A Border Passage: From Cairo to America-A Woman's Journey 0374115184, 9780374115180

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AMERICA—A WOMAN'S JOURNEY

U.S.A. $24.00

Canada $38.95

Leila

Ahmed grew up

'50s in a family that political.

in Cairo in the

was eagerly and passionately

Although many

in the Egyptian

were firmly opposed

classes

1940s and

to change, the

upper

Ahmeds

were proud supporters of independence. But

when

the Revolution arrived, the family's opposi-

tion to Nasser's policies led to persecutions that

would throw

their lives into turmoil

and

set their

youngest child on a journey across cultures. Hers is

a

life

lived through

some of

the major transfor-

mations of our century: the end of colonialism and of the European empires, the creation of Israel, the of Arab nationalism, and the breakdown of the

rise

had thrived

multireligious society that

in Egypt.

S3 murr van-

Through jobs in

university in

England and teaching

Br

Ahmed

a

Abu Dhabi and America,

Leila

sought to define herself— and to understand the world defined

her— as

Egyptian, and an Arab.

a

woman,

a

how

Muslim, an

Her search touched on

questions of language and nationalism, on differ-

ences between men's and women's ways of knowing,

and on

She arrived

vastly different interpretations of Islam. in the

end

at

an ardent but

critical

fem-

inism and an insider's understanding of multiculturalism and religious pluralism. In language that vividly evokes the lush

summers of her Cairo youth

and the harsh barrenness of the Arabian Leila all

to

Ahmed

desert,

has given us a story that can help us

understand the passages between cultures

that so affect

our global

society.

£22

WITHDRAWN No longer the property of tim -M Boston Public Library.

"

Sale of this material benefited flit Ubrvf

A

Border Passage

Also by Leila Ahmed Women and Gender The

Historical Roots of a

in Islam:

Modern Debate

Border Passage From Cairo

A

to

America-

Woman's Journey

Leila

Ahmed

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

NEW YORK

AL BR

HQ1793 .Z75 A55 1999

Farrar, Straus and Giroux 19 Union Square West, New York 10003

Copyright

©

1999 by Leila

Ahmed

All rights reserved

Distributed in

Canada by Douglas

&

Mclntyre Ltd.

Printed in the United States of America Designed by Lisa Stokes First edition,

1999

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ahmed,

A

Leila.

border passage

/

Leila

cm. ISBN 0-374-11518-4

Ahmed.

p.

(alk.

paper)

Women — Egypt — Biography. 3. Muslim women — Egypt — Biography. 4. Women in Islam — Egypt. 1.

5.

Ahmed,

Egyptians

Leila.

2.

— United States — Biography.

HQ1793.Z75A55

6.

Feminism.

I.

Title.

1999

305.42'092— dc21 [B]

98-39027

The quotations from Rumi on pages 1, 130, 155, and 306 are taken from Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved, translated by Jonathan Star (New York, 1997); the web page of Handan Oz; and The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, A. J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson (San Francisco, 1996). Grateful acknowledgment is made to Rhonda Cobham and Merle Collins for permission to quote from "Strangers in a Hostile Landscape" by Meiling Jin, first published in Watchers and Seekers: Creative Writing by Black Women in Britain (London: The Women's Press Ltd., 1987).

s6 KNOWLEDGMENTS (

I

want

to

thank the University of Massa-

chusetts at Amherst, and Clare Hall, the University of Cambridge, for a

Samuel

F.

Conti Faculty Fellowship and for a Visiting Fellowship, respectively, both essential to the completion of this book. Thanks also to

and family on both sides of the Atwhose interest and support were just

friends lantic

as essential.

Many

thanks to

my

editors at Farrar,

Straus and Giroux, Jonathan Galassi and

Lauren Osborne.

Some names and

the details of people's lives

have been changed to protect privacy.

Contents

Tart IN •

1

I

THE HOUSE OF MEMORY

1

•

EGYPT:

THE BACKGROUND

3

•2-

FROM COLONIAL TO POSTCOLONIAL

32

•3IN

EXPECTATION OF ANGELS

47

•4-

TRANSITIONS

68

•5-

HAREM

93

•6-

SCHOOLDAYS

135

•7-

SUEZ

158

•8-

THE HAREM PERFECTED?

179

Contents

viii

"Part II

"RUNNING FROM THE FLAMES THAT LIT THE SKY"

195

•9-

PENALTIES OF DISSENT •

10-

IN •

11

THE GROVES OF WHITE ACADEME

206

•

ON BECOMING AN ARAB •

197

243

12-

FROM ABU DHABI TO AMERICA Hyilogue CAIRO MOMENTS

271

299

IN THE

HOUSE OF MEMORY

"To hear

the song of the reed

Everything you have ever known

must be

left

behind."

Rumi

Background

(

27ue

Sgyft-.

IT

WAS AS

IF there

the era of

my

were

to life itself a quality of

music

in that time,

childhood, and in that place, the remote edge of

Cairo. There the city petered out into a scattering of villas leading into tranquil country fields.

On

the other side of our house was the

profound, unsurpassable quiet of the desert.

There was,

to begin with, always the

than a mere breath having

its

friends day,

own music,

(when we

make

— of the wind its

left in

own way the

sound

— sometimes no more

in the trees,

of conversing.

summers

each variety of tree I

knew them

for Alexandria

I

all like

would, the

the round of the garden saying goodbye to the trees),

last al-

though none more intimately than the two trees on either side of the corner bedroom

I

shared with Nanny.

On

one side was the

barely perceptible breath of the mimosa, which, strong,

window

On

would scratch

lightly

with

the wind grew

the other side was the dry, faintly rattling shuffle of the long-

nights the street

window

facing the street.

lamp cast the shadows of the slender

calyptus leaves onto

I

when

thorns at the shutters of the

facing the front of the house, looking out onto the garden.

leaved eucalyptus that stood by the

fall

its

silky,

my bedroom

wall,

my own

On

hot

twirling eu-

secret cinema.

I

would

asleep watching those dancing shadows, imagining to myself that

saw a house

in

them and people going about

their lives.

They would

4

Leila

appear

at the

Ahmed

door or windows of their shadow house and talk and

come out and do

things on the balcony.

would go

I

forward to finding out what had happened next in their I

bed looking

to

lives.

loved the patterns of light cast by leaves on the earth and

I

loved

being in them, under them. The intricate, gently shifting patterns that the flame tree cast where the path widened toward the garden gate,

me

fading and growing strong again as a cloud passed, could hold still,

totally lost, for long

moments.

Almost everything then seemed sounds that its

terrors,

the karawan, a bird

have

its

own

own lilt: made audible

beat,

sweetness of being, others that

distilled the

its

The cascading cry of heard but never saw, came only in the dusk. Its descending down the scale was like the pure

and sounds

long melancholy

to

I

call

for everything between.

expression of lament at the

fall

of things,

all

endings that the end of

light presaged.

Then

there was the music of the street beyond the garden hedge

in the day, not noisy

but

alive,

between long

intervals of silence, with

the sounds of living. People walking, greeting one another, the clip-

clop of a donkey, sometimes of a horse. Street vendors' calls

— "tama-

a-tim" for tomatoes, "robbabe-e-eccia-a" for old clothes and furniture.

And

the sound, occasionally, of cars, though rarely enough for us to

own car. Our when the car was

be able to detect the horn and the engine even of our

we could, still almost two miles away. That was how Frankie died in the end, running out as he always did to greet my father when he arrived in dog, Frankie, could detect

it

long before

the car driven by a uniformed government chauffeur. Frankie's front

paw

got run over, leaving

him whimpering about

soon chewed through. Father put a guard on too late; Frankie got gangrene and died.

down, although

Then

this

was kept from

me

More

in a cast that

mouth but

his

precisely,

it

he

was

he was put

at the time.

there was the sound sometimes, in the earliest morning, of

the reed piper walking past our house. His pipe sounded private, like

someone singing speech, like a pipe and one

himself.

to

human

knew

it

voice.

to

A

simple, lovely sound, almost like

He would

say "good morning" with his

be "good morning."

When

he passed,

it

would

A something of

feel as if

one's

Years later is

5

sweetness had momentarily graced

infinite

and then faded

life

Border Passage

irretrievably away.

discover that in Sufi poetry this music of the reed

I'd

the quintessential music of loss and I'd feel, learning this, that

known

always

to

it

be

so. In the

poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi, the classic

master-poet of Sufism, the song of the reed

human

we

condition, haunted as

its

the metaphor for our

we know not

quite what.

bed and fashioned into a pipe, the reed forever laments

the living earth that

breathed into

it,

haunted by

lives

is

so often are by a vague sense of

longing and of nostalgia, but nostalgia for

Cut from

I'd

its

once knew, crying out, whenever

it

ache and

loss,

we

its

yearning and

too, says

loss.

We

life

is

too live our

Rumi, remember a condition of

completeness that we once knew but have forgotten that we ever

knew. The song of the reed and the music that haunts our

music of

loss,

That's

lives is

the

of loss and of remembrance.

how

was

it

in the beginning,

how

it

was

to

come

to con-

sciousness in this place and this time and in a world alive, as

it

seemed, with the music of being.

And memory,

yet also, as it

is

begins. Rather,

I

sit

here now, in these halls, in this house of

not in those days and those it

begins for

me

that I'd begin to follow the path that

so

politics that

I

fell in

it

is

that era

lives.

is,

For

it

would bring me

lives that

I

was only then

— exactly here.

must begin.

in the last days of the British

when

Empire.

My

childhood

the words "imperialism" and "the West" had not

yet acquired the connotations they have today

come, that

story

with those years and their upheaval and with the

framed our

grew up

my

that

with the disruption of that world and

the desolation that for a time overtook our

And

moments

mere synonyms

— they had not yet be-

for "racism," "oppression,"

and

"ex-

ploitation."

Or, at any rate, they had not yet tual, professional,

entirely ordinary,

become

so

among

the intellec-

and governing classes of Egypt. In Cairo

among

it

was

those classes, to grow up speaking English

6

Leila

Ahmed

or French or both, and quite ordinary to attend an English or French school.

It

was taken

for granted

much

there was unquestionably ilization of

to

Europe and the great

human advancement. No litically

among

who

the people

raised us that

admire in and learn from the

civ-

Europe had made

strides that

in

matter that the European powers were po-

oppressive and indeed blatantly unjust; nor did

seem

it

to

matter that the very generation which raised us were themselves locked in struggle with the British for Egypt's political independence.

There seemed

be no contradiction for them between pursuing

to

in-

dependence from the European powers and deeply admiring European

institutions, particularly

scientific

democracy, and Europe's tremendous

breakthroughs.

common

This was the

My schoolmates

at the

ethos

among

other Middle Easterners, too.

English School in Cairo included Syrians, Leb-

anese, and Palestinians from the

same broad

mine, and their attitudes toward English, the attitudes of our parents.

school years was Jean Said,

like

class

background as

mine, no doubt reflected

One of my two best friends through my who would later write Beirut Fragments;

she was the younger sister of Edward Said, the well-known theorist

and

literary critic.

They were Christians of

Muslims of Egypt, but

their attitudes

from ours. Our very names Lily,

Palestine and

we were

were not discernibly different

— Edward, Jean, and my own school name, my given name — plainly suggest our

an anglicized version of

parents' admiration of things European.

At home

my

parents' heroes were

Gandhi and,

to a lesser extent,

Nehru, as well as the leaders of Egypt's own struggle for independence, such as Saad Zaghloul. Egypt in the decades of

youth and young adulthood

ahead of India

in fact, slightly

democratic

rule.

pendence from chy,

and

— that

By the

in

is,

its

parents'

the 1920s, 30s and 40s

had won

partial inde-

Britain, established itself as a constitutional

installed

its first

— was,

pursuit of independence and

early twenties Egypt

democratically elected government.

government believed that education was key bility as

my

monar-

The new

to ensuring Egypt's sta-

a democracy and began at once to open

more

free schools,

A

By the

for girls as well as boys.

university

opened

Border Passage

7

late twenties Egypt's first

modern

doors.

its

For three decades the country was a democracy. Then came the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, which drove the old governing classes out of power and put an end to their dreams. Democracy was abolished and Egypt was declared a socialist state, drawing inspiration

now

Soviet Union.

its

political

not from the democracies of the West but from the

The

revolution had inaugurated a

new and

fiercer type

of anti-imperialist, anti-Western rhetoric,

which would become the

dominant rhetoric of the postrevolutionary

age.

Already in the

thirties

and

forties events

had begun

to prepare

the ground for revolution as well as for a deepening anger at and

disillusionment with the Western powers. Egypt, like

many

countries,

was caught up

in the eddies of the

Great Depression, which overtook Europe and America and which

came

in

Egypt just as the

new

graduates of the expanded schooling

were entering the workforce, looking for the professional opportunities their

education had promised. Already, even before

had been experiencing

its first

glut of school

this,

Egypt

and college graduates.

Frustrated in their hopes of upward mobility, increasingly alienated

from the government and

its rival

parties, these aspiring

members

of

the middle and lower-middle classes began to turn to alternative organizations of opposition.

They turned, above

all,

to the

Muslim

Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, founded in the late twenties, aimed to institute Islamic

lingering

and

government

in

still-palpable British

Egypt and free the country from

domination. The Brotherhood grew

rapidly through the thirties, in particular

among

those educated and

alienated lower-middle classes. While the government merely talked

about improving conditions, the Brotherhood got down to work raising charitable funds from

its

members and

establishing free health clinics

and other much-needed centers providing

As the Brotherhood's influence grew, imperialism and the

its

West became more

vital assistance

and

relief.

profoundly negative view of familiar

and widespread.

Leila

8

which had hitherto kept

In the thirties, too, Egypt,

from the Arab East, began

Ahmed

to find itself

its

distance

more and more drawn

into

negotiations around the question of Palestine. European immigration to Palestine

surged with the

rise of

Fascism

in

Europe, and reports

of Palestinian uprisings and brutal British reprisals were

more frequently

in the

more and

news. Egyptian sympathy for the Palestinians

grew, as did outrage at the flagrancy of imperialist injustice.

The Mus-

lim Brotherhood also took up the Palestinian cause. Already, then, Egyptian attitudes toward the

Then,

to radically change.

altogether bleaker and

West were beginning

in the forties, cataclysmic events cast

more

lurid light

on Europe and

an

its civilization.

Postwar revelations about the death camps in Germany and America's dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

now

called into

question the very notion of European and Western civilization. Many,

who had once so admired ask in what human values,

including people of the class and generation the West, found themselves compelled to

indeed in what garbling of

was

after all

tion leading

Europe

values, this civilization of

grounded. Toward what abyss was

this flagship civiliza-

humanity?

Such events

precipitated a sense of shock and revulsion. Probably

no one gave voice tling as

human

more succinctly than Gandhi, wres-

to this sense

he was with Western

lence. 'There have

and the new order of

civilization

been cataclysmic changes

in the world/'

he

vio-

said,

responding to news of the atom bomb.

"It

American friends that the atom bomb

bring ahimsa [nonviolence]

as nothing else can. will so disgust the

time being. This

It will, if it is

world that

is

it

very like a

will

meant

will turn

man

the point of nausea and turning

will the

effect of disgust

power

away from violence

for the

its

glutting himself with dainties to

is

to return

over. Precisely in the

with

same

world return to violence with renewed zeal after the is

worn

out."

Germany were not merely lives.

destructive

that

away from them only

redoubled zeal after the effect of nausea

manner

it

has been suggested by

Hiroshima and the gas chambers of

distant events without effect

Egyptian memoirs from that era record

how

on Egyptian

these events indel-

A ibly

marked the

impact on ers to

my

Border Passage

writer's consciousness. In

mother. She became a

our house they had a direct

pacifist.

take a solemn oath, which we were

would never serve

that they

as

they kept. In the Suez conflict,

he served

at the front as

9

She required

all

summoned

combatants in any war.

when one

an ambulance

of

It

my broth-

to witness,

was an oath

my brothers was

drafted,

driver.

The final blow that would trigger the revolution come with the founding of Israel, swiftly followed by

in

Egypt would

Egypt's

and the

Arabs' defeat by Israel in the war of 1948. Egypt's defeat, profoundly galling to the army,

was rumored

to

have been caused by corruption

at the highest levels of the military establishment, it

was

said, in collusion

members

of which,

with the king, had pocketed the funds

in-

tended for military supplies, procuring instead, and passing off on the army, cheap, defective equipment.

The feat

revolution of 1952 was planned in the aftermath of that de-

by a group of young, bright, capable army

officers

smarting from

the humiliation of a defeat suffered, they believed, entirely because

of the corruption of the establishment.

One

of these

young

officers

was Gamal Abdel Nasser. Another

was Anwar al-Sadat. Egyptians would take pride in the fact that Egypt's revolution was a bloodless one.

While other revolutions

olution, for example,

which came soon

in the region

— the

Iraqi rev-

after the Egyptian

— would

carve out a bloody path, in Egypt the royal family was treated with civility.

The deposed King Farouk even received

a twenty-one-gun sa-

lute as his yacht sailed out of his palace harbor in Alexandria to exile in Italy.

I

recall following its progress across the horizon. Violence,

Egyptians said with pride back then, was not the Egyptian way. Egyptians, they said,

who would lution

had a tradition of abhorring violence. Even people

eventually

would

come

to hate

Nasser and the Egyptian Revo-

give the revolutionaries credit for having

honored

this

tradition of nonviolence.

Following the revolution, the state took control of the media and

10

Leila

Ahmed

motion a propaganda machine that

set in

tirelessly

disseminated

its

new message of socialism and anti-imperialism, and also of something quite new to Egypt at the time, Arab nationalism. Today we are so used to the idea of Egypt as "Arab" that it seems unimaginable that Egyptians ever thought of themselves as anything else. In fact,

I

memoir.

this

made

It

this

assumption myself when

was only when

make sense

that

tory of our

Arab

I

my own

was compelled

I

first

began writing

discordant memories failed to

to look

identity. Eventually

nature of our Arab identity as

I

more

began

carefully into the his-

to see the constructed

was formed and re-formed

it

to serve

the political interests of the day. For example, during the years of

my

adolescence and early adulthood, Egypt underwent several changes in

name,

when

the media, the try's

Under Nasser, hammered home in

reflecting the shifting definitions of our identity.

the idea that

name

briefly,

we were Arab was

incessantly

word "Egypt" was removed altogether from the coun-

— and we became the United Arab Republic as we united,

with Syria. Through the Nasser era the country retained that

name, even though the union with Syria dissolved within

a couple of

years. Eventually, in a sign of shifting political winds, Sadat brought

back the word "Egypt" and we became the Arab Republic of Egypt.

Of

course, the issue of identity, a profoundly ambiguous matter for

Egypt, was inescapably and deeply political. Sadat,

who

published

his autobiography during his presidency, actually called his

book

In Search of Identity. If

the president of Egypt himself, no less, was searching for his

identity,

no wonder that

I,

years in that era of revolution,

and conflicted and, forever tainty

my

crossing the threshold into

would

after,

teenage

find myself profoundly confused

haunted by feelings of deep uncer-

and a mysteriously guilt-ridden sense of ambiguity. Identity was

not simply a matter of rhetoric and politics but something that directly

touched

my own

life

While Jean

in personal if unarticulated ways.

Said was a Palestinian Christian,

was an Egyptian Jew. The new crystallized in those years

other best friend, Joyce Alteras,

definition of our identity that

had

sensed, for the Jews of Egypt.

my

direct implications, as

I

was being

am

sure

I

A But how

so firmly fixes

hostage, as

its

it

if

not as Arab?

has been in our time, to a politics that

identity as Arab,

we might

easily see that,

and geography, there are

basis of the country's history

number

11

might Egyptians define themselves,

else

Were Egypt not

Border Passage

on the

in fact quite a

of other ways of conceiving of Egyptian identity.

Egyptians, for instance, might, with equal accuracy, define them-

Or

selves as African, Nilotic, Mediterranean, Islamic, or Coptic. all,

or any combination

as

the above. Or, of course, as Egyptian:

of,

pertaining to the land of Egypt.

Pertaining to the land of Egypt. Pertaining

nous ancient Egyptian word is

called in the Bible.

for this land

"Musur"

—

to

—

to use the indige-

Kemi. "Mizraim," as

it

to the Assyrians. "Aigyptos" (from Hi-

kuptah, one of the names of Memphis), as the Greeks called

it,

when

Egypt became a province of their Hellenic Empire. "Aegyptus" to the

Romans, when we became part of

when

they, too,

"Masr," as

we

their empire. "Misr" to the Arabs,

conquered Egypt. "Masr," as we Egyptians

call

our capital

"al-Qahira" to Arabs.

A city

too.

call

it.

Masr. "Cairo" to English speakers,

founded, in

fact,

by the Arabs a

little

over

a thousand years ago, soon after they

conquered the country. Founded

on a

Memphis, the ancient

site fifteen

Egypt

—a

miles or so north of

city dating

nufer," City of the

They came tentions.

in,

from about 3000 bce. "Memphis" from "Men-

Good. the revolutionaries, with high ideals and good in-

They simply wanted, they

the corruption with which said,

it

was

said, to cleanse society

rife to

class oppression that

had forever plagued

this country,

tremes of wealth and poverty. This would be a era of equality and opportunity for failed; socialism

now was

all.

the only answer.

their wealth stripped

new

injustices of

with

The

old,

ex-

its

era, they said,

Democracy, they

said,

an

had

unscrupulous rich

from them; their properties would

be nationalized and put to use for the benefit of land they

and bring

an end. The revolution, they

would sweep out the old corrupt order and end the

would have

capital of

all

the people.

The

owned would be taken from them (anything over two hun-

dred feddans

— about two hundred acres) and distributed

to the peas-

12

Leila

antry.

And

Ahmed

owned would be taken over and run by

the factories they

the government for the benefit, now, of

Of course

all

the people.

the old upper classes and propertied middle classes did

not like losing what they had

owned and

and the new laws nationalizing

this

did not like the revolution

and that and stripping them of

the wealth they had inherited or themselves built up. But there were

many members

of those classes, too,

who

disliked

and feared what

the revolutionaries were doing, not out of greed but out of political

They believed

conviction.

that the revolutionaries'

of sus-

first act,

pending and then abolishing democracy, augured ominously

for the

country's future.

The

revolution did in fact bring about

tant changes.

who

all

this policy

had

its

qualified,

both

costs, in the

and impor-

positive

immediately instituted free schooling for

It

college education for

though even

some

all

and

men and women.

free

Al-

enormous overcrowding

of schools, colleges, and universities and a resulting dramatic decline in educational standards,

it

had the extremely

significant effect of

opening up educational and professional opportunities for

and

it

all

classes,

brought about a class mobility and a democratization of wealth

unprecedented perhaps,

it

in Egypt's recent history.

Even more fundamentally,

effected a transformation of consciousness

and expectation

by making equality of opportunity a basic assumption of society. To be sure, though, Egypt continues to be a society marked by vast inequalities

— no

less vast today, perhaps,

But gradually

it

became apparent

side to the revolution.

Soon enough

with Nasser emerging from the sole ruler,

whom

it

initial

than in the old days.

that there

became

was

a

more somber

a blatant dictatorship,

group of revolutionaries as the

no one could challenge or

defy. Soon, too, corrup-

became the order of the day at the hands of a new ruling class, of them military men, who had come in on the coattails of the revolutionaries. Political repression became the norm and Egypt's prisons began to bulge with political prisoners. The mukhabarat, a tion

many

Soviet-style

network of informers and secret police whose purpose was

to ferret out critics society.

and

dissidents,

became

a pervasive presence in

A

Border Passage

13

This was not what the young revolutionaries had meant to happen. But here

it

was;

had happened.

it

This darker side of the revolution would in due course affect

own family. The problems that were just beginning when

I

college in

left for

the time

I

England

to

touch our

my

lives

had become, by

in the late fifties

my

returned, full-blown. These years following

return to

Egypt were to be, for me, quite crucial. They marked the end, in important ways, of the enormously privileged taken for granted. They changed

me

who

I

years

became. The story of

my

changed Cairo world

In the

my

when "work" was

reading, thinking,

and

writing.

I

I

which

to

remember

bus stop

A

immediately loved.

I

trudging,

at the

time

remember,

read him, holing up in

first

and

my work and

returned, those under-

I

come

to

seem

the pleasure of immersing myself

of English literature. As

whose books

life

politics of these years.

graduate years at Cambridge would quickly time

damp

until then

then, begins with these crucible

life,

and the circumstances and

had

I

At once turning point

forever.

and crucible, they fundamentally shaped

life

it

when

idyllic.

day in

all

discovered the riches

I

was Thomas Hardy, above

all,

must have been autumn when

It

my room

A

I

with an armful of his books, for

leaves underfoot, back

and forth from the

corner of the Girton woods in between hours of read-

ing him. There were squirrels in the woods, red squirrels always fleeing,

vanishing at the sound of a footfall.

rang with the

call

Dark and narrow, courtyard.

and

A

of cuckoos, which its

one

in the spring the

could hear in

I

one virtue was that

great tree stood to

in the center

And

side,

were rose beds that

it

my room

woods

— E22.

looked out on a lovely

changing with the seasons,

filled

with color in spring and

summer. The rooms below me were occupied by Muriel Bradbrook, the Shakespearean scholar,

been

told

when

I

arrived,

who was

also

my

director of studies. I'd

by way of warning perhaps and as a piece

of college legend, that the previous occupant of

my room had one

day

unthinkingly emptied a teapot out her window, only to learn that Miss

Bradbrook, sitting out on a deck chair, had been

down

below.

14

Ahmed

Leila

The way Hardy wrote were

of nature, the earth, the trees, as

living beings, gave voice to a sense I'd

had of them growing up,

a rather lonely child in a house encircled by a garden

of enfolding trees had given lace.

Perhaps

it

gland that drew the

way

was

me

me

they

if

whose

variety

nurturance, companionship, and so-

also Hardy's acute sense of the loveliness of to him.

The sheer

En-

physical loveliness of England,

the earth here transformed itself through the seasons, subtly

and moment by moment and yet

new and

also spectacularly,

marvelous. Even winter with

was mysterious and

its

was

to

snows and early

me

lovely.

Other things too had made Hardy particularly resonant His sense of some force

— nature,

society,

against

man, fundamentally primed

voice to

my own

forces, before

to

something

which we were

as nothing.

Often

is

And

had etched

had loved

for the

same

that too

conformed

itself in

Maugham whose

had been Somerset sorts of reasons. I'd

sex

it is

at the heart of

to the pattern and understanding of

that

and stupid

Hardy,

too, in

the destruction that unfolds through the book. life

set

crush and defeat him, gave

or something to do with society's rules about sex that

it

me.

for

— inexorably

sense, then, of our puniness before blind

In earlier years

quite

nightfalls

me.

books

come on them among

I

all

the other English books that lined our shelves at home: scientific

books, novels, the works of Dickens, Thackeray.

I

don't

know how

I

would have survived the loneliness of my teenage years without the companionship of such books, read

to the

the trees, alternately dirge and solace.

leaning on of the I

my

windowsill,

moon, and the

when

pull of

some

could turn to and bury myself

Sometimes from

all

my window

And

of the house toward side.

was a

in

evenings,

between me, the

vast abyss below

book

spell

that

in. I

saw, across the stretch of wasteland

men

the dead, borne on

some

sound of only the wind

remember moonlit

that stood

between us and the next neighbors, line, defecating.

I

burial

crouching by the railway

litters,

passed by on that side

ground beyond

sight

Sometimes there would be no one following the

on the desert

litter,

the dead

person being someone destitute and without kin, the bearers in that case

literally

jogging with their burden, hurrying, the customary rhyth-

A

Border Passage

mic chant "innana min Allah wa

and

to

him we

was how its

I

return")

illayhi ragi

it

was

un" ("We are from God

— but

now know,

I

in the years

my

is

different in

when

I

facts.)

returned from Cambridge that

what had been only vague forebodings took on that overtook

breath. (That

of course memories are the stories of our

consciousness rather than just "objective"

But

c

pounded out of them with each

heard that phrase, which, as

"correct" form

15

parents' lives

and the

gloom

reality in the

now

air of desolation that

permanently overhung Ain Shams, our family home.

Ain Shams (the name of the suburb the

name

in

which we

lived as well as

of our house) had already in that era begun to change for

reasons that had nothing to do with politics.

What had been

my

in

childhood a remote, sparsely populated suburb was, by the time of

my

return, being rapidly assimilated into the chaotic,

crowded urban

sprawl of Cairo. Previously our house had been bordered by lush and tranquil countryside

on one side and by desert on the other, the

dreamlike outlines of palm groves lightly gracing the horizon.

