Alexandrian Summer Read online

  “You know,” Grandma tells Robby’s mother, “that David Hamdi-Ali doesn’t seem bad at all.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Nothing, nothing. Only that maybe we should put some pressure on your daughter … not let her act according to …”

  “Mama, please! You know she’s a big girl and she needs to make up her own mind. Her father is very adamant about this matter. He says we mustn’t, under any circumstances, push her into the arms of a groom against her will.”

  “The way they did to me, my parents,” Grandma identifies. “Your father, they made me …” But when she sees that her daughter shows no enthusiasm in speaking ill of her father, she returns to the original topic: “All right, then let her choose for herself, but have her choose already, and choose wisely! What does she think, that princess? That boys like David are just rolling around the street? Big and tall like a Turkish guard and blond and beautiful and educated.” The further she enumerates David’s virtues, the worse is her anger at her indifferent granddaughter, and finally she puts aside the pillowcase she is embroidering with demonstrative distaste (the pillowcase being a part of the dowry she and her daughter are preparing for Robby’s sister), as if to say: Who am I working for? She’ll remain an old maid, or marry some Greek Orthodox or Coptic Christian, or worse—an Arab, heaven forbid!

  “She’s still young!” says her daughter, who heard even what Grandma did not say, and quickly hands her back the pillowcase. Grandma exhales with contempt, takes the pillowcase, inserts a purl thread and returns to the intricate embroidery. Finally she relinquishes her displeasure with irrelevant questions, such as: “When will we finally get a letter from the boys in Israel?” or “Are the Murads planning on staying with us again this summer?”

  She knows there is no clear answer to her first question. Robby’s two older brothers had left for Israel a year before, and since then communication has been scarce. As for the second question, she is well aware of the answer: indeed, the Coptic Murads will spend the scalding summer in Alex. Madame Murad and her two daughters, the black-haired Thérèse and the blonde, braided Juliette, have already rented out the large living room, which will serve as their bedroom for the summer months. Mister Murad will join his family only on the weekends, unable to leave his business in Cairo unattended. Two of the remaining four rooms will be used by the Hamdi-Alis, and so Robby will have to spend nights in his parents’ bedroom, which thrills him to no end.

  7. VICTORICO

  Happy is the black sheep who has never seen her dark reflection in a puddle—she does not perceive herself to be any different than her pearly white sisters as they step out from the pond. This is the case for eleven-year-old Victor: a sort of contemptible John Lackland, resembling a court jester’s bastard more than a king’s son. No wonder he views his brother’s regal mannerisms with mercifulness mixed with a pinch of ridicule. He silently accepts the crowned prince’s generous beatings, as if saying: beat on, beat on, but only I know what you’re really worth, his pouting lips twisting into a crooked smile. He hardly speaks to his parents and brother, and among adults is considered quiet and almost slow. This misconception is enhanced by the appearance of his elongated head and his face, which resembles a horse’s snout. Grandma’s card club friends are sure there is a connection between Victorico’s horse face and his father’s dealings.

  “He was probably thinking of a racing mare when he was …” they giggle. This is an innocent comment in principle, but it paves the way to more bold variations: “Maybe Victorico really is the son of Joseph and … Leila, the purebred that Joseph loved more than his own wife?”

  Once laughter dies down some of the ladies express shock at the vulgar joke, but who can tighten the reins on a gossiping matron once her tongue is set loose? Madame Marika finally brings matters to their ultimate climax: “You’re all mistaken. I know for a fact that Emilie is Victor’s mother. It’s Joseph who isn’t his father.” Here she grows silent. Curiosity bubbles. Some of the women suspect that she is pulling their leg, but most of them swallow the bait and cannot help but ask: “Then who is his father?”

  Madame Marika puts on a mask of mystery and finally says, “A stallion!”

  That’s it. Unbridled excitement. They writhe with laughter, folding in half and balling up and nearly falling off their seats. Almost violently, they slap one another on the back of the arm. Tears run like water, and Madame Marika, finally celebrating victory, feels her underwear filling with sweet warmth, followed immediately by cool moisture. She runs to the bathroom, and the laughter goes on unrestrained.

