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Caught

Cairo. Like, the unexpected snap bursting through your bones when descending familiar stairs in the dark and miscalculating the last step, Cairo hit Katarina hard.

She and Karim, the driver Aunt Noura’s had inherited from Yousra, did not weave slowly through narrow streets and bustling market squares between low whitewashed houses. No Bedouins sporting outlandish turbans or women in colourful garb and silver jewellery were jostling to offer her exotic goods through the windows. Was that from Indiana Jones? Jubilant barefoot urchins did not trail behind the car. She saw no camels, no snake charmers, and the city was not a haphazard or cheap version of the west. It did not consist of dusty streets, advancing tanks and fleeing crowds. There were no public executions, no menacing, bearded men with ogling eyes, and no disfigured beggars—almost. Instead, they sailed through the traffic on wide treelined ring roads through bright spacious suburbs. No one in the other cars seemed to notice her. Cairo was complete in itself. The distance between her expectations and the queer ordinariness of the unfamiliar made her head spin.

Only the following morning, as Katarina, startled by her own insistence on going without her Aunt Noura, was being driven out to the jewellery shop, Khan Yousra, did she realise that she already had a distinct image of the shop. It had emerged passively, combined of preexisting bubbles in her mind. Did your ideas about the shop, the country and the city simply come from television and films? She leaned towards the car window, opened her eyes widely, and told herself that her ignorance provided a unique opportunity to start something true—something that would belong to her.

But the city was indecipherable to her.

The frustration of suspecting that the unfamiliar was a well-known story written with an unfamiliar alphabet, halftones and a perplexing grammar made her feel stupid. Nothing was as she had expected.

Katarina discovered that she had imagined Khan Yousra as a small, cosy boutique with a workshop in the backroom, located in an alley in a covered bazaar with ancient, pointy-arched gates and the tickling fragrance of spices. Perhaps there would be an interior brick stairway leading up to a whitewashed roof terrace, looking out over low buildings where cooing pigeons strutted among colourful washing on flat roofs. There one could drink mint tea at sunset, brought by a loyal, fez-wearing café waiter. And kids flying kites. Or was that India?

Beyond the cinematographic fantasies, she became aware of hoping to find something that would complete her. Like the hidden buttons that hold a removable lining in place in a coat, she needed the point of reference in herself which Ignat had failed to instil in her. She hoped the fog of her father’s withheld facts would lift. In Paris, when she had spoken about feeling incomplete, scornfully, her psychiatrist had remarked that what she really wanted was to find a man. “We’ll start you on a new and better medication,” he had added. Katarina had accepted the prescription but had burned it over a candle flame before she left France—the paper had curled up. The smoke was acrid.

“Khan Yousra,” her aunt Noura had said over breakfast, handing Katarina the silver toast rack “it is on the ring road. Karim will take you.”

“Ring road?” Katarina took a piece of golden toast.

“Yes, in one of the new, wealthy suburbs.”

During the drive there, with hashish-heavy eyes, Karim attentively observed Katarina’s apprehension in the rear mirror. They took a ramp and spiralled into an underground garage. He held the car door for her, walked with her to a steel elevator and pushed a button. On the way up, she looked at herself in the mirror, but did not adjust anything. Like her mother, she looks like someone who is constantly trying to recall something, Karim noted.

As they stepped onto the polished marble floor of a great, central atrium, Karim noticed how she inhaled sharply. Instinctively, like a father with his child on their first day of school, he took her hand. When she squeezed his hand lightly, he realized what he had done. He let go and embarrassed, muttered an apology. She smiled. Men always wanted to protect her. They walked below lofty domes and arches, built with prefabricated concrete elements. Suspended from the ceiling and illuminated by skylights hovered an enormous glass mobile consisting of tens of thousands of clear shards, each hung individually, forming a vast, diffuse cloud. Amazed, she stopped and looked up at it. It dawned on Karim that Katarina had inherited her mother’s habit of losing herself in thoughts. To save her, he led her to the next glass elevator, which transported them up to the third floor.

Khan Yousra, her mother’s shop, was much larger than she had anticipated. Its name was spelled out in gold on the glass façade in an elegant curvilinear script. Latin letters designed to look like Arabic. The shop had two wide, double doors. One was set in the façade that faced the glass cloud in the atrium and the other opened onto a smaller blue tiled courtyard behind the shop. Khan Yousra looked like an aquarium. Everything was brightly lit and competently exhibited. A crew-cut security guard was stationed at each door, both wearing a marine blue uniform with an embroidered, golden logo.