A single

road, lined with a scattering of garden-enclosed houses, linked

the

to

it

city.

What we had most loved about our house, its most remarkable own eyes and everyone else's, had been its garden.

feature in our

Besides being enormous by Cairo standards, in its variety of

shrubs and trees

tamarind, oleander

— and

in its

among

family, friends,

legendary gardens.

which made

it

On

was marvelously

rich

— pine, eucalyptus, apricot, mango, clam— bougainvillea,

winding paths and arbors and

bering plants, brilliant and fragile

was,

it

roses,

its

wisteria. It

and even casual

visitors,

one of Cairo's

the other hand, the suburb where

possible for us to have so large a garden,

remote and distinctly unfashionable edge of the

city.

we

lived,

was on the

Nearly

schoolmates lived in elegant apartments in the fashionable

all

my

districts

of central Cairo or else in villas with town-sized gardens in the similarly

exclusive Heliopolis

—

districts that

were the equivalent,

Park Avenue in Manhattan or of Scarsdale, whereas we were, in Brooklyn. Cairo, of course, eval core,

its

ancient

sites,

and

its

is

not

New

York.

great spiritual

lived, as

With

hubs

say, of

its

it

medi-

— shrines

to

16

Leila

Ahmed

which people have flocked over centuries it is

a city

ered;

and

whose geography, all

spiritual

somehow, even

of this

as they flock to

and

historical,

is

subliminally,

if

experience of growing up in Cairo. At Ain

Lourdes

complexly

lay-

part of the

is

Shams we had, each within

ten minutes' walk of our house, the obelisk of ancient Heliopolis,

standing in the place in which

thousands of years

sycamore (with, beside

it

it

had stood since

and the ancient

earlier,

it

was erected spreading

tree, a great,

now, a small church), where, legend has

it,

Mary halted to rest with Jesus and Joseph on their flight into Egypt. Our house, then, standing as it did at the intersection of country, desert, and city, stood also at the edge and confluence of these many worlds and histories.

Ain Shams was

seems

It

way

in this

that even geographically

one world. Or rather

The was he

for

whom

look back, that

as not quite to belong to

to belong, at once, to all of

original conception of this garden

he who, before

I

quintessentially a place of borders and

was so placed

it

now, as

entirely apt

them.

had been

my

father's. It

having a wonderful garden had been a priority and

his marriage,

had bought the land and planned and

planted the garden. Throughout our childhoods

my

albeit always in friendly fashion, over the subject.

more

parents bickered,

Mother would com-

plain that she

wanted

would ask

wasn't worth the inconvenience of living where

to

we

if it

any

to live in a

central location,

and Father

we

did

have such a garden. Then he would appeal to us, the children, and

But even Mother was

invariably took his side.

in her protests, for she herself

than that, the garden and the cultivation of the entire meditative

mood

less

than halfhearted

was by then an avid gardener. More

of Ain Shams, a

its

loveliness,

mood

and indeed

of garden and read-

became her domain, a realm sustained by her

ing and imagination,

involvement. It

was hard, returning from Cambridge,

garden had become as ertheless, while they its

air of

my

were

parents' alive,

home

Within the house

if

like a sea against

my

how

disheveled the

subsided into decay. Nev-

Ain Shams would continue

enclosure and seclusion as

urban sprawl beating

to see

to retain

holding off the encroaching

it.

parents lived from day to day, disoriented,

A like

Border Passage

people whose ship had foundered.

looked as

if

herself.

And

affected

my

17

My mother in

particular often

she didn't quite recognize the world in which she found

was indeed a quite

it

different world, for the revolution

family in fundamental and irreparable ways.

my parents' difficulties were position my father had taken on the

cally in this period,

quence of the

Most

criti-

the direct consebuilding of

Aswan

High Dam.

A distinguished

engineer, Father, previously chairman of the Nile

Water Control Board, was chairman of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission when he opposed the building of the High Dam. Nasser and the government rejected Father's views, but Father would not be turned away nor would he be silenced. In

book about

his views,

fact,

would today

My

it

father's reasons for

call ecological.

movement and power

now

the very has.

It

to write a

which the government then promptly im-

pounded, ordering him neither to speak nor the subject.

he went on

But

in the

efforts to stop the building of the

which would become the

first

any further on

dam were what we

in those days there

word had not

was

to write

opposing the

was no ecology

meaning and

yet acquired the

mid-1950s that Father began

dam. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring,

well-known work

to

sound a warning

note about ecological destruction, was not published until 1962. so

my

father, with his forecasts

his

about the consequences of the

— most of which, incidentally, have proved

to

be correct

And dam

— was a lone

voice in the wilderness.

There were many reasons that he opposed the construction of the

dam. The

first

was that Egypt would

lose the Nile

silt,

that

silt

of

proverbial fertility brought annually by the fast-flowing waters of the

Nile in flood, spread on waters.

With the dam

the world's largest ser).

its

banks, and

this silt

man-made

left

would sink

there by the receding

to the

bottom of the

lake (to be called, of course,

Lake Nas-

Henceforth, consequently, Egypt would have to rely on

chemical

fertilizer, as

indeed

it

fish

artificial

does today. In addition, before the

dam, the swift-flowing waters of the Nile organisms that fed the

lake,

in flood

brought with them

of the eastern Mediterranean and contrib-

uted to sustaining the very livingness of the sea and

its

plant and

18

Ahmed

Leila

animal

life.

would be held back by the giant dam.

All of this, too,

series of smaller

dams, on the other hand, which Father recom-

mended, would have had causing none of

A

its

the benefits of one colossal

all

problems. Father's plan would have

dam

made

while

possible

the control and regulation of the flooding river, but without disrupting

and

vital

its

life-sustaining processes.

With the Aswan High Dam,

Father also argued, there would be a dramatic disease bilharzia

work with water

among

rise in the snail-borne

those whose livelihoods required them to

— the Egyptian peasantry. The fast-flowing waters of

the Nile in flood had kept the disease in check by annually flushing the snails out to sea. Furthermore, according to Father's calculations, there would even be an for in

would create

it

a

enormous

huge

what was one of the

lake, a

loss of

water because of the dam,

body of water with a vast surface,

hottest, driest regions of the world; the rate

of water loss through evaporation would be enormous. In addition, the geological composition of the earth south of Aswan, where the

would form, was such that the

lake

of the loss.

lake's walls

would seep

enormous pressure on them, causing further

And

so on, for this

is

only a partial

list

as a result

significant water

of the

damage Father

foresaw.

He

felt

he could not obey Nasser's ban against

on the matter of the

his speaking out

Nile: the cost of his silence to Egypt,

was too high. He believed

it

was

he

felt,

his duty to alert people, particularly

the scientific community, to these catastrophic problems and to do

everything in his power to stop the dam's construction. Prevented

from publishing

in Egypt,

he took the only other course open

he went to London, where he delivered a paper with

to

him:

his findings at

the Institute of Civil Engineers, of which he was a long-standing

member. The

To

institute published

it

forthwith.

Father's mind, his paper, full of mathematical calculations,

measurements of water volume, evaporation so on,

dence important ser.

rates, soil erosion,

was a presentation of meticulously calculated

to the future of Egypt, not a political attack

For Nasser, however, the

dam was

and

scientific evi-

on Nas-

a political symbol, a symbol,

A among other things, own important role

Border Passage

19

of Egypt's defiance of imperialism and of Nasser's in Egypt's political future. His nationalization of

the Suez Canal in 1956, that

supreme act of challenge

to imperialism,

had been undertaken, as he had declared in his nationalization speech, in order to use the canal's revenues to build the High

(once America had reneged on

its

promise to finance

it).

Dam

Moreover,

and grandiosity was emblematic of

for Nasser, the dam's very size

Egypt's rebirth as a great nation, a nation venturing once more, as in

ancient days, on

monumental

amids. That was

how

the

projects

dam was

— projects

was new Egypt's great pyramid. For Father,

it

as

grand as the pyr-

touted in the press in those days: it

was Egypt's great

disaster.

Finally, of course, Nasser's at stake.

Weighed

own

political stature

against these matters,

and glory were

what did environmental dam-

age or the illness and premature deaths of a few thousand more peasants from bilharzia matter? Father believed that Nasser cared not at all

about the Egyptian peasantry or about what happened to Egypt in

own power and

the long run, only about his

rate Father's defiance of Nasser's

Nasser's fury. living

On

prestige.

And

so at any

ban on publishing further provoked

my

their return to Egypt

parents found themselves

under a palpable cloud of government censure and displeasure.

In daily

life this

translated into small habitual harassments that

made

their lives bleak, difficult, anxious, debilitating.

how

This was return

home

things were

of respite, but

would

sheet.

I

left

England and college

to

to Egypt.

Soon my father became

I

when

ill

more and more

regularly

find Father prostrate, his

He would open

He had days now when visited my parents

with chronic pneumonia. I

body puny

as a child's

under the

his eyes fleetingly to look acutely, intensely,

then close them again, breathing with the aid of an oxygen mask, each rasping breath harsh and labored, drawn, one could hear, in pain.

my entire visit (in my last couple of years in Cairo I my parents' home to a flat of my own) would be taken

Sometimes

moved out up with

of

sitting or standing at his side,

holding the oxygen

mask over

20 his

Ahmed

Leila

mouth. Wearing

Fat-hia the maid or

was uncomfortable

it

I

would

relieve

him

for him,

for a while

my mother

and

by holding

it

or

gently

over his mouth.

The

smells, the sights, the paraphernalia of illness.

Sitting in the

my arm

darkened room,

aching from holding the

mask, listening in the silence to Father's labored breath,

and over

my mind

in

that

all

was happening

to us.

I

turned over

How

Father had

how he had been crushed by this hero of our Arab world. And I thought of

struggled on the right side and political giant, this great

the years of careful, devoted, meticulous thought and calculation

about the Nile that had gone into his work and his understanding of

and of

this river,

his heroic

attempt to avert catastrophe and preserve

for future generations the riches that Egyptians

pended on,

And

time.

for their lives

and

how I longed to return own thought up my life. And about justice and innow how my sense of a troubled division between cul-

thought about England and of

I

there and take justice.

I

see

first

side.

And

of I

the history

from

all

see I

I

even civilizations took

tures, places,

form

this

how my

was

by the thoughts

its

particular cast

moments

self-understanding and

had

my

understanding of

Father struggling to

sitting here listening to

But here they were anyhow and

my mother

Living from day to day, sit

and color and

sitting here at this bed-

through would be forever marked and scored

living I

— those

breathe, aware of his pain and of his ebbing

would

had enjoyed, and de-

their civilization since the beginning of

this

life.

was how

their life

was now.

tended to Father and in between

exhausted in front of the flicker of the television, she and

her faithful Fat-hia sometimes sitting together and sometimes separately, taking turns.

There was nothing Father's illness

really for

and the

which

fact,

to hope.

unspoken by anyone, that he was

dying occupied the forefront of our thoughts. Unspoken but near the surface, evident in our eyes

For visits,

me

whenever they met.

there was another, deeper,

a dread

I

am

sure

I

more obscure dread

barely acknowledged.

It

in those

was the dread that

A I,

my mother, would

like

was particularly

and

real

ernment was refusing

me

grant

the

means

this

never have a professional

me

to grant

They were refusing

a passport.

Egypt not because

to leave

was a way of further harassing

my

my

had any

I'd

my own dream

to think

doomed

My

to

come

father. Captive in Egypt,

un-

a

life,

life in

which

(in

my own

future.

I

remember,

my

as

coming out of Father's room and looking found her and Fat-hia watching

passive, almost

bending

I

came

in.

I

air, for

my

And

I

in,

how

those

She looked

film.

and exhausted, had the I

went up

to her,

with her a formal gesture, a

mother, unusually in this society,

remember thinking

terrible

to just sit there, passively

as

left

I

them

black-and-white television, the

sitting together in the flicker of the

dusk outside closing

all

room adjoining my her main living area. I

an Arabic

face, gray

— always

me

for

was leaving one evening,

as

television,

Her

goodbye

always shrank from touch.

life,

I

was

eyes in those days) she

stunned look of absolute weariness.

to kiss her

careful kissing of the

one's

life

into the

now

mother's bedroom, which she used

up, startled, as

had hoped,

to nothing.

mother's

about

I

of pursuing a professional

had "done" nothing, pursued no profession, focused fears

significant

and

able to return to England to begin graduate studies as

began

to

father's daughter,

was

I

This possibility

life.

because the Nasser gov-

acute in those days

myself but because

political activity

21

Border Passage

must be

it

watching

to

do nothing with

television.

my

But of course Mother was not doing nothing. Nursing

father

was certainly not doing nothing. And

in truth

now,

cope with the daily problems

in the face of Father's illness, to

arising

it

fell

mostly to her

from the government's ongoing harassment and

pression.

Having

froze their

basic needs

to

borrow money,

for instance,

bank account, scrambling and

to find a

for Father's medication.

And

political op-

when the government way to pay for their

the worry of

it all,

constant anxiety as to what the government might do next

Mother's shoulders, not on Father's, as he lay desperately ing.

ill

fell

the

on

and dy-

Mother had from the start supported him in his stand and she and unreservedly continued to do so even when the con-

steadfastly

sequences began

to affect their lives

and the

lives

of

all

of us deeply.

22

Ahmed

Leila

Nevertheless, the act of conscience was Father's, and

who would have had

than Mother

Mother was much younger than he and,

made

was he rather

the satisfaction of knowing that he

had done what he believed he had had healthy

it

Even the

to do.

as far as

fact that

anyone knew then,

time harder for her, because of the bleakness of

this

the future confronting her, a future in which she would be bereft of the people she had loved and the resources and status that had once

been

hers.

All of this, of course,

clearly than to

when

did then,

I

Mother. Back then

I

understand quite clearly

I

gave

days

how

and that

it

What

And

so a

On

mood

On

it

far

more

whom

she, ministering,

such as

life,

it

was,

remember now from those

I

my

mother's eyes.

of gloom and a sense of fallen fortunes engulfed

those days

when Father was

good days Father would

sit

better our spirits

on the sofa

in his

pads and pencils beside him, the

sunlight streaming

Wrapped

in.

gown, pausing sometimes

in

his

would

bedroom by the

radio, writing, a stack of

sweet

—

was she on

was

sustained their

difficult times.

the constant look of apprehension in

is

Ain Shams. lift.

thought to

fell

who

coping ("doing" nothing),

now

might have been more of a comfort

little

the brunt of their difficulties

through these most

I

warm winter

brown checkered dressing

to enjoy a sip of

weak

tea or just relish the

he looked cheery and even radiant when he glanced up,

air,

then utterly engrossed again in the act of writing, his hand moving slowly but determinedly across the page, pausing to erase, rephrase.

Sometimes,

Quran.

He

a look of

too,

on those days he would

listened to

it

know

often in those last

simply listening to the

months and always with

keen appreciation, sometimes exclaiming out loud

pleasure at the marvel of It

sit

was

to

me

at

its

in sheer

words.

once incomprehensible and riveting that one could

oneself to be dying and yet so enjoy, unperturbed, the passing,

precious moment.

assumed

I

that

I

that Father

was used

memoirs.

I

to seeing

have with

was writing one of the

him

write, but

me now those

scientific

papers

he was in fact writing

yellowed, faded pages.

his

They came

A my

into

23

possession in chaotic, jumbled form more than twenty years

after Father's death, having

among

Border Passage

been

houses of

set aside in the

relatives,

things one day to be "gone through. " Alas, they are almost

indecipherable to me, for

Arabic script that

my

do not have the easy mastery of the cursive

I

father had. At the best of times

find cursive

I

Arabic hard to read, and these pages are in the slurred handwriting of

someone ravaged by

and nearing death.

illness

•~>

But how did

someone

that

somehow a

all

like Father,

of

its

^

happen, Tve sometimes found myself wondering,

who

neglected to see to

command

by

it

language

means, since

it

loved the Quran, as he clearly did, had

it

would have

that his children

— written Arabic —

was the language of the

as

as sure

he had? English

globally

too,

dominant and

the language, therefore, of knowledge and professional advancement.

But why not also in

classical, written

Arabic?

We were completely fluent

spoken Arabic, but not in the written language. For

me now

there

is

was valued above Arabic

mind

child's

at least, as

no doubt

that, at least implicitly,

ways that would have marked

in

being

somehow

abic.

And

it

we spoke

And

and of the glamorous worlds

at school,

to at school,

the language of the movies in

in a

playground from speaking Ar-

was the language of the people we looked up

namely, our British teachers. to

in the

it,

innately a "superior" lan-

guage. English was, to begin with, the language

where we were prohibited even

English

which they were

set,

we went

and of the

books we read and their enticing imaginary worlds. At

home we spoke

too, though, English

for speaking

among

Arabic and French as well as English. At home,

soon became the favorite language of us children ourselves

— chiefly because the adults around

except Father, could not understand

it.

And

so, since

us,

Father was often

not home, English was from the start for us a language of subversion

and a way of circumventing and baffling the adults around us and of

communicating around them. Sometimes we spoke English with Father. With our mother we almost always spoke Arabic and, if not that, French.

Nor was

it

only the Arabic language that

became

implicitly

— 24

Ahmed

Leila

marked

as inferior (and

presumably marked as native and

inferior).

I

we heard Arabic music, too, as somehow lesser. It is probably for this reason that I do not now remember any, not a single one, of the songs my mother sang. She had a lovely voice. I remember how its sweetness arrested me, held me still. I remember other songs, other think

musics of childhood, but

can't recall even

I

one of the

my

lyrics

mother sang. Father admired Mother's voice enormously and would say that she could have been a professional singer. "But Mother was not a professional

anything!"

thought that

is

find

I

really only

myself involuntarily thinking, in a

an echo or ghost of an old thought that

I

once harbored intensely and angrily as an adolescent. Such thoughts live

on and shape how we see our

past,

be products of false perceptions and prejudices even against our

our

in

own

even when we know them to

old,

unexamined prejudices

kind and the most cherished people

lives.

When my mother listened to the Egyptian singer Um Kulsum, the whom she and everyone else in Egypt admired, or to others

singer

(Asmahan was another gather together to

it

coffee

she listened mostly alone. Some-

sisters

and other

make an evening of

sum's concerts the

consuming

favorite),

and her

times, though, she

first

it,

listening to

and lemonade, smoking, relishing

were some rich and subtle

feast.

To us

And we

sic

Um

Kul-

children,

sit,

this singing as if it

sounded

like

when we heard

it.

They

the same, particularly the children of Egyptians and other

Arabs attending the English School. looking

one of

would

took care to make this plain to

our schoolmates, sighing and rolling our eyes

much

relatives

Thursday of every month. They would

endless monotonous wailing.

did

women

down on Arabic music, among

was the music of the

streets, the

It

was common,

this

show

of

English Schoolers. Arabic mu-

music one heard blaring from

radios in the baladi, the unsophisticated folk regions of town.

But Mother was not, also quite self-consciously

different

in

our eyes, baladi. She quite distinctly and

belonged

to a culture

from the folk culture around

and background quite

us. Still, the fact that

Mother

A

Border Passage

25

loved Arabic music and sang in Arabic, and even the fact that nearly always spoke to her in Arabic, undoubtedly

marked

some way silently, silently in my child's mind, as inferior. It would be decades before I would come to reflect on these my own life. When I began to look in my academic work at

in

in

of colonialism and began to

unmask

we

her, too,

issues issues

the colonialist perspectives and

racism embedded in texts on Arabs and on the colonized, steeping myself in writings on internalized colonialism, it

was not only

in texts

that they were there, too, in

of

my

consciousness.

I

people, or at any rate

my own

had grown up,

my

father,

tinctly kept herself at a distance

I

came

to see, in a

sciousness in the It

world where

had not merely admired European

My

who

mother,

way

that

my my

was excruciatingly hard

whom

I

own

heritage,

mind for having had a colonized confather did. to find myself having to

had admired

open-mindedness, had after

always dis-

from Europeans and their ways and

always also explicitly cherished and honored her

never became suspect in

father,

to realize that

childhood and in the very roots

the superiority of European civilization.

my

began

but had probably internalized the colonial beliefs about

civilization

who

I

that these hidden messages were inscribed but

all,

conclude that

for his integrity, clarity of vision,

and

and

had a colo-

in spite of himself,

nized consciousness, cherishing things European and undervaluing the very heritage that had shaped him. this.

my

I

have been through

them now this

my

father,

and

this

at

many

mother, and way,

now

I

no longer struggle with

revolutions in

my own

that,

Now

my

understanding of

consciousness

convinced

at

— understanding

one moment that they are

another that they are that. For the truth

is,

I

think that

we are always plural. Not either this or that, but this and that. And we always embody in our multiple shifting consciousnesses a convergence of traditions, cultures, histories coming together

and

this place

that the point I

know now

and moving is

that

to look it is

like rivers

through

us.

And

in this I

time

know now

back with insight and without judgment, and

of the nature of being in this place, this place

of convergence of histories, cultures, ways of thought, that there will

26

Leila

always be that

I

will

Ahmed

new ways to understand what we are living never come to a point of rest or of finality

through, and

my

in

under-

standing.

Once and to

had arrived

I

I

began

to be able to reflect on,

and even

for the first time to see, events in the past with clarity

remember

things that

my parents had

that

me

at this point

I

had forgotten. For example,

arranged

when

one much enthusiasm

inspiring in

was a child

I

(which he did, albeit without, for

in .Arabic

remembered

my uncle

I'd

learned very

little

from him because

sessions with figuring out at

how

me under

I

to stay

was

grammar). And that

I

in

.Arabic.

I

chiefly occupied during our

beyond reach of

the table as

to tutor

his valiant efforts,

been given a professional private teacher of

adolescence

hands groping

for Arabic

for all

I

my

inched

his

wandering

chair

away from

somehow shamed by his behavior, I was unable to tell anyone what was happening but announced one day that was not going to take any more .Arabic lessons; I remained adamant on the subject. But for many years had forgotten that I had this teacher him. Feeling

I

I

and had forgotten that gotten

why

had done

I

written Arabic to

And

my

I

had myself stopped the lessons and had

so,

my mind

attributing

my

for-

lack of fluency in

parents' neglect of that language.

then, fortuitously, a

little later

I

came

to learn

why we had

not been sent to the kuttab, the traditional Quranic school, for a few-

my schoolmates had been, to learn classical .Arabic and the Quran. A friend \isiting me from Cairo, more skilled than at deciphering cursive .Arabic, looked through my father's memoir and read me a few pages in which he described his hours each w eek, as some of

I

own

experience of the kuttab. Daily he dreaded going because the

teacher kept a thick stick at his side with which he would the boys

if

they were not properly memorizing their lessons. Father

himself could recite the entire

he had no idea up, he

He

whack

at that

vowed never

Quran by

age what any of

to subject his

own

the time he was eight, but it

meant.

When

he grew

children to such an experience.

decided, too, that the one thing he wanted

them

to

have was a

garden, a place where body and imagination could run free. Listening to

my

friend read these words

I

found myself intuitively understanding

A and

that English

27

Border Passage

the English books with which Father had sur-

all

rounded us had been intended

to serve exactly the

same purpose

as

the garden: to nourish and free imagination.

This, then,

gloom,

my

was what

returned

I

Ain Shams under a

to.

pall of

father dying, the best of the past vanishing in decay, in

disarray, turning, like the bitter fruit of the fabled al-zaqqutn (the tree

that grows in the

Unable

women's

to leave,

I

pit of hell), to

dust in one's mouth.

took a teaching position at the newly opened

college at al-Azhar University. But almost every

wasn't teaching

my

bottommost

be at the

I'd

passport and a

way out

Mugammaa,

of Egypt.

moment

I

trying desperately to secure

The Mugammaa,

a vast building

dominating Tahrir (Liberation) Square, was the country's bureaucratic center,

where

all

the bits of paper that ruled people's lives were

my

processed. In the Nasser era, at least in

experience,

it

became

a

place of nightmare, where the country's already notoriously compli-

cated bureaucratic system became one of the tools with which the

government controlled and punished dissidents and others

it

disliked

by denying their applications without explanation or simply stalling

under endless

pretexts.

became, with

It

its

innumerable

dows dominating Tahrir Square, the emblem and, heart of the revolution's abuse of power and of

its

cell-like

win-

me, the very

for

concealed, diffuse

malevolence.

Every day

from one bokra

I

would be referred from and the

floor to the next

— tomorrow — or

office to office to office

next, then told to

Some

next week.

or, as

I

on the minister's desk but was not signing that

I

it

told eventually,

some reason

For four years

was denied a passport.

obvious that in

it.

was

for

I

I

come back

further signature was re-

quired and the relevant person was not there that day,

paper was missing,

and

my

some

bit of

application was

— no one knew why— he

was put through

was simply unable

this. It

was not

to get one.

It

was

was not merely bureaucratic convolutedness that stood

my way but an

intentional political will to deny

my father's daughter

her freedom. I

refused to give up.

It

was not a choice

for

me. As month after

28

Leila

month and then year

after year passed,

me began

Everyone around

have to accept

to urge

— that

I

utterly

my

and

me and

relentlessly

My

father.

yearnings and that refusal

my

my in

to

I

was obviously going

be able to leave and not

studies abroad. Relatives

treated

me

and friends

as unreasonable for being so

determined to leave

father alone

was

to face reality, resign myself

was not going

going to be able to continue

remonstrated with

me

simply would not give up.

I

down and accept what

to the inevitable, settle to

Ahmed

— everyone, that

seemed completely

to

is,

refusal to give up, even though, as time

some sense "unreasonable"

except

my

empathize with

or, at

any

wore on,

rate, unreal-

istic.

I've

never been sure

compelled to stay felt to

me

like a

I

could not take no for an answer. Being

my studies, that my family's

being compelled to give up

in Egypt,

sentence of doom. There's no doubt

difficulties in Nasser's

now

why

Egypt and the bleakness of the future

my

faced there were key in

I

myself

determination to get out, as were

my

hopes and ambitions for professional and intellectual development.

But

it

was more than

that.

I

needed

to

understand myself and

lieved that the path to understanding lay in returning to

graduate studies there.

to

that

I

same understanding

a

else, too, a

sense of desperate resolve.

few months

death, and

after

now

I

My

shadow always

pletely

life

to Egypt.

the

that she did not

unendurable

I

more

had grieved I

at

her

feared

I

want and

that finally

became com-

to her. terrified

me and made me

resolute.

was going

was not

I

me if found myself trapped on with my life. Aunt Aida had felt

Her example, always there before me, all

there, adding to

her despair became hauntingly real to me.

Egypt forever, unable to go

trapped in a

find

aunt Aida had committed suicide

had come home

that a despair like that might overtake in

would not

I

be-

in a university in Egypt.

There was something

my

believed, moreover, that

I

England and

to leave,

no matter what. Once

just inefficient bureaucracy that

the required scholarship

— from

it

was obvious that

was holding

the British Council

me up

— and

it

(I

had

had

ful-

A

29

Border Passage

every other condition that the government officially required for

filled

a passport),

I

began trying other avenues. Resorting

wasta ap-

to the

proach of getting things done through connections, one of the normal

ways of pursuing one's

and family friends

tives

ments myself with It

begged and badgered

my

case or get

my

shook hands,

father over the

my release.

privately

though not

High

Dam became

a minister,

meeting with him. At the end of

to obtain a

his eyes alive with sympathy,

my

thing like as brilliant as

my

from pursuing

appoint-

finally to

was an engineer by training and who

managed

me

rela-

undersecretary or that minister.

this

publicly supported I

to inquire into

I

was one of those meetings that would lead

A man who and

affairs in Egypt,

studies.

father

The

it

he said that

would be a crime

following day

my

if

it,

as

was any-

I

to prevent

exit

we

me

permit was

signed.

This at

man remained

in office only a

few months.

I

had been struck

our meeting by his courage in even indirectly acknowledging the

value of

wanted

my

to

work and

father's

his service to the country.

Nobody

be known to be supporting, or even to be respectful

someone who was the object of Nasser's

fury.

of,

Occasionally in those

my name somewhere, someone would react with visible emotion shaking my hand fervently, telling me how deeply they admired my father and how much it meant to them that my father had taken the stand that he had. But always when

days

was introduced or gave

I

—

when

this

happened we would be

public place

— and certainly not

This resolution to It

my

in

in a

some

private venue, not in a

government

office.

passport difficulties had a further blessing.

helped dissolve Father's sense that, as he once said to me,

had been the

sacrifice

had insisted that continuing

my

I

made

to his conscience.

be more

"realistic"

studies abroad, while so

reconcile myself to the fact that

abroad, never for a

my

efforts,

moment had

sharing with

would manage

me

I

failed.

