Out of Egypt: A Memoir

And suddenly I knew, as I touched the damp, grainy surface of the seawall, that I would always remember this night, that in years to come I would remember sitting here, swept with confused longing as I listened to the water lapping the giant boulders beneath the promenade and watched the children head toward the shore in a winding, lambent procession. I wanted to come back tomorrow night, and the night after, and the one after that as well, sensing that what made leaving so fiercely painful was the knowledge that there would never be another night like this, that I would never eat soggy cakes along the coast road in the evening, not this year or any other year, nor feel the baffling, sudden beauty of that moment when, if only for an instant, I had caught myself longing for a city I never knew I loved. Exactly a year from now, I vowed, I would sit outside at night wherever I was, somewhere in Europe, or in America, and turn my face to Egypt, as Moslems do when they pray and face Mecca, and remember this very night, and how I had thought these things and made this vow. You're beginning to sound like Elsa and her silly seders, I said to myself, mimicking my father's humour. On my way home I thought of what the others were doing. I wanted to walk in, find the smaller living room still lit, the Beethoven still playing, with Abdou still cleaning the dining room, and, on closing the front door, suddenly hear someone say, "We were just waiting for you, we're thinking of going to the Royal." "But we've already seen that film," I would say. "What difference does it make. We'll see it again." And before we had time to argue, we would all rush downstairs, where my father would be waiting in a car that was no longer really ours, and, feeling the slight chill of a late April night, would huddle together with the windows shut, bicker as usual about who got to sit where, rub our hands, turn the radio to a French broadcast, and then speed to the Corniche, thinking that all this was as it always was, that nothing ever really changed, that the people enjoying their first stroll on the Corniche after fasting, or the woman selling tickets at the Royal, or the man who would watch our car in the side alley outside the theatre, or our neighbours across the hall, or the drizzle that was sure to greet us after the movie at midnight would never, ever know, nor even guess, that this was our last night in Alexandria.

He hated Egypt and he's buried in Egypt. "What could be worse than being buried in a cemetery where you know nobody, Monsieur Jacques?" he would ask. "And I tell you what. Worse than dying is the thought that no one will ever come to your grave, that no one will come wash the letters of your name. Everyone remembers for a few months, a few years, on anniversaries, and then, a generation later, they forget you. And the earth might as well make dust of you, for you're as good as unborn - you never were born - even if you live to be a hundred.

No matter how much we seem to move forward, we seldom venture truly far—our steps often circle back to the places within us we thought we'd left behind.

Even today, I continue to live my life that way. I cross the street on the slant, I always sit in the side rows at concert halls, I am a citizen of two countries but I live in neither, and I never look people in the eye,' she said, as I, conscious of her effort to do so now, averted my own, 'I'm honest with no one, though I've never lied. I've given far less than I've taken, though I'm always left with nothing. I don't even think I know who I am, I know myself the way I might know my neighbour: from across the street. When I'm here, I long to be there; when I was there I longed to be here,' she said, referring to her years in Alexandria.

Only then would it hit me, this truth about her ears, that she would always be deaf, never hear music, never hear laughter, never hear my voice. Only then did I realize what it meant to be alone in the world, and I would run to find her in this large house that became so quiet, so empty and so very dark at night because nighttime in our part of Alexandria was always somber and murky, especially with my father out so late every evening. We would turn the lights on everywhere in the house, not to ward off imaginary thieves, but to look out the window and see our reflected faces on the windowpane.

So tea was over, I thought, already missing the spell of that moment when my uncle and I had opened the door to find everyone already seated in the living room, the sun just barely set over the horizon, and everyone hurrying to make room for us. Sitting quietly next to my parents, my cousins, my aunts and uncles, everyone's thighs cozily glued to mine, I knew that even if I disliked almost everyone in this room, it was good to be with them, good to hear the ritual hubbub of tea, good to look and be looked at.

Nothing was ever more hostile," she told me years later, "than this gnarled, twisted selflessness that chokes you like a bad debt and always makes you feel slightly unworthy and always unkind in the end.

For couched in the joy that lit up her face whenever she saw you on the street was the mild, unspoken reproof that your tardiness in seeing her either betrayed a desire to avoid speaking to her or that, if she always noticed you first, it was only because she thought of you more often that you did of her.

For couched in the joy that lit up her face whenever she say you on the street was the mild, unspoken reproof that your tardiness in seeing her either betrayed a desire to avoid speaking to her or that, if she always noticed you first, it was only because she thought of you more often that you did of her.

A notorious crook who took advantage of everyone precisely by protesting that he was not cunning enough to do so.

I used to tell him, 'Your head is in the clouds'; and he would say, 'And you, Esther, your feet are underground.' Look who's underground now.

Revenge always come too late, he thought, and only after time, indifference, or forgiveness has evened the score.