Sitting under that impressive statue by the canal, I couldn’t have known that, many eventful years later, I would become even more adept at these thoughts. I couldn’t have known that, as I sat chain-smoking and contemplating the ceiling in my small studio—the smallest apartment in the world—I would still be at exactly the same spot.
My studio was almost unlit, tiny. It had no rooms. Just a few meters of space, a small sofa bed, two lamps that gave off a faint yellow light, a big comfortable sleep-inviting armchair, and a “wailing wall”—the large bathroom that was perfectly suited for locking oneself in to cry. Many people visited that place: friends and work colleagues. Dozens of friends and friends of friends used to stay over, in complex sleeping arrangements.
*
The first time my father came to visit, I cleaned the apartment and prepared a feast.
For two days I stood in the kitchen, making all his favorite dishes. I made rice with semolina, boiled in chicken broth, the way he liked it. The chicken was well marinated with all kinds of spices, except black pepper, which he was allergic to. I put a large onion in a clay pot, added carrots, peas, zucchini, and potatoes, drizzled everything with olive oil, and placed the pot in the oven until the vegetables were crisp and golden. All were relatively low-fat dishes that wouldn’t give him atheroma or threaten his weak heart. I cut the salad into big chunks—my father believed that small-cut vegetables lost their health benefits. He also liked mint leaves in his salad. I made fresh orange juice. I prepared everything. I compiled a playlist on my new laptop of songs by Abd al-Wahhab—his favorite musician—and waited for him.
While we ate, my father told me the story of how he met my mother. Whenever I teased him that it was a mistake, he would reply, laughing, that it was the mistake that gave me life.
With a smile full of nostalgia he began to speak:
“I was in Germany. I went there after the 1967 defeat, once I had been released from prison, and had written a book about all the traumas in my life. I left wanting nothing more to do with Egypt and lived like a drifter, working one day out of ten. At night I cried because I couldn’t go back. I missed Nasser’s funeral and, like all the other exiles, cried as I watched it on TV. Then one day, I found out from a friend that the novel I had written was finally being published in Egypt. I asked several friends to buy copies and keep them for me in case it sold out. Among those I asked was my niece, who wasted no time and went straight to the Cairo Book Fair. What I didn’t know then was that she had taken a friend from university along. They were young, early twenties, while I was well into my forties. A few days later, a week or so, I got a letter from Egypt. It was from a young woman, your cousin’s friend, who later became your mother, saying that she had read my book, was in love with me, and wanted to marry me. I was spellbound. I thought she must be hideous, with protruding teeth or something, or pretty but stupid. But still, I couldn’t resist. I replied, and we wrote to each other for over a year. She sent me her photo. She was so beautiful, much more beautiful than I could have imagined. And she was intelligent too.”
“So you fell in love with her?”
“Of course. I loved her very much, even before I met her. She was the fairy tale in my life—it was a story that could only happen in a novel. That in itself was enough for me to love her. I came back, we met, we got on with our lives, and we got married.”
“I have no idea how Grandma agreed to it, Baba.”
After a long laugh, he said, “Your grandmother was a powerful woman, but your mother even more so. When I went to propose, your grandmother told me, ‘Listen, son, you are a poor man, a piecemeal journalist, you don’t own an apartment, you’re always on the move between countries, so you’re not the settling type, and you’re more than twenty years older than my daughter, and—no offense intended—you have a criminal record. Let’s just say that I have no daughters available for marriage.’
“Of course, your mother heard that and went berserk. Yet she had a plan. She stayed home for a week, and then she called me and we agreed to meet the following day. She left the house, we met, and we went to the marriage registrar. We got married without telling anyone. She said that was the only way, and I guess she was right. Look, at the time she was definitely right. She then left me and went back home. There, she placed our marriage certificate on the dining table before your grandmother and told her she now had two options. One was to accept the marriage: we would have a small wedding and avoid a scandal. Or I would go and claim her by the power of law. I was, after all, her husband. Once the fights, abuse, and breakdowns had subsided, your grandmother agreed to the first option. We had a wedding and were officially married. So there you go.”
I was mesmerized by that story. I couldn’t believe how strong-willed and capable my mother was,