With sweaty palms and a stuttering welcome, the balding manager opened the door and ran a hand over his shiny scalp. Katarina did not know if they were supposed to exchange kisses or shake hands, so she did neither. Awed by her mother’s creation, she smiled and let her gaze travel over numerous gleaming, brass-framed display cabinets spaciously placed on the costly hardwood floor. Nodding at the manager, Karim showed her to the imposing, solid oak counter where the manager pulled out a tall stool and invited her to sit down. Not knowing what they expected, Katarina placed herself on the stool. Courteously, the manager leaned forward and with his index finger extended, turned on the computer which played the Windows’ welcome jingle. With the same index finger, he made the drawer of the till pop open with a ding. Ceremoniously, he moved one step backwards and positioned himself behind her with his clammy hands clasped at his back. Silently, Katarina looked at the rows of numbers on the screen and the cash drawer containing neatly arranged, unfamiliar bank notes with Arabic writing. Unexpectedly overwhelmed by hopelessness and confusion, she turned teary eyed to the manager.

“The mademoiselle resembles her mother,” he whispered in a thick voice. He dried his eyes, “May God keep her soul safe.” He handed her a tissue, and, with a sigh of relief, he stepped forward to explain what she was looking at. Katarina realized that he had feared losing his job.

                                                                                ***

The weeks passed. Every morning, entering the mall, Katarina listened to the purposeful, sharp snaps of her square high heels striking shiny, black marble floors buffed over night by an army of workers. When she strode through airy, mosaic-covered atriums with their fragrant fountains, suspended coloured glass lamps, expensive cafés with their electric waterpipes, and the foreign fast-food chains—encouraged by Aunt Noura—she appreciated her prominent place in society. The cool air, the lofty, fine-looking halls, and the ubiquitous jasmine perfume that was the signature scent of the mall gave her a pleasant, floating sensation that was different from the meaningless lightness she had known until now. She did not know that this was the novel sensation of financial security in a population struggling to live.

In the beginning, hoping to get to know more about her mother, she spent every day in Khan Yousra. Some costumers appeared to have known her Yousra. They stared at her, uttered formal commiserations, and shook their heads in pity when they thought she was not looking. The manager did most of the work.

Katarina took pleasure in waking gradually during the ride in the parrot green vintage Mercedes that had belonged to her mother. Along the misty Nile, where feluccas with proud, triangular sails glided by calmly in the gentle morning light, Karim’s steady hand let the car roll on over the never-ending flyovers. After half an hour, they would reach the monstrous, new ring road floating on pylons above the ancient land with its fields, irrigation canals and villages. Through the smoky windows, in the silence of the air-conditioned car, she peered down at farmers walking along footpaths in the lush green fields far below her. Dressed in flowing, wide gallabiyahs and crocheted skullcaps, they led unhurried herds of lumbering water buffalo to water. Shimmering flocks of small snow-white egrets drifted over steamy rice paddies. By communal taps, barefoot children brushed their teeth in the first sun and women with colourful plastic containers lined up by tube wells. At the desert horizon stood the pyramids. She resisted the urge to ask Karim to take her down into one of the villages, for she knew he, with a small appreciative smile, as instructed to by Aunt Noura, would politely decline.

When they took their exit, the descent funnelled them into a satellite town sprawling among artificial hills covered with perfect grass. Gardeners would be trimming glossy foliage of thick hedges. Blinding white luxury villas nested between, lush trees and decorative brooks. Sprinklers flung rainbow after rainbow into the clear sunlight reflecting off forbidding glass fronts of expensive shops. On infinite, flawless greens, people dressed in pastel colours played golf. Chauffeurs drove rich kids to private schools, the ice-skating rink, or the mall. It was a gleaming mirage—an alien world unreachable for the larger part of the population, whose lives were cluttered and dusty.

In the equally isolated world of an older, grander affluent neighbourhood on the river island of Roda, lived Aunt Noura, the younger sister of Katarina’s mother. Her kids studied abroad. Her husband probably had other women, but Noura could afford not to care, she had inherited the family fortune. Like everybody of her class, Noura existed in a filtered, temperate atmosphere. She never walked.  The bustling city streets, not a part of her world, were an uninvited obstacle one had to be chauffeur-driven through to reach one’s five-star destination.

Katarina was convinced that everything in the flat was exactly the way Noura and Yousra’s parents had left it—reverently preserved in tones of beige and gold with heavy, velvet curtains, glossy damask upholstery, sound-absorbing Persian rugs, and floors of Italian marble or oak parquet. Here, light passed serenely through polished prisms of crystal chandeliers. The glass doors of the balcony looked down over the Nile. Most of the time, the only audible sounds were the faint hiss of the air conditioner and the distant noise of the radio in Mina’s kitchen.

Noura’s manner was discreet and perfect like the solid, antique furniture that surrounded her. Most of her movements had, as their purpose, to ascertain, adjust and organise: smooth out her dark, dyed hair or skirt; run a well-manicured little finger along the curve of her beautifully-shaped eyebrow; check that her earrings were positioned correctly; turn a coffee cup so the handle pointed to the right; move a vase or a bowl of Belgian truffles so they sat in the middle of the coffee table; adjust the heavy, golden tassels dangling at the end of the satin ropes that tied back the voluminous curtains so they fell in luxurious folds.

