E-Book, Englisch, 214 Seiten
Chacour What I Know About You
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80533-482-8
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 214 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80533-482-8
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Eric Chacour was born in Montréal to Egyptian parents and has lived in both France and Québec. He has a degree in applied economics and international relations and now works in the financial sector. What I Know About You is his first novel.
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3
Cairo, 1974
Fathers are born to disappear; your own died in his sleep one night. In his bed, like Nasser, just when everyone was beginning to think he was immortal. Your mother didn’t realise until the next morning. She rarely woke up before him. Believing he must still be sleeping next to her, she hadn’t dared rouse him. His face in death was as rigidly impassive as the one he’d worn in life. There was no reason to suspect he had crossed the threshold. She glanced at her watch. It was after 6 a.m. How strange that he had not woken up at 5:20, per his custom. At first, she’d worried he would blame her for waking him. Maybe he just needed a little more sleep than usual? Who was she to know what was best for her husband, who was a doctor after all? She waited a while longer. When still he made no sign of getting up, she worried instead that she’d be blamed for letting him sleep. She made some gentle sounds, to no avail. Now sure that she’d be found at fault no matter what she did, she decided to give him a shake. Against all odds, this time he did not blame her for anything at all.
The news didn’t reach you right away. You had just driven off towards Mokattam, the plateau in Cairo’s far eastern reaches where you were having a clinic built. You’d taken a day off to oversee the work. Scarcely had you got out of your car when a young boy ran over to you.
‘Dr Tarek! Dr Tarek! Your father, Dr Thomas, is dead! You have to go home right away!’
You would have suspected a bad joke had he not said your name and your father’s. You tried asking questions, but his shrugs made it clear that he knew nothing beyond the message he had been sent to deliver. You pulled a few coins from your pocket to thank him before sending him on his way. At the sight of the money, a grin replaced the solemn countenance he had put on for the occasion. You got back on the road, more in shock than grief at the news that had yet to sink in. You rushed to get back to your family.
You came in through the clinic where your father would never again practise, not yet trying to understand the implications of this seismic shift, and took the stairs four at a time to reach your mother’s side. You found her sitting in the living room with your aunt Lola. The scene resembled a rehearsal for her new role as widow, held before an audience of one. Visibly thrilled to have front-row seats for your mother’s investiture, your aunt showed her appreciation with effusive sobs. You felt almost like you were interrupting.
Sensing your confused presence in the doorway, your mother beckoned you in. Her bracelets jingled with impatience. When you reached her, she stood up, took you in her arms and offered a commonplace – ‘He didn’t suffer’ – in answer to a question that you hadn’t asked. Her face was suitably drawn, her hair tied neatly in place. Since she was a good head shorter than you, you had to hunch your back awkwardly to hold her. For a few seconds you remained still, not entirely sure who was consoling whom. Then she freed herself from your grip and instructed you to go find your sister.
When she saw you walk into the kitchen, Nesrine began sobbing uncontrollably, to the servant’s chagrin. For hours now, Fatheya had been conjuring remedies to keep Nesrine from breaking down, from hot drinks to firm embraces and divine beseeching; your arrival was a gust of wind assailing this carefully constructed house of cards. Fatheya gave you an angry look that softened when it struck her that your sister’s grief was yours as well. She walked over and looked at you, whispering, ‘My dear.’ She had a thousand and one ways of saying my dear. This one meant stay strong. She then nodded her head, to show you that she had a lot to do, and left the two of you alone.
Nesrine’s distraught face made her look younger than her twenty-three years. She reminded you of the adolescent girl you used to take for feteer in Zamalek, back when she’d tell you all her problems. You never found one that couldn’t be dissolved in the honey of those sweets. Perhaps they were the very thing to bring her comfort at that moment. You wouldn’t tell Nesrine where you were taking her, nor would she try to guess; you just had to get both of you away from this house in mourning. She’d crack a smile when she recognised the café storefront. The two of you would think as one, without speaking a single word. She could watch the baker work the dough, sending it spinning through the air above the marble countertop, his expert hand movements multiplied in the mirrors behind him. It would be no more than a misdemeanour against the regime of your shared grief.