I

set aside the

many

dream of

others had urged

was not going

to

me

to

be able to study

Father wavered in his support for

always the hope that perhaps this time

to get a passport

time after time,

I

and

my future

While so many others

and sharing,

too, in

I

my despair when,

remember how one morning when

things

had gone particularly badly

Shams with my

He

Ahmed

Leila

30

me

asked

at the

Mugammaa and

Father began to cry as

story,

told

I

went out to Ain him of my plight.

I

my

him: he had not meant to do this to

to forgive

and he hoped that some day when

I

was older

I'd

had done what he had done. But of course

I

understand

him

told

life

why he already

I

understood. I

remember

also

to say goodbye.

vividly the last

He was

well

enough

so

hurt, until

so openly affectionate.

encountered

I

his lashes.

acknowledgment

come

I'd

sitting

He would not look at who was usually

gray.

was taken aback and a

his eyes, casting

And then and

that he

I

I

I

me

understood.

little

a quick, brief glance It

was

in his eyes, the

would never see each other again and

was no ordinary goodbye.

that this

The

had.

I

be out of bed and was

extraordinarily offhand, gruff even, he

warm and

from under

to

somewhat

in the upstairs hallway, looking

me and was

meeting he and

last

time

I

heard his voice was about a year

England working desperately hard

later.

I

was

in

to get myself registered quickly for

a doctoral degree instead of the M.Litt. that beginning students are

registered for until they prove their worth. tell

him before he died

that

I

so

I

had succeeded

hoped

in this.

to

But

be able to it

did not

call came through from Cairo, my mother's Daddy wanted to talk to me. "Hello, Nana darling," I heard him say, his voice so tender. That was all. She must have held the phone for him.

happen, not in time. The

voice saying that

He

died the following day.

Or maybe it was March 1 My mother died exactly two years later. Or almost exactly. On the ninth, or the eleventh, or the twenty-somethingth. Later, when I could not remember the exact day, I tried to calculate it, to think w hat day of the week it had been

On March

9.

1

and so what day of the month. there was no one to ask.

them.

I

No one

No one mourned,

.

could never quite get in the place

at least

where

I

it

time, as

left

if

behind,

my

and

then knew

not in the world around me.

without mourning and without the visible grief of those

had been

straight,

lived

like

And

me who

parents' deaths felt quite unreal for a long

they had not died at

all

but just somehow vanished.

A "I

Border Passage

31

was never certain that mother had died," wrote Emily Dickin-

son in a

when she

letter to a friend. Except,

she went on, in those

moments

listened to the choir singing, their voices so clearly

"from another

coming

life."

Sometimes even when we have heard the choir sing to believe that the

dead are dead.

it is still

hard

&rom

Colonial

TO f^OSTCOLONIAL

SUEZ CRISIS THE through who

of 1956 would

lived

it

and

come

to

be thought of by those

also by historians of empire as the piv-

moment that heralded the final passing of the European empires, when the world moved irrevocably from the colonial to the postcolonial age. In fact, there still were many countries under European domotal

ination, but

because

it

Suez became a symbolic and important date above

all

marked the moral defeat of the European powers and the

public exposure, on the world stage, of their hectoring tyranny toward countries under their dominion. their brazen

Nasser,

It

also

made

plain their

open greed,

abuse of power, and their moral bankruptcy.

who had

precipitated the crisis,

would emerge

as

its

hero.

The sequence of events is well known. In June 1956, Nasser announced in a speech that he was nationalizing the Suez Canal and appropriating

its

revenues for Egypt

unjustly, to Britain his act

and issued

— revenues that had been going,

and France. The threats,

and

British

and French denounced

in October, joined

by

Israel,

they

launched a military attack on Egypt. The spectacle of two of the world's mightiest powers combining to attack the small nation of

Egypt, in collusion with Egypt's

new

neighbor, had the effect of dem-

onstrating to the entire watching world

how immoral,

how

unjust and bullying, and

the European imperial powers actually were.

The outcry

A

Border Passage

33

was worldwide. Not only were Third World nations unanimous their

condemnation but there were huge demonstrations

and France, and

in Britain, at

any

rate, resignations

in

in Britain

by major

political

to a halt

and compelled

In Egypt Nasser emerged triumphant as the leader

who had dared

American action brought the attack

players.

the withdrawal of the aggressors.

to stand

up

to the imperial tyrants.

Arab nationalism had begun side Egypt.

Now,

him

to gain

his heroic stature

the Arab world and beyond, he

Even

prior to Suez his call for

a considerable following out-

enormously magnified throughout

became

politically unassailable within

Egypt. Henceforth he ruled openly as dictator and his government

became more and more

overtly repressive.

Besides transforming Nasser into a national and Arab hero, Suez

seemed

also to give

already under

new impetus

way around

to the struggles against imperialism

the globe and to spur opposition to impe-

rialism within the imperialist nations themselves. In the late fifties

and through the

sixties, struggles

against imperialism grew fiercer and

more determined everywhere, and country

after country in Africa

elsewhere gained independence. In Britain and France,

and

leftist intel-

lectuals supported the struggle against colonialism. In France, for in-

stance, as the savage battle for Algerian independence its

climax,

leftist

among them finally

intellectuals

— came

—

Sartre,

out in support of the Algerians. By the time

Frantz Fanon, the philosopher and theorist of the colonial

condition, was

among

the most admired voices

while anti-imperialism, Marxism, and socialism

and the

among intellectuals, had become the pol-

intellectual positions of the avant-garde.

Thus began the

era that

would

colonialism that would lay bare tural, political,

and

I

obtained a passport and returned to college in England in the

late sixties,

itics

moved toward

Camus, and de Beauvoir

its

give rise to the critiques of

huge costs

— psychological,

cul-

and economic. And we began, through the new lenses

insights of figures

Memmi, and Edward

such as Fanon, as well as Paolo Friere, Alberto Said, analysts

all

of colonialism and

quences, to interrogate, reinterpret, and reevaluate the of the generations that preceded us.

And we began

lives

its

conse-

and work

also to look with

new in

Ahmed

Leila

34

eyes at the lives of our parents and grandparents, the generations

which our own

lives

were rooted, and

to see

what they apparently

had not seen, the psychological consequences of colonialism and that silent, insidious

process of internalized colonialism.

Reflecting on

this

all

and thinking back

to

my

father,

I

had a

how enormously complex these issues were. The members of his own and of the preceding generation had undoubtedly internalized colonialism, possibly more fully than we had, and certainly in sense of

any case they had been

less analytically

conscious of the psychological

processes they were subject to than those of us of Fanon's and of thought, for example, not only of my father man whom Father had admired above anyone else, Gandhi. of how Gandhi himself, when he had started out as a young

subsequent generations. but of the I

thought

man, had dressed not collar

and

I

in the familiar loincloth

suit of the English

hard to become.

And

gentleman that he had

yet, for all that,

had remained more deeply rooted different

ways of seeing. Gandhi,

lation of

European

to

draw

and

fully

Jain, in

and

ideas, did

explicitly

but in the starched

end

at first striven

they far more than

it is

in their

own

heritages

their

and assimi-

for all his exposure to

and he came

his days in a loincloth

on the understanding of

we who

and

life,

both Hindu

which he had been nurtured.

Similarly

Hasan Fathy, the Egyptian

architect

who

in the forties

pioneered the return to the use of traditional materials and to ecologically

sound as well

architecture

—

as aesthetically satisfying indigenous forms in

an approach eventually adopted

Third World countries other heritage, a

way

Thoroughly versed

in

— seems

to

globally, particularly in

have done so by tapping into an-

of seeing other than that of the

Western architectural

ideas,

modern West.

he developed

his

innovative views and methods in reflecting on the fact that, as he wrote, "the peasant built his house out of

mud, or mud

bricks,

which

he dug out of the ground and dried in the sun. Here, for years, for centuries, the peasant has

been wisely and quietly exploiting the ob-

vious building materials, while we, with our ideas, never

modern school-learned

dreamed of using such a ludicrous substance

so serious a creation as a house."

as

mud

for

A

Border Passage

owed

Father, too, quite possibly

35

own

his

innovativeness

pating, as he did, the ecological understanding that

an ordinary way of seeing in our day tradition

and perhaps even

to his

all life

and

become

to his rootedness in his

own

sense of the profound connect-

its

the processes to which

all

to

antici-

thorough immersion in the language

and thought of the Quran, with edness of

—

was

—

we

are subject. Think-

ing about a dam, he considered earth, river, sea, fish, organisms, and

people and thus came up with an "ecological" understanding long before "ecology" was a

common

who women

concept. Interestingly, those

have studied Rachel Carson, Barbara McClintock, and other

pioneers of Western scientific thought have suggested that the originality of these

women

ferent cultural ethos

sprang in part from their rootedness in a

dif-

— a women's ethos of connectedness — different

from the ethos of competitiveness and individualism of the

men

of

their culture.

No doubt about He grew up in a

it,

though,

my

father did love science.

world in which the inventions of science and the

ways of the West were quite

transforming the world around

visibly

him. Cairo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was exuberantly surging forward in acquiring these "modern" ways. Al-

my

ready a few decades before ruler of Egypt (khedive to Paris,

is

father

a Turkish

royalty

title

for "sovereign"), after a visit

had ordered the construction of a new section of Cairo

today the heart of the modern city

wooded

was born, the Khedive Ismael,

parks,

and

streetlights.

who were coming

to

opening of the Suez Canal

—

to

He was

be

laid

out with boulevards,

eager to show the European

Egypt to attend the celebrations for the

in

1869

just

how modern and "European"

Egypt was.

The Khedive Ismael was by no means alone

in his attitude. In

those days the Egyptian elite and intelligentsia pursued and believed in the idea of

Egypt as a rapidly advancing nation, as dedicated to

"progress" and to

becoming

fully

"modern" as any of the

nations of Europe. Consequently, they believed

(much

"civilized"

as the intelli-

gentsia of Turkey today believe of their country) that Egypt should

— Ahmed

Leila

36 take

place and be accepted by the European Powers as, to

its

intents

new

still

to Egyptians.

to surmise that in

them

their race.

and ineluctably

begun

or even remotely

that defined

different, unalterably

and ineluc-

Europeans and unalterably and ineluctably

They had not

in the

ilized"

They had not grasped

European eyes there was one thing

as unalterably

tably unlike

them

all

and purposes, a "European" nation. European domination was

yet understood that this

inferior

was what defined

European gaze and that nothing would make them

and "modern"

in

European

They did not know

eyes.

"civ-

that noth-

ing else counted, not "progress" or "development" or "modernity," just race.

In any case, by the mid-nineteenth century, Egypt had indeed

already been forging rapidly forward in the adoption of

modern ways

and technologies, leading the way among Muslim and eastern Mediterranean countries, ahead even of Turkey.

enormous

strides in the acquisition of

Muhammad

dynamic

ruler,

in 1805.

He opened

Ali,

It

had begun

to

make

European know-how under

who had become

its

governor of Egypt

schools and colleges staffed by Europeans and

sent student missions to Europe to acquire and bring

home

its sci-

ences. By mid-century, Egypt was on a par with European nations like Italy

and indeed ahead of others. Trains,

for example, linked the vital

centers of Cairo and Alexandria before railways were introduced in

Norway. By then,

too, the

country had begun to move forward in the

establishment of industries, until Britain, alarmed at the prospect of

an industrialized Egypt capturing Middle Eastern markets away from British exports, exerted pressure

on the Ottoman sultan

to

put a halt

to Egypt's developing capabilities.

By midcentury, a growing body of Egyptian

intellectuals

who had

studied in Europe and were familiar with Western ideas were coming to constitute a significant political

and

intellectual leadership in the

country and to advocate various reforms. By the time a

my

father

young man, there had been two or three generations of such

ligentsia,

among whom

committed

to

intel-

there was a consensus as to the kind of society

Egypt should aspire to become: a try,

was

fully

modern European-style coun-

freedom of speech and

free public education, to the

A modernization of the role of veiling,

and

to

a dominant

would shape

Border Passage

women and

37

the ending of the practice of

government by democracy. This tradition of thought,

when my parents were young, And in my own family anyway, they

tradition within Egypt their generation.

would remain deeply committed

to these ideals

and aspirations

all

their lives.

While Egypt had begun ish rulers,

were

in

march

its

into modernity

by the end of the nineteenth century

it

under

was the

Turk-

its

power. The British Occupation of Egypt began in 1882,

the Khedive Tewfiq appealed to the British for help in putting a native rebellion. In response, the British

who when down

British

bombarded Alexandria and

landed their troops in the country. The rebellion that the British helped suppress had been led by Colonel Urabi, one of only two native

who had risen to the rank of colonel in the Egyptian army. days, when Egypt was still part of the Ottoman Empire, not

Egyptians In those

only was Turkey and litical

its

imperial capital of Istanbul the ultimate po-

authority over Egypt, but within Egypt, too, the ruling class was

essentially Turkish.

And according

to the laws of the land, native

Egyptians were prohibited from holding senior positions in either the

government or the army.

All

such positions could be held only by

Turks. But Urabi and the other native Egyptian colonel had risen to their rank

because these laws had begun to

fall

ernment, controlled of course by Turks, was stitute laws prohibiting

was

this that

to

The

now proposing

gov-

to rein-

Egyptians from holding senior positions.

had triggered the

official

the British troops were on Egyptian

be governed by the British, though

it

soil,

British Occupation.

Egypt began in effect

continued

considered not a colony of Britain but what centuries, a province of the

It

rebellion.

Thus, in any case, had begun the

Once

into disuse.

it

officially to

had been

be

for several

Ottoman Empire. While some

in the

country would always hate the infidel British presence, others, and in particular a growing thing, Egypt in

The

number

of the intelligentsia, did not. For one

some ways prospered economically under the

British invested Egypt's resources in projects,

and road construction, that brought prosperity,

such as

at least for

British.

irrigation

some, and

Leila

38

Ahmed

that developed the country as a producer of

raw

materials, in partic-

ular cotton, for British industries.

But conversely, the British contin-

ued

Egypt to develop as an industrial

their policy of not allowing

nation, a policy

now

whose

more obvious

costs to the country are

to us

than they were to the people of those earlier generations.

the British held back

and even cut funding from other

projects,

And such

as education, essential for Egypt's long-term prosperity.

But

at the

time what was obvious and palpable to Egyptians, es-

pecially the elite

and the

middle classes of Cairo, was that Egypt

rising

was becoming prosperous. In addition, although Lord Cromer, the British consul general in Egypt

from 1882

to

1907, was

more benign and more

and

in effect the country's

distinctly autocratic, British rule

beneficial to the country (or so

intelligentsia believed) than despotic rule

another or by the local monarch

Moreover, under the free

press,

British,

chiefly because

thought did not matter and

who

that,

press would be useful because

it

was

still

some of the

by one Ottoman sultan or

served as his representative.

Egypt enjoyed for the

Cromer

governor

time ever a

first

believed that what Egyptians

on the other hand, having a

would provide a

free

safety valve. Cairo

Ottoman world with a free press, and consequently it became a magnet for the literati of the Arabicspeaking world. Major publishing houses in Damascus and Beirut moved their presses to Cairo. The result was that Egypt enjoyed a thriving press vibrantly alive with free debate, and it became the venue

was the only

capital in the

of an outpouring of books, newspapers, and magazines that included fierce criticism of the British,

on the one hand, and open criticism of

the traditional system of despotic rule, on the other. Egypt's prosperity, rapid modernization, tracted also

many

at-

immigrants, not only from the Ottoman territories but

and particularly from Europe. For under the

skewed

in favor of

British the laws

were

Europeans. They were exempt from paying taxes

and could not be prosecuted by any

Not

and open society

surprisingly, Italians, Greeks,

local court

and Maltese,

— even

for murder.

as well as

French and

British, flocked to Egypt.

Not everyone, though, benefited from the country's

prosperity.

A

Border Passage

my

Middle-class people like

father,

39

who managed

to get a

modern

education and thus to join the professional classes, did well, and so did the landed classes,

who

benefited from the improved irrigation

projects and transport systems try's

revenues. But for

which the

in

common

British invested the

working peasants

it

was a time of dire

hardship and dispossession. They were heavily taxed, and

way

those unable to pay fled their land, making their

where they found refuge winding medieval

its

up on the with

its

many

of

to the capital,

abandoned areas of Old Cairo, with

in the

alleys, or in

outskirts to

coun-

the ramshackle constructions put

house them. The ever-expanding modern Cairo,

handsome new apartment blocks and gardened mansions on

the Nile, was where the Europeans, the old upper classes, and the

made

rising professionals

homes. The luckier ones among the

their

destitute country migrants

found domestic work in the houses of

the well-to-do in the new, other Cairo.

It

was, then, for some, an exhilarating time to be young.

time of hope,

new veil

when

all

sorts of ideas

personal freedoms for

— were

in the air

by the young. And

it

men and women,

and being

women's

rights,

the casting off of the

freely discussed in a press avidly read

was a time when everywhere there were signs of

coming of the West and

the improvements that the

was poised (apparently) laid for internal

— democracy,

was a

It

to bring to all of

plumbing

its

modern ways

humanity. Pipes were being

in people's houses, streetlights

up, and tramways began running. Cars

made

their

were going

appearance on

Cairo's streets almost as soon as they did in the capitals of Europe.

And Egypt was A moment

prosperous. in

my own memory

with the sense of a

have had. in

I

was

new world

that

sitting in the car

connects

me

young people

with

my

with that era and

like

father and

my

father

we were

must

driving

from the outskirts toward the center of Cairo. Our route took us

past the king's

Ubba

Palace. As

we drew

nearer, the rough potholed

road turned into a smooth, elegant avenue running the length of the palace gardens

— gardens that were

invisible to us

behind their high

ochre walls except for a luxuriance of foliage that here and there

40

Leila

A

spilled over.

Ahmed

couple of cars, no more, passed us, going in the op-

posite direction, their headlights in the gathering

avenue,

dusk picking out the

As we reached the end of the

rare figure of a trudging pedestrian.

noticed a not-unfamiliar sight in the Cairo of those days: a

I

young man standing on the median leaning against ing by

its light.

member

My father,

a lamppost, read-

at this point in his life a solidly established

of the middle class, chairman of the Nile

Water Control

Board, former dean of the Faculty of Engineering, said to me, "That's

how

I

did

memory, thought

my homework

I

at his age." It

was obviously not an unhappy

he chuckled to himself as he added, "In those days

for

was lucky

I

where there were streetlamps

to live in a district

to study by."

My father's older brother had

when

taken him in

their father died.

That brother, who was himself scarcely more than a boy, finding himself

now having

had considered lights at

to provide for the family it

a waste of

money

and perennially short of cash,

for his

younger brother

burn

to

home, reading.

Their father had been a qadi, a judge. Just months before his

death he had been appointed to a prestigious

High Court from with

My

in the capital.

his native Alexandria its vivid,

father

post on the Islamic

remembered

and moving

glowing carpets and

new

into a

its fine,

traveling to Cairo

house arrestingly

lovely,

dazzling chandeliers. Then,

suddenly, his father died.

But

for

my grandfather's

death,

my father,

his brightest son,

have followed in his footsteps and become a mufti

and scholar of the

law), the profession that the

might

(a religious leader

men

of the family had

practiced in a tradition going back (according to family legend) to the

time

when

they had fled the Spanish Inquisition, settling

first in

Mo-

rocco and then making their way to Alexandria. But soon after his father's

that

my

death

my

father

modern

father transferred to a

had

his first

school.

It

was there

encounter with things English, in the

person of a British teacher.

Gazing

and

at this figure,

embodiment,

dress, of the different world

and

in his complexion, language,

its

enticing ways

now

palpably

A

41

Border Passage

encroaching on the local world, the child would be immensely taken

by the man's impeccable "modern" dress

he would

(as

later recall in

the faded pencil-scrawled pages of his memoir). All his

would himself be an impeccable

life

my

father

dresser, in European-style suits,

which soon became the ordinary dress of the professional the upper classes. Only the tarboosh, the fez that

work, would be retained of the old ways.

my

as well as

father wore to

My grandfather,

on the other

hand, must have dressed in the kaftan and turban that were traditional for a mufti

he was when he

My

father does not set

donned

this

new and

first

One can imagine

attire.

at

and scholar.

himself in the mirror,

down how

evidently much-coveted

him, however, standing, adjusting

now

the very

old

it,

looking

embodiment himself of the new

and "modern" man. I

believe that

my

father,

from a very young age,

science and with the world that in his study a portrait of Isaac

me

as a child, the

it

beam

side split rainbow-like into a

Father would devote his that science

that encapsulated, even for

wondrousness of science. Newton stands

brary, holding a prism in the path of a

on the other

love with

He would one day hang

unveiled.

Newton

fell in

life

in a

li-

of light, which emerges

band of

colors.

to harnessing these invisible forces

had revealed. He would do so

in the service of the

com-

munity, through the construction of dams and the development of irrigation

and

electrification projects linked to the Nile.

map of the Nile in its desk. He had explored the

logical his

Photographs

in

A

huge geo-

hung on the

wall beside

river, too, in its full length,

by steamer.

entire course

our family album recorded that journey: in the back-

grounds of photos of himself and of the more numerous ones of his assistants

were the

sails

of feluccas and the fertile riverbanks, the

black granite boulders of Aswan, palm trees, and barren distance; waterfalls its

and then jungles, a dead and

empty, pale

lion

hills in

the

and a man holding a gun, and

The map, in contrast, was mostly sand-colored, ochre spaces marked here and there with swaths of

lakes.

deeper ochre and cut into by the contours and traceries following out the flow of river.

42

Leila

Eventually, too, as

I

Ahmed

said earlier, Father

would spend

his last days

trying to prevent the catastrophic destruction that the insensitive, un-

imaginative misuse of these forces could wreak. I

wish that he had lived to know that he had, in

forefront of a lation

new

fact,

been

in the

kind of thinking. But he did not. The only conso-

he enjoyed in that

last

period was the entirely meager one

af-

forded by the fact that certain words in the Bible seemed to offer

confirmation of his views. The Egyptians would build dams, the passage said ("turn away the rivers"), and this would bring destruction.

The passage occurs in Isaiah. Once or enough to sit up in his room wrapped in to

brief pleasure, but pleasure evidently

was

at best a mixed,

a shaking of the

well

gown, quietly

to find

— and of course inevitably— that

ambiguous pleasure, accompanied always

head

at the folly

and tragedy of

There was only one other picture

who was

his dressing

them for him again him. These gloomy prognostications would give him

enjoying the winter sunlight, he asked

and read them

me

when he was

twice,

also by

it all.

someone

in Father's study of

not a family member. This was a photograph of

Mahatma

Gandhi, lying on his funeral pyre and covered with flowers.

Christians' hatred for

today as

it

was

Muslims

in the days of the

is

as intense

and fanatical

Crusades. Fanaticism

still

abides in their tissues, permeates their entrails, and circulates in their veins.

Ahmad Amin, an

Egyptian contemporary of

my

father's,

wrote

when disillusionment with the West even among this earlier generation of

these words in the early 1950s,

had begun intellectuals

to set in deeply,

who, whatever reservations they had, nevertheless

admired the West and believed that Egypt should follow steps.

still

in its foot-

(Amin, a conservative Muslim thinker, had from the

start

both

admired the West and cautioned against too wholesale an imitation of Western ways.)

But these are words such as ine

— my father

uttering.

Although

never heard

I I

often heard

— and cannot imaghim speak

critically

A

of British political duplicity and injustice, this

I

never heard him speak in

comprehensively dismissive way of Christians or of the West gen-

erally.

had

43

Border Passage

Possibly this was because in his

to fight,

own

life

and

in the battles

he

Egyptians as well as British had been corrupt, and Mus-

lims as well as Christians had been tyrannical, unjust,

and

destructive.

Years before tangling with Nasser, Father had run into difficulties

with King Farouk. Father had refused to endorse some engineering

scheme

had put forward with the support of the

that a British firm

scheme from which both the firm and the king stood

king, a

a lot of

money and

that

was

essentially,

my

to

make

father believed, a scam.

Father was fired from his job on trumped-up charges to make way for

someone who would endorse the scheme. For a number of years then,

The rest of us stayed Egypt and he would come back every few months to see us, arriving he had to earn his

in the 1940s, in

with suitcases

filled

him were

against

with

living abroad.

In Cairo, meanwhile, the charges

gifts.

investigated

and he was eventually reinstated and

fully exonerated.

Certainly

father

had been the

tice. It

to his

my

had himself personally suffered

British

who,

in his youth,

British injus-

had nearly put an end

dreams of becoming an engineer. After graduating from the

College of Engineering in Cairo, he had his studies in

won

a scholarship to continue

England. The British Administration had demanded, as

a condition of his taking

up the scholarship, that he abandon

engi-

He had no choice, and so he agreed. He might even have obtained though that am not sure of. But somehow

neering and study geography.

And he

did for a time study geography.

a degree in the subject,

I

he managed to get back to the subject he loved and not only obtained a degree in

it

Birmingham

—

why

but also distinguished himself at his university

as a singular

and

reading of

brilliant student. Father's

the British had tried to obstruct his training as an engineer was

that they

wanted

to prevent natives

from acquiring such

the country would have to continue to

That was the way the British were

their dealings with Egyptians, trying

the country for themselves.

depend on

in those days,

skills

British

he

know-how.

said.

one way or another

so that

Unjust in

to hold

onto

44

Ahmed

Leila

I

know

also that the events of Dinshwai,

which occurred when

he was a youngster, were landmark events in his consciousness, as they were for that entire generation.

I

remember hearing him and

when we

others talking of the great tragedy of Dinshwai one evening

were

our beach cabin in Alexandria.

sitting in

I

was too young

to

follow what they were saying and had to look up recently what exactly

happened

Dinshwai, a small village in the Delta.

in

when some

British officers decided that they

wanted

It

had

to

go out pigeon

all

was not popular among the

shooting. This sport of the British

begun

villagers

because to them pigeons were creatures they kept and bred in dovecotes on the roofs of their mud-brick huts.

went forward, and

The

villagers,

with

sticks.

in the course of

blaming the

One

officer

officers,

ran up to help him. At that

emerged and, seeing the two

No one was

— and

The

shoot, in any case,

a barn in the village caught

came out and began

to beat

fire.

them

escaped and, running back to camp in the

heat of noon, collapsed and died.

killed the officer

it

killed

A

passing peasant, seeing him

moment figures,

fall,

a group of British soldiers

assumed

that the peasant

had

him.

ever tried for the death of the peasant.

The death

of

the officer, however, was treated by the British as a heinous crime against the Occupier, it.

From

the start they

example of the

murder

show

and they created

seemed determined

villagers. Fifty

men

to use the trial to

— rather than manslaughter. The defense

tried to

no

avail to

had been fortuitous and the attack un-

that the circumstances

istration,

make an

were charged with premeditated

planned. Long before the court reached

its

verdict the British

Admin-

as the papers reported, ordered the erection of gallows

outside Dinshwai. to

a special tribunal to deal with

The

villagers

— men, women, and children — were

be compelled, the Administration had decided, to watch the pun-

ishment and execution. screams of the

When

villagers, four

the verdict

men were

came

in,

amid the

tears

and

hanged, and seventeen others

savagely and repeatedly whipped before being taken off to serve sen-

some of penal servitude for life. The drama unfolded, followed daily by everyone through June and then the whole country plunged tences,

—

in the country,

into mourning.

A All Egyptians,

was

seemed, would remember where they were and what

it

they were doing

45

Border Passage

when

they heard the news of Dinshwai.

Ahmad Amin

dinner party on the roof terrace of a friend's house in Alex-

at a

was June 27, 1906. When the news arrived, "the banquet turned into a funeral and most of us wept." Salama Musa, another andria.

It

contemporary of for a

walk with

my father's,

his brother

also

was

in Alexandria.

and they had stopped

He had gone

out

to eat at a restaurant.

There, purchasing a newspaper, he read the verdict and was over-

come. For days, he wrote, he was unable he

because of the rage

those "who had so brutally wronged our people." Even the

felt at

British,

in

to eat

wrote Musa, seemed ashamed of what they had done, though

England the British foreign secretary, as Musa

justify

recalled, tried to

Cromer's conduct by stating that such tough action had been

necessary because "Islamic fanaticism was flaring up Africa."

