Egypt


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But then, wars are won not because one party is the more resourceful, but
because the other is a touch more incompetent.

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Vili was unmoved.  "There's only one thing she understands, and all the men in
this room know what it is."

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In the maid Latifa's room, which was Flora's now, she had taken off her ring
again and her earrings and, depositing her glass of cognac on a makeshift
bedstand, had said, "Now you can kiss me."  But she kissed him first.  "It
means nothing," she added as she looked away and lit the kerosene lamp,
bringing down the wick till it glowed less than her cigarette.  "As long as
we're clear that it means nothing," she said almost enjoying the cruelty with
which she foisted despair on everyone.

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"During the days of the war, in the days of Alamein, we all stayed in your
great-grandmother's house.  You have no idea how crowded it was.  Well, one
day, in walks this dark-haired, beautiful, but painfully beautiful woman who
plays the piano every evening, who smokes all the time, who looks a trifle worn
but sexier for it, and who flirts with all of us, though you'd swear she didn't
know it.  In short, we were all madly in love with her.  Madly."

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"So she couldn't see then," he said.  "She couldn't see," he repeated, as
though trying to scan in the words and the syllables themselves some secret
meaning, some revealed purpose behind the cruelty of fate and the vulnerability
of old age.  "So she couldn't see," he said like someone gripped by a sorrow so
powerful that all he can do is repeat the words until they finally bring tears
to his eyes.

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Five minutes later, the two mazmazelles could be seen hobbling down the street
toward the Camp de Cesar station, one with an unusually wide-rimmed hat, the
other carrying a folded fan in one hand, her handbag and a white glove in the
other, chattering away in the language that had brought them together and
which, despite their repeated reminders to themselves and everyone else in the
world that they had absolutely nothing else in common, despite their rivalry,
their barbs, their petty distrust of one another, would always rescue a
friendship that remained close until the very, very end.

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Since she was always scattered and vague in her speech, once the mood for
complaining had set in, she would digress from one woe to another, weaving a
never-ending yarn filled with subplots in which the principal villains were her
ailments, heartaches, and humiliations, with herself cast in the role of the
hapless victim fending off adversities as best she could, a medieval martyr
tied to a post surrounded by advancing dragons ...

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"She's been the perfect wife for you: your cook, your maid, your nurse, your
seamstress, your barber, your mother even.  How many times has she saved you
from certain ruin?  She's the most intelligent woman on Rue Memphis."  "I know.
God gave her the biggest brain in the world.  But he gave her nothing else.  In
her company even an iceberg would catch cold."

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When he returned late that night, my father wrote in his diary that he had
*finally* met *her.*  He did not portray her as the woman of his dreams, nor as
the most beautiful, nor did he describe any of her features.  Superstitious as
ever, he even avoided mentioning her name.  She was simply and so clearly *her*
that the need to capture her on paper or to probe the more elusive aspects of
her personality proved too elaborate a task for the man who had merely written:
*I want to think of her.*  He did not write what he felt upon first setting
eyes on her or what he thought of each time he caught his mind drifting toward
her.  He merely described her gray skirt and maroon cardigan and the way she
crossed her legs when she sat behind her mother, the skin of her knee pressed
against the edge of the card table as she kept her eyes glued to her mother's
cards.  At one point she had smiled when she caught him looking at her, a kind,
indulgent smile filled with languor and mild apology.

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"It's such a wonderful evening," she said.  She was wearing a sleeveless white
cotton dress, a thin necklace, and white shoes, her ruddy tanned skin
glistening in the evening light.  With a touch of makeup on, and her wet hair
combed back, she looked older and more spirited than the shy neighbor's
daughter who all during her visit earlier that evening had kept her schoolgirl
eyes riveted to her pleated skirt and her mother's cards.  There was even a
suggestion of self-conscious elegance in the way she carried herself, holding
her champagne glass with both hands, her elbows almost resting on her hips.
Yet the absence of stockings and a handbag and the white outline of what must
have been a missing man's watch on her tanned wrist betrayed a hastily dressed
or vaguely underdressed quality, as if after spending all day at the beach,
with barely a few minutes to make it to the ball, she had put on the first
thing that came her way without drying her hair or feet.  Her toes were
probably still lined with sand.  Somewhere, he thought, watching the dimmed
evening lights play off the liquid sheen of her white gabardine dress, was a
wet bathing suit, hurriedly taken off and left crumpled on a wooden bench in a
friend's cabin.

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"The important thing is to eat well," added the Princess.  "But I've lost all
my appetite.  I eat so little." "Then why do you keep putting on so much
weight?" her husband interrupted.  "Nerves, that's why.  You've been in this
room two minutes and already I feel the pain starting."

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After finishing the wash, Om Ramadan would sit in the kitchen and smoke a
cigarette with Abdou.  Then, with more tea in her system, she would return to
the bathroom, load a large wicker basket with wet clothing, and carry the load
on her head up the five flights of circular servants' stairs that led to the
roof, taking slow, deliberate steps, stopping to catch her breath on the
landing above ours, where another neighbor's servant would hand her a glass of
water.  Then she would resume her climb, I alongside her, and the closer we got
to the top, the brighter the stairwell grew, with more and more light shining
against the walls of the sixth, seventh, and finally the eighth floor, where a
sudden, blinding spell of heat and sunlight dazzled our senses.  Not a sound on
the terrace.  Only the faraway whir of distant traffic below.  Everything I
touched was burning hot, and as I roamed about the empty terrace and looked
over the tops of all the other buildings of Smouha, there it was, immense as
always, that color blue lining the limitless horizon, quiet, serene, and
forever beckoning: the sea.  A gridwork of clotheslines awaited us.  The
sagging gray cords were frayed with use and, all along them, abandoned clusters
of unused pins sat like little sparrows idling on electric wires.

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"No, the other *wanted* to die," added Dr. Alcabes, our relative and family
homeopath.  "I told him we could save him," he added as we were sitting at the
third and last luncheon of the centennial.  "But when he heard what the cure
involved, he wanted no part of it.  'Cover me that I may die,' he said, quoting
a Turkish proverb.  So I told him, 'Albert, this can lead to only one thing!'
Do you know what he said? 'Well, that's got to be better than letting you open
me up, scrape me clean of my favorite organs, and leave me as hollow as a bell
pepper.  No thanks.' "

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"I don't know what to make of it yet," answered my uncle.  Perhaps he was being
evasive or, as he would say, diplomatic: say less than you think and mean more
than you know.

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Madame Marie, a devout Greek Orthodox from Smyrna, stood up and sat down,
dipped her foods in all the requisite dishes and sauces, ate everything she saw
us eat, and repeated "Amen" after everyone else, though with the guarded look
of a missionary forced to down a tribal brew.  Her biggest fear in working for
a Jewish family was to be inadvertently converted to Judaism.