Cigarette Number Seven

in what my father called the 1959 roundup. Leftist intellectuals and, of course, Muslim Brothers, and others who had nothing to do with anything. My father was among the naive ones who managed to get arrested again after they were released in 1964, in what he called “the more famous political roundup.” He was reluctant to speak about it, yet when he did, it was always with the same smile. Prison nostalgia: a longing I never understood. I would draw the details out of him, trying to imagine what the cell looked like, how he slept, what he wore—trying to erase from my mind all clichés about prison. Did he wear a blue uniform like we saw in movies? He never told me. His stories were always about his fellow prisoners. I was a child and knew none of the names he mentioned.

But one story I’ve always remembered is that of Fouad Haddad, who wrote poetry. He slept in the top bunk and would hang upside down so my father would see his head from the bottom bunk. Hanging there, he stood his poetry on its head too: He always wrote the last lines of a new poem first. That story amused me. My father, on the other hand, was sad when he wrote. He rested his forehead on one hand while he wrote with the other.

When I sat on his lap, he would put his arm around me and keep on writing. Sometimes he would give me a kiss; sometimes I would scribble on the paper he was using in order to get his attention. He would laugh and say, “Scribble all you like. Rip up all the papers you want. That’s what I had you for. You rip away and I start again.” I would go quiet and watch him write, then climb down and go to my room.

I was deeply saddened when Abd al-Wahhab died. I thought I would mourn him alone. No one else in our home cared much for him. In all honesty, I didn’t like him on a personal level; I just liked the stories he shared and responded to. But then I was surprised when I found my father crying bitterly. He never read Abd al-Wahhab’s column, so why was he crying? I asked. He looked at me with annoyance: “It’s Abd al-Wahhab the musician who died, Nadia! Not Abd al-Wahhab Mutawei who writes the agony column!”

“Oh,” I replied, “the ‘Nagwa’ guy?”

“Nagwa” was the title of a poem that my father had listened to Abd al-Wahhab sing on a daily basis for years. The word means an intimate conversation, but it can also be a woman’s name, so I—not understanding a word of the poem back then—assumed it was about a woman.

If the sad night holds me, I am moved by Nagwa

It must have evoked a certain memory for my father. It’s a depressing poem that Abd al-Wahhab makes even more depressing in song. He must have been really moved by Nagwa. So it was that Abd al-Wahhab who died when I was nine years old, and not the one who entertained me with other people’s problems in the newspaper. Later, I would of course regret that short-lived relief, when I really discovered Abd al-Wahhab and became even more obsessed with his songs than my father was.

16

My teenage years were difficult. There was no one I was close to. I stood on my own two feet and pushed everyone away. Even my father. Most probably I was beginning to understand the problems of our home around that time; the painful silence between my parents, for instance. The love story that my father often retold with a bitter smile was present in my memory. My mother told the story too, blaming herself at every other sentence.

“I married your father against my mother’s wishes and paid the price. She was right. As you see, he does nothing but sit at his desk all day. He doesn’t even utter my name any more. I should have married a teacher or a lawyer. They would have at least talked to me.”

She always complained about my father’s silence, that he was constantly preoccupied by his papers and books, that he hardly spoke to her and didn’t involve himself in trivial household matters. Years and years later I understood—despite my difficult relationship with my mom, who used to say that I was “spoiled like my father”—that sometimes a woman needs a man who goes grocery shopping with her and argues with the vegetable seller over a few pennies for a kilo of potatoes. He was a cultured man with a superior intellect, as she used to say, but he never talked to her.

My father didn’t talk to me either during my teenage years. He was sometimes affectionate with me, reluctantly. I knew he was feeling affectionate when he called me “Nannous.” I would smile and say I was too old. Then he would put on a deep frown and say, “What do you mean too old? You’ll stay a little girl forever, even when you’re a hundred years old. Too old! You’ll always be my Nannous.” So I would surrender and go sit in my father’s arms as he went on reading, with a smile on his face. Other than that, I lived inside my own personal bubble. I would put on the headphones of my Walkman, a pretty red one that my father’s friend had gotten for me from the US. I would turn the volume up to its maximum and listen to rock music. The loud rhythms and guitar shocked my mother and soothed me.

I listened to Guns ’N’ Roses and Metallica and Bon Jovi, but also to ABBA, which my father liked. I knew the words to “Chiquitita” and would sing them when he could hear me so he would know I was no longer a child. I was listening to the same songs that a grown man like him liked. I