Musa, a Copt, was thoroughly disgusted

enemy

a nonexistent Islamic

all

over North

at the fabrication of

and

to justify savagery, injustice,

in-

humanity. In the ensuing years, Egyptian politicians tiate

would go on

to nego-

with the British for Egypt's independence and, by the end of

World War

I,

would bring about a

partial British withdrawal. It

was

soon thereafter that Egypt's experiment in democracy would begin.

There was one further major change under way that would ically affect

my

father's

life,

and indeed

my

crit-

own. This was the ending

of the old system of separation between the Turkish upper classes and native Egyptians.

Through the these two groups

first

decades of

of Egyptian professional

power and

century intermarriage between

this

became more and more common. As the new

men

class

rose through the ranks to positions of

authority, they consolidated their

the daughters of the Turkish upper classes.

out such marriages, but they, too

—

able,

new

status by marrying

They themselves sought

hardworking

men

distin-

guishing themselves in their professions and clearly on their way up in society

— were sought out by the Turkish

pursued educations and professional

lives

elite.

Ambitious Egyptians

with a zest and dedication

46

Leila

that

many

Ahmed

of their aristocratic Turkish brothers, secure in their in-

herited wealth, lacked.

Rising through the ranks, establishing himself in

younger brother get an education, status in ily.

Aziz

life

my

life,

helping his

father, too, consolidated his

by marrying the daughter of an upper-class Turkish fam-

— "beloved," "dear one" — my mother would

viating his full

name, Abdel

Aziz.

Her own name,

call

Ikbal,

him, abbre-

was unusual,

a gender-neutral one as often a man's as a woman's. Mother's family's

wealth, like that of most such families in Egypt, was in land.

owned

a fine estate, devoted mainly to growing fruit

tangerines, bananas

—

—

They

grapes, oranges,

in the fertile oasis of al-Fayyum.

J?n (Expectation of J3^ngels

REMEMBER

I

tence

itself

made up

IT

my

AS A TIME, that era of

seemed

to

have

its

own music

—a

lilt

when

exis-

and music that

the ordinary fabric of living. There was the breath of the

wind always, and the perpetual murmur of

awan

childhood,

came

that

trees; the call of the kar-

in the dusk, dying with the dying light; the reed-piper

playing his pipe in the

dawn

living: street-vendors' calls;

clip-clop of a donkey; the

and, throughout the day, the music of

people passing in the

sound of a motor

car;

street, talking; the

dogs barking; the

cooing of pigeons in the siesta hour.

Night too had clogs of village in pairs,

its

women

varieties of music.

The clack

of the

from work or from errands among the shops

of Matariyya.

And

wooden

returning home, sometimes singly, sometimes

the sound, as

much

a part of

in the

summer

suburb

nights as the

croaking of frogs, of the neighbors' waterwheel creaking gently, turned

by an ox whose eyes were blinkered so he would not know he was going round and round rather than forward. The neighbors had a

mango

mud walls of their land. Along one of my bedroom window, was a stream borthe mud wall and fruit garden of the next

grove within the dried

those walls, directly opposite

dered on

its

neighbors.

other side by

The stream, dark and

peared beyond the walls into open

still

and edged with reeds, disap-

fields. It

was

all

that remained,

I

48

Leila

was

told, of the

before

Ahmed

canal that had run parallel to our house until just

was born. The canal was

I

filled in

and a road

down on

the time that a railway line was laid

about

built at

the other side of our

house, linking the suburbs and the distant country centers beyond

our house with Cairo and with Maadi on the other side of Cairo. In the depths of the night, one also sometimes heard hyenas

somewhere out on the

distant edge of the villages, in the heart of the

countryside, and very occasionally but so faintly that they were like a

beat on the ding.

membrane

of night, one could hear drums: a village wed-

There would be pipe music,

carried to us;

drums,

I

what one heard, or sensed

do not know why, awoke

did not think,

bring alive in

Terrors above

living.

lives in

— the beggars, the

why

blind, the cripples, or even just the

poor and

them on the

it

was that kept us on one

side of

other.

where the deprivation of others

obvious, no doubt produces

What

about death, whose

way they

Privilege, in a setting

is

glaringly

own mesh of anxieties and perhaps make of seeing another child, just like

its

does a child

on the other

all

things were the

the villagers themselves, and what

herself,

I

myriad ways, but also of other

things, the vagaries, for instance, of

also of guilt.

were the drums. The

a kind of obscure terror.

I

presence was there in our

the line and

rather,

me

in

am frightened of the drums. Instead they seemed to me the hidden and muffled terrors that inhered in and

threaded our ordinary

were

but only a note here and there

too,

side of the hedge, looking in at her, hollow-eyed,

in rags, as she stops in her play to stare

back?

I

imagine that the sense

of terror and precariousness that seemed to have pervaded

hood was not unconnected with whatever conclusions

I

my

child-

drew about

the mysterious arbitrary line that divided our lives and that could quite possibly at any

moment

shift

— people

are struck blind, die, in an

instant.

Sometimes the sheer pain and

terror of existence

would be

right

out in the open, in the screams, for instance, that tore through the night once, in the darkest time before dawn,

somehow

fell

when our

into the well by the waterwheel.

dead and the women's wails were

shrill

He was

and endless,

neighbor's ox

dragged out

like the wails of

A villagers

was

and poor people over the death of a person. Another time

away but

it

day that the screams went up from another house, farther

in the

ties,

49

Border Passage

still

piercing.

A

man

son of the house, a young

had committed suicide by drinking a

And once someone was run

in his twen-

bottle of Lysol.

over by a train just outside the large,

disused iron gate to our garden, a gate that had been the main entrance before the canal was

rilled in

unusually, the gate was open, and

and the railway

built.

That day,

saw bloodstains on the road and

I

here and there bloodied newspapers covering something, or some

mangled scattered

things, the

out

why he was run over. It Or maybe his foot

suicide.

might,

remember

that

I

forted me, I

I

remember, but

remember her

ing to

me

it

I

was

I

or

five

must have been

would squeeze myself

stuffed easy chair near the radio

figure

someone speculated, have been

got stuck.)

shivered for days after that, although I

(No one could

bits of a person.

in beside

six.

early

summer.

my mother

where she habitually

sat.

a

literally

I

in the

She com-

must have taxed her patience because

saying, "It's just too hot, dear,

I

can't have

you

stick-

like that!"

Other one-time events also happened on that side of the house, at that gate,

member

which seemingly opened only

for those occasions.

standing there once watching a train

full

I

re-

of smiling, red-

faced English soldiers chug slowly by. They called out and waved to us and threw chocolates; given their cheeriness and their dispensing of chocolates, this

World War.

I

was

must have been close five in

to the

end of the Second

1945.

Besides the drums, there was a whole variety of other beats and

rhythms that marked and threaded our days and nights, and most

were not frightening. Even the

trains, despite that dreadful accident,

were not frightening. They mostly passed

at a

casionally blowing their haunting whistles. (for

his

no better reason, head

to

I

It

comfortable chug, ocdid

happen sometimes

think, than that the engine driver took

it

into

put on a sudden burst of speed) that the chug would turn

into a loud, gathering, hurtling sound, as

would shortly be upon

us.

if

some unearthly monster

The sound would cause us children

to

drop

whatever we were doing and race to the top or bottom of the garden

50

Ahmed

Leila

or of the stairs. Safety lay in getting to wherever

was

hurtling monster

fully

upon

was before the

it

us.

And there was the regular beat of al-makana, "the machine," which pumped well water to the house and to the pond and garden and the various canals and waterways of earth and concrete that ran through it. Turned on every morning, it would come on again in the afternoons

when

were

with the sound of hoses, running water, the regular

filled

the weather grew hot, so that

summer

afternoons fall

of

a spade, and, in the background, the phut-phut-phut of the machine. All these, the

makana and

the running water, were good sounds, re-

way it makana would pick up and interheart. And for some reason, perhaps

assuring sounds, sounds about everything going forward in the should. Sometimes, though, the

weave with the sound of one's because

imagined the absence of that sound, the

I

ceasing, the sound of

The sound of

regularity of

my

Nanny was

my own heartbeat reminded me of death. my own breath did not frighten me the way

heart sometimes did, but

ny's breath, in the sixty

bed beside me,

when

I

to

was born. She

night, reading her Latin Bible, turning

sometimes

in prayer.

possibility of

Her Bible had

its

the

remember listening for Nanmake sure she was still alive.

I

sat at the foot of its

our bed every

moving her

silky leaves,

a picture of Jesus

lips

coming on

clouds of glory, the light streaming out in bands from the clouds in a

way

that I'd never seen

look like that, but exactly

how

it

when

I

it

do.

didn't believe that light could ever

I

got to England

Nanny would pause

looked sometimes.

sometimes and say meditatively, "Tu "The Call of the Curlew," by Egypt's fore-

in those days,

goes to work as a servant for a young

When

It

to see a

world in which

it

put

I

was

the sense of violence, of deadly violence that was there beneath

when matters of sexuality and transgression were concerned. The violence, after all, had alin a small but devastating way, been part of my own life.

the surface of ordinary pleasant living sexual ready,

remember

I

talking of

who supported

all this

herself by

with Fatma, a spinster and distant relative

making

all

the casual wear for the family

— 164

Ahmed

Leila

pajamas, nightdresses, housedresses. She would

come

to stay at

our

house, or at the aunts' houses, or at Zatoun or Alexandria, bringing

her Singer sewing machine, and would remain until she'd finished

we needed. Fatma was

the sewing

could speak

fairly freely.

ventions, possibly because of her

pendent and yet free-floating

whom

the only adult with

She seemed more able

own

I

felt

I

through con-

to see

marginality and her

social status.

I

all

own

de-

loved her visits above

all

because of the moments of deep laughter that we invariably shared.

She was

at

summer

Siouf that

for a

few weeks and

with her the day after seeing the movie.

It

was one of the few adults who did not sat in the

den,

was the

I

remember

siesta

sitting

— Fatma — and we

hour

retire for the siesta

shade of the downstairs balcony overlooking the front gar-

white paving stones, with vivid ornamental grass demarcating

its

them, dazzling

afternoon sun.

in the

Such was the summer we were having when Nasser made

his

speech nationalizing the Suez Canal on the twenty-sixth of July, the fourth anniversary of the revolution.

He was

speaking in the main

square in Alexandria and one could hear on the radio the surges of

euphoric applause breaking in as he spoke

— and he spoke

for several

hours. There was no euphoria in our home. Even back in the days of the revolution, the exile,

hension.

and so it

news of

I'd

often heard

logically they

was a

military

ocratic process feared,

of the coup that had sent the king into

was

coup

and

my parents

though

it

at

home, much

— a group of

officers

forcibly seized power.

at the very least in jeopardy,

was not called

cally" elected president

to

my

incompre-

lament the corruption of the king,

should be pleased now,

of course they were right.

to

it,

had been received somberly

I

thought. But to them

had cut through the dem-

Democracy

and perhaps

in Egypt, they at

an end. And

By 1956 the country was a dictatorship,

that:

Nasser was the country's "democrati-

and he would continue

for the rest of his life

be "democratically" elected and re-elected, always receiving 99 per-

cent of the vote.

The speech he now

delivered

was a rousing one, describing

— speaking

in colloquial Egyptian

British oppression of Egyptians since

A

165

Border Passage

the building of the canal, the construction of which had cost, he said,

hundreds of thousands of Egyptian

had taken

rialists

And

lives.

for themselves, as they

ever since then impe-

continued to

this

day to take,

the revenue of millions generated by the canal, continuing meanwhile

way to frustrate Egypt's hopes, selling arms to Israel, refusthem to Egypt, and deciding now as America had just announced to withdraw the funds they had promised for the buildand there could be only ing of the High Dam. And so the answer in every

ing to

—

sell

—

—

one answer now, he said take possession of said,

— was

what was

would be used

throw

to

rightfully ours, the canal. Its revenue,

was received

home

in our

he

dam.

to finance the

This fiery speech, exhilarating in perialism,

yoke and

off the imperialist

defiance of tyranny and im-

its

with deep gloom, principally be-

cause of Nasser's linking of the nationalization and the dam. Only in the course of hearing

did

it

my

father realize that, contrary to his

hopes, Nasser meant to go ahead with the

dam

despite the

enormous

damage that my father had warned him would ensue. Years later I would learn that Nasser had not informed the Egyptian cabinet the

—

body supposedly governing Egypt

— of

his intention to nationalize the

canal until hours before his speech and that

had been opposed

to the action

many

cabinet

members

because they opposed pursuing a

course of seizure rather than of negotiation and law.

who were

not the only Egyptians in the country

over the nationalization. But at the time

wished that we could just for once be

it

felt

like

And

less

as

if

so

we were

than euphoric

we

everybody

were.

How

else, that

I

we

could be nationalistic and anti-imperialist and just support Abdel Nasser.

But

me, that

knew

I

I

must

too by then, because reveal to

was beginning

society

who would

to

my parents had drummed

no one what they said

at

it

into

home: already the

be riddled with "secret police" and informers

we had heard the and knew of people who had

report critics to the government; already

rumors of people being tortured

in jails

disappeared.

The drama

nationalization speech

that

an end

was

to

would become a landmark

to old-style imperialism and,

be the in

first

shot in an unfolding

world history, bringing about

above

all,

to the old-style as-

166

Ahmed

Leila

sumptions and attitudes of imperialism that had been the norm. The nationalization of the canal and, even

French reactions Egypt

to

would

it

who had begun home and

content at

more

directly, the British

measures

to resort to repressive

and

from a dictator

also transform Nasser

in

to control dis-

with, as yet, only a relatively small following

abroad, to a Third World hero and the uncontested leader of the Arab world.

At home, over the ther's trips to

summer, things grew subdued. Fa-

rest of the

Cairo continued, and he continued, as

I

learned only

years later, to try to dissuade Nasser from proceeding with the dam,

announcement

despite Nasser's

used

now

I

remember

moment

the very

golden October day. side the

that the canal revenues

We

were

that

sitting,

we saw

A

the planes.

Joyce and

gym, looking out toward the playing

on the edge of the desert.

wind rose and

light

I,

fields

A

hold them down.

group of

girls

our eyes, and saw two

silver

last

fell,

line of firs

making

a great

we had

to

life is

words.

We

a but a dream, " a

looked up, shading

planes gleaming in the depths of the sky.

They must have been recognizably

different

from ordinary planes even

because watching them pass we said to each other, "Maybe

we're going to have a war!" there was

The political

we

was a

passed behind us, one of them

singing, "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,

drone from above threading her

It

on the bench out-

and the

whirl of dust on the fields and tugging at our skirts so that

to us,

would be

to finance its construction.

enough going on

We

laughed because we were joking, but

to bring the possibility to

nationalization of the canal

was

exchanges had been reported

schoolgirls paid

vaguely aware

of.

no attention

to but

still

in the

our minds.

a live issue and various

news

— exchanges that

would undoubtedly have been

More important and immediate was

the fact that

since we'd returned to school at the beginning of October our school

days had been

filled

with

all

sorts of

emergency arrangements and

unexpected free periods because many of our British teachers cifically all

the

had announced

women at the

— had

failed to

come

back.

— spe-

The headmaster

beginning of the term that they had not

re-

A

167

Border Passage

turned on the instructions of the British government, which was

ways extremely cautious, he said with that smile of his.

He

was now

late

us shortly.

It

fully

— overly so

in this case,

al-

he added

expected that they would be joining

October.

The bombing began the following morning, October 29, 1956. The planes we had seen had been British RAF reconnaissance planes. French planes, Cairo Radio told Suez Canal region.

us,

had been seen

in action over the

The planes bombing Cairo were

The

British.

tack on Egypt was not, the radio said, as had been thought at

an

Israeli attack.

and a

The

distraction,

Israeli incursions in Sinai

at-

first,

were simply a pretext

an excuse for the British and French attack.

and

Air-raid sirens

clears

all

sounded throughout the day, and

throughout the day there was the sound of bombs and anti-aircraft fire.

At

home we

stocked up on candles and papered our windows and

car lights as instructed on the radio, to father taking control of

together

my

which we were glued,

knob so we could piece

twirling the

it,

from the BBC, Cairo Radio, and other stations what

A

was actually happening.

British station

came

BBC,

on, not the

broadcasting from Cyprus, explaining that only airports and military installations

were being targeted and that the station would announce

the times and targets of the attacks so that the people could stay away.

Once we'd established that the times they gave for the raids were accurate, we packed some essentials and set off, during one of the brief scheduled intervals in the

bombings, for Zatoun, with

stone walls a sturdier house than ours and less thought, to collapse

if

a

bomb

fell

too close.

were already there with their children.

We

likely,

its

my

thick father

My aunts Aisha and Nazli all

slept in the

basement,

considered safest, making our beds on the sofas that lined those downstairs rooms.

Cairo Radio said that

all

our planes had been flown to safety in

Sudan and Saudi Arabia, and British

it

issued bulletins of the

number

of

and French planes shot down; but other stations we picked

up, including the

BBC,

said that the entire Egyptian air force

been wiped out and that there had been no British

made speeches

saying that

we were under

losses.

had

Nasser

attack by two of the world's

— 168

Leila

Ahmed

mightiest military powers but that

if

they thought

we were going

to

bow to their tyranny and injustice they were wrong. We would fight, we would fight (Hanharib! Hanharib!) for our freedom and dignity, every single Egyptian would fight, we would all be issued arms, and we would all, every single one of us, fight. We were a small country and had no military power compared with theirs, but we would not be defeated. They would see, we would not be defeated. Hanharib! Hanharib! From village to village and house to house, we would fight and never surrender.

All the world,

he

said,

the tyrants, the imperialists. His friend

saying that

all

was on our

Nehru had

sent

side against

him

a cable

the people of Asia and Africa were with us, that the

aggression of the imperialists against the small, newly liberated country

of Egypt was a shock to the whole world.

on our

side,

and even America, usually the

America was on our

And

it

was true

Soviet

Union was

of the British, even

side.

— we got the same thing from the BBC.

world, apart from the aggressors,

were outraged

The

ally

at the British

seemed

and French

to

All the

be supporting us and

attack. Sir

all

Anthony Eden,

the British prime minister, had been declaring that they were coming in to separate the warring sides, Israel

going to land in the main

and Egypt, and that they were

on the Suez Canal

cities

to safeguard

But nobody believed Eden. The British parliament was as

a

we heard on liar,

sign.

the

demanding

BBC. People were shouting to

at

in

an uproar,

Eden, calling him

be told the truth and demanding that he

re-

Eisenhower issued a statement condemning the aggression, and

America sponsored a

UN

except for the aggressors

resolution supported by

all

— demanding an immediate

the nations

cease-fire.

But the bombing continued night and day. At night, of bombs,

now

now

muffled and distant and

would

close,

the searchlights' pencil-thin

beams raking the sky over

urbs unfamiliarly black.

an ambulance

head, did not, to

My brother went My mother, kissing

my amazement, make

a

altogether of serving in a dangerous area.

and watch

a city

off to serve in the

driver.

sound

and the sound,

fire,

I

to the

listen to the radio

sporadically, of anti-aircraft

as

it.

and sub-

Suez area

him solemnly on the scene or try to get him out It

was

his duty to serve his

A

169

Border Passage

country, she said, and she would be praying every

moment

for his safe

return. I

continued to spend

my

time by the radio in the basement of

Zatoun, reporting to the adults,

who now

spent their days upstairs

and no longer followed every version of what was happening on the

number of planes downed Cairo Radio and according to the BBC, the ships sunk

ground, the targets that had been according to

in the canal. After a first ship

by the

British, the

hit,

the

was unintentionally sunk

in the canal

Egyptian side deliberately scuttled several more

in order to totally block this canal that they

were bombing us

to

"safeguard." I

slept at night with the radio beside

whenever

I

was awakened

the volume low so that

waking

to listen to

of night

when

it

it

in the night

was

me and would

listen to

it

by sirens and bombs, keeping

murmur that only I could hear, light of dawn and in the pitch dark

just a

in the gray

the faint light of the radio dial was the only light there

was. Until the British

when thousands

bombing and subsequent invasion of Port

died, there

were few

civilian casualties.

bombings and searchlights with which we

And

Said,

so the

lived in those first days,

the constant and varied reports from the radio, imparted to

life

and

not a

sense of the horror and tragedy of war but chiefly a sense of general

excitement and of the heightened danger with which edged. Above

all,

life

was now

there was the exhilaration of feeling that here

we

were, a small nation unjustly and immorally beleaguered by two of the world's mightiest powers and greatest bullies, heroically fighting

on

to the support

and applause, as we learned from the

radio, of the

entire world.

And

so

I

followed through those days, riveted not only by news

of the developments on the ground but also by every detail of what

was happening and

internationally:

America again denouncing the French

British, the African National

solidarity with the people of Egypt,

Congress issuing a declaration of

huge demonstrations

in Trafalgar

Square against Anthony Eden and the British attack, speeches made against the British government by British

reported in

full

on the

BBC — the BBC,

members

of parliament,

often in the past

all

jammed by

170

Ahmed

Leila

now coming through loud and clear. We how Hugh Gaitskell, leader

the government in Cairo,

heard

all

about the battles in parliament,

denounced the aggression

of the opposition,

immorality and

how Anthony

an act of

as

saying that the British government was acting against

For the

time

first

and Gaitskell became heroes

my

in

For in addition to the drama

all its traditions.

was

me, as

for

mind.

I

was

I

think for

living

through with everyone

many

English Schoolers,

an inner drama, a personal drama about loyalty abused and trayed.

and

learned the names of British ministers. Nutting

I

else in Cairo, there

folly

Nutting, another minister, had resigned,

We would say to one another afterward, we

how shocked we had been

to see the British

trust be-

English Schoolers,

behaving in

this

way,

with such brazen injustice and to see them being so immoral and so openly, cynically acting on the principle that might

who had

ish,

uprightness and fairness!

how

I

had believed

in

I

remember

feeling

grown up saying

trusted them, and yet they had

bombed

like us,

us,

invaded us.

way one

of having been betrayed was deeply personal.

is

when one had

when one

I

Brit-

I

this,

done

felt,

I

was hurt

has trusted and been betrayed by a friend,

believed in the goodness and uprightness of

and then discovered that they have I

The

right.

could not believe anyone or anything anymore.

My sense the

I

them and

country

this to us, a small said, that

is

taught us that what they stood for was morality and

wonder now, looking back,

after all

at the

in the British despite the fact that

I

someone

been deceiving one.

anatomy of that sense of belief

was

living, as

I

was by then,

in

an environment pervaded with anti-imperialist and anti-British sentiment. First of

all,

obviously,

I

was a

schoolgirl

and knew nothing

about history other than what we learned in school, about battles and the

Magna Carta and William

the Conqueror and Bismarck and Ca-

vour. Second, the political speeches

all

around us were made

in that

declamatory tone that made one automatically discount whatever was being said as untrue

And

the attitude at

— as a

lie

or at the very least a wild exaggeration.

home would have confirmed my sense

ness and manipulativeness of the political rhetoric.

It

of the false-

was well known

A at

home

something or other went wrong in the country or

that, if

there was

some

111

Border Passage

political fiasco or failure,

Nasser would immediately

blaming everything on "the imperi-

deliver

one of

alists,"

"the feudalists," "the Zionists," "the forces of regression."

My

his long diatribes

parents always listened carefully to his speeches to glean,

from the various codes of

political discourse

and from the subjects he

harped on, what the country was in for next. His routine was so miliar at

would

home

say,

that

"Ah

yes,

my mother, when now were

fa-

he started in on the imperialists,

next,"

and would brace herself

attack on the feudalists, which she always took personally, as

were direct attacks on her and her family. She would

sit

for his if

they

there fuming,

countering his every charge. She did not believe they had been oppressors at

all;

on the contrary, they had been, she was convinced,

enormously responsible, conscientious landlords, generous

to a fault

toward the people living and working on their land. By the end of his tirades she

would be furiously invoking curses on

upon you, Abdel Nasser!

yell'anak ya Abdel Nasser! God's curses

In addition to imperialists glish ideas,

Adam

—

all

all this

was the

too intimately.

I

at

Jane Austen, Dickens, Winnie the Pooh, George I

could reduce what

caricature called imperialism and

reject everything English, as the rhetoric

Besides, even with

what we had just

come

I

knew

to hate

around us enjoined us lived through,

Eliot,

to

and

to do.

what had been

— a way that of course would not have known say then — was how multilayered and complicated everything

reinforced for to

—

I knew "the enemy" the home in English books, En-

fact that

was

Bede. There was no way that

some cardboard

how

his head. Allah

me

in

was and how even the

I

evil imperialist British

thing or another. There had been Anthony

were not

all

just

one

Eden and the attack on

us and the perfidy and injustice of that, but there had also been demonstrations in Trafalgar Square, and resignations from the British parliament, and people passionately denouncing their leader,

BBC

and the

reporting things as they were, often things that were totally in

our favor. I

emerged, then, from those packed few days lived in the semi-

172

Leila

Ahmed

underground rooms of Zatoun probably somewhat more

nationalistic

than before but probably, too, with an enhanced rather than a dimin-

how

ished sense of

On

complicated things were

—

politics, justice, truth.

a Saturday, five days after the British planes had begun their

bombing, British ships began the bombardment of Port Said. News of civilian deaths and casualties and of overflowing hospitals began to

pour

in,

reported, though in slightly lesser numbers, by the

as well as by Cairo Radio.

began landing

On Monday,

in Port Said.

The governor

BBC

and French troops

British

of Port Said refused to

surrender and the numbers of civilian deaths and casualties rose into the thousands.

London and

now

The

Soviet

desperately needed,

cease-fire

Union threatened

attacks on Paris and

the United States, refusing Britain the

went

oil

demanded an immediate

into effect at

and funds

it

The midnight on Tuesday, November 6, cease-fire.

1956. At American insistence, the British and French began a total

withdrawal from Egypt and Israel gave up the territory in Sinai

and returned

it

had captured

Anthony Eden

to its prior borders. Sir

left for

Jamaica "on doctor's orders" and shortly afterward resigned as prime minister. Nasser, the

man who had

stood up to imperialism and

anny, was hero to the entire Third World and

its

friends,

tyr-

and undis-

puted leader, too, of the entire Arab world. In Egypt henceforth there doing whatever he wanted

would be no bar

to Nasser's

mildly critical of

him was purged

or

somehow

— anyone even

or other silenced or got

rid of.

When we line

were back

had been down

our teachers had

at

left, I

at

Ain Shams

called

I

my

friends; the

phone

Zatoun almost from the day we got there. learned,

when

the country a few days after the attack began.

heard her news but got no reply

All

the British were ordered out of

when

I

I

talked to Jean

and

called Joyce. Soon, though,

she called me. They were just back, having gone to stay with relatives in Alexandria; there

ents

felt,

too,

had

were too many airports near Heliopolis, her par-

and Alexandria, they thought, would be left

our house and gone to

my

safer.

I

said that we,

grandfather's place.

I

paused.

A There was something

I

173

Border Passage

had sensed

from launching into ordinary conversation, talking

in our

normal way

When

about what we were feeling and thinking. There was a silence. the

phone had rung

I

had been upstairs and

the upstairs phone, which was in

my

were there, shirt

my

and

my

I

father's

was speaking now from room. Both

my

parents

father in front of the mirror buttoning his crisp white

stiff collar

and putting on

who was

mother,

sitting in

his tie

and braces and talking

inhibited.

still felt

to the downstairs

I

to

an armchair on that side of the room

me

glancing through the paper. They were not paying attention to I

me

in her voice that prevented

"Hold on, I'm going

said to Joyce,

to

but

down

go

phone."

"No, don't," she said, "my father's waiting to use the phone, so

on long."

can't stay

"Oh," his call

I

said, mystified,

I

wondering why she hadn't

and then called me, so that we could

let

him make

talk at length, as

we

usually did.

Then she

told

me

that they

were leaving Egypt

— immediately, the

very next day.

Her words threw me friend Joyce

into a turbulence of feelings.

My own

and her family were, apparently, on the wrong

best

side. In-

stead of supporting us and standing with us, they were on the

wrong

side. I

recall the general feel of

exact words.

I

what happened between us but not our

must have responded

stiffly,

my

hurt and withdrawal

obvious to her. Joyce explained that she had nothing to do with the decision,

it

was her parents who were deciding.

she'd stay, she said, but her parents thought for

them. She didn't succeed in persuading

remained

My down

stiff

announced

made me

that Joyce

would be dangerous

me

been speaking

call

of anything and

I

her back. Putting the phone

was leaving and

remarked how surprised she was I'd

she could choose,

and distant and hung up, saying a cool goodbye.

mother, however,

I'd

it

If

to hear that

to in that tone of voice.

it

my mother

at

once

had been Joyce that

She thought Joyce's parents'

decision to leave was an entirely sensible one.

