In Their Father's Country Read online

  While patting Warda’s hand – she was still crying – he thought of their mother. She had died before judgement in the case had been rendered. Some relatives had said at the time that the trial had killed her, which had filled him with guilt. Selim’s death revived those guilt feelings. Selim had been their mother’s favorite. Yussef had no doubts that his death would have destroyed her.

  ‘If Selim were still with us, he would tell us what to expect now that the British have issued their ultimatum to parliament,’ Warda managed. Removing his hand from hers, Yussef exclaimed heatedly, ‘Really Warda, what a thing to be thinking of. Think instead of how Letitia, Gabrielle and Claire must be feeling. Besides, since when are you so interested in politics?’

  The morning after the funeral, dwarfed by the huge armchair in which she took refuge – Selim Sahli’s armchair – Letitia Sahli announced to her daughters, with a quavering voice but dry eyes, that she could not endure the thought of receiving condolence visits. Their uncles and aunts would have to receive the visits in their own homes. Small and dainty, she had just turned forty. With a vacant stare – her abundant auburn hair pulled in a severe bun and her face free from any trace of make-up – she explained to the two bewildered girls that she could not imagine herself hearing platitudes about the death of their father. Without him, she said, her life threatened to become as barren and desolate as the Egyptian desert; a country in which she still felt, even after all these years, so terribly alone.

  Of their mother’s background and family, the girls knew nothing other than that she was Italian and that she had been, in her youth, an accomplished rider. They had discovered this by chance, after coming upon an old riding outfit of hers at the bottom of a trunk, whip and boots included. The outfit had to be hers for the boots were unusually small and the trousers’ waist almost a child’s size. She had unusually small feet and a waist that could be encircled, almost in its entirety, with two hands. Teased about their discovery, she had conceded, without divulging more, that she had ridden on a regular basis when she was younger. Her silence about her past was so all-encompassing and her reluctance to break it so palpable that they had never dared probe. Claire had asked her father just once why she had no family on her mother’s side. He had answered that it was a private and painful subject for her mother, that people were entitled to keep silent about hurtful subjects, and that she would be better off thinking of all the relatives she had, on his side, as opposed to those she did not have, on her mother’s side.

  ‘I only have you two now,’ Letitia said to her daughters.

  ‘Mother, this country is our country. Father’s country. You cannot refuse to receive condolence visits. You cannot,’ Gabrielle cried out.

  ‘Gabrielle, I’m suffering enough as it is. You want to make things even harder for me?’ The mother looked in her daughter’s direction without seeming to see her.

  Gabrielle’s voice acquired a frenzied tone, ‘But the presidents of both bar associations will be coming to pay their respects. Uncle Yussef said so. Even the president of the Chamber of Deputies might come, despite his busy schedule. Father was much loved, both in the mixed courts and in the native courts. Think of him! You cannot close the door in people’s faces.’

  Letitia looked down and said nothing.

  ‘Mother, say something,’ Gabrielle insisted, moving closer.

  ‘I told you that those visits would be unbearable for me.

  Unbearable,’ Letitia said.

  ‘But why? Why?’ Gabrielle repeated, towering above her mother with all her height. Turning towards her sister, she demanded, ‘Claire, talk to Mother, talk to her,’ after which she ran out of the room shouting, ‘What will people say? What will people think?’

  Her heart racing – Gabrielle’s explosive temper still dismayed her, though she should have grown used to it – Claire stood still. Standing in one corner of the room, all she could think of was, ‘But what’s to become of us now?’ while telling herself that it was her father’s death and not her future that she should be thinking of. Yet the more she tried to focus on the death of her father, the more it was her life that seemed to matter.

  Her mother too was still, with that faraway look that tended to invite belligerence on Gabrielle’s part and solicitude on Claire’s.

  Banging noises came from Gabrielle’s room, at the other end of the apartment.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mother,’ Claire said, rushing towards her. ‘Don’t worry, you know how Gabrielle is,’ and she put her hand on her mother’s shoulder.