  That entire time the children, elsewhere, exchange impressions and experiences from the schools they go to during the dreary winter months. Suddenly they each become vehement patriots of their schools. From here the road carries directly to the eternal question: Which city is neater, Cairo or Alexandria? To Victor’s argument that Cairo is the capital, Robby quips that Alexandria is the second largest port in the Mediterranean and the largest in the Middle East. And if, as Victor says, Cairo is larger and has more inhabitants, “Alex,” Robby claims, “is more cultured!”

  Victor protests bitterly, this is completely baseless, but Robby insists: “Besides, Alexandria has the sea, and what does Cairo have? Desert!”

  “Pyramids! One of the seven wonders of the world!”

  “And we have the lighthouse on Pharos Island, that’s also one of the seven wonders!”

  “But the lighthouse was destroyed and drowned!”

  “If you have it so good, why do you spend the summer here? Who asked you to come?”

  This cuts Victor’s arguments short and he answers hypocritically, “It is really silly, but what can I do? My parents make me come here.”

  Robby looks at him with disbelief and sets him up, “Then let’s run to the beach!”

  “Let’s!” Victor responds with an enthusiasm that negates his fabricated indifference toward Alexandria’s charms. They step out of their pants and run around in their underwear, looking for bathing suits. On the way they are submerged by a deluge of rebukes from the grownups, and Victor collects a dry slap to the back of the head, but what dam can ever stop the raging Nile during the high tide of June?

  At the doorway, Robby says, “See? If we were in Cairo we could only dream of the sea right now!”

  They slam the door on the morality of grownups, who claim that it isn’t nice to run down the street bare-foot, in their bathing suits, and that their feet are going to burn on the scalding asphalt, and that they shouldn’t stay in the sun too long because they’ll get overheated, and that they shouldn’t go in the water right after eating because they’ll have cramps, and that they should wipe themselves dry when they come out of the water, and that they shouldn’t drink cold water or soda with ice cubes when they’re sweating, and that, and that, and that … They roll down the stairs, pushing each other, and their laughter echoes all through the building. Now that the threat of his brother is removed, Victor goes wild. Robby still behaves in a civilized manner. But when the doorman greets them with saccharine politeness, they stick out their tongue at him. The doorman’s son quickly comes out to defend his father’s honor, spitting an Arabic curse word at them, something to do with their mothers. Only after some time, in Israel, where this curse involving one’s mother’s reproductive organs would be integrated into Hebrew slang, Robby would be able to figure out the first part of the expression, as well. But they are too busy to mind some little Abdu, too preoccupied to try and punch him. Onward to the boardwalk, towels flapping and bare feet skipping over the scorching asphalt.

  Robby thinks, how good it would be if I had a brother my age, like this Victor!

  8. KUDJOOCOME

  Siesta in Alexandria. An hour of siesta in the midst of an Alexandrian summer, a Mediterranean summer, a summer of the early 1950s. An hour in which everybody floats above ground, in which every word is uttered as a whisper, so as not to desecrate the serenity of the moment. Only the antique g
randfather clock in the darkened hall keeps swinging its pendulum patiently, and every fifteen minutes it erupts in sounds from a faraway world, laden with yearning: doyng-doyng-doyng!

  “Finally!” says Robby, who is not among the sleepers. Meaning, finally, it’s three o’clock. “Kudjoocome! Kudjoocome!” the voice echoes throughout the apartment.

  “Kudjoocome”—a mispronunciation of “Could you come?” and in Robby’s family, a sacred ceremony not to be missed, an hour of pure happiness, caressed by the afternoon sun.

  They emerge from every corner of the house and convene in the parents’ bedroom, around the wide bed with its rumpled summer comforters. A ceremony of familial privacy. No guest shall dare enter this holy place. Once, Victor Hamdi-Ali tried to sneak into the room, and was immediately pushed out shamefully by Grandma and Robby.

  Robby’s father is already sitting on the bed, reclined against an abundance of pillows, leisurely and distractedly flipping through an Émile Zola novel. It’s a 1925 edition, and the pages are already yellowing, their edges crumbling.