"But the president said the Jews were welcome to stay,"

I

said.

174

Many Jews

heard him myself on the radio.

I'd

their

homeland, he'd

ports

said,

must be with us

did they

If

Ahmed

Leila

lived in

and they were welcome all

and accept Egyptian

you

way and

the

nationality.

Egypt and considered

accept Egyptian nationality.

Why

my mother

it

But

their passports

thought of Egypt as

didn't see

and he changes

give

up

to stay, but if they

their foreign pass-

That had sounded

it

fair to

me.

your home, then you should

not?

way at all. "What if they give up mind and turns against them?" she

this

his

"Why should they trust him? Why should they take such a risk?" "But why should he change his mind?" I asked. "He said that they're welcome in Egypt. He said that." said.

She continued to

argue with me, saying that of course he wasn't

to

be trusted and that the decision that Joyce's parents were making

was a very hard one any case

was

make, and probably they were

to

right.

And

in

was not Joyce's decision, and she was my friend and she

it

leaving. I'd be very sorry later

if

I

didn't call her

up now and say

goodbye properly. I

didn't

want

"Your mother I

to. is

did call her.

were both

in tears,

Months that they

I

looked at

my

father.

absolutely right," he said.

And

this time,

as she says."

by the end of our conversation, we

promising each other that we would write.

after they left, Joyce wrote to

still

"Do

did not

know where

been temporarily placed

in a

and her brother had gone

me from England

saying

they were going to be. They had

house with people they did not know,

to France,

where a family friend had

se-

cured a job for him. Her parents had been trying to arrange for her to

go to school but she was not sure, she

to school

said, that

anymore and they were arguing about

it.

she wanted to go

She wrote again

some months later to say they were in their own apartment in London and she was going to secretarial school but was not sure she would finish there because they might be moving again, to France this time because that was where her father had a job. I meant to write back but this

I

procrastinated.

Months

later

I

heard from her again, just a card

time with her address, in Paris, and the words

write?"

"Why

don't you

A I

procrastinated again.

England, where

Border Passage

I

was going

I

175

was beginning

to plan

and

to college,

I

my own move

to

put off writing until

I

knew when exactly I was going to be traveling, as I thought that maybe we could plan to meet. I could perhaps, I thought, stop in Paris on the way and we could meet. And so finally I wrote to her with my plans.

My I

letter

came back stamped "Unknown

at this address."

never heard from her again or from anyone

School,

when we went back in January, was no

School. Taken over by the Egyptian government,

Nasr

who knew

longer the English it

was renamed

—Victory— School. Documents had been discovered

ment,

it

was

said, that indicated that the

her.

al-

in the base-

school had served as a British

spy center. Probably, people said, the school had branched into spying

with the advent of Mr. Price and probably he had been appointed by the British government specifically for the purpose of beginning this operation. This explained both the abrupt recall of his predecessor

and the

British government's break with precedent in appointing

someone unfamiliar with Egypt knows, though,

if

any of

The new teaching below what

nominally in

one usually

was true or

was

if it

Who

staff at the school, all Egyptians,

had been

level

was now

my O levels, I was my A levels, exams that

had been. Having just passed

it

my

at that.

just propaganda.

by the government, and the academic

hastily recruited far

this

— a white South African,

first

sat for

year of preparing for

two years after

was easier than preparing

for

O

O

levels,

but the work

levels. In the past,

come from England; now they were going

I

was doing

both exams had

be set by the Egyptian

to

Ministry of Education.

Many the Jews.

students had

And once

left

—

all

the British children and nearly

the school reopened and

the academic standards were, others also friend,

Jean Said. After a few weeks

left,

it

was

clear

including

at al-Nasr

she

all

how poor

my remaining

left to

complete

her schooling in America so that she'd be able to go on to Vassar,

which was where her parents had always intended her I

do not know why

my

to go.

parents did not think, as Jean's did, of

— 176

Leila

sending

me

me

abroad to finish school.

would have been

It

my

college there. Instead,

College,

my

my sister's

college, as to

The

would go

I

to

father entered into discussion with Girton

what should be done about me, given

education had been interrupted by

anyone's control.

send

logical to

England, since the plan had always been that

to

that

Ahmed

matters outside

politics,

me

college decided to permit

to sit for the next

entrance exam the following November, even though

A

normally required and there was no expectation that

I

were

levels

would have

passed them. In June of that year

I

with flying colors. For the next year occasionally with the

important to me,

than

I.

new

friends

Amr and

Amr had been

Egyptian

sat for the

I

I

A

just stayed

levels

home, hanging out

had made. Two

in particular

in his final year of preparing for

just before the

A

and

levels,

Suez invasion, having

passed her baccalaureate at a French school and having

come

to ours

spend a year improving her English. Books played a major part

both friendships.

We

Amr.

would

I

— or rather he would

think now, hearing the

name

but of oleanders and

talk

and

I

would

listen

firs

grounds, where the

firs

evil.

and desert and red playing fields to the

copse

at the

We

fields.

end of the

leaned against the desert, and once there

to stroll,

now

I

Dostoyevsky, not of those brooding nov-

would walk along the edge of the would continue

in

would take long walks on the school grounds with

talk

about Dostoyevsky, symbolism, and the meaning of good and

els

were

Nawal. Both were a couple of years older

Nawal had entered our school to

and passed

we

daringly holding hands. There would be

other couples strolling there also, though not many, for there were

weighty taboos

among

us, the students as a whole, against

having

boyfriends and girlfriends. Occasionally, late in the school day, after

games,

when

the dusk was beginning to close

see a really daring

Since

with

I

couple

sitting interlaced

was of course not permitted

Amr

remained confined

to

in,

one might sometimes

behind an oleander bush.

have a boyfriend,

my friendship

to school.

Like Amr, Nawal took the lead intellectually, dazzling

me

with

her French-style literary analysis and her ease with philosophy. Be-

cause of her

I

now

read Proust and Gide and

Camus and

Colette,

A names

I

my

had heard

111

Border Passage

my mother

cousin Samia and

not until then thought to exert myself to read.

Nawal (whose

father

to connections ticularly her

mother, Soheir,

me

regularly included

aspects of Cairo to

Khan

and

to

family, par-

a daughter,

treated

began

I

in this

who were

was a close friend of

to

it

Soheir

She took us

hers.

to

I

one

alleys in

sisters,

and

shops

craft

Um Kulsum, who of Um Kulsum's con-

met

certs,

and hearing the famous Egyptian singer

stood

how

truly

My first visit

browse through the

And through

to discover

winding

its

was with Nawal, her four

city,

visiting

purchase jewelry.

way

had not hitherto encountered.

I

famous Cairo bazaar with

the medieval section of the

her mother,

my life. Her me almost like

for the rest of

who

in their projects.

that

life

Khalili, the

friendship with

was a well-known doctor) would eventually lead

would have

I

mention but had

My

live,

finally

I

under-

marvelous her singing was.

Soheir took us too to the annual charity bazaars held in the Se-

miramis Hotel. These events were run by society women,

who em-

broidered various things or baked cakes or donated jewelry and other items for sale. Besides raising funds for charities, these affairs had an

Frequented only by women, they were a kind of

unofficial objective.

marriage bazaar, for the

manned by mille.

n

stalls

where the goods were

In this

way they would be shown

society families,

who were

brides for their sons.

Um

among

there,

Kulsum,

too,

off to the

new crop

Aunt Karima took cialite life

out were

of pretty

girls.

life

(it

was

Among my own

was,

I

of other

a regular at these affairs,

part in these charity activities

they involved. This

women

other reasons, to scout out

was

not because she had sons but because she herself seeing the

laid

the society matrons' daughters, "jennes filles de bonne fa-

think, too

said) enjoyed

relatives, only

and the

much

lively so-

part of the

public domain, too nontraditional and too Westernized for the

conservative

women

my own

of

direct family,

my mother and

more aunts

and of course Grandmother.

My friendship with the years, so that

them

that

I

when

would

too, but not in the

Nawal's mother and sisters would endure over

stay.

way

I

finally

My

that

it

returned to Egypt

friendship with

had begun

it

would be with

Nawal would continue

— as a passionate intellectual

178

Leila

companionship. Her those

was soon overtaken by

life

tragedy. Already in

years of our friendship she began to suffer from a myste-

first

rious illness.

proved to be multiple sclerosis and

It

fected her mind, clouding

While

I

stayed

home

Amr and Nawal began finally

Ahmed

came

its

eventually af-

clarity.

waiting to take the Girton entrance exam,

When November

attending Cairo University.

sat for the

I

once dazzling

it

exam

in the bizarre setting of the Swiss

embassy. In those post-Suez days there was no British embassy and

no

British institution in Egypt to

their I

exam and didn't

want

was a kind of

to

rote

and

to

me I

friends at Cairo University that there

approach there, that one was expected said verbatim

to put

and not what one thought

down

for oneself,

sounded deadly. The American University had a some-

that

what better reputation, but either.

they could entrust

go to Cairo University or to the American Uni-

knew from

I

what the lecturer

felt

supervision.

its

versity in jCairo.

which Girton

wanted

to

for

some reason

I

didn't

want

to

go there,

go to England and to Cambridge.

"Place offered Stop Peace," the telegram from Girton read. Peace, I

learned from

to

be the

my

name

sister,

was not part of the message:

of the college admissions secretary.

it

just

happened

8

^he PSrem Perfected?

LOVED GlRTON from

I

October as dusk was

the

moment

falling,

of

my

arrival

on a day

in early

the taxi turning into the college drive-

way and pulling up under the red brick tower with its college crest. I remember pushing open for the first time the heavy wooden door to

how busy

the porter's lodge and

parents saying goodbye

assignment into the

— and

failing

it

was with people

with

its

shadowy

my

trees

glimmering now

in a dra-

October

light,

I

and bicycle

Wing Gyp,

taining the laundry

racks.

We

entered the buildings by

from gippo,

I

loved

it

know

to

women.

also

what they

("Gyp: at Cambridge and

Durham,

— Oxford Dictionary. Possibly, the dictionary notes, from gypsy. Gypsy: "a wandering race

come from all:

would come

rooms and bathrooms. "Gyp" was

varlet, or

lieved to have

I

the gyp being what they called the area con-

called the college cleaning

a college servant"

followed the assistant

luggage diagonally across the main courtyard

another heavy wooden door, leading into what as the East

arriving,

my room

matic streak of brilliance over the buildings. porter as he trundled

— students

then coming out again with

.

.

.

be-

Egypt.")

huge, heavy doors, corridors that went on forever,

overlooking courtyards and lawns and woods and hazy, distant mead-

ows, Victorian Gothic turrets and towers and spiral

words

— words

like

"gyp"

—

known only

to initiates.

It

stairs,

was

secret

like arriving

180

Leila

in a Bronte novel

Heights

who

Ahmed

— some combination of Jane Eyre

— and being immediately taken

in,

and Wuthering

accepted at once as one

belonged.

Of course and fogs and

this

was "England," a

place, with

its

red roofs and woods

my

rain, that I'd already lived in, in

mind, through

all

those years of losing myself in English books. This was one reason, no

doubt, that

took so easily to Girton and instantly

I

was that

other, of course, at

Cambridge and

who were

people

I'd

to

felt at

home. An-

my brothers and sister had also been students

grown up hearing them

talk

about

it.

Even the

my own life at Girton,

be the key presences in

Miss

Bradbrook and Miss Duke, director of studies and tutor respectively, were people

had been too,

I

at

I'd

heard about before

I

ever got there because

Girton and they'd had the same role in her

found,

knew about me. Miss Bradbrook,

had been a champion runner and that loved

A Room

of One's

Own — my

some reason

I

Indeed they

life.

for instance,

had written

about me. Magda had surely thought that her, but for

sister

knew that I

had, that summer, read and

I

sister

my

to

her telling her

this latter fact

would impress

found Miss Bradbrook's knowing

it

deeply

my sister had given away something about me that was very private. What was it about loving that book of Woolf 's that felt it was so important for me to be secretive about? Its fem-

embarrassing, feeling that

I

when feminism had

inism, tainly

I

not yet become a living idea again? Cer-

wasn't consciously a feminist in those days.

have been something to do with that that made

— whereas she wrote — and

book

I

thought then that what

feel that

There were other, felt

I

had

I

liked about

less obvious, less tangible

so familiar to me. For, in fact,

life at

inward

had hitherto framed the world

mood

of Girton, for instance

quiet, trees

—was very

grand and

lovely,

like that of

—

Am

it

must

both love the

was the way

it

it.

reasons

why

Girton

Girton was jn fundamental

ways deeply continuous with the assumptions, living that

me

be secretive about

to

think

I

as

I

beliefs,

knew

it.

and ways of

The

meditative,

this place of books, gardens,

Shams. Although

infinitely less

Ain Shams was a place essentially given over

to

reading and to a sense of the overriding reality of inner worlds of imagination. Even visitors

felt this

about Ain Shams. People

who

A came would

say that they

— or whoever

Border Passage

181

they had entered the world of Proust

felt

happened

their favorite writer

As

to be.

if

the place

were somehow located exactly on the edge and borderland between imagination and the ordinary world.

Girton then, spectacularly more lovely, was this too, and so naturally

felt at

I

home. (To

Cambridge

the English landscape around

landscape

— even

probably because of Girton,

this day,

Egypt's. Different as they are,

cracked and parched

— even

in

Cambridge

the pleasures of finding myself in of living once

more

in a place

—

love

much as I love any for me they share an

as

underlying similarity. Flat, dark earth, rich,

I

furrowed

fertile,

in a dry

fields

summer. One of

Cambridge again recently was that

where the look of the earth and

trees

and the shapes of leaves and the shadows they cast on the ground were deeply familiar

which

— and

Then

I

Africa.)

framed and regulated our ordinary

lives

home in. I found myself living, just as where women, presiding over the young authorities. This is how it had been from

was perfectly

at

in Alexandria, in a place

in their charge,

when

between Europe and

also the order that

was one that had

some of

recognized from childhood in Cairo, birds going back and

I

forth in their migrations

I

of hearing again familiar birds,

I

first

were the

came

into the world,

and here

ing reality, at Girton. Girton, that

community of women

— the

harem

it

was, the same underly-

to say,

is

— as

I

had

was a version of the lived

it

every

summer

in Alexandria.

Moreover, the order undergirding

this reality

and equally fundamental ways, though to

speak of

it

then. Here, too,

special, privileged people.

after

dusk

— gowns

marking us as university. to

I

was familiar

in other

would not have known how

we were marked

Wearing gowns,

off

from others as

for example, in the

town

that distinguished us

from mere townspeople,

members

of this ancient, exclusive

insiders, initiates,

Wearing them

to dinner in hall. Standing, waiting for grace

be said in Latin from High Table and sitting down, in a great

scraping of chairs and amid the rising

food ness

— food that for:

I

now,

roast beef

initiated into

it

hubbub

of chatter, to English

at eighteen,

have quite a fond-

and Yorkshire pudding, shepherd's

pie,

prunes and

— 182

Ahmed

Leila

women whose por-

custard, bread pudding. Eating under the eye of the traits lined

women

the paneled hall,

women

in plain white bonnets, stern

gowns with frills at the neck, founders, mistresses, our Mine as well, now that I was member and initiate. Sitting

in dark

foremothers.

eating, being served not

kitchen

staff,

women

by Saleh and

his assistants but

in black dresses with white collars

For here, too, our

lives

by the Girton

and aprons.

were sustained, as we pursued our quest

of meaning, ideas, truth, by a troupe of others, called not servants but

gyps and staff and workers and groundsmen and gardeners and assistants.

These were words that professionalized and

also sanitized

rendered psychologically and emotionally acceptable the

power and

class.

They were words

fortable classes of

Western

that, while they allowed the

societies to be sustained

ously to

someone not

com-

by the labor and

them (somewhat

service of others, simultaneously allowed

and

realities of

mysteri-

and so not wearing those

raised in this system

particular spectacles) to feel self-righteous

and

to believe that they,

unlike the backward, oppressive middle and upper classes of Third

World

societies, lived in classless,

common

oppress people. (Other

democratic societies and did not

words

for this pool of laborers in-

clude "helpers," "agricultural workers," and

"illegal

immigrants"

never, of course, "servants" or "peasants," though such people some-

times

live,

even

in this

founding land of democracy, in conditions as

bleak as those endured by people that other societies designate that

way. For Westerners, apparently, servants

your

it's

both — people whose the provided you use —

directly

labor,

lifestyle

that. Betty Friedan, for

okay and democratic to have

right

and

indirectly, sustains

words and never

call

them

example, unabashedly recommends in The

Feminine Mystique that the government subsidize university-educated

women der,

and what

fulfill

— of what society? — and thus

so that they can hire "household help" class in this classless

their artistic

and

color,

In Girton, then, this

you stuck

won-

be free to

intellectual potential.) life

devoted to the pursuit of "higher things"

sustained by the labor of others could be lived guilt-free and as

I

to the right

words

— without

oppressing or exploiting anybody.

And

it

— so long

any sense that you were

was

free of the

bonds of

A

183

Border Passage

intimacy and personal involvement with which the servant-master re-

was

lationship societies.

liable to

be fraught in those Third World, "backward"

no

sitting

with

Umm

Said,

—

as

or any other faculty

member

with a

sitting talking intimately, quietly

with someone as lowly as a gyp

mother

Duke

never saw Brad or Miss

I

of the

staff, let

alone

had many times seen Grand-

I

and Mother with

relationships here of servant

member

Fat-hia.

and mistress going back

There were

to girlhoods,

no mutual knowledge and sharing and companionship between them, no reaching out

to

comfort with the touch of long affection.

member of the faculty member

so far as

staff,

other

died, as Fat-hia

photo of her to hang in her

for a

don't,

(I

on the other hand, want

tions in the Third

But

in

I

would ask when Mother

home

died,

and have always before her.

to romanticize servant-master rela-

World: they were without question relations of

power and were surely mired which such

And no

know, asked when Brad or any

gyp or

in all the

imbalances and injustices in

relations are typically mired.)

any case,

it

was a deeply familiar world

to

me. In some

ways, indeed, Girton represented the harem perfected. Not the harem of Western male sexual fantasy or even the fantasy or reality, but the

women

harem

as

I

had

harem of Muslim men,

lived

the

it,

harem of older

presiding over the young. Even the servers here

— gyps, cooks,

— were women, and from these grounds, these precincts, the ab-

staff

sence of male authority was permanent. For unlike Smith and other

women's

colleges in America, the Girton fellowship

— was from the sively

Consequently ties,

start exclusively female.

female until the I

late sixties,

and

Girton would remain exclu-

when

have been privileged to

a Turco-Egyptian one

I

was a graduate student.

live in

two harem communi-

And

a British one.

destiny, too, alas, to live through the

— the professors

it

has been

my

ending of both the Turco-

Egyptian harem world and the hundred-year-long British experiment in

women's communities Going

I

as practiced at Girton.

to supervisions: putting

had just scrambled

on

my gown,

taking along the essay

to finish, arriving at the door,

door, knocking on the inner one.

opening the outer

184

Leila

"Come

Ahmed

in!"

Miss Bradbrook's high, birdlike voice.

My

moment

fellow supervisees already there or arriving a

later.

Usually there were two or three of us, no more.

Reading our essays aloud, listening

to Brad's

comments, watching

her expressions and reactions as she listened.

would

"Ye-e-es," she

the

say,

suddenly

alert,

leaning forward to poke

fire.

She might say nothing

good few moments or begin a sen-

for a

tence and

trail off,

before her.

Then she would

looking intently into the

fire

or just into the air

follow out her thought, and almost always

The sense one

the experience of watching her do this was riveting.

had was of being

homed

in

in the

facilely, simplistically.

aware

presence of someone

— listening meaning

gem that now that.

a

in

which

own

long silences

— of the

to

which we went

dark, although there

all

Books lined

all

light

as well as chairs,

were photos on

sat

left

open on

and a

fire in

fine days.

the winter.

the walls right to the ceiling and there was a its

this light,

along one wall and French

on where we

cluttered feel to the place, with

were

was always quite

for supervisions,

were windows

now

it

some reason her

sherry. For

doors opening onto the courtyard, which she

There would be some

multiple uni-

this object before us existed, as if

she was slowly turning before us to catch

room,

it

Whatever we were contemplating, we became

Sometimes she offered us coffee or sitting

nearly always

her probing reflections and her spare, exact

to

words, interrupted by her verses of

who

on the essence of the issue before us and never handled

somewhat

occasional tables, lamps, and stools

one of these, her

favorite,

a rocking

chair.

There

one of the tables in oval silver-gilt frames of Victorian-

looking people in Victorian and Edwardian clothes.

Mrs. Madge's room was quite different, spare,

like a

Japanese

Madge was (is) the distinguished British poet Kathleen and her room had something of the distilled, uncluttered love-

painting. Mrs.

Raine,

liness of her

poems. She was a botanist by training (she and Brad had

been undergraduates together

at Girton).

The

first

thing one noticed

A

185

Border Passage

on entering her room were the perfect plants that she always had a hyacinth or a white cyclamen in exquisite bloom. In her

she was

the diamond-shaped the sky.

fifties

then,

quite beautiful in a painterly, poetic way, sitting awaiting us,

A

windows behind

her, vivid blue eyes the color of

research fellow rather than a permanent fellow at Girton,

a poet in this academic world, Kathleen Raine self-consciously oc-

cupied an alternative space. She was scornful of academics and above of critics, although she did value, she said, the

all

scholars, people like Brad. it

was not knowledge

Such scholarship was

work done by true

useful, even

though

Raine defined

in the deepest sense of the word.

herself as belonging to a different tradition of knowledge, distinctly in opposition to the

"knowledge" pursued in universities, which she

regarded as a barren, dead, destructive, desiccated, rationalistic, su-

premely arrogant, and ultimately deadly enterprise. Real knowledge

was the knowledge of prophets, poets,

visionaries;

it

was there

Blake and Yeats and in the world's ancient traditions dia

came

Plotinus

into this,

— but not

But what exactly

and possibly ancient Egypt) and

anyone or even

was enormously drawn

was

stood, she

think In-

in Plato

and

in Aristotle, definitely not in rationalist Aristotle.

knowledge and tradition was

this alternative

never quite able to grasp, not in a way that to explain to

(I

in

to

1

I

was

would have been able

to articulate for myself.

what

I

But

intuitively

I

sensed, rather than clearly under-

saying.

Brad, too, deferred to Mrs. Madge's superior ways of knowing and in

terms that affirmed the innate mysteriousness of this other process

would say, suggesting that we some question up with Mrs. Madge rather than with her, "Mrs. Madge is a poet, you know." The statement was at once explanatory

of knowing, the poet's vision. She take

and conclusive. In Brad's vocabulary, poets seemed special vision, so that her

words were

at

to

be people with

once recognition and

af-

firmation.

Thus

I

had already back then a model of someone who openly

despised academic knowledge, indeed despised this entire enterprise

we call knowledge. know now more clearly than

of what I

I

knew

at the

time why, during a

— 186

Leila

Ahmed

particularly difficult time soon after I'd arrived in America,

and bought myself a copy of Kathleen Raine's

ems and had found such

the local supermarket, a white cyclamen,

me

ensuing days becoming for altar,

memory

invoking the

remembrance of

its

I

unfolding flowers in the

known, keeping

I'd

own

vision.

Miss Bradbrook and Mrs. Madge were the teachers of.

alive the

a clarity and steadfastness, a holding on, against an-

other tide, to the truth of their

most

bought, in

presences, candles on an

like living

of people

went out

latest collection of po-

And why then

solace in them.

I

saw the

I

Both were generous teachers, the best kind one can have:

they were passionate about pursuing what was true to them and un-

derstanding and defining

it

as exactly as they

sions they did this in our presence

(And yet

if

were

I

to grade

that students are asked to

them according fill

the course objectives clear?

you?

How

In supervito us.

to the teaching evaluations

out these days

What

knew how.

and without concessions

— Did the professor make

significant learning took place for

did the course help you better understand the intersection

— both would

of race, gender, class?

me

Brad would leave a handkerchief in

little

fail

Christmas

abysmally.) gifts in

my pigeonhole,

once

an envelope. The college would be almost empty

in

the last days before Christmas, everyone except a handful of people

from abroad

myself having gone home. Both Brad and Mrs.

like

Madge, along with

my

my

essays, although

end of the

year.

supervisions,

I

I

other supervisors, gave

me

was exceedingly shy and

terrified of

speaking in

and having missed out on two years of study that

eryone else at Cambridge had been through for their

A

levels,

exceedingly ignorant and unsophisticated, compared with students. Particularly with Mrs.

my

point distinctly in

on

excellent grades

never did well on the university exams at the

favor: she

Madge, though,

this

my

seemed

I

ev-

was

fellow

to

be a

could be scathingly dismissive of

fellow supervisees, particularly those

who were most

my

sophisticated and

knowing, and conversely was often very affirming of things

I

said

Sometimes now, when

I

have a

those few things

student

I

managed

who comes from

to say.

a less "good" school than others in the class,

A I

understand what

it

Border Passage

187

was that she appreciated, and

I

appreciate

it

myself in those students. Addressing things out of their deep need to understand, they bring a freshness and directness to their readings; they seem less cluttered in their thought and less entangled than others

by what they are expected to think and say

— everything the others

have been taught in the "good," fast-track schools

is

the right thing

to think, to say.

While Brad and Mrs. Madge interested themselves only higher realms of things,

my

Radzinowicz, took enough interest in the practicalities of

me

how to

a few elementary but essential skills, like

and even how

in the

other supervisors, Mrs. Bennett and Dr.

to take notes, Dr.

to teach

life

structure an essay

Radzinowicz showing

me

the index

brought to

mapped out the entire Faerie Queene in all its The kind of intellectual attention that Joan Bennett bear on whatever we were reading, steady, clear, like a

lighthouse,

was quite

cards on which she'd essential themes.

sheer contradiction

once

from the

different

— of

effect of complexity

and of

and dark being there inseparably and

light

— that Brad's attention brought out

in texts.

at

With Bennett one

could believe that, provided one thought clearly enough, steadfastly

enough, everything could be brought within the compass of our understanding, within the compass of rational thought and

understanding. Not so Brad.

somewhere

in

been

in

human

Raine. Radzinowicz was

between.

Besides the sible for one's

Or Kathleen

women who

taught me,

"moral" welfare)

I

also

saw my tutor (respon-

fairly regularly.

Egypt briefly during World

War

II,

A

classicist

Miss Duke conveyed a

sense that she was familiar with Mediterranean ways.

going to her with any

difficulties,

indirectly addressing issues that

a benign presence in

my

life.

I

and yet

I

who had

I

don't recall

remember her

as at least

was worrying about, and saw her

She had a wonderful painting

as

in her

room by Winifred Nicholson, Ben Nicholson's less well-known wife, to whose work she'd been introduced by Kathleen Raine. Raine, as we knew from the names she mentioned in supervisions, was at home in the artistic

After

my

and first

literary

world of England.

term or two

at

Girton

I

hardly attended university

188

Leila

was ordinary

lectures. This

Ahmed

at Girton,

among

students of English,

anyway. Lecturers often just talked about their specialties and usually

We read the books, which

quite unintelligibly to most undergraduates.

were generally much

by the various famous people lecturing

clearer,

there in those days but rarely went to

happened

lectures. All the significant learning

We

were

in

my room

late

more than one

at Girton.

one evening, the two other Muslims

the college, Selma and Hamida, and myself, and

English friends.

sitting

women whom and had

in

think a couple of

I

typewriter on the coffee

behest of our par-

at the

on our own, and we had been protesting

consequence been locked up together by the for help

Hence

were planning on sending newspaper, calling

it

college,

was typing

this

on the back of a Players cigarette box.

We

also deprived us even of paper.

message appealing

to a

my

Girton was holding prisoner,

ents, forbidding us to go out this

floor,

We were concocting a story about how we were Muslim

should type.

which had

on the

in

me, talking with them and then typing what we decided

table before I

was

I

or two of their

I

concocted story

this absurd, transparently

"S.O.S. from Girton's

Muslim Women." Of

—

who would believe that Girton was colluding Muslim young women prisoner? But there was evidently no limit to the nonsense that the Western or, anyway, the British press was capable of believing or at least to what it was willing to print and sell, in connection with Muslim women provided such course

it

was absurd

in holding

—

—

—

—

words as "prisoners" and "oppression" were

We

mailed the piece off to one of the tabloid newspapers, and to our

and embarrassment the newspaper proposed

incredulity

porter

down

to talk to us.

and we were come down and talk a hoax

He

liberally sprinkled about.

did.

