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Caught. 2003. August.

Cairo. Cairo hit her as the sudden short snap that shoots through your bones when walking down familiar steps in the dark and finding that there was one more step than anticipated. The frustration of suspecting that the unfamiliar was a well-known story written with an unfamiliar alphabet, halftones and an incomprehensible grammar made her feel stupid. Nothing was as she had expected.

She and Karim, Aunt Noura’s driver, did not drive 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 offering her exotic goods through the windows. Was that from Indiana Jones? A trail of jubilant barefoot urchins did not follow 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 spacious new suburbs. No one in the other cars seemed to notice her. The city was complete in itself and did not need her. The distance between her expectations and the queer ordinariness of the unfamiliar made her head spin.

Only the following morning, as Katarina, at her own insistence, was being driven out to the jewellery shop without her Aunt Noura, did she realise that she already had a distinct image about the shop. She knew that she had not created those particular imaginations today, but they had emerged passively, like bubbles in her mind. When she realised that her ideas about the shop, the country and the city had 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 see the city clearly and to start something true—something that would belong to her.

Katarina had imagined 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 the flat roofs. There one could drink mint tea at sunset, brought by a loyal, fez-wearing café waiter. She was aware of a hope of finding something that would complete her and enable her to understand herself—to find the point of reality that would make the world coherent. Like the hidden buttons that hold a removable lining in place in a coat, she needed the point of reference in herself which her upbringing had failed to instil in her. She hoped the fog of her father’s withheld facts would lift. Katarina was well aware that this hope was a B film fantasy. Scornfully, her psychiatrist at home had remarked that what she really wanted was to find a man and added that he wanted to start her on new and better medication. She accepted the prescription but burned it over a candle flame before she left—the paper curled up and the smoke was acrid.

Her mother’s shop, Khan Yousra, was on the third floor in an upscale shopping mall in one of the new, wealthy suburbs on the ring road outside the city. During the drive there, with hashish-heavy eyes, Karim attentively observed Katarina’s apprehension in the rear mirror. He held the car door for her in the underground garage, walked with her to the steel elevator, and pushed the 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 the great, central atrium, he 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 the 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, which 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 and to save her, he led her to the glass escalator, which transported them up to the third floor. Khan Yousra was much larger than she had anticipated. Its name was spelled out in gold on the glass façade in an elegant curvilinear script designed to look like Arabic but was actually Latin. 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 bald 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. She smiled and looked with curiosity at the numerous gleaming, brass-framed display cabinets that were spaciously placed on the costly hardwood floor. 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. She had no idea what any of it meant. 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 while mumbling, “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 Katarina listened to the purposeful, sharp snaps of her high heels striking the shiny, black marble floors that were buffed every night by an army of workers. When she strode through the 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 the beginning, she spent every day in Khan Yousra. She 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, the car rolled on over the never-ending flyovers. They reached the monstrous, new ring road that towered above the fields of the ancient land with its irrigation canals and villages. Through the smoky windows, in the silence of the air-conditioned car, she looked 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 stood in line by tube wells. The pyramids stood at the desert horizon. 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, would politely decline. He had promised Aunt Noura he would take care of her. When they took their exit, the view abruptly changed character. The descent brought them into a newly-built satellite town with artificial hills covered with perfect grass, where blinding white luxury villas nested between lush green trees and decorative brooks, and water from sprinklers flung rainbow after rainbow into the clear sunlight. Gardeners would be trimming the glossy foliage of the thick hedges, the forbidding glass fronts of expensive shops reflected the sharp sunbeams, people played golf on infinite, flawless greens, and chauffeurs drove rich kids to private schools or maybe the ice-skating rink or the mall. It was a parallel reality circumscribing the city like 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 island of Roda, lived Aunt Noura, the younger sister of Katarina’s mother, Yousra. Noura, whose kids studied abroad, had inherited the family home. Katarina, who was Noura’s guest, was convinced that everything in the flat was exactly the way Noura and Yousra’s parents had left it—reverently preserved in beige and gold tones with heavy, velvety curtains, glossy damask upholstery, sound-absorbing Persian rugs, and floors of Italian marble or oak parquet. Light passed serenely through the immobile, polished prisms of the crystal chandeliers. Noura lived her life indoors. Like everybody of her class, she never walked, but was chauffeur-driven from door to door. The bustling city streets did not belong to her world but were rather an uninvited obstacle one had to pass through to reach one’s five-star destination.

Noura existed in a filtered, temperate atmosphere. Her husband probably had other women, but she could afford not to care; she was the one with the money. The glass door 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 that dangled 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. After Katarina had persisted with her questions, Noura said with a painful twist in her discontented smile, “She was the good looking one … she attracted.” 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. She knew that it had given her a decent income and that she used to go to gallery openings and concerts in the old, crumbling city centre, downtown. “What is Downtown?” Katarina had asked. “You are a pretty girl and no matter what anyone tells you, the locals are not our friends,” Noura warned softly as she adjusted an embroidered table runner a fraction. 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, narrow 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 have 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.

Her aunt did not understand Katarina’s restlessness and desire to experience more—to see another Cairo. “The rest is all poverty and superstition,” she 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, “So, 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.”

With Karim’s help Katarina bought a pair of Chinese pocket binoculars of a street vendor in a traffic jam and continued to stand on the balcony at night. She would look across the river and in through the windows of the jumble of buildings in the huge, chaotic neighbourhood filled with ordinary folk. 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 outside their building, Karim would wait in vain for her in the car while she slept in. Katarina lost interest in the shop and the escape of sleep and dreams held her hostage. Karim knew this well from Yousra. Even though it was none of his business, it worried him.

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