  ‘Only you understand me,’ her mother said.

  ‘Gabrielle loves you. She does,’ Claire said.

  ‘Go talk to her, console her,’ said Letitia. ‘You remember her tantrum over the birthday dress? You were barely six years old. She was terribly upset, and Papa told you to go cheer her up? Remember?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Claire said. How could she not? It had all started at lunchtime with Gabrielle, a seven-year-old girl already conscious of her looks, declaring, ‘I will not go to Lola’s birthday party wearing the dress I wore at Mona’s party. I need another dress!’ When told by both her father and her mother that she would have to resign herself to wearing the same dress, she had chanted, ‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to.’ Her father had then said, with utmost calm, ‘All right, you’ll get your new dress; tomorrow we’ll walk past Uncle Yussef’s office, and you’ll trade your dress for the dress worn by the little girl who sits by the building selling jasmine with her mother. You can wear that dress to Lola’s birthday party.’

  Screaming, ‘No, no, no,’ Gabrielle had got up, without asking to be excused, and had dashed out of the room, followed by Osta Osman begging her to finish her lunch.

  ‘But poor Gabrielle,’ Claire had tried to intercede on her sister’s behalf, terrified at the prospect of her sister being actually forced to wear the tattered dress worn by the little jasmine-seller. Never having heard her father issue any threats, she feared he meant business.

  ‘Poor?’ her father asked. ‘Hardly. You must learn to use words more judiciously, Claire. The little girl who sells jasmine is poor, but Gabrielle is not. Though I suppose your sister is in need of consolation. So you go to her, and do your best to cheer her up. Tell her I love her, that she’s still my darling, that you both are.’

  Thanks to a small lie, Claire had succeeded in comforting her sister, telling her that, at Mona’s birthday party, she had heard two girls say that they found her dress so pretty they wanted one just like it. Getting the dress out of her wardrobe, Gabrielle had judged it to be special enough to warrant being worn to another birthday party.

  ‘Please, go talk to Gabrielle now,’ Letitia urged Claire.

  About to knock on Gabrielle’s door, Claire recoiled upon hearing her lament, ‘Why did it have to be him? Why him?’ She quickly looked behind her to ensure that her mother was nowhere near, retreated to the end of the hallway, and closed the door to the living room. Then she took refuge in her bedroom, where she sat at her desk and rested her head on its cold surface. The emotion she had – perhaps wrongly – attributed to her sister was lurking in her own heart too. ‘Forgive me, Mother,’ she whispered and tried to suppress her sobs.

  While Claire and Gabrielle were giving vent to their anguish – grieving alone in their bedrooms – their mother wept in the privacy of hers.

  It was the thought that her father would deplore their being divided in mourning that eventually drove Claire to get up, compose herself and go see her sister. She found Gabrielle sitting at her desk, with a collection of postcards – from Paris, Vittel, Ostend, Lyons, Venice, all places her father had gone to for his cures – spread out on top.

  Gabrielle quickly gathered the postcards and stuffed them in a big envelope. ‘So, has Mother come around?’ she asked Claire with a sullen air, as if she expected the answer to be negative. ‘If she sticks to her decision, I intend to talk to Uncle Yussef.’

  ‘But let her be. She’s free to do as she pleases,�
�� Claire said and immediately regretted her confrontational tone.

  ‘But it’s a matter that concerns us too! Besides, you know her. Left to do as she pleases, she would never go out, never socialize. Have you already forgotten how much Father used to have to prod her?’

  ‘He knew how to handle her.’

  ‘We cannot let her isolate herself. He said so himself.’

  ‘It seems to me that this is a different issue,’ Claire began, then pleaded with her sister, ‘Gabrielle, I beg you not to harass her about it. Please.’

  ‘Will we always have to walk on thin ice with her? Make special allowances?’ asked Gabrielle. ‘Respect wishes that have no rhyme or reason?’ She was now pacing up and down her bedroom.