We

were

all

I

really awfully sorry,

to us

to

send a

re-

explained on the phone that the story was

but he said he wanted to

anyway, could he take us out to dinner?

extremely sheepish.

No newspaper story ensued. how people in the

Obviously we were aware of and making fun of culture in which

But none of

us,

we found

ourselves

and certainly not

I,

seemed

to see

Muslim women.

had a developed or

derstanding of racism, which, in the England of

my

critical

un-

day and in the

A

189

Border Passage

word or

milieu of Cambridge, did not exist as a

people were analytically conscious

of. It is

something that

as

we

true that

did cluster

Muslim women but the group

together at times, not specifically the

of us from abroad and especially from the former British Empire, from

the places once shaded pink and deeper pink on the colonies and protectorates. There was Iraq,

Olu from

map

Nigeria,

—

British

Selma from

Achla and Primula from India, Hamida and Farida from Paki-

was more ambiguous,

stan (although Farida's relation to the group possibly because she

had converted

was not

to Christianity; the issue

her religion, for Olu too was Christian, but presumably something entailed in the process of conversion).

Sometimes we clustered

to-

gether at breakfast or lunch, not exactly as friends, at least not as

some recognizable connection, something odd and un-

close friends, but as people with particularly

if

comfortable

—

someone had a racist, as

story about

we would

call

it

now

Olu, for instance, shortly after she arrived, aghast

— another I

at different times

trying to "save," or convert, us.

I

to breakfast

to bring her

Africa,

morning

tea!

had

And

had experiences with fellow students

And

the hope of seeing us converted

was there even among some of the dons (the college ing one

had happened.

woman from South

student, a white

knocked on her door and asked her

Selma and

— that

came down

was particularly attached

to.

fellows), includ-

There would be some implied

— and sometimes not only implied — suggestion that becoming Christian

would be the proof and mark of our having found our way

to true

morality and civilization.

Talking recently to an American friend bridge at the time that

I

was,

I

who had been

at

Cam-

heard of the racism he had witnessed.

People at his college, Pembroke, would often in his presence make derogatory remarks about Jews, not realizing that he was Jewish.

never overheard such remarks about Arabs, but obviously both

my name made my

appearance and This bridge.

is

not to say that

A man

he discovered College,

spat at I

where

I

me on

Arabness

visible.

never encountered overt racism in a bus once when, thinking

was an Arab. And once I

I

my

I

was

Cam-

Israeli,

at a College Feast at King's

had gone as someone's guest, one of the young

fel-

190

Ahmed

Leila

me

lows of the college sitting at the head of our table told

that he

was a staunch supporter of .Anthony Eden and that the Suez Canal

— the Egyptians

should be in British hands

capacities to keep the canal open.

and the

British

Of course years.

would have

would no doubt shortly clog up

It

to take over

do what

free to

for the first time. .And of course, too,

— and

all

undeniably, interesting

moments

Convention says that story of one's

fall in

with this convention,

an exercise

experience in

it.

I

had brought myself with me

On

in Cairo. Still there were,

— and is

those years was not

living

There were three of

it

must

on what

make

inevitably is

for

then asked myself

that the a

I

me

why

I

most unforgettable,

moment

of either romantic

was a moment of intense presence

world around us and also of companus.

window open onto

midnight, the

me

dutifully set forth

For the truth

and connection with the

spring.

those

life in

also.

archaeology

in

or erotic involvement. Rather

ionship.

I

my

liked without supervision

I

Unthinkingly assuming that

life.

was even attempting lyrical

again.

one's romantic involvements that

it is

up the

just

it

the baggage of attitudes, beliefs, notions of morality, and

wariness that had been instilled into

now

running

there were other things going on in

was eighteen and

I

didn't have the engineering

We'd been

sitting

up talking past

a balmy, scented night of sudden

moment we decided to climb out (the ten and we were not officially allowed out

the spur of the

college locked

its

doors at

of the building after that) for no other reason than to be out on such a night, running across the moonlit lawn to the safety of the woods.

Here we

just

wandered about, whispering and laughing, picking

for

ourselves in the clearings bright with moonlight handfuls of dew-

someone had told me then that thirty years later I remember this night and not so easily remember who

heavy

violets. If

would

easily

it

—

was, in a given year,

believed

I'd

been involved with

—

I

would never have

it.

.And then, too, no matter what convention says, the people that

have remembered over the years and that relation with

were the people who taught

I

I

continued to have some

me and who

were

in au-

A thority in the college

and

attitudes

community.

and ways of seeing

—

mind in the way what I was doing)

that to

I

191

Border Passage

It is I

they whose words and presence

have returned to

many

what Grandmother or Aunt Aisha or

once said or how they looked at this moment or that. Those moments spent in Kathleen Raine's room and a few others, have something of that

sheer pleasure of those

women

company

of

Brad's,

and

same charge and richness and

— that rounded balcony shaped a ship cleaving the dark around us — listening their

my parents

dusks and nights spent on the balcony

starlit

in Alexandria

mother and

my

times in

have returned (without necessarily registering

women.

like the

to

my

prow of a

ship,

aunts and grand-

In Alexandria, as at Girton, the

devoted a good part of their time to analyzing, discussing, and

taking apart words, meanings, motives, characters, consequences, responsibilities

with

much

issue lay

(though in Alexandria their seriousness was leavened

laughter) and to reflecting on

and what

it

real people's actual

might

all

words and

where the moral heart of an it

was

real people's characters, motives,

and

mean. In Alexandria, though,

intentions that were taken apart and put together again.

exandria

it

was

real people

whose

lives

And

in Al-

might well be profoundly

af-

fected as a result of the burden of their talk, the conclusions they

came

to,

the advice they gave, the actions they then took. Sometimes,

no doubt, through the resolutions they arrived

at,

children were saved

monogamous, and women some unendurable situation. activity that engrossed them daily,

the devastation of divorce, husbands kept

appeased

(for

good or

At Alexandria and

at

ill)

so as to endure

Zatoun

this

with both gravity and laughter, was part of the job of sustaining

and sustaining the community

in its

ongoing

life

life

across the genera-

tions.

At Girton, on the other hand,

it

was

fictional people,

people in

books and novels and plays, whose words and actions and motives and moral characters we analyzed endlessly. Obviously activity that, in

actual circumstances. Also, of course, at Girton

end of Zatoun

it.

That same

orally

this

was not an

any direct sense anyway, sustained anybody's

and on

we

life

or

got degrees at the

activity essentially, practiced at Alexandria

living texts to sustain the life of the

and

community,

— 192

Leila

Ahmed

— by men of the culture and by Westerners, men and women —

was

called by outsiders to the process

official .Arabic

idle gossip, the

and even sometimes That same

women

however, practiced by the

activity,

written, not oral, texts

and on

fictional,

not

once did

their culture, too. it

manner and

in the

men down

)

life.

ner, that

—

orally

—

to sustain

men.

women

in

They practiced and

in relation to written texts rather

than

as their

activity

for these purposes

becomes suddenly a

worthy and honorable occupation. (There

tween cooking

life.

own

of Girton no

that

a profession, and to earn money rather than to

Performed by men

same

and

women

manner

colleagues

tradition of

the centuries had

living people, as

sustain

in the age-old. traditional

it

of Girton on

people was regarded

living,

as honorable, serious, important work. For the

longer practiced

empty

women, harem women.

malicious talk of

evil,

for the family

and cooking

great is

and

in this

man-

and important and

similar difference be-

as a chef: the

same

activity

masculinized becomes a profession and worthy of esteem, honor, remuneration.)

Why

are

we doing

women

in her

coming

to

Woolf asked, contemplating

this? Virginia

day entering the ancient, venerable universities and

form the

end of what she

tail

called the "procession of the

sons of educated men." with their ribbons and gowns and tufts of fur

on

their shoulders

we doing

this?

knowledge

is it

institutions,

and

their arrogance

she asked. that these

why

are

we

Is this really

men

and self-importance.

Why

are

what we want? What kind of

have developed and passed on in those

following in the

wake of men's professions

what are these professions and why should we, following

in these

men's footsteps, pursue them? "What are these ceremonies and why should we take part in them?*' Woolf herself, offered several honorary degrees over the course of her

life,

including from the University of

Cambridge, consistently turned them down.

A

men in moment perhaps

place to pursue the professions of

women. Girton had :::r.±. >:^r Foremothers

I

offered for a

a

community of

a kind of transi-

called those founders of Girton:

mv own

fore-

A mothers, too,

my

on

I

193

Border Passage

said of them.

But these foremothers had looked down

them

other foremothers and had held

in

contempt. They had

adopted the same attitudes toward these subjects idle gossip

men

—

as to

and what was worthy, important thought

had, and they

now combined

own

these attitudes with the feelings of

men and women,

Europeans and white people,

superiority that

—

what was

as their

felt

toward the cultures of the "inferior" non-European peoples generally. Harriet Martineau, a prominent nineteenth-century intellectual, visited

Egypt and was hospitably received in their harem quarters by a

group of women I

who were

probably just

like the

women among whom

grew up. Returning home, she wrote of how ignorant these Muslim

women were and how

course, Martineau spoke no Arabic.

how

spoke no English. So

harem talk. Of And the harem women, naturally,

worthless and mindless their

exactly

was

this

woman

of (supposedly, by

the measures of her society) austere, superior intellect judging them,

and how exactly was she

setting about assessing, with that fine, dis-

And she

cerning, superior intellect of hers, the value of their talk? just

thought of Muslim harem

But

I

activities of

men

women.

me

which Westerners and

In childhood, I'd picked in particular the

up

women and

this

sense of con-

women around me

that

and those

my mother

in the

world around me.

distinctly enters the fabric of

—just from

It is

"She was not a professional anything,"

in these pages,

remembering my own

tempt as a youngster. mother, as people

who

I

and

I

all

my

too took their "endless"

world where doing

— was everything. Men did things, were something or

somebody, and Western films,

wrote earlier

women, and above

talk as idleness, gossip, as "doing" nothing. In a

doing, not being

I

inarticulate, internalized con-

too saw those

"did" nothing,

quite clear

my own memories

in the negative.

and

the

from the books we read, the films we saw, the intangible

attitudes at school to

as mindless.

of the local culture at large held

tempt for women, and air,

women

too internalized the low regard in

also traditional

the

is

one of a steady stream of Europeans who looked down on and

women

too, at least

Western women

in

could be something or someone, compared with the

books

women

194

Leila

around

me

who just were. In the fabric of my own conwomen among whom I lived and most of all my mother

in childhood,

sciousness the

I didn't want to be. The only escape from this, way out, I must have concluded at some level, would be for grow up to become either a man or a Westerner.

were everything that the only

me

to

Ahmed

•

•

II

"RUNNING FROM THE FLAMES THAT LIT THE SKY' ...

A

damn

plot you might think.

Yes indeed,

was

it

called

colonial-ization, spelt

with a

z.

The prince of the plot was called Brit

But actually he had many

A in

brothers.

After much time

and many

millions of £s later

they leased us back our

land

through a deed called In-Dee-pendence

This meant the land was

But

everything

was

We

ours,

we produced,

theirs.

even got our

own

leaders.

Meanwhile, another plot called Imperial-Ization

had worked

and

its

way through

the earth

and Back on

We (with a

the

world

was carved up

re-aligned.

the Plantation

all fought each other little

help

from

outside).

We

squabbled over what would remain

when

the In-Dee-pendence deed

and

was passed

the prince departed for home.

And so, in the midst of the troubles

my

parents packed their bags.

They followed to the

We

the general recruitment drive

imperial palace

itself.

arrived in the Northern Hemisphere

when Summer was

set in its

running from the flames that

way

lit the

sky

over the plantation.

We

were a straggly bunch of immigrants in

a

We made

lily

white landscape.

our home

among

knowing no one but

One day

A

strangers,

ourselves.

I learnt

secret art,

Invisible-Ness I think it

it

was

worked

called. .

.

.

Meiling Jin (black British poet), "Strangers in a Hostile Landscape"

0\ENALTIES

Cairo THE graduate

life

years

for England. effusive,

I

I

returned to after those rich, sheltered under-

was

far different

knew from my parents'

shock

to

rooms

overgrown

off

at

we had when

I

left

— always brief rather than came as a the dining room and

the bleakness of their lives

Still,

my

and shuttered,

parents occupying just the

one end of the house. The garden was

in places

Amm

grass.

letters

life

me. All the downstairs rooms except for

were closed

upstairs

from the

and arriving always with the censorship tape along one side

— that things were hard. hall

OF DISSENT

and desiccated

derelict,

in others, fruit lying rotting in the

Suleiman, the aging gardener,

still

lived in his

room

at

the bottom of the garden and tended to the garden, but now, with no

young

assistant, only sporadically.

Most of the time now my upstairs. ious.

Nanny, of course, was gone.

when died.

father was

And Mother was permanently

I

I

was a

would

waterwheel leaves

child, in the lie

lying in the corner

slept in the

bed we had shared

when

I

woke

walls, eucalyptus,

room

permanently anx-

room we had shared

— and

listening to the familiar night

— seeing,

on the

I

ill,

gray- faced,

in

sounds

in the night, the

which she had

— the

frogs, the

same dance of

mimosa, shadows cast by the

street

lamp, the shutters standing open.

Nanny's ghost was there,

I

think,

one summer

night.

Not

in the

198

Leila

room with me but

Ahmed

I woke up about two and heard the someone pacing up and down the hall from one end, where my room was, to the other. Back and forth, back

in the hallway.

heavy, solid footsteps of

and

forth.

assumed

I

was Mother, who had a habit of pacing thus

it

whenever Father's health took a

particularly

what had happened. There was nobody

room

the middle

"Maman?" No have been clearly

to

my

mother's room.

response.

I

pushed the door open.

— she was

in her

and looked

I

got

I

room ill

up

went through

I

suppose there must could see quite

I

in case

it

so that

it

went back

I

had been he;

it

was conceivable

had been he who had been pacing about. But he was

it

to see

said, at the door,

I

bed and sound asleep. Puzzled,

into Father's

must have been a time when he was not

The

in the hall.

"Maman?"

moonlight or something, because

to the hall

that

bad turn.

asleep.

pacing, meanwhile, had stopped. I

went back

back and

forth,

end of the

hall

to bed,

now just

and the pacing began again. Loud

I

door,

now

I

woke Mother, and she too

them but had decided not

I

got

stood there listening.

hear anything but she looked as

if

listened.

she could.

to distress

me

footsteps,

retreating to the other

and then returning again. Again

Mother's room. Sound asleep.

gan again.

my

outside

She I

up and went

The sound

to

be-

said she couldn't

was sure she heard

by agreeing, since footsteps

could only be explained by the presence of a ghost, what else? That

was the kind of thing Mother might well was

slightly deaf, so

had now come on

do.

But

it is

true that she

maybe she really didn't hear anything. A light room and we went in and found him,

in Father's

unaware that we were up,

when he woke we fell quiet, he

settling

down

to read

on the

sofa, as

he

explained what was happening

often did

at night.

and, as

listened for the footsteps. Yes, he agreed,

I

exchanging glances with Mother, he did hear them. Houses creak night, he said,

wood

wood

creaks, that

was probably

creaks, but randomly, not in this way,

all it

was. Okay,

like footsteps

I

at

said,

receding

and returning, receding and returning. "Well, you

know

it

could,*'

he

where footsteps have habitually stress."

said. "It

could be the points of stress

fallen,

you know, releasing that

A couldn't believe

I

somebody walking. There

— now

it.

Border Passage

"No,

Listen,

it

199

wouldn't do that, sound exactly

wood

footsteps, not just

it's

and now

they're at this end, listen,

.

.

.

like

creaking.

Do you

think

it's

a ghost?"

He

listened. "I don't

We

all

that night.

went back

And

morning that

it

know," he said

to bed.

I

never heard the footsteps again after

do not know

I

finally.

now why

had been Nanny and that

was so certain the next

I

had something

it

purgatory and having to retrace things done in one's

dreamed

it

something

—

or,

more

to

me

in

the changes

undergo

all

I

I

my

life

when

the expectations, assump-

all

had grown up with were

lived

I

dreams.

This was a period in tions, certainties

do with

suppose

Nanny had communicated

exactly, felt that

my

to

life. I

through in those years

some of were changes such as we dissolving. True,

— the death of the older people one

close to, the illness

is

and decline, quite perceptibly now toward death, of parents. And even at the best of times

one

and even

— such events, natural though they

time though they are,

my

for people

much

are, expected,

are hard to take in

still

case, these natural events

older than

I

some

and adjust

— twentyday, to.

some

But

in

were taking place within the context of

a completely unexpected reversal of circumstances. I

my

wrote earlier of

how

I

would

rors to be the result of her having

ing

listen skeptically, disbelievingly to

mother's anxieties about money, supposing these inordinate

now how

to

cope with

less.

been born But

what the family revenues were, and

in fact it

to I

wealth and not knowdid not

may be

was not done anyway,

I

must have

felt,

by the time finances were a problem in our

know

it

were

was "not done."

in relation to lives

exactly

that her fears

justified. Inquiring into one's parents' financial affairs It

ter-

Mother, for

was Mother exclu-

money matters. My father left all these affairs to her, and even when he was not ill there was a distinct sense at home that money worries were to be kept from him. sively

who

dealt with

In fact there

was something surreal about the

Mother's anxieties about money, whether or not justified.

For example,

I

remember

a day

situation

my

and about

skepticism was

when Mother arranged

for

200

Ahmed

Leila

Gaafar, the chauffeur, to purchase half a kilo of apples because Father, feeling better,

was

off,

had awakened craving an apple. As soon

she fretted about

were indeed expensive

someone who

how we

house

like this,

even

How, if

I

thought, could

most of

up and neglected, someone who had a chauffeur be unable to afford half a

which

really couldn't afford apples,

in those days in Egypt.

lived in a

as Gaafar

to

it

was shut

send to market,

kilo of apples?

But the surrealism was

on the surface. In

really only

fact,

it

is

quite possible to live in the fine house in which you have always lived ill,

— and have no money. And up and move,

to

it is

not so easy,

when one

find a smaller, less expensive place.

chauffeur, in their circumstances, was hardly a luxury.

of you

is

Even the

They

lived a

considerable distance from shops and markets and pharmacies and the place where they got Father's heavy oxygen tank. Father could drive,

but most of the time

was a whole other

drive. Besides, there

them

for

many

now was unable

layer:

years and was married to a

worked on Grandfather's

estate,

to,

and Mother could not Gaafar had been with

woman whose

family had

and these were bonds and responsi-

(When I returned to Egypt more than twenty years later, Gaafar, who had retired to farm a small plot of land after my mother died, made a sixhour journey to see me and to honor the memory of my parents.)

bilities that

could not just casually and simply be dissolved.

Also underlying I

realize

now, were

my skeptical attitude toward Mother's my own fears of having no money.

prospect terrified me. a lecturer at

I

I

had a

job, as

one of Cairo's main

good a job as

I

anxieties,

think the

could get;

universities, the Islamic

I

was

Women's

College, which was part of al-Azhar University. But the pay was low, barely I

enough

to cover the rent for

was dependent

my tiny rent-controlled apartment.

for everything else

medical treatment, pocket money

— food,

clothes, transportation,

— on my parents.

able, less terrifying to believe that

my

It

was more bear-

mother's fears were fantastic,

exaggerated than to believe that they really didn't have that

I

having

was a burden, too great a burden, on them. The

money

is

inversely proportional to the remedies

money and

terror of not

and options

A one has. And

money

in that

my

so were

if

my

201

Border Passage

options and

my

and earn

capacities to go out

moment and that society were limited, how much more What job could she have got?

mother's?

My having an in that society

apartment on

and

unusual and even

my own,

in those days, slightly

I

improper.

a young, unmarried

should explain, was

The

woman,

itself

very

came about

situation

be-

cause the Islamic Women's College was in Maadi, a Cairo suburb on the other side of the city from Ain Shams, and so the

Ain Shams by

and then by tram

train to Cairo

one, about two hours.

And

as

it

happened

—

I

Zamalek

Maadi, was a long

think none of us would

—a

became

avail-

(a central residential district of Cairo) in the

same

have even considered the possibility otherwise able in

to

commute, from

flat

apartment block and right next door to where a close family friend,

Madame

Sherifa, lived with her

helped lend an

two grown children. Her being there

of propriety to this enterprise: a responsible older

air

person was close by to keep an eye on me. Yet such was the unusualness and air of slight impropriety that

my

parents probably would

not have agreed to the arrangement had things not been so gloomy at I

Ain Shams and had they not also been worried about

was about being unable

that

I

was trapped

Mugammaa,

miserable

For those were the years

to leave Egypt.

in the country, referred

how

from

office to office in the

the vast government building dominating the center of

Cairo.

And just

all this, all

happened

to

these obstacles and miseries, were not things that

be occurring

courtesy of the government.

— they were being deliberately dealt

"He himself

wife, get his daughter." All this

is

old

and

ill?

Then

wanted

to

of? Speaking out to

get his

because of some vindictive, malicious

person or persons, people who, to curry favor with the leader,

us,

rayyis,

the

my father. And for what, what was he guilty when he was ordered not to be a tyrant? Refusing

punish

be silenced because he feared the costs of his silence would be too

great for his country? All this

was happening because we had an unscrupulous govern-

ment, a government

that, in its totally controlled

media, spouted an

202

Leila

Ahmed

endless rhetoric of liberation, socialism, Arab nationalism, and the

Glorious Revolution; a government that ill-treated and abused the rights of

its

powerless citizens simply because

But these were grim years

whom my

a fair proportion of the people

been part of

their

were also

tions

could.

it

for others too in Egypt.

parents

For one thing,

knew

or

who had

broad network of social and professional connec-

in difficult circumstances, also struggling with unfa-

whose properties had been

miliar poverty. Mostly they were people

nationalized or placed under sequestration (under government con-

and mostly

trol)

they, too,

were elderly people,

their children abroad.

now was rare, but it might occasionally happen that would see at Ain Shams an elderly woman or couple, sitting talking quietly over tea with my mother, and that when they were gone Socializing

I

I

would hear from her about how

some

taking

longer afford its

it

palatial old

or about

person had just stopped

how the such-and-such

home because

have the right to

sell

The chauffeur

feur.

this or that

heart or other medication because the family could no

property, lived

still

family, living

still

in

under sequestration did not

families

was now being supported by

its

chauf-

room over the garage and

in his old

shared with his former masters the salary from his job with a newly rich family.

Cairo was

and

full

early sixties)

of such stories. These were the years (the late of the

Nasser regime's worst repression, when

Egypt's prisons bulged with political prisoners (ironically for a

fifties

regime that proclaimed

— Muslim Brothers and

itself socialist

of the Soviet Union) Marxists and Communists.

It

and was an

ally

was a time when

Cairo was riddled with mukhabarat, the secret police, and their army of informers, ordinary people recruited to report (and eventually re-

warded era

for reporting)

any criticism of the government, and

when people suspected

Basil,

was the

of being disloyal to the revolution were

being jailed or were disappearing; rumor had jailed or disappeared for

it

even the most

it

trivial

that people could be

or oblique

comment.

our childhood friend and neighbor, was one such case.

appeared while doing military service; his mother, desperate out what had happened, appealed to the

He

dis-

to find

army and the government

A for information. After

two years

on him. He had been

torture

ground when he was trying

damn

in prison,

he reappeared, the scars of

in a military hospital after breaking his

jump. One day a radio was blaring

leg in a parachute

radio down!"

It

to sleep,

and he called

in the back-

out,

"Turn that

was Nasser making a speech. For those unpa-

words Basil was thrown

triotic

203

Border Passage

in jail for

two years, tortured, and

beaten.

government persecution of

Stories of

political

enemies, abuse of

power, greed, corruption, violence, and general thuggery were Cairo.

A man who

had disappeared was found by

bag on their doorstep months it

was the

military that

rife in

his wife in a garbage

An officer (and broadly speaking new class in power) had driven to a

later.

was the

grocery store, ordered the owner to

fill

numerous

bags,

and driven

off

without paying. Protesting or disobeying could be costly. People suddenly got rich for no discernible reason, while acquaintances of theirs

and sometimes even family members were taken

woman

dayat, a Syrian alist

I

had met

and Nasserite, appeared

in

off to prison. Hi-

England, an ardent Arab nation-

in Cairo and,

though a

woman

of modest

means who had never been to Egypt, took up residence in a plush Zamalek apartment. Meanwhile a mutual acquaintance who, in our presence, had been openly critical of Nasser, was in prison. Egyptians

abroad knew that they had to watch what they said to other Egyptians

—

West were to this

that

it

was well known that Egyptian student bodies

riddled with mukhabarat. But

person

—

one needed

this era

as, until this

incident

it

it

obviously had not occurred

had not occurred

Of course much

of this was

me

to

watch what one said before other Arabs,

to

when Nasser had become

in the

too, in

the idol of Arab nationalists.

rumor and speculation; there could

be no proof, or no proof that ordinary people could have access myself have no idea which of the rumors were true. But this of

memory, not of

live all.

history,

and of the memory of what

it

is

was

a

to.

I

work

like to

through the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, rumors and

An atmosphere

of government terrorism was the reality of our

world.

Something

else

happened

to the feel of Cairo in those days

— as

204 if

Leila

once you make hatred and derision

enemies that Nasser was so good

mal and acceptable

One saw

else.

one

in

(that particular derision

area, they

become

generalized to everything

mark

to

a vast gulf between the old Cairo

and

man who

just

An

Cairo of the aftermath of the revolution.

happened

to

old

be passing, shuffling slowly by on the pavement, sneered

by two young

in this society

where

toward

at injecting into his speeches) nor-

things unimaginable before, small things, details that

seemed

nevertheless this

at

Ahmed

men

young

for the

simply because he was old: unimaginable before

where respect

for the elderly

was so ingrained and

to address the elderly disrespectfully

thing so extraordinary that

I

had never actually witnessed

ber the shock of seeing this

was some-

it. I

remem-

now and the feeling I had that I was human taboo. (I know, though,

witnessing the breakdown of a major that

I

cannot succeed

in

conveying the shock of

where the idea that respect for the elderly

is

this

scene in a society

human

a fundamental

value seems weird and not particularly meaningful.) In the old days, too, other people in the street

havior;

someone would have

would never have tolerated

told those

young men

off.

I

this be-

remember

observing with the same kind of shock as a group of boys threw stones at two

women,

mother and daughter, stepping out of an

a

old-

fashioned and clearly once-grand car. "Your days are over," they called

you know

out, "or don't

am

I

it

yet?"

not an apologist for feudalism or class privilege or even in

some vague way brought about

for the old order.

many good

I

am

sure that the revolution

things and that for other people and in

other parts of society doors were opening and new, golden opportunities offering themselves.

know

I

But not

too, familiar as

lutions in our

own and

I

in

my neck

now am

of the woods.

with the history of

many

revo-

in earlier times, that as revolutions go this

revolution was very mild in

its

consequences

for political

enemies and

the old displaced classes. There were no guillotines, no mass executions.

And

I

and equality

first

that

of

all

all

revolutions bring about justice and liberty

and above

all

for the revolutionaries

them-

The French Revolution executed not only the aristocrats but those who presumed to ask for a little liberty and equality for

selves.

also

know

A their

own groups

— Olympe de Gouges,

crime of daring to ask for a I

know

that ideals

205

Border Passage

little

for example, executed for the

liberty

become tarnished and

and equality

for

women. And

that hordes of small-minded,

greedy people ride in on the coattails of revolutionaries, abusing

power and further tarnishing the the end leaders

even

if

come

to

ideals of the revolution.

that in

depend on these sycophants and hangers-on,

they are not themselves corrupt. There were never, for in-

stance, any rumors in Cairo that Nasser himself

On

And

was greedy or

venal.

the contrary he lived, everyone always said, a simple, even an

austerely simple,

life.

There were rumors that he was vindictive and

ruthless toward those that he

deemed

political

enemies, yes, but ve-

nal, no.

But it

this

was the only revolution

lived through.

Whether

I

liked

— socialism, — and the Glorious Revolution, became me red-

or not, words like ishtirakiyya, al-wataniyya al-Arabiyya

Arab nationalism

olent of fraud. This I

I

for

was not an

even consciously registered

tional, lived perception.

those people in

my

And

it

analytical reaction intellectually. It

the fact

experience

is,

who took

and

I

don't believe

was merely an emo-

too, that over these years

principled stands and

were honest and upright and did not abuse others were not the olutionaries, not the Nasserites or the rich, busily lining their pockets.