  Robby’s mother is in the room too, wearing a robe over her nightgown, her straight black hair running along her pure ivory face, tainted only by its rosy cheeks.

  Robby puts away his coin collection, inherited from his brothers who migrated to Israel a year ago, and runs into the room, bouncing on the bed and wrapping his arms around his father’s neck to get a kiss that smells of cologne and Player’s Navy Cut cigarettes. Robby immediately spots the aforementioned surprise: a long envelope, no doubt a letter from his brothers. The letter, indeed, is from Israel, but the envelope and the stamps are from France. Three weeks ago, maybe a month, his brothers wrote to their parents in Alexandria, but sent the letter to the town of Périgueux in France, to the house of Suzette Charnière. They met Suzette a year prior, during a training session run by the Jewish Agency on a farm in France. The training was meant to prepare the young men for agricultural life in Israel, but was mostly spent running around with local girls. Suzette fell head over heels for Robby’s middle brother, and even after he left her all by her lonesome and went to Israel, she still hoped he would return and marry her. Whether out of practical calculations or pure altruism, she agreed to mediate between her beloved and his relatives, and never even asked Robby’s brother to pay for the postage. At first, Robby’s brother added to the Alexandrian letter a long letter for Suzette herself. Later on, the letters addressed to her grew shorter, and their passion dwindled, and finally the letters to the parents arrived on their own. Suzette swallowed the insult and continued to serve her role dutifully, as was fitting of a true Christian.

  Robby yearns to rip the stamps off the envelope, but, seeing his father’s stern expression, holds his horses. Order must be maintained in the Kudjoocome ritual.

  Grandma joins the meeting, commenting on the hope-lessly slow servants: “Haraganos primos, first-class bums.”

  Silence. Robby watches the daggers of sunlight invading between the shutters. In a moment, Salem will enter, pushing out the shutters to the expanses of air and light. The sun will burst inside with a lighthearted frivolity, and the ceremony will begin. This is all contingent on Robby’s sister joining them on time.

  “Where’s Miss Anabella?” Father asks, using his nickname for Robby’s sister.

  “She’s always late!” Robby tries to incite his father.

  “It takes her forever to grace us with her presence, esta cocona!” Grandma adds her own fuel to the fire.

  Steps approach. They all exhale, prepared to torment the tardy party with their righteous rebukes, and Grandma already begins spewing her share, but they are disappointed when it is only Salem the servant who enters the room. He carries a tray of small cups of Greek coffee and glasses of ice water with pearls of condensation. Finding his masters laughing, he joins the hoopla, not knowing what it is about, but trusting his heart that playing along will win him his masters’ favors. He hands out coffee and water by way of a little dance, while Grandma tells him off, saying that his twirls will cause the coffee to lose its kaimak, that layer of brown foam, without which the beverage can barely be called coffee. He immediately puts on an expression of grave servitude, continuing his waiter’s ballet in moderato.

  Robby does not get coffee, of course, because Grandma says that kids who drink coffee pishan preto—piss black. (The mere thought of a black spray painting the toilet water puts Robby in a state of panic. He runs to the bathroom. Thank God, the color is normal.) Instead, he receives sickly sweet cocoa, sipping it with a pleasure whose very memory brings sweetness to his stomach years later.

  The tray is empty. Salem opens the shutters wide and then stands around, smiling proudly, as if he himself had created the sun. They all look at him gratefully and dismissively, but Salem does not budge. Perhaps he’ll hear a snippet of conversation, or maybe his master will inform him of a raise. All signs point to his expectations being met: Robby’s father says, “Listen, Salem, starting next month —” but Grandma foresees the future and quickly orders Salem to go and call “mamazel”” to join them for “kushkucome”—a mispronunciation of a mispronunciation, meant to awaken laughter and push aside the matter of the raise. Salem shifts from foot to foot for a moment longer, perhaps his master will recall his initial intention, but his alert black eyes, bouncing around like those of a smart animal, slam against the wall of laughter. He has no choice but to go do as he is ordered. Maybe next time …

  They wait.