You soon chased that thought from your mind. It was hard, under the circumstances, to imagine telling your mother you were heading out for a stroll. None of us is ever wholly what society expects us to be. At that moment, you two were meant to put on dignified faces to evoke respect and compassion. Certainly the picture did not include pastry crumbs in the corners of your mouths, to be wiped off with the haste of greedy children.
Feeling the full weight of your twenty-five years, you sat next to your sister. The chair was still warm from Fatheya’s presence.
‘You okay?’
In answer she showed you her kohl-streaked cheeks. How could she be okay? She smiled. That was enough.
You had been graced with a moment of calm before the coming storm. News of your father’s death would quickly raise a crowd, like sand swept up into the air by the khamaseen of spring. You were too young to have seen Cairo’s Levantine community in its heyday, but it was still very much a city within a city. And such a community, close-knit in times of joy and grief, would keenly feel the death of one of its eminent physicians. Your people, known as Shawam in Arabic, were Christians of various eastern confessions come to Egypt by way of Syria, Jordan or Palestine. They formed the core of your father’s practice and your family’s social life. Even after generations on the banks of the Nile, many were more fluent in French than in the Arabic they used only when necessary. They were seen as foreigners at worst, ‘Egyptianised’ at best, a view they did little to dispel.
You were raised in a self-contained and increasingly anachronistic bubble. Your bourgeois world recalled a progressive, cosmopolitan Egypt where diverse communities lived side by side. The Levantines saw themselves in the European education of the Greeks, Italians and French. Like the Armenians, they had known the ferrous tang of blood preceding exile. This common ground made for strong ties. Your father’s family was among those who had fled Damascus during the massacres of 1860. All that remained of that homeland was his first name, a tribute to St Thomas Gate, where his ancestors had lived, a few pieces of heirloom jewellery and the pocket watch that never left his side. In the hope that you would one day pass on this heritage to your children, he told you and your sister stories of past times: how successive waves of newcomers spurred the intellectual rebirth of the land that welcomed them, and how during the British ‘veiled protectorate’ your people rose to eminence in culture, industry and trade.
While your father’s words proclaimed his pride in his origins and gratitude towards his family’s adopted nation, notes of melancholy seeped through in his inflection. He knew how much water had passed under the Qasr al-Nil Bridge since those days. Another Egypt had come into being. Galvanised by Nasserian patriotism and dreams of grandeur, it was intent on reclaiming its Arab and Muslim identity. This new Egypt was determined not to lose its elite. Then came the Suez Crisis, the nationalisations, confiscations, emigrations – so many rude awakenings for the Shawam who saw themselves as a bridge spanning East and West.
You remembered a time when not one day went by without some friend announcing their departure for France or Lebanon, Australia or Canada. With no violence but that of inner turmoil, those who left resigned themselves to leaving behind the land they had so dearly loved, where they had expected to be buried one day. You were among the few thousand who stayed. The ones who refused to abandon a country that had turned its back on you, intent on maintaining the illusion of the good life, in their homes and their churches, in the French-language schools they sent their children to and the Greek Catholic cemetery in Old Cairo, where your father would soon be laid to rest.
The next day a crowd gathered at your home in Dokki. One of Fatheya’s cousins had come to help manage the procession of mourners your mother greeted with a dignity befitting the solemn occasion. She received the timed visits of those brought to your front door by a mix of propriety and voyeurism. They came with shop-worn phrases of condolence and memories of your father dusted off for the occasion. But all the while they were silently sounding the depths of your despondency. They scrutinised the lines fatigue had traced under your eyes, how your voices quivered when someone spoke the name of the deceased. Then they went off on their way, with a lingering taste of pistachio sweets and duty fulfilled. For some, it seemed, death was life’s greatest entertainment.
This was your first intimate acquaintance with bereavement. You came to know the diffuse feeling of being outside yourself, almost...