Arab

nationalists, not the

who rev-

new

IO

&N

THE PROVES OF

^HITE J^CADEME

WAS SITTING on a plane at Cairo airport within days of getting my passport. I'd gone out to Ain Shams to say goodbye to my parents: saying farewell to my father for what we both knew would

I

be the

last time.

Finally. off.

I

But

was

I

wanted it

just to

wanted the engines

to start up, the plane to take

be out of Egypt.

was a precarious, uncertain moment,

for just

too.

My

scholarship

one year, which was simply how British Council schol-

arships were.

What

then?

Would

I

get the funds to continue?

Cam-

bridge (and most other British universities) did not allow students to

work part-time while getting case, didn't allow

with

all

would

me

to

My

their degrees.

work

in

England, and

student visa, in any it

was unimaginable,

the problems in the news about immigration, that the British

give

me

a

work permit. Cambridge had accepted me only

for

the M.Litt. degree, not the Ph.D., on the understanding that they

my status after a probationary period. depended on my work's being good enough in the

would review for

them

to

upgrade me.

It

go back to

England,

at

now and no one

Oxford.

to turn to if

I

my

failed.

I

felt,

next few months

was desperately important that

there was no safety net, only a black hole under to

Everything,

feet.

My

I

succeed:

No

sister

Egypt

was

in

A student herself, with family responsibilities, she

A was

no position

in

to help

me. And

struggling to establish their

touch, anyway. things didn't

own

if

coming

Was

it

Now

I

I

in England.

sat

my

in

siblings if

life

many

there are

station, wait-

assumed, sweeping the platform and won-

England had turned out

to

At the

watching a black woman, from be the right move for

to

London than

better to be sweeping a platform in

trapped in some other

to

be

in another, sunnier world?

British-born black people in England but

was not the case then,

that

and we were not much

lives,

out.

Africa or the Caribbean,

her.

brothers were in Switzerland,

couldn't imagine turning to any of

I

work

ing for the train to Cambridge,

dered

my

was January. Gray and raining

It

207

Border Passage

in the latter part of the sixties. In the

these years of the aftermath of the British Empire, black

sixties,

— and British English "black" meant of Europeans — had become the major issue of the day.

immigration

in

political

cians talked endlessly about

coming Powell,

to their shores.

who had

a

how

to stop

curb

it,

it,

non-

us, all

all

Politi-

this flood of blacks

among them Enoch

Right-wing extremists,

mass following, advocated deportation, forced mass

repatriation, for the presence of these "niggers," these savages

— us

threatened not only British jobs but the very fabric of civilization.

These

issues, continually in the

news, and this kind of language

formed the ambiance and backdrop against which life

now began my

I

as a graduate student. I

had been assigned the ground-floor room

on Trumpington

hostel

vacant.

It

room

in the

that

smelled of trafhc fumes even with the

the roar and rumble of

ton Street

Street, the only

is

traffic

one of the major

was

I

arteries into

would have

window

as constant as the sea

Cambridge.

from the woods and lawns of Girton. And attached to Girton,

Girton graduate

happened

little

in fact,

to be

closed,

and

— Trumping-

A far cry, although

then, I

was

connection with the college

apart from occasionally going out there for dinner. As

I

discovered,

college affiliations were essentially nominal at the graduate level.

There were two entirely fortuitous circumstances back,

I

see were essential to

would have made

it

my

survival.

that, looking

Without them

through those years or managed to get

I

my

doubt

I

degree.

208

Leila

Oddly enough, those years were ically, as

Ahmed

as hard, emotionally

the preceding difficult years in Egypt.

and psycholog-

say "oddly" because

I

outwardly and in concrete terms they were not particularly hard in the

way

was denying me pursuing the

The I

first

nobody was

a passport,

life I

wanted

months

to see students.

ill

now

piece of good fortune that

supervisor until a few

Thomas Adams

me from

forcibly preventing

to pursue.

was assigned Professor Arberry

too

had been. Nobody here

that being in Egypt in that last period

He

fell

my life was that He would be my

into

my supervisor. my second year, when

as

into

died a few months

later.

he became

Arberry, the Sir

Professor of Arabic at Cambridge, was a scholar in

the tradition and possibly of the stature of the great British Orientalists.

Among

other things, his translation of the

Quran was, and prob-

ably

still is,

one of the

and

finest English versions,

and of Rumi

Sufi poets,

in particular, are

still

his translations of

highly regarded.

Arberry had Parkinson's disease and was by this stage in his

life

He never came to the faculty building so I would home on Gilbert Road for supervisions, where I would sometimes glimpse his wife, who herself was disabled, her hands quite in a wheelchair.

cycle out to his

crippled by arthritis.

mystical air about

was a

him and

rare, special gift to

brusque although learn

Working on mysticism, he himself had I

in his responses to I

felt at

the time

have known him.

my work and

was very tentative

in

what

I

as

I

do today

He was

— that

it

never harsh or

almost always encouraging,

did and only just beginning to

what research was. He managed always

to

seem

positively in-

— the outline of my research — that wrote him. No doubt and was partly because the subject was focusing on — the

terested in

what

I

had

to say in the papers

project and then the draft chapters this

—

a gentle,

for

I

life

I

work of Edward William Lane, probably the of the nineteenth century

finest British Orientalist

— was a subject that he himself had written

about.

The second piece was

of good fortune to

that, within the first

later marry.

few weeks,

The marriage would not

I

last,

fall

into

my

life

just then

met Alan, the man probably most of

all

I

would

because

of the stresses that overtook our lives and that neither of us

knew

A how of

to handle. Still, Alan's affection

my

arrival

209

Border Passage

and then through the

and friendship through that year first

year or two of our marriage

were crucial to me. His warmth and support, the fact that with

him

laugh, not least at

connection and

Alan and

I

was able

I

my own

be completely myself and also to

to

anxieties, gave

me

a fundamental base of

stability.

met

Alan an American.

at a party at the

was rather a

It

house of another student,

fine

been standing before a was,

large,

when he came up

murky

like

house on Panton Street

Americans on the whole had more money than the

it

and

his ability to laugh,

rest of us.

had

I

make out what a moment, then

painting, trying to

beside me, stood studying

it

offered a mock-Freudian, pseudo-artsy analysis that was at once intelligent

and funny.

following

We

weekend he

arrived, looking spruce

and keen-eyed, bearing an African

and scrubbed and shy

violet, to take

The connection we made was immediate.

— and I

I

—

in

to see

each

American

his-

He

America.

in

and had brown eyes and black, deep black

thought he might be part Native American, but he said the

black hair

came from

a

Welsh

ancestor.

The African violet flourished. I took managed to keep a plant alive for long. It

out to dinner.

began

had already done a postgraduate degree

was four years older than hair.

me

We

other regularly. He, too, was a graduate student tory

The

spent the rest of the evening together.

was the Vietnam

era.

that as a sign. I'd never before

Americans seemed

make up a signifiI knew were

to

cant proportion of the graduate students (several that there as a way,

happenings

in

somehow America

or other, of avoiding the draft).

—

tablishment, Kent State, Woodstock, flower people their every detail by everyone in the circles

as American.

Vietnam and

protests, sit-ins, confrontations with the es-

Knowing about these

I

— were followed

moved

things and

in, British as

in

well

knowing the language

and issues and debates that went with them was part of the graduate student culture of the day.

Radicalism was in the

air,

anyway. Though

less in

England than

elsewhere, in Europe too this was the era of student protests and

sit-

210

Leila

made

ins that often

Cohn-Bendit

dubbed

Ahmed

the headlines. Marxist student leaders (Daniel

"Danny the Red,"

in France, for example,

as

he was

newspapers) become household names, and in the strike

in

of 1968, which brought Paris to a standstill, students joined with the

workers.

But

it

was America, and events

there, that set the tone. For

me,

of course, the day-to-day happenings in America and the import and significance of the issues they raised were

connections and friends in ical

and

intellectual issues,

this I

all

quite new.

To make

community and understand the

had

ican scene, from understanding what "institutional violence"

and why

it

was important

to

oppose

to learning

it

in

their lives

and

their understanding of

meant

about Che Guevara

and reading Marx's critique of imperialism, which friends changed

polit-

scramble to learn about the Amer-

to

told

me had

American involvement

Vietnam.

These events and perspectives At the seminars

I

now began

tone academically as well.

set the

attending,

where Americans were among

the smartest and most articulate people, the language of Marxist theory was often the language used by the senior graduate students and

those

who were

intellectually in the lead.

language and theory that

was new

to

political

and

I

To me,

different ring

intellectual radicalism of the

moment and

me and had for me a quite for my American and English

all

of

whom

were, broadly speaking, from the

middle and upper classes and had lived their cratic societies

where they were

liked. (All the

free to say

Americans

I

met

Words

like

lives in stable,

what they in

as well, of course, as all the English people

white.)

of the lan-

in fact familiar to

and meaning than they did

cohorts in Cambridge,

where they

was new, a

me, many of the ideas and terms that were part of the

guage of the day were

—

this too

hastened to master. While Marxist analysis

liked

Cambridge

who were

demo-

and

to

go

in that era

there

— were

"revolution," "socialism," "liberation struggles,"

"class oppression," "the struggle against imperialism" represented, for

my classmates,

me they had quite another that my classmates were advoon the face of it anyhow, my

great shining ideals. But for

undertow. According to the theories cating as superior intellectual truth,

A parents and family and

were on the wrong

211

Border Passage

who had

those

all

side, distinctly

on the

suffered in the revolution

side of the bad,

whereas the

unjust people in power, spouting their rhetoric of revolution, socialism, al-ishtirakiyya, the struggle against al-imperialiyya

apparently were on the side of the good.

more complicated than endorsement of

that

naturally that

it

was

and that Marxist analysis did not mean

and language had

made me more

experience doubtless

knew

and so on,

and tyranny. But the resonances that

injustice

theoretical perspective

I

y

for

me

in relation to

reluctant to

embrace

this

my own

it

than

I

might otherwise have been.

At any

rate, then, for

my

classmates the popular theories were

those that exposed and explained their governments' "wrongful" im-

and conduct and that deeply and

perialist policies

and addressed intellectual

their

own

situations

and

their

own

directly spoke to

moral, political, and

dilemmas. These same ideas and theories, however, did

not in a parallel way or in any simple sense directly explain or

my own

minate

life

and the history

entailed for me, personally

and

I

realize

—

now

did for

it

that the process that

of having,

first,

ple's lives, the lives of

lived.

analytically, a

and complicated negotiation than student

had

I

I

to learn the facts

my

Connecting

to

illu-

them

much more complex fellow students.

underwent as a graduate and

realities of

other peo-

those in whose history and experience the cur-

rent academic theories were grounded,

and of having, second,

to

master theories that explained their experience but that needed considerable refining

— must

and transforming

have been the

students from the Third the Third

World

typical,

to

have meaning for

to the

West.

Many

it

— for

this quite

simply has been the

we had

lived that

were

at the center of

it

was not those

our studies, nor

the perspectives arising from those histories that defined the

intellectual

Of

of us from

arrived having lived through political upheavals that

legacy of imperialism for most of our countries. But histories that

life

indeed the defining experience for

World coming

traumatically affected our lives

was

my own

agenda and preoccupations of our academic environment.

course, the histories and perspectives that defined not only the

curriculum but also the theoretical perspectives and issues of the day

— 212

Leila

were those of the countries at the very center of the

to

Ahmed

which we had come,

were

societies that

Western world. Moreover,

was not only

it

the old academic establishment that reflected the perspectives of

powerful,

these

dominant

societies;

even the oppositional, anti-

establishment, countercultural, "radical" intellectual trends and

cri-

tiques of the day also in fact represented the views of the powerful classes in those societies

new

— the white middle classes — but, now, of the

generation of those classes. For, obviously,

was not the con-

it

cerns of black or working-class Americans or Britons that defined our

agenda

in the

academic world or that we needed

order to get on with our studies,

it

about in

to learn

was not those groups who were

we needed now

generating the theories and critiques that

to acquire.

Blacks and working-class people and others on the margins of West-

ern societies

who

joined the academic world had, just like us, to

scramble to learn the experiences and histories and perspectives of others

— of the Western white middle — and learn put those

agenda

to

needed to do

this,

to

it

to

class,

first,

make our way

in the

All these kinds of issues, inhering in

was

living

through as

pursued

I

which

set the

intellectually.

my

We

academic had

to

do

academic world. situation

my work and

life

and

in

what

I

as a graduate stu-

dent, we would eventually identify, address, explore, and analyze, as my own generation and the generation just ahead of my own began to

living

and

was exactly the kind of experience that would

fuel

mature as academics and

passively learning

intellectuals.

For what

I

was

the intellectual revolution that would come, particularly in the American academic world, as those from the margins

— blacks,

people from other cultures and from minority cultures in

women, the West

understood their exclusion from the academic curriculum and

work ble.

make

to

And

their

own

perspectives and histories academically

thus they began to rework old theories and

grounded

in the lives

set to

and

histories of their

own

visi-

new ones and to make

devise

people,

sense of the processes and currents of history and society from the perspective of their

But for

me

own

this revolution

— our own —

lives.

had not yet happened.

I

know

that there

was

what

was

a sense of fundamental disconnection between

I

A

213

Border Passage

grappling with academically and

my own

make sense

of what

life

and

and

entirely private I

remember con-

cluding vaguely sometime in those years that Theory

must have noth-

isolated struggle to

ing to do with Life, or that irrelevant to theory

my

and vice

I'd lived.

anyway, was obviously completely

life,

versa.

think

I

I

had some

also

intuitive

understanding of the connection between geography, power, and the

making of academic knowledge,

for

I

would occasionally wonder

waking, say, in the middle of the night

knowing what was happening

to

— why American

But

in the

day

I

to the-

Ghana

ory and to everything else, whereas the lives of people in

Egypt or India, for example,

and

lives

Americans were so important

were apparently completely

or

irrelevant.

dismissed these as midnight thoughts that had noth-

ing to do with anything.

Preoccupied in standing, writing stand,

and write

such things

make

tity

I

of the

and race

charged in

daylight

with learning, mastering, under-

life

the things that

needed

I

to learn, master, under-

in order to survive as a graduate student,

I

make

of finding myself defined as black?

enormous negative

— whether

this culture?

pondered only

in those

significance with

Arab or black

— were

relegated

What,

for

And what

did

to the margins, the edges of consciousness.

example, did I

all

my

my

which

iden-

quite unambiguously

These, too, no doubt were subjects that

I

wakeful moments in the night, waiting for

sleep or for the dawn. It is

extraordinary to think that

it

was exactly these kinds of con-

cerns, relegated to the margins, dismissed as of

anything, that today

make up

no consequence

the very questions that

we

to

often directly

wrestle with, particularly those of us working on feminist issues and in black

and cultural

tives today, is the

defines

What,

studies.

for instance,

meaning of race and

from our perspec-

racial identity?

Who

that

is it

what constitutes "true" knowledge? Does the white male

ac-

ademic canon, and the white male perspective on other cultures and other races or on

women,

versal understanding of

Whose

represent a "truer," more valid,

human

more

uni-

experience than any other perspective?

experience and whose perspective should be at the center of

our studies in the academy?

Whose

lives?

Men's? Women's? Which

214

Leila

men and which women? class women? And whose us? Does an valid,

more

Ahmed

Native Americans? Blacks? White middleperspective and theories should weigh with

intellectual in

Cambridge or

New York have

authoritative understanding of our world

cesses shaping our lives than

Cairo or Lagos and

someone who

who works

spectives, experiences, theories?

more

Delhi or

lives, say, in

out of those different cultural per-

Can

really

it

be the case that

only us here in the Western world (including those of us

world from the 'periphery")

to this

a truer,

and the pro-

who have some

who

it

is

migrated

special, privileged

relation to true knowledge, true understanding, true theory? (Or only

who ground themselves in the same assumptions and knowledge systems as we do?) How do we define what "knowledge" is and what it is that we should be learning and believing and us and those abroad

studying and passing on as the essential, cherished heritage to the next generations?

So

this

my days

Whose

was how

I

lives,

whose

whose

values,

occupied myself

in those first

histories?

months:

I

spent

reading in the library, writing papers for Arberry, seeing Alan,

going to seminars. As time went on and

normally do, to acquire

new

analytical

I

began, as graduate students

and theoretical vocabularies,

the experience of attending seminars nevertheless continued, occasionally at least, to be

an experience of straining

to grasp

what was

being said in what seemed to be an increasingly abstract language.

And indeed

the late sixties was the era

theory and French theorists

when

the language of French

— structuralism, poststructuralism, Levi— was just beginning be used

Strauss, Barthes, Foucault, Derrida

by the rising young

stars

among

to

the Cambridge faculty and even by

one or two of the smartest graduate students. At any

rate, this

was

the language occasionally spoken in English department seminars. In

my

other department, Oriental Studies

(I

was

affiliated

with both),

they spoke only the old-style, perfectly comprehensible academic language.

By the end of the summer hostel, larger than the

I

moved

to the

one on the ground

tops of trees as well as of buildings.

I

floor

room

at the top of the

and with a view of the

had come

to

know

the other

A hostel residents

215

Border Passage

and had become particularly friendly with Veena, who

was from India and occupied the room below mine, and with Barbara,

When came home in the evening would often come my room and stand chatting with Veena while she cooked

an American.

down from her supper

I

I

— nearly always

from a poor family

lentils

and

Veena was

ing outside her room.

rice

— on the stove on the land-

a theoretical biochemist.

and had arrived where she

in the south of India

was through scholarships and sheer native etarian

She was

brilliance.

She was a veg-

and a practicing Hindu and had on her desk a picture of

Ganesh, the deity whose form elephant.

is

that of a benignly smiling,

The small space around

it

was arranged

like

an

humanlike altar,

with

stick of incense. Barbara, who was also a who did experiments on rats, tried valiantly to engage with Veena, who was eager to talk about her work with a fellow scientist. But Barbara, who was utterly committed to rational scien-

a few flowers always

and a

scientist, a physiologist

methods and

tific

for

whom

religious belief

was simply

superstition,

could not overcome her prejudice about Veena's devotion to Ganesh. It

tainted for her the value of Veena's

work and she could not bring

herself to take her seriously as a scientist. I

too, actually,

ing about

own

was prejudiced about Ganesh.

Hinduism and

I

had

still

I

knew almost noth-

essentially the prejudices of

my

upbringing, which regarded monotheistic religions as infinitely

superior to other religions.

I

had no conception

at all that for theists

God was One, too. But I liked Veena and understand how she prayed to what, in my ignorance, was Hindus,

like

I

image of an elephant. "Everything religious images, Christ

bolic as well. This

is

symbolic, "

did try to

simply an

Veena explained,

all

on the cross was a symbol, Ganesh was sym-

was

to

me

an unfamiliar but perfectly plausible

idea.

Over the ensuing months, the following events take

One evening when to call her.

I

call

I

get

home

there

is

a

place.

message from

my

from the coin-operated phone on the ground

of the hostel and hear of the various difficulties besetting her

sister

floor

life.

216

Ahmed

Leila

On my way up

my room

to

I

Veena on the

find

landing, cooking

down her face. She man who worked in the

as usual, but this time there are tears pouring

has been thinking about Ivan, the Czech

same she

is

lab with her

obviously

whom

and with

still

she was in love

He was

in love.

and went back

finished his thesis

— and with whom

in love with her, but

to

when he

Czechoslovakia and told his

parents he wanted to marry an Indian, they would not hear of

He was

it.

but he could not bring himself to defy

sorry, his letter said,

them. I

end up sharing her supper and by the end of the evening we and laughing, doubling up with laughter. She's been

are laughing

ing to explain to is

me what

it is

exactly she's working

an exciting time for her. She thinks she

on and why

plain the equation that

is

"Why?"

I

ask her.

tries to

me why

And somehow

explain

it

seems suddenly hilarious

I

am

down our

able

matters.

the noncommunication that en-

some mathematical formula and

in this sea of incomprehensibility, trying to grasp

tears run

is

tries to ex-

her basic premise. "Y equals such and such,"

she says, trying to convey to

sues as she

and she

could be very exciting. She

it

this

on the point of making

is

a real breakthrough. If her calculations prove correct to substantiate her theory,

try-

We

to us both.

what she

I

flounder is

saying,

laugh and laugh until the

faces.

house on Gilbert Road. There are

at the Arberrys'

rattling

and banging noises coming from the kitchen. The woman who cleans

them puts her head round the door and asks me if I would cup of coffee. A few moments later she returns with two cups. for

Arberry, handing I'll

you

have no for the

difficulty

me back my

recommending

My

to talk to

to the

is

really good.

board that they register

Ph.D."

Early in the morning Cairo.

chapter, says, "This

like a

I

am

urgently called

mother. After asking

me. After a moment

I

how

I

down

am, she says

hear his voice.

to the

my

phone.

It's

father wants

A Nana

"Hello,

217

Border Passage

darling!"

How are you?" Then my mother's

"Hello, Dad! Silence.

anymore now, ya habibti

The next day when

me

informing

voice again. "He's too tired to talk

you again soon."

[darling]. We'll call

get

I

home

that Father passed

I

seems odd over the following days that nothing

It

There

nothing in the world around

is

me

to indicate that

any significance whatever has happened. Everything

is

is

anyone here.

anything of

find myself reading intensively,

I

whom

reincarnation

—

as,

I

I

— the

based on I

move.

I

spirits in

me

all

sorts

of ways,

spirit

presences.

read

I

made through

see,

I

the

way

feel, as

—

as

am

letters taking

shape under

about to make and gradually

And feel

it.

He

—

is

my hand

is

and

is

that

at once,

begins to

(for the writing

is

slow)

the words, "I've

moves, the shock and disbelief of the

is

using

my hand

to write.

He is

spirit,

aristocrat.

She died

in the

And

David,

has just died in a car dead; he just cannot

young, in his twenties. Then another

some kind of

in-

pen, not knowing

spirit takes over.

French woman. She writes the F of "France" with a great

She

book

my pen and

And almost

my

for

automatic writing.

my own,

crash in Cornwall and cannot believe that he believe

scents,

maybe. Yeats

again and again the same words, "I've just died!"

my hand I

as

too, that

Vision, Yeats's

that Yeats described.

forming across the page in writing not

just died!"

A

A

his wife's

but not at that point frightening me,

watch the

what word

who

in

Madge. He believed,

decide to try automatic writing myself, holding

shocking

I

think, did Mrs.

spirit revelations

voking the

I

searchingly through Yeats's

scent, suddenly, inexplicably, of roses

himself experienced

different

is

studied years ago with Mrs. Madge, believed in

manifest themselves

spirits

instance

was,

it

seems just the same.

Life, everything,

works. Yeats,

different.

just as

people's eyes today look just as they did yesterday. Nothing for

me,

find a telegram waiting for

away the previous afternoon.

flourish.

seventeenth century

now to look for an ivory cross that belonged to her and somehow it has something to do with William and Mary had here

—

—

218 been unjustly taken from for

it,

plies.

ask her

if

the living to

mean page. I

I

is

she? Pur-

permissible,

Is it

right,

is it all

put

I

this,

say,

I

By which

it?

acceptable to do

it.

A

I

long

I

don't

can

I

want

do

to

it if

God

last.

Then

doesn't want

her departing loneliness. She

feel

is

my pen down.

dawn by now.

broad daylight,

mean

dead and

right for the

is it all

Does God permit

like this?

happen but

lonely, she says, spirits get

is

can sense her replies even before they appear on the

must stop now.

It is

in

time? Resting, she re-

all this

sense her reluctance to answer. No, she writes at

I

come

Where

have to end

to.

gone.

it

it

taken her so long to

in purgatory, she says.

is

communicate

now

it

she knows

she talking to me? She

is

not can

I

will

has

if

lonely for the living.

pause. By

Why

she has met Yeats, or Freud or Jung, or

Freud

are.

Why

gatory.

her.

what has she been doing

ask,

I

I

where they

us

Ahmed

Leila

I

I

go to bed and

fall

find myself terrified.

that this has happened, that

I

Waking

asleep immediately.

Am

I

What

going mad?

have stayed up

automatic writing, communicating, apparently, with

does

night doing

all

sensing

spirits,

their feelings, their thoughts? I

he

tell

says.

Alan. "No,

"You know, your

reassure me. that

am

I

don't think you're going crazy,

I

I

He

me

sees

much

of

it

says,

is

he doesn't think

for

am

as

I

doesn't

— but he for

me

give

to

him

is

know what

it

is

— subconscious, my

is

"resting" for a couple of

— something

seems particularly

going crazy. Now,

not concerned as to

call.

him

do with

to

with William and Mary. Freud's

sanity

continue seeing him. But should a

to see

recount the details

if

to relish.

had come

I

a crowTi or claiming to be myself a French aristocrat

He

doesn't

to find the entire matter fasci-

some reason

irritated

a detail he I

my mind and need

woman had been

— thoroughly

being in purgatory

losing

He seems

hundred years or so and was,

7

it

know, saying on the phone now

enormously amusing,

of our exchanges: that the

an ivory cross

am

I

that afternoon. Benson, the psychiatrist,

actually quite wonderful.

nating and

I

just stress,*'

death and everything." But

father's

call a psychiatrist

vers worried that

immediately.

it's

spirits,

.

.

.

in

but

No, he wearing

this, no.

he doesn't know

and doesn't see any reason I

feel

I

want

to

I

can always

A How does How does one

How

one deal with death?

who

think about those

am back

I

essentially

219

Border Passage

does one think about

it?

are gone?

once more into the rhythm of regular work. Focusing

now on my own

research,

have given up going to most

I

seminars.

spend several weeks in Oxford reading manuscripts in the Bod-

I

long bus ride from the center of town,

leian. Staying in lodgings a

see

my

sister a

couple of times.

On

weekends

I

I

return to Cambridge.

IVe decided to attend a lecture by the head of Barbara's depart-

ment, a I

brilliant, internationally

should hear.

It is

— genes and

about suicide

known

scientist

whom Barbara thinks

an open lecture, intended for nonspecialists.

The

suicide.

gist

of the talk

is

can quite legitimately be thought of as "nature's" way the genes

weak. this,

I

—

to cleanse

am

and

some

tled as well as appalled

secretly

been drawn

that suicide

— the way of

and purify the species of the psychologically

shocked, feeling there

also, in

It's

is

something

terribly

wrong with

scarcely acknowledged recess of myself, star-

—

someone might be who on occasion has

as

to thoughts of suicide.

But

I

can't think

how

to

respond intelligently to Barbara's enthusiasm for the talk or to say

why

exactly

I

found the talk lacking

in

compassion, inhumane,

wrongheaded.

A

letter arrives

Europe

from

to visit us all

Alan and

I

my mother

and expects

to

decide to get married while she

only recently that Father died.

Mother here of Egypt?

saying she

for the event

We

It

is

planning a

spend a few days is

Cambridge.

here, even though

would be good, we

and who knows when she

had already talked of marrying before

the bitter arguments between

in

trip to

feel, to

will next this.

have

be out

Mindful of

my mother and sister on the my parents were alive

long ago told Alan that as long as

it is

subject, I

I

couldn't

consider marrying him unless, just as a formality, he converted to Islam. Alan

is

completely secular and he has no problem with the idea

and apparently even quite

likes

it.

I

don't

know

exactly why, other

220 than that

for

it is

him perhaps

have to do something about

name

choosing a Muslim

He

Ismael.

is

just a bit of

now

enjoys telling his friends and,

me

Ahmed

Leila

it,

that

an adventure. Anyway, he

my mother

is

coming and we

he embarks on the project with gusto,

for himself, Ishmael, of course

—

in Arabic,

delighted that he will be able to say to his friends, "Call

Ishmael!"

We

seek out a sheikh in London and Alan learns to

recite the fat-ha (the equivalent of the Lord's Prayer), although this

not a requirement, and he learns the formula that a convert

is

required to utter as a

mark of conversion: La

Muhammad

— There

illahi ilia Allah,

no God but God, and

is

wa

Muhammad

his Prophet.

is

Mother I

rasul Allah

is

She

arrives.

me,

stays with

literally

with me, in

borrow a sleeping bag from Barbara and sleep on the

my room.

floor. In

the

when my parents came to Cambridge they stayed at the UniArms or the Garden House Hotel. Miss Duke, who knew my parents from then, now invites us to lunch. At some point when we're in her garden and out of earshot of the others, Miss Duke tells me about friends of hers in Greece who lost everything in a political upheaval and about how she loaned them money, which eventually, when things were all right again, they returned. Knowing how difficult things must be for my mother, Miss Duke goes on, she would be quite happy to lend us some money, "until, you know, things sort themold days

versity

selves out." I

is

am

touched by Miss Duke's thoughtfulness and generosity, as

my mother when

I

tell

declines the kind offer.

her of our conversation.