  ‘Black suits her,’ Claire observed, but fearing that her sister would find the compliment ill-timed, she kept that thought to herself. ‘I have been meaning to tell you that Father believed you would make a great lawyer,’ she said instead.

  ‘He never said so to me,’ Gabrielle said, coming to a stop, then she asked, with incredulity in her voice, ‘When did he say that? When?’

  ‘Last week. He told me that you had all the aptitudes needed to study law, and you could easily get accepted into the law faculty on the strength of your school record, without the bac.’

  Gabrielle’s face lit up and she sat on her bed, saying, ‘It pleases me to hear that. It really does. Why don’t you sit down, Claire?’

  Shoulder against shoulder, the two sisters – for that brief moment full of love for one another – let their thoughts about their future take an optimistic turn.

  Later that day, Claire would raise with her mother the subject of the duel her father had apparently fought some ten years earlier. She had overheard, at the funeral, her Aunt Warda make mention of it and being rebuked by her brother Yussef for it. ‘Selim had his unpredictable side. Who would have thought that he would fight a duel? He of all people,’ Warda had said.

  The image of her mild-mannered, rational father fighting a duel naturally grabbed Claire’s imagination, its chivalrous side appealing to her. Yet at the same time, it seemed unthinkable to her that he should actually have done so. And like most children faced with unexpected revelations about their parents, she was troubled.

  Alone with her mother in her father’s study, Claire adopted a light tone to ask, ‘Well, Mother, tell me about Papa’s duel.’

  Her mother glanced in her direction. ‘Papa’s duel?’

  ‘Yes, Mother. Papa’s duel,’ Claire said gently.

  ‘Who told you about it?’

  ‘A little bird,’ Claire said. Then she revealed, ‘I heard Aunt Warda mention it.’

  ‘You know that I like your aunt a great deal, but she talks too much. She would have been in her element in the theater; your father was right.’

  ‘Mother, what about the duel? When did it take place, and why?’

  ‘Oh! It would have been in 1912 or 1913 ... I’m not quite sure anymore. Why? Because men easily take umbrage. That’s why.’

  ‘But he was not a hot-headed sort.’

  ‘He had his moments.’

  ‘What exactly happened?’

  ‘Claire, it’s all in the past. One of his colleagues made a remark which your father found unacceptable. They were in the chambers of the mixed tribunals. One thing led to another. The duel took place a couple of days later – a duel by sword. After a few rounds, your father was wounded in his forearm and the attending doctors declared that the injury put him at such a disadvantage that further rounds were out of the question. He and his colleague made up on the spot.’

  ‘If doctors were present, there must have been witnesses too.’

  ‘Yes, there were.’

  ‘It must have been a real duel then?’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’

  ‘I’m amazed. Are there any documents concerning it?’

  ‘I’m not sure and, in any case, I have no idea where they would be. It was not such an important thing, Claire. Really.’

  ‘But how did it all start?’

  ‘I already told you. One of Father’s colleagues made an objectionable remark. Papa asked him to withdraw it, he didn’t, so Papa slapped him. That’s what led to the duel.’

  ‘At the time the duel was fought, Gabrielle and I were very little. Didn’t he think he was taking some risks?’

  ‘You don’t think things through in the heat of the moment.’

  ‘I would love to see any documents about it,’ Claire told her mother in a pressing though still gentle way.

  ‘If I find any, I’ll show them to you, but, please, don’t tell Gabrielle. It might needlessly agitate her.’

  ‘I won’t. Where was the duel fought?’

  Suddenly more relaxed, her mother flashed a smile and said, ‘Not far from the Mena House Hotel. In the shadow of the Pyramids.’

  That same night Claire had a nightmare in which her father lay bleeding on a dune, sword in hand, surrounded by his whole family looking on helplessly. Claire woke up with a start, hearing herself scream, ‘Papa’.

