Desiring Cairo. Louisa Young

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СКАЧАТЬ nothing to do with any man who drinks alcohol and reads the Qur’an: OK to do one or the other, but not both, because hypocrisy is the great sin. I was young and firm and unforgiving in those days, and I took that rule to heart; nowadays I’m a little gentler. Weaker. My standards have slipped. Anyway I am pleased that Hakim takes out his mat and prays in Lily’s bedroom, and I am pleased that he is willing to crack a beer with me and gossip, and with his youth and sweetness keep madcap monsters from my mental door.

      ‘So, is Sa’id married yet?’ I asked, flinging around for a subject, as we sat down to eat.

      Hakim looked surprised at the suggestion. ‘Oh no,’ he said.

      ‘But he’s, what, twenty-five?’

      ‘No one is married now at twenty-five,’ he said. He peered at his beer and looked less than completely happy.

      ‘No one?’ I was surprised. Shagging about was definitely not on in Upper Egypt in my day, and not much in Cairo either, and where there is no shagging about there tends to be early marriage. Or some other arrangement.

      Hakim screwed up his eyes and ran his fingers over his forehead, pressing above his eyebrows as if to dislodge something stuck inside. ‘No one,’ he said crossly.

      ‘Don’t be cross with me about it,’ I said mildly.

      He looked up. ‘Not cross with you,’ he said, heartfelt, fearful of giving offence. ‘Of course not with you.’

      He held my gaze, eye to eye, steady. It made me realise how seldom he caught my eye, let alone held it.

      ‘Things are strange to me here,’ he said. ‘At home you are tourist and the tourist, perhaps you know, is number one. And number two and number three and number four and so on. In Luxor for thousands of years we have been guardians of our palaces and graves, and people – you – have come to visit, and have brought money for the people who tend to visitors.’

      It was one of those moments which make me want a cigarette. When someone starts to talk.

      ‘Let me tell you,’ he said. ‘During the Gulf War, when I was quite small. Not so small. After the houses where the people lived were knocked down and the big hotels all built, and the tourism schools teach that the tourist is always right; after they build the walls to hide the villages because the village isn’t so pretty, so they build the walls not the drains, anyway. Then there was the bombardment of Baghdad and the tourists don’t come, and everyone is scared, because so much is … spent for the people who will come. Just before the bombardment of Baghdad, when everything was just so … you know … I went with a visitor from Cairo to the grave of Thutmosis, in the valley of the kings, I think you know the one. There is a metal steps up the cliff, and climbing, and a pit, and steps down inside. My friend’s great-uncle was a guard in this grave. It is shaped like an egg, pale cheese colour with black pictograms, beautiful. The king made it hard to find, and now you just go every day.

      ‘You know photographs are not allowed in these graves without a pass. The flash destroys the picture. Too much light, too many people. One time, this day, four tourists come in and just start to take photographs with flash. The old man, the guard, says to them no photograph. All he can say in English, in French, in German (except also “Welcome Luxor”). He says it, in English, in French, in German. The tourists take no notice. He stands in front of them, in front of the pictograms. Then one tourist knocks him down. We came in next – me small boy and the lady visitor, the friend of my mother. The old man is on the floor, blood … the tourist taking photographs. The lady visitor picks him up, the tourist police come, fuss and bother, no one saw but everybody knows the old man is telling truth.’

      ‘So what happened?’

      ‘The old man was made to apologise.’

      He looked at me straight, to see what I thought.

      ‘Luxor is a beautiful place but it is not good,’ he said. ‘No one is married before thirty because they have not enough money. Business is good for us but even for Sa’id to make enough money for himself to marry will take time. All the money is spent for him going to university, to Sorbonne, business studies – he did only one year, said he knew more than the professors, then economics. But everybody else is leaving school and not going to university. People come by so rich, tourists, Egyptians, Saudi, Europeans. And we are rich, my family. My father employs people. Sa’id does business with Cairo for him. We sell abroad, in Khan el-Khalili, we have the shop in Luxor and the fabrique on the West Bank. But Sa’id cannot marry. How is it for the poorer people? Wages are not good. The richness does not travel from the rich people to the poor. The poor people live in places that are built without permission and then the officials say they will knock them down and they will have nowhere to live. In Qurnah because the old village is just among the graves of the Nobles they are always trying to knock it down. They send in tanks, the village people come out with sticks. Just to show that they are people, who can hold sticks, not just some bit of litter. And now they build New Qurnah, and we are all to leave and go there.’

      This was making me sad.

      ‘It’s the same everywhere, to one degree or another,’ I mumbled. Like that’s any comfort. But I have no sophisticated analysis of these situations. I just feel sad, and sometimes want to punch someone for not making the world a fair and just place. A reaction which has hardly changed since I was Lily’s age. Janie used to say there was no point because you can’t punch God. We stopped talking to him, though. Remained silent during ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, and hoped he’d take the hint.

      ‘Many people at home are very unhappy,’ he said finally. ‘Things happen you don’t hear about here. The last years … But Egypt doesn’t make a big noise of it to the world because they don’t want the world to stop to come. And it’s just Egyptian people, so the world doesn’t mind.’

      Of course I knew what he was talking about. Those single paragraphs you read in the sidebars of the foreign pages: four policemen killed in an ambush at Naqquada; train shot at, suspects, fundamentalists, reports say. Like any one of a thousand problems, that only flick our conciousnesses when they happen in places where we’ve been on holiday. If I lived in Qurnah I could never leave. The Nile before you, five thousand miles of Sahara at your back, ancient Thebes the bones of your home.

      Hakim was looking at me. I couldn’t remember the last thing he’d said.

      ‘I make coffee,’ he said, and did.

      Oh yes. It was, ‘It’s just Egyptian people, so nobody cares.’

      Then Zeinab rang. What with one thing and another I hadn’t spoken to her since Hakim’s appearance, so I told her about him. Or as much as I could with him in the room. He gestured me furiously not to mention his mother, so I didn’t. She wanted to come and see him, to welcome him and to check him out. Of course I’d told her about Abu Sa’id, over the years. We decided she should come at the weekend, and bring the boys. Then Brigid rang, was I still on for tomorrow. Yes indeed I was. How many of them? Three boys and Caitlin. All night? Fine. They could go on the lilos on the floor in my room, in with me and Lily. Squashy!

      Perhaps a midnight feast might be in order. It’ll be Friday after all. Hakim announced his intention to go to the mosque. Then my mother rang, saying would we come for lunch on Sunday; then Harry rang, saying he was sorry he rushed me off like that, and was I all right, and I lied that yes I was, and we had an awkward pause, and said well all right then, ’bye then.

      And then Hakim and I sat down with the phone books and I showed him how we needed to look for Tomlinsons or Lockwoods rather than СКАЧАТЬ