Katarina had never met a woman as perfect as her aunt, but the incomprehensible fluctuation between curt, exasperated outbursts and intimate chattering between Noura and the cook, Mina, reminded her of two sisters from her school. Maybe because she did not know the language, she was mistaken in her judgment about their behaviour. Perhaps it was normal here. Still, it unsettled her.

Initially, Katarina was bursting with questions about her mother. She was too shy to ask to see the will. Noura told her she had not had a lot of contact with her divorced, elder sister and skilfully avoided Katarina’s questions by asking, “What do you remember about her?”

Katarina frowned and thought about the Armenian nanny that she ought to be too young to remember, “Nothing… “

“And how about what happened after she…” Noura said and leaned close, “after she left?”

“Nothing really… my father never spoke about her either, so…  “ Katarina sighed, ”I wish I could have met her.” I wish he had not lied her dead.

“She was the rebellious one,” Noura said with a painful twist in her discontented smile. “Attractive I guess.” Noura was of the impression that Yousra hadn’t put much of her time into the shop in the years leading up to her death. “Strangely, her accounts showed that she could have had a much better lifestyle.”

“In which way?” Katarina asked.

Noura had wrinkled her nose “Your mother had become a downtown type.” 

“A what?”

“Downtown… arty, you know, one with the people… against air condition… against us. My husband used to say she only cared for four things: gallery openings, concerts, and cheap bars.” Noura had chortled.

“And the fourth?” Katarina had opened her eyes widely.

“Did I say four?” Noura had looked down, “I meant three… well, no, four… she loved to drink sugarcane juice, right from the vendor, on the street… a miracle that did not kill her.”

“But… what is Downtown?”

“Listen.“ Noura had taken Katarina’s pointy chin between her manicured fingers, “You are a such pretty girl and no matter what anyone tells you, the locals are not our friends.” Noura let go and adjusted an embroidered table runner a fraction.

Katarina’s voice grew thin, “They are not?”

Nour pursed her lips and shook her head. By the locals, she meant anyone that walked or did not have a driver. Noura rarely ventured off Roda Island and only socialised with Coptic Christians. Proudly, she pointed down towards the riverbank to the spot in front of their building where, according to legend, Moses was found in his basket by the Pharaoh’s maid. An ancient sycamore tree grew there. Its wide canopy stood above a narrow road and extended out over a sluggish, slim part of the Nile between the island and the main riverbank.

On one of her first evenings there, at sunset, Katarina went down to sit under the sycamore and write a letter. The maid, Mina, spotted her from the balcony and scurried down before Noura would discover that Katarina had gone out alone. Katarina’s new shoes had shit on the soles—probably human shit. The stench made her gag. Despite Katarina’s polite protests, Mina threw them out. After that, for a while, Katarina grudgingly followed the advice of her aunt.

With Karim at the wheel of the air-conditioned car, she travelled along flyovers above the original Egypt and spent her days in a world of manufactured, oriental ambience, Arabic elevator music, and fake jasmine scents. I saw her try to finish her lunch under artificial palm trees to the tune of fragrant fountains. Always alone with her book, Mahfouz’s first volume of The Cairo Trilogy, Palace Walks. She got used to witnessing the spoiled rich kids treating anyone working in the mall as if they were their own servants—condescendingly.

Katarina started to think that her new life was more unreal than the old one. She did not sleep well and, in the same way it used to happen in Paris, she would wake up in the darkness, short of breath. For hours on end, she stood in the balcony doorway with her back to the nocturnal stillness of the living room and looked down at the lights of the city across the Nile. She once asked Noura if they could visit other sites in the city besides the luxury hotels and prestigious private clubs that Noura had taken her to.

“I can take you to see the old churches. The rest is all poverty and superstition,” Noura responded. “Your mother had the same strange urges, and it did not make her life any better. Your father …” She stopped herself. “May God preserve her soul.”

Katarina raised her shoulders and held her breath, “Why don’t we visit the lawyer to see the will?” She said feigning disinterest.

“Good idea… “Noura flashed a nervous smile “But first I will take you horseback riding at the Saqqara Country Club this Friday.” They did neither.

In a nauseating traffic jam on their way home from Khan Yousra, Karim rolled down the window and negotiated for her the price of Chinese pocket binoculars offered by a street vendor. Katarina continued to stand on the balcony at night. She would look through the binoculars across the river onto the jumble of buildings in the huge, chaotic neighbourhood filled with ordinary folk. Behind small windows people watched television and did their dishes. When the nights were sultry, their cigarettes glowed on their balconies or flat roofs.

In Cairo, her old longing to head into the streets and disappear—to sink into the mass of humanity and feel the world against her skin, grew so strong it scared her.

Some mornings, Karim would wait in vain for Katarina, sipping tea in Mina’s kitchen while she slept in. Mina and Karim witnessed how Katarina lost interest in the shop. How the escape of sleep and dreams held her hostage. They both knew this well from Yousra. Even though Mina cautioned Karim not to interfere, it worried him.

                                                                                ***

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