My father called me early one morning. “I’m going to the countryside tomorrow and you’re coming with me.”
I tried in vain to persuade him to postpone, so I could make travel arrangements, but he said, “We’ll go by car.”
Of course we’d go by car—I didn’t drive and he had stopped driving a while back. “What car, Baba? Who will drive?”
“We’ll get a driver,” he insisted.
I knew how much he loved road trips and how he used to take long ones when he lived abroad. I remembered when he took me and Mom to faraway summer holiday destinations and insisted on driving there. He used to say that a whole world went by outside a car’s window, and he liked to see that world so that one day he would return to it.
I booked a small car with a driver and headed the following morning to Heliopolis. My father came down with a small bag, his face full of enthusiasm. I knew this pre-travel enthusiasm quite well. But I was irritated already. I didn’t know why we were going or how many days we were going for. My father got into the car and proceeded to give the driver directions. Then he glued his face to the window and started to chat without looking at me. He talked about traveling by car, about trees and fields and cows, about narrow country roads and rural towns, about the coffeehouse on a street named after the post office, where he used to hang out as a teenager and which was no longer there. A modern multistory building stood in its place now. He talked about his teenage years, about his unrequited love for his friend’s sister and the notes he left at her door; about his grandfather, and about his uncle who had gone to Germany on a scholarship and come back a qualified doctor, but had also become arrogant and dull. He talked and talked, then went quiet for a few minutes as he stared out the window.
I yawned. I needed to get one hour of sleep before we got to the village. But I wasn’t allowed that hour.
“Wake up, don’t sleep,” said my father, shaking me awake. “I want to tell you about your hometown and your people. Wake up. You sleep for hours on end in Cairo. This is no time for sleeping.”
“But you’ve told me these stories a million times before,” I said. “Is it not enough for you that you’re dragging me at such short notice? Please let me have a little rest.”
“No, I won’t let you. Wake yourself up so you don’t arrive in the village with your eyes full of sleep.”
He returned to his never-ending stories: coffeehouses and schools and streets, the big house his grandfather built in Zagazig where his maternal uncle continued to live with his children until they were all married, and those who were widowed returned to the same house, and how proud his uncle was that he’d never left his father’s house, how he restored and renovated it every few years. And about his uncle’s wife and her big, fat butt. He laughed as he described how she would knock vases over and sweep dishes off tables when she tried to move around in a small space. So I joked about how all the women in our family seemed to share that attribute.
He talked and talked, then stopped and sighed. “Those were the days.” He said his village used to be a small hamlet, and when we finally got there, he added scathingly, “All towns have changed. Alexandria is not what it used to be. Mansura and Sohag now attract tourists. Everything has changed except in Zagazig, where every millimeter stays the same.”
I mumbled, “Nothing ever stays the same.”
We finally got to the house—my great-grandfather’s home that became my great-uncle’s home and was now transformed into the extended family home again. It resembled the house in Heliopolis that my grandfather had built for his children and grandchildren, and where my widowed father and aunts were now living.
We went in and were received by a straight-backed old woman wearing a black gallabiya with a pattern of blue flowers and a headscarf that only covered a small portion of her clean, cotton-like hair. My father hugged her and kissed her shoulder. I, of course, did not remember her.
“Rawya, do you remember my daughter Nadia?” he asked her.
She hugged me and said, with seeming familiarity, “Of course I remember you. You’ve grown up so much, Nadia!”
I smiled as she kissed me.
As we sat in the big reception hall, my father whispered to me that Rawya was his uncle’s eldest daughter. It was suffocatingly hot and there were many insects sticking to my skin. But in order to avoid trouble with my father, I tried not to look grumpy. There were several children playing in the courtyard. They wore dirty clothes, and looked like they would have been cleaner and more presentable at an earlier stage of the morning.
I asked the old woman if I could use the bathroom to wash off the dust and sweat from the road. She leaned on my arm and led me to the bathroom, then stood at the door and handed me a clean towel. The bathroom had the refreshing smell of old-fashioned soap. The tiles on the floor were old but spotless. “Have you finished college, Nadia?” the old lady asked me. I wasn’t sure how to address her—the Cairene word ‘tante’ would fall flat in this environment, and—as she was related to my father on his mother’s side—I didn’t know which would be more suitable, the word for maternal or paternal aunt. I opted for the latter, and said with a nervous smile, “Yes, Ammeto, I’ve finished.”
“And have you gotten married?”
“Not yet.” I didn’t dare