  Grandma is burning with curiosity, and pleads with Robby’s father to begin reading the letter without waiting for his daughter. But of course he won’t. The three thin pages of the letter make crispy rustlings in his hand, stimulating his appetite for words, but he restrains himself. When he placed La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret on the bed next to him, he also removed his glasses, so he wouldn’t be tempted to take a peek at the letter. Now he sips from the thick coffee, a wondrous mixture of spicy and sweet. “We’ll wait for Miss Anabella!”

  “Ana-bella, Ana-bella, like a seesaw!” Robby grabs hold of his toes and rocks back and forth on the bed, Ana-bella, Ana-bella, Ana-bella, but he does not ignite sympathy or laughter, only reproaches, as he is about to spill someone’s coffee on the bed.

  “Is there any coffee left for me?” sounds the relaxed, indulgent voice of the aforementioned Miss Anabella. She is wearing a nightgown, her auburn hair is wild, her eyes are puffy. An enormous yawn swallows the word “me.” Sleepwalking, she goes to the dresser and searches for the delicate china cup with the image of a marquis asking a marquise to dance. Only after taking a long sip and sighing deeply does she manage to open one eye and stare at her surroundings, her free hand grabbing the arm of her chair.

  Grandma informs her that a letter has arrived from “the children.” Miss Anabella sits up and says, “Really? When?”

  “This afternoon. Your father brought it back from the office. They sent it straight to Ford.” The fact of the letter, along with two more sips of coffee, completely erases the sleep from her eyes, and she is awake and smiling and rearing to go, even prepared to give Grandma a fight. Grandma wastes no time: “What does it say, you ask? How should we know? You think we’ve read it? Your father insisted that we wait for you, while you were lying around in bed like a cataplasmo.” One would not imagine she would make do with such a benign comment, especially seeing how the indifference and laziness on the face of her opponent only feed her desire to fight, but at that moment the father puts on his glasses with equanimity and determination that announce the commencement of the reading.

  Silence.

  “ ‘Dear family, we apologize for not having written in so long …’ ”

  “That’s right!” Grandma confirms.

  “ ‘We were just very busy. We left the place where we lived until now …’ ”

  “That’s the koobooss,” Grandma interprets needlessly, since the boys have already hinted in a previous letter that they’d been living on a kibbutz.

  “ ‘To th
e place where Felix’s family lives.’ ”

  “To Tel Aviv,” Grandma adds. This language of riddles is a necessity, since the Egyptian secret police occasionally opens letters addressed to Jewish families, and those must not contain any express details about Israel. That’s why the authors of these letters make up primitive codes in order to provide important information. Some even agree with their relatives in advance that Italy means Israel, Genoa means Haifa, Milan is Tel Aviv and Rome is Jerusalem. There is a story about Raoul Picciotto, who went to Italy with the Israeli Basketball League to play basketball for two weeks and invited his old mother in Alexandria to visit him in Genoa. Virginie Picciotto, the widow, immediately understood that Genoa meant Haifa, and was overjoyed that her son finally remembered her and invited her to join him in Israel. She did wonder how her soft son managed to convince his wife, her daughter-in-law, that witch, to have his mother live with them, but she quickly erased any doubt or embarrassment from her mind, and two weeks later was on a ship bound for Israel. When the ship entered the Haifa port at the agreed upon time, her son was waiting for her at the port of Genoa.

  “And the expression on the face of Elvire Picciotto, her daughter-in-law, who stayed in Israel, when she saw her mother-in-law at her doorstep, was a sight to behold!” Madame Marika always concludes the story, which very well may be merely a figment of her imagination.

  “Money is worthless here!” Robby’s two brothers announce unanimously in their letter. This is, of course, the time of austerity in Israel of the early 1950s. Even those who had funds could not buy any more than what was allocated to them in their food coupons. Naively, the two boys remained blind to the flourishing black market, where money buys everything, just like anywhere else in the world.

  “‘Here they eat money, because there’s nothing else to eat!’”