not for the Pasha’s eyes only; it was turned over to the ‘Abeddin Palace.

Shamel supposed that the Pasha was aware that, of late, his youngest brother had neglected his familiar haunts and regular nightclub companions; had taken solitary trips to the country; and had spent several hours with an illustrious doctor of theology at the Azhar University.

‘There’s something on your mind.’ The Pasha puffed on his cigar. ‘I’m listening. You’ve not been yourself lately. I know it must have been a shock for you, your friend Maurice dropping dead like that. And so young too, in his twenties.’

‘That’s just it. You never think it could happen to someone your own age. I mean, you live your life, you sow your wild oats, you think you have all the time in the world, to settle down later, to make everything right with Allah and your fellow-man. And then, just like that…You realize that you can run out of time at any moment.’ He shook his head. He was quiet for a minute, then he turned to face his brother. ‘I’ve come to ask for your permission. To get married.’

The Pasha listened, nodding from time to time. If he had an inkling of the nature of Shamel’s revelation, he did not show it. Shamel had learned very early on that his oldest brother could listen to the same piece of information five times from five different people and leave each one of his interlocutors with the impression that he was imparting news.

‘Well, well, so you’ve decided it’s time to settle down. Of course, what a shock, that poor Baruch boy – You know, someone else would have dealt with that very differently. But you were always mature for your age. I think you’re making the right decision. Congratulations.’ The Pasha puffed on his cigar, deep in thought. ‘When I get back from the ministry this evening we must get together with all your brothers and decide about dividing up the inheritance. We always said we’d do it when you came of age. We should have done it five years ago, but there never seemed to be a good time. Now that you’re thinking of getting married, it’s high time.’