  Jumping out of bed, she threw her dressing gown loosely over her shoulders and, barefoot, ran to her father’s study, where she began hunting for any document that might tell her more about the duel.

  She found none, though she rummaged through each one of the desk drawers.

  It was past one o’clock in the morning. To keep warm, she slipped on her dressing gown and tied its belt tightly around her waist. Still sitting at her father’s desk, she tried to picture him at the time he fought the duel. In his early forties, he would have been more athletic-looking, though on second thoughts perhaps not. In her earliest childhood memories, he was already rotund. A skilled swordsman? It hardly seemed possible. Probably a bad swordsman, even if willing to fight. What did she know about him and what didn’t she know? Loving of her mother but not always faithful to her. She knew that. He had had at least one affair – with a Swiss milliner who lived in Alexandria. Again, it was her Aunt Warda who had let that slip in front of her. Her mother, however, had never manifested any knowledge of that affair, or of any other. Had his extended stays in Europe been really only health-related? Had he, at times, too easily accepted her mother’s withdrawn character, using it as an excuse to go out on his own? And why hadn’t he – a man so sympathetic to Egyptian nationalist aspirations – insisted that she and Gabrielle learn Arabic properly? And what had been his true feelings about his brother Yussef? Why had her father gone so much out of his way to extricate her Uncle Yussef from the big legal morass he was in that one time? Simple brotherly loyalty? To shield the family from disgrace? Because it had made him feel good to be so much needed by his successful young brother? Now that her father was gone she would never have answers.

  Exhausted, though reluctant to go to bed, Claire heard a faint noise, like soft steps gliding over tiles. She held her breath and thought she saw a silhouette hurrying past the door to the study, which she had left open. Her head buried in her lap, she whispered, ‘Papa, wherever you are, protect me. Protect us. You must.’ Then, all was quiet again. But Claire remained glued to her chair until she heard the hallway clock strike twice.

  Forcing herself to be brave, she quietly rose from her chair and hurried out of the study. In the hallway, she noticed a ray of light coming from under the closed kitchen door and heard her mother cough. The fleeting silhouette had been neither a burglar nor her imagination.

  ‘Mother,’ Claire said, opening the kitchen door.

  ‘I could not sleep so I decided to have a cup of coffee. You know how coffee helps me go to sleep. It always does. I don’t know why. But darling, why are you up? Thinking of Papa?’

  ‘Yes, I was,’ Claire said and sat at the kitchen table, next to her mother whose long, thick, wavy hair, hanging loose on her back, gave her a youthful appearance. Letitia was more graceful than beautiful. Her looks invited a protective impulse in those around her. Gabrielle seemed to be the exception.

  Claire looked tend
erly at her mother.

  ‘Claire, there’s something I need to tell you. I was going to talk to you about it tomorrow ... to you and to Gabrielle. I might as well tell you now. Uncle Yussef is putting an apartment in one of his buildings at our disposal – the building where he has his office. It’s a very nice building with spacious apartments. We’ll still be in the heart of town, and we’ll be close to him, if we need anything.’ Letitia spoke without looking at Claire, her face resting on her slender fingers, her eyes pensive.

  Claire had not expected this at all. She objected, ‘But we’re close to his office anyway. We don’t need to move, Mother. Walking to his office takes less than ten minutes.’

  Frowning, her mother explained, ‘We lived very comfortably on Papa’s earnings. More than comfortably. But the situation has changed, darling. We must be careful with money now.’ Then she hurried to add, ‘But your lives – yours and Gabrielle’s – will not really be affected. Besides, Uncle Yussef thinks we ought to move, that it’s not such a good idea to live surrounded by memories.’

  ‘Uncle Yussef, Uncle Yussef, Uncle Yussef ... but what about you, Mother? What do you want? What do you think?’

  ‘Claire, it’s not like you to be difficult. Don’t you think we can trust your Uncle Yussef?’

  ‘But that’s not the point,’ Claire argued. ‘We can trust him, but do we want to become dependent on him? I certainly don’t.’