Who

knows, she

says,

My mother of course

when

things will "sort

themselves out"?

Most of the time my mother is

not quite taking in where she

point

I

is

someone

and what

is

in a daze, as if she

happening. At one

cross the street ahead of her, absorbed, talking to Alan about

something, and

when

I

look back

gering, lurching as she walks. ill.

like

is

I

She

notice that she seems to be stagis,

as

we

will later learn, already

A As

look back to those days

I

221

Border Passage

am

I

sure that she was suffering, too,

from what must have been depression. That was why she often

seemed disconnected and unable thing, although she was,

I

to take a positive interest in any-

think for our sakes, making heroic efforts

seem, involved.

to be, or at least to

It

seems so obvious now that

must have been her condition. She had

who had been her companion, and

this following those last

Nothing, at any

this

the one person

friend, intimate all of her adult

life,

harrowing years in Cairo.

seemed

rate,

lost, after all,

to truly rouse her interest, not Alan's

conversion or even our marriage.

There was only one moment fully present

and engaged

Father and she began to

when he

in

tell

our exchange. We'd been talking about

me how

She had

actually died.

when she seemed

in all that time

she had been out of the room

left his

bedside for a moment, to go

bathroom, and had come back to find him gone. The same

to the

thing had happened with her mother.

"they couldn't bear to go while so they waited

Alan and

When

"It

was

as

if,"

my

me,

in attendance.

my mother and

Mother then

left for

sister.

Alan and

bassy, formalizing

she ruminated,

there, couldn't bear to leave

got married, at the Guildhall, with

Miss Duke and a few friends Oxford, to see

was

was out of the room."

till I I

I

registered our marriage at the Egyptian

I

in

it

an Islamic contract, remembering

Aida's difficulties around divorce,

I

did not

fail to

em-

my Aunt

invoke the clause

—

Muslim woman to invoke transferring the power of divorce from husband to wife. Alan and I then went for a week to St. Ives in Cornwall. that

On thought

Veena

the right of every

is

it

the evening I

we

heard you," she

to Fulbourne."

"Good God!"

I

Barbara didn't chotic breakdown.

came up to my room. "I have some news. They've taken

got back Barbara said. "I

Fulbourne was the Cambridge mental hospital.

Why, what had happened? know exactly. Veena had had some kind

said.

Among

telling colleagues that

of psy-

other things, Veena apparently had been

she had discovered the secret of the universe.

222

Ahmed

Leila

Barbara herself was shaken and we stayed up

late in

my room,

talking.

Despite her reservations about Veena as a scientist, she had grown

fond of her.

plunged into

I

my work now,

about almost nothing to the British ters

else.

Museum,

working on

my dissertation,

was going down

I

London almost

to

to read manuscripts,

thinking daily,

unpublished works,

let-

by Lane and his circle of friends. In the early

fall

Dr. Radzinowicz, tutor to graduate students, gave

a party at Girton to celebrate our marriage. tian psychiatrist

whom

I

invited Husain,

an Egyp-

who had been at Cambridge with my brothers and He and my sister fell in love immediately and soon

liked a lot.

I

married.

A

few months

later

my mother

returned to England, this time

going straight into a hospital in London. She had cancer, although

we knew

apparently, though treated for

she did not. She thought she was being

it,

damage caused by an overdose of

wrongly given to her

in the first place.

place in

my

she died

of. Still to this

mind,

I

radiation that had been

Once

the confusion was in

could never again feel entirely certain as to what

day

I

wonder

or cancer? But to begin with

I

— was

thought

it

it

an overdose of radiation

was cancer and

aware that she did not know, so when she said

up

to see her, "Imagine!

and

surprise

enough. I

saw

I

They thought

disbelief but not,

gave away,

a kind of

I

believe,

shadow come

I

to

had cancer!"

I

I

was un-

me, when I

I

went

simulated

think, well enough, not quickly

what

I

then thought was the truth, for

into her eyes, a dark understanding

suddenly clouding them as she lowered them away from mine. For the rest of I

my

life

I

would remember that

would ask myself whether

mother

a

it

was

I

life

my

knowledge that she did not want.

In the next few weeks in London,

Mother regained her

looks,

as she must have been as a young girl, extraordinarily Her cheekbones grew prominent as she lost weight, and her blue-gray like the sea, seemed to grow more luminous.

becoming now, beautiful. eyes,

my

unwittingly given

look, for the rest of

who had

A my

said

I

last

goodbye

223

Border Passage to her in

London

where she was

airport,

taken onto the plane in a wheelchair. She died a couple of months later in a hospital in Cairo. Fat-hia,

her maid, had moved in with her,

sleeping on a cot in her room. Fat-hia,

my

aunts told me, had said to

them, as they sat through the days outside Mother's room, that she

my mother more

loved

than she did her

own mother and

that,

when

she was going through her divorce, Mother had saved her from suicide.

In her last days,

I

was

told,

Mother seemed not

one. She seemed to be seeing only those

Grandmother, her brother Fuad, her last

day or two.

It

who had

my

too,

chimed

in,

in the

sister interjected as

my

my aunt

Nazli said,

Yes, ah daruri, ya habibti,

no doubt,

aunts talked of Mother's death. Probably, darling,

and then Aisha,

already died

That was just

sister Aida.

was no doubt delirium,

to recognize any-

darling.

"But

back if

still,

you know," Nazli resumed after an

in her voice, "the

way she was

she could see them." As

died, as

if

they had

if

interval, the

talking to them,

they had come, those

come now

to receive

it

who had

her as she

wonder

was exactly

as

already

came over

to

them, to greet and receive her and gather her to them and love her

had always loved

as they

her.

Anyway, she was gone.

was spring when she

It

As

I

died.

write these words, aware of the

sound of

my hand

across the

page, the scratch of a pen, a great wind outside bends everything

before

it,

baring the underside of leaves, tossing them

bunches, flinging down small branches, tugging ine the house tossing, it is

coming

free, as

it

I

know now,

to death,

I

house.

in great I

imag-

did once in a dream. In fact

sturdy, fixed, like a well-planted tent.

ness.

at the

down

But

I

feel a

sense of dark-

find myself saying to myself, that the road leads

and more precipitously,

it

seems, than

I

had

yet realized.

Veena and her breakdown. Veena and her picture of Ganesh.

When

I

think back to Veena and to that period in

think of the silent costs of the lives that

we were

my own

living.

life,

I

224

Leila

Ahmed

think of the events and words that

I

made up

days and that were the ordinary backdrop to our

the news in those

lives.

Enoch Powell

holding forth about black immigration and the menace and danger that blacks

(all

how they must deported. And headlines

of us non-Europeans) represented and

be turned back and those already in Britain

about white youths going on "paid-bashing" rampages. "Paki-bashing"

was the term formed the

for attacks

on Pakistanis and Indians, who

group of recent immigrants

largest

we

the words and events that coffee.

We

spoke of

I

Such were

routinely took in with our morning

took in this open racism, lived with

it.

in those days

to Britain.

it,

and yet never once

do not remember a single conversation

I

had with Veena

or anyone else either about racism or about ourselves as actually

touched

by,

and implicated

Why? How was

that

it

in,

we

these racist words.

apparently were not able, did not

how. to speak about racism? Racism was not,

which

I

lived, a subject that

an issue that might touch

in the

was openly talked about,

us.

know

Cambridge at least

in

not as

For one thing, there was the myth that

racism existed only "out there," not in civilized Cambridge. Cambridge

was indeed too well-bred

for the crass

and overt racism of an Enoch

Powell or of paki-bashing, and most people

knew and had

I

dealings

with openly deplored these ghastly, appalling happenings. But there

was undoubtedly,

too, the sense that

we were

not quite what they

were and that our cultures and religions and race (but that particularly

would never have surfaced) were not quite up

and would be best

left

to theirs

outside the door.

think that there were other reasons

I

word most

why both Veena and

I,

read-

ing and hearing about the overt racism that was out there, did not fully identify ourselves as

among

its

targets.

To begin

with,

we were

not direct targets. There were no physical attacks on nonwhite people in

Cambridge. There was never a moment, going out into the

that

I

was

fearful of being attacked. Paki-bashing violence

not in Cambridge but

in places like Leicester

Hill Gate, working-class cities

streets,

happened

and London's Notting

and neighborhoods. And there was the

silent implication in

Cambridge and probably

press generally that

was working-class blacks who were not only the

it

in the liberal British

A

who were

targets of racism but

probably in fact somewhat inferior:

"them," the working class, and not people

And

it

was an implication

like

that, unconsciously,

we would have known

than working-class blacks. it,

I

we were probably

some

at

indeed implicated by these prejudices, even

spoke of

us here in Cambridge. only

on and ourselves believe and accept.

too eager to seize

Nevertheless

225

Border Passage

knew

full

I

am

level that

we were

and

if less fully

perfectly sure that, though

well that even civilized

directly

never

I

Cambridge did not

regard us as equals.

But we didn't

And

talk of

so, privileged

superprivileged,

we

it.

though we were and

world of the

living in the

lacked the psychological sustenance that the pres-

ence, perspectives, and words of other people like ourselves would

have afforded us, not only people of our

own

particular group but

those subjected to these insidious or overt assaults of racism.

was the only other black person

I

knew

well in Cambridge. There

a Pakistani graduate student at Girton

there

and

must have been other blacks between. This too,

far

I

whom

I

knew

slightly,

come from

their countries without family

no one we might meet

we were

living just as

munity with

whom

to

at a

and

who

nearly

then, iso-

live,

No one

lated in predominantly white communities. street,

and

must be a distinguishing aspect

of the experience of middle-class academic immigrants,

always

was

we were few

in other colleges, but

expect,

all

Veena

living

on our

bus stop was living through what

an ordinary part of our

exchange words about

lives.

We

common

had no com-

experiences, no

make some connection with that would break the sense of isolation. And there was no one with whom, shutting the door on this assaultive world and its demeaning tide, we could share and affirm our own feelings and beliefs and ways of being. one

to joke with, to

There was another dimension that defined the perspectives, beliefs,

came

and values that were the norms

in the societies

as implicitly but distinctly inferior. This

from which we

was the pronounced

and almost aggressive secularism of the Cambridge of student days. There was no doubt that people

who were

my

graduate

religious

not regarded as quite on a par intellectually with those

were

who were

226

Ahmed

Leila

unambiguously and forthrightly secular. Even Christians were marked in

some sense

And anyone who

as intellectually lesser in this ethos.

belonged to and actually believed in any of those "other" religions

were

like

who

Islam or Hinduism was completely outside the realm of those

be taken seriously.

to

And

so Veena, engaging in

what

home

in her

was the

society

simple, ordinary act of putting an altar before Ganesh, here found

And

herself the target of the scarcely veiled contempt of her peers.

no doubt she sensed

it

as clearly

my

not be considered an equal by riously as an

academic had

Veena and

and surely

as

I

knew

I

would

defined myself as a believing Muslim.

I

women immi-

(and thousands of other nonwhite

I

that

peers and would not be taken se-

grants into the academic societies of the Western world) were living

through our own version of the experience of Betty Friedan's generation of

women

had no name." pervasively

our to

own

speak

in

America, what Friedan called "the problem that

We

too were living in a society that insidiously and

undermined our own experience, our own perspective, and

sense of of,

reality,

and

in

ways that we too did not know how

and that undermined and denied

our case, our

too, in

own

histories and cultures and the foundational beliefs of our socie-

ties.

The Friedan generation

chiatrists,

find

took Valium,

words

for

demic

felt suicidal,

what they had

own consciousness but

A

of middle-class

lived,

women and

and eventually,

writers

is,

I

and other

flocked to psy-

as they

began

would transform not only

also that of their class

similar quiet revolution

women

and

to

their

society.

now under way women of color, who as

believe,

as aca-

yet live

scattered and isolated through white academia, continue steadfastly to

map and name and make

our

visible the territory of

own

different

experiences.

It is

no wonder, then, that Veena had a nervous breakdown.

And perhaps in bringing suffer.

these kinds of unspoken stresses played

about the physical

illness

from which

Sometime between my mother's

first visit

I

some

part

now began

and her death,

to I

A

227

Border Passage

me and that I of my days in

to suffer a vague, mysterious illness that trailed

began

would not be able

to

shake off for the remainder

Cambridge. didn't feel like anything particularly serious. Slightly swollen

It

glands, a bit of a temperature, exhaustion, so that doing any

When

thing was a chore.

symptoms

the

didn't go away,

doctor. Probably glandular fever, he said. tests he'd

done, but

could

I

have had

still

didn't

It

—

went

I

little

to the

show up

in the

it

generally took a while

month

or two, before going

it

to clear.

back, but

me me

know how long

don't

I

I

waited, a

did eventually go back.

few days

for observation.

They picked up my chart and ing comments. James put

gesturing and talking.

No one had

The

GP referred

Blood samples, chest

flicked through

my X

ray

They were

it

a bevy of

X

ray,

and

young men.

as they stood exchang-

up on one of those

just out of earshot.

light boxes,

Then they were

addressed a single word to me, James only briefly

nodding when they

Then

cleared.

came by with

so on. Dr. James, the specialist,

gone.

had not

It

Addenbrooks, the Cambridge hospital. They took

to a specialist at in for a

I

first

came

in.

was sent home. They hadn't come up with anything but

I

were going to continue keep a diary of

to observe

my symptoms and

me, the nurse told me.

a daily chart of

I

was

to

my temperature and

return in two weeks.

Weeks

No change and no

passed.

diagnosis.

Addenbrooks every month instead of every gone

in,

Addenbrooks had been on Trumpington

road from where long bus ride

where

I

fun, nor

I

lived.

Then

the hospital

Hill's

Road;

it

down

lived to the

was having

I

I

moved

to its

bus stop. In the rain and cold the to sit for

down the new site, a

Street, just

was something of a walk,

trip

was no

for that matter,

was always

and unwell.

Somewhere along the

line

I

complained

to

Husain,

my new

brother-in-law and a doctor, that nothing was happening and fed

up

from

too,

an hour or two waiting for James in the

gloom of the out-patient department. Nor, feeling tired

Now reported to When had first

fortnight.

at not getting better.

He

offered to

I

was

make me an appointment

228

Ahmed

Leila

whom

with Sir Ronald Firth, physician to the queen,

know.

eagerly agreed.

I

Reviewing

me

my

record and running some tests himself. Firth told

although the results were not absolutely conclusive, he be-

that,

lieved that

what

I

had was rheumatoid

chronic disease, he said

(I

arthritis.

knew nothing about

could usually be controlled by medication.

on

he happened to

and

steroids,

I

was

happy

entirely

it

He

was a benign

It

which

in those days),

me

suggested putting

At

to fall in with this plan.

last

someone was doing something. and

was getting

I

thought, over the next couple of weeks, that

I

returned for

my

regular Addenbrooks appointment.

James or

his

nurse that

either to

and feeling

wanted

better.

me

to see

As

I

was

the next

Why would

anxious.

me

leaving, James's nurse told

week and

my

I

better,

mentioned

seen Firth and was taking steroids

I'd

band and my brother-in-law. He This request to see

I

that he

wanted

James

that

to see

my

hus-

also ordered an eyelid biopsy.

relatives of course

made me extremely

he want to see them unless there was something

very seriously wrong? Tuesday rolled round again, and the four of

us

— my

for

sister,

Addenbrooks. But

And then James's nurse James's office

For

me

about

I

came up

I

is

were quite

it's

pale.

rheumatoid

"What?"

He

I

I'd

said

off

anxious to eat.

we had

sat waiting for a while,

and asked Alan and Husain

to us

to tell

go into

to

it

said.

I

me

— why

Finally the door

else

to tell

James

to

was asked

to

opened and

said, "I don't agree

arthritis.

believe

I

I

it's

I

it

out, as

if

furious.

particI

don't

The evidence

what

word he was

never heard before. again, barking

with Firth,

sarcoidosis.

believe that that's

couldn't catch the

them

would he want

was red and Husain and Alan, Husain

not completely conclusive but

of course,

far too

lunch before setting

had some awful disease and he was going

them and not me?

think

for

— only them, not me.

join them. James's face ularly,

was feeling

at the hospital, after

and they would have

it

— met

I

that instant confirmed the absolute worst. Obviously this

was the end.

see

Alan, Husain, and

it

is."

saying, which,

A

229

Border Passage

"Could you please write

it

down?"

was

I

still

stunned and could

not grasp what he was saying.

He still

word on a piece of paper and handed

scribbled the

"What

to

me,

asked.

is it?" I

now

learned, like rheumatoid arthritis, an autoim-

It

was, as

I

mune

disease,

which meant a disease

reason attacks it

it

apparently furious.

And

itself.

it

also

meant

in

which the body

that, unlike, say,

some

for

an infection,

wasn't something whose progress could be stopped or altered; treat-

ment cases,

was

essentially

James

said,

just to alleviate

symptoms

as they arose. In

ran a benign course, and he

it

expected

fully

most it

to

my case. They were going to continue to see me regularly and to treat me as need arose. Meanwhile he wanted me off the steroids. in

That was the end of our meeting. Outside

naturally immediately

I

things he had told

happen

to

them about

me. No, no, they

said,

this illness

I

to

know what awful

and what was about

he hadn't said anything

any awful thing that he expected then?

wanted

to

to

about

happen. Well, what had he said

couldn't get anything out of them, just rambling meaningless

nothings.

Why

were they, and Husain

particularly, looking so upset?

Well, he hadn't been pleased about Husain's taking

Husain should have consulted with him

them

at all

and

in

me

left

couldn't believe

it,

For

out there and subjected

simply couldn't believe

answer from either of them, so happened. Alan

first.

later told

me

that

I

it.

But

me I

me

to Firth

he had called

this

to this terror?

I

never got any other

suppose that that

really is

what

James had actually bawled Husain

out quite sharply, and that Husain had privately told Alan that he had in fact notified

James, leaving a message with James's secretary, but

had

would be ungentlemanly

felt

that

Still,

it

to this

traordinary. This at

work, as

I

day

was

I

British patriarchy, medical establishment-style,

know now.

that setting. But for certainly never by

to point this out.

find James's insensitivity as a doctor quite ex-

me

Perfectly standard it

was new.

any doctor

I'd

in Egypt, as

and ordinary behavior

in

never been treated before,

someone not

to

be consid-

—a 230

Ahmed

Leila

ered or directly addressed in the deliberations that passed between

men. Different patriarchies evidently had Dr. James's treatment blighted for

me. For the next few years I

my life

was emotionally devastating.

it

had

moment

would take I

up on

it

for the next couple of years,

was

as

outside his

if

he had put a curse on

room

or of the conviction

whose name he'd barked out

this disease

a fatal or a devastatingly crippling turn. For

learned from

be, as

It

could not free myself of the terror that

I

moments

those

felt in

that at any

and

their different styles

forms of casual, ordinary, acceptable erasures.

their different

my

reading

—

for of course

it

me

could indeed

Alan and

both read

I

— a very serious, sometimes crippling, and sometimes

fatal disease. Its course,

at

swiftly

however, was unpredictable. You just had to

wait and see.

Had

had a decent doctor,

I

become the little it

change

I

like to think,

anxious, terrified person in

not been for

my my

I

I

would not have

now became,

afraid that any

health was augury of impending disaster.

And had

anxiety about this illness and the stress

it

placed

on me and Alan, we might never have divorced. But there

it is.

Alan was having problems with his either to revise

He had no getting

and resubmit

precise idea

little

help from

how

it

my

told

he had

it

and he was

And he had just accepted

and he was

had no understanding of

I

first

He was

they wanted him to revise

his supervisor.

in Hull, his first teaching job,

terror

thesis.

or accept an M.Litt. instead of a Ph.D.

until the

a job

in terror of lecturing

day that

I

had

—

to deliver

lectures.

A hundred problems came up. Where would we live, who would commute? He felt I was not there when he needed me, and I felt the same about him. And once he was no longer a student he changed and began

who would be

person It

to pressure

to

fit

there for

into the conventional role of wife, the

him when he

got

home from

his job.

was a miserable time.

What

got

me

tory of the period,

had

me

all

through I

it

was

my work.

Reading deeply

in the his-

began piecing together from the boxes of notes

around me, the material

I'd

gathered in

my

trips to

I

Oxford

A and the ing.

Museum,

British

And

this,

I

the

life

of the

suppose, was

my

third

of good fortune. Lane, after

though

man whose work I was

study-

and hitherto uncounted piece

could have been someone who,

all,

and writing about Egypt and Islam and becoming an

living in

authority on them, disliked the country,

He

231

Border Passage

culture, people, religion.

its

could have been someone who, at least privately, wrote conde-

scendingly or even contemptuously of

been a

me

distasteful exercise for

much

about him, so

one's biography. But fortunately it.

to

it

could, therefore, have

much

spend so

company

time in his

almost everything about

And

it.

—

as

time thinking

one does writing some-

Lane loved Egypt, unreservedly loved

From

work he undertook would be an

his arrival, his entire life

and the

and service

act of devotion

to this

much loved and in which he felt, home than he did in his own land. He

country and culture that he so almost from the

had

first

more

start,

at

fallen in love with the idea of

through reading about

it

(which

Egypt as a young boy, simply

understood perfectly, longing as

I

as a youngster for the red roofs of

flat,

boring roofs). Scraping and saving for years to

to Egypt,

he

prove to be

finally arrived at the

all

way

make

the voyage

age of twenty-four, and

it

would

and more than he had hoped.

By the time rather the

I

England rather than our own

had

I

was done working on Lane

did about Arberry, that

I

I'd

I

would

been

about him company of

feel

in the

human being and that it had been a privilege and know him. Of course I knew Lane, in important ways,

an extraordinary gift to

far

and

come

to

more intimately than letters. It's

I

knew

Arberry:

read his private journals

a peculiar and quite poignant relation, that of biog-

rapher and subject, at least liking for the person.

you come

it is if

to feel, as

I

did, a great

Reading someone's private words you share

hopes, fears, longings, knowing

all

book

will

will

I'd

be published, which

the while what he does not

his

— which

succeed, which illness will prove

fatal.

Working on Lane at this time in my life was also a gift to me in some quite specific ways. Lane's love for Egypt, after my own recent alienating experiences there, brought restorative way. His letters,

it

back into

my

life in

a positive,

whenever he was away from Egypt, were

232

Leila

Ahmed

of sighs and aches and longings for that country

full

— as well as of

endless complaints about England. Egypt, Egypt, Egypt!

Oh, Egypt! Oh,

be back there. Oh, to be

to

Ah

ya Masrl

once more taking

sitting

supper on the bank with the boatmen. Oh, to be there in those sum-

mer of

nights, listening to the croaking of frogs, breathing in the scent

orange groves! In Cairo his pleasures were talking to people,

its

learning things, studying things, drawing

man, a trained engraver), hearing

them

stories

(he was a fine drafts-

from

his friend the book-

seller,

looking over his manuscripts, joining in prayers at the mosque,

sitting

on there afterward

I

me

learned from Lane too

to learn

it

— how

in work, just work. his

in meditation.

—

I

at a

know

got to

moment when

it

was valuable

his daily routine exactly.

of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Muslims

utter

on beginning a

to

half-hour

stroll

Poole, who, to Egypt,

and

for

his wife,

words that devout

Lane would break only

meals with his family

when she was abandoned by

and

— the

— In the name

task, dedicating their labor to

in the service of His purposes.

—

for his daily

his sister,

her husband,

religious

temperament and

also valuable to crisis,

me

in that

a crisis about loss of

we tend

near despair

I

— meals grace.

unconventional but

his

and Christianity, were

was going through

tremendous inner

a

meaning and about the kinds of things

to define as "spiritual."

— not

Sophia

came with him

would begin always with the utterance of the Christian

Lanes deeply

God and

Nefeeseh, a Greek or Greek-Egyptian

also deeply religious habits, interweaving Islam

that

Going

desk every morning after an early breakfast, he would begin his

workday with the words "Bismillah al-rahtnan al-rahim"

that

for

person could be devoted to and absorbed

totally a

It

was a time of depression and

surprisingly, given the losses I'd suffered in just

two or three years and the anxiety over

my

health.

I

remember standdown my

ing one day at the bus stop outside Addenbrooks, holding

coat against a sudden cold blast, watching the wind pick up and whirl

on the edge of the road too,

and

as

if

a circlet of leaves, feeling myself whirled,

spiraling into vast interstellar spaces

empty with mean-

inglessness. I

was desperate

for, craving,

some

religious faith,

something that

A would say

me

to

that

all this,

to

lich,

Teilhard de Chardin.

church a

converting.

not to do

lot

belong

And

was

I

so. It

— Bultmann,

I

Til-

close, really quite close to it

— and

was

I

right

would have solved nothing and would have only mud-

In reality

to.

was meaningful.

in Christianity

came

I

living,

did not, in the end, go through with

I

my crisis was

died things further. For to

what

and read deeply

went

233

Border Passage

I

not in fact about which religion

have never had any

one

difficulty feeling that

could perfectly well believe both Islam and Christianity at the same time, although

I

many Christians and completely unacceptable. And as I have gotten

recognize, of course, that for

Muslims such a view older and learned

is

more about other

religions,

I

feel the

same way

about those too, including, of course, Veena's Ganesh and Hinduism

more

generally.

No,

my

crisis

was grounded

in

two things.

about

faith, just religious faith in itself.

her,

was thoroughly pervious

I

sumptions of

my

And

time.

to

For

I

First,

it

was a

crisis

was no Veena. Unlike

and permeated by the secular

this in the

end

— because

I

as-

could not

sustain religious belief and could not shake myself free of the conviction that religion

no reasonable thinking person could possibly believe

— was the reason

not because

I

Second,

all

— simply

real issue

— and

was not which

faith

faith itself.

my crisis and my attempt to resolve it by turning to Chrismy response to, and my attempt to remedy, a loss

had been

had suffered ing that

whom

did not go through with conversion

had understood that the

but any faith at

tianity

I

I

I

— without knowing that

had

lost anything. Until

religious belief

had been

in

was

I

had suffered

now

I

just a given,

true, of course, in Egypt,

but

had

lived in

it,

without know-

communities

an ordinary part of it

life.

had also been true of

Duke and Brad were

in

my

life,

had been deeply

religious.

my

who

years at Girton. There too, people, and in particular the people

had been most important

for

This

Miss

devout, practicing Christians, and Mrs. Madge,

although she was not Christian (on the contrary, for her, Christianity, the beast slouching toward Bethlehem,

marked the beginning of the

dark ages) was definitely Something. For the graduate student years

I

was

living bereft of a

first

time

now

community of

in

my

belief

234

Ahmed

Leila

and bereft of the sense of sustenance and reassurance that such communities can provide whether we are active believers or not. Such communities buoy and sustain aware of

I

it,

without our necessarily even being

us,

by their sense of the meaningfulness of

finished

my

thesis, got divorced,

and began

our

all

lives.

to apply for jobs.

I

continued to have physical problems but they did not get worse. In addition

I

was freed now from James's curse

an Egyptian doctor

who was

Cairo

in

London

to

whom

I

was taken by a friend from

England. This doctor,

briefly in

as a result of a visit to

who was

a chiropractor

as well as a conventional doctor, spoke utterly persuasively of the

medicine and of

limits of regular

how

little

doctors

knew

particularly

about such vague sub-clinical ailments where the medical evidence

remained inconclusive, and he began tling the authority of James's

for

me

the process of disman-

pronouncements about my own

and

life

body and future.

Veena recovered. She completed her

thesis

Czech boyfriend, came

cessfully. Ivan, her

and defended

suc-

it

drawing

to see her and,

strength from what she had been through, found the courage to his parents that

Veena

I

left for

he loved

Prague

this

woman and would

not abandon her.

marry Ivan.

to

began working part-time, teaching

at the

Cambridge College of

Arts and Technology

(now Anglia University)

college supervising.

got no offers of full-time jobs but

I

a letter from a publisher to say that they sidering

my

thesis for publication. Like

I'd

I

did receive

would be interested

most of

my

cohorts,

sent an outline and sample chapters of

to various publishers

sent the manuscript it.

But

I

Still,

— and

off,

now

I

had had

liked

it

and

in

in

con-

and

just

and ap-

my

thesis

this astonishing reply.

feeling certain, though, that they

was wrong. They

some

as well as doing

as a routine part of the business of finishing one's doctorate

plying for jobs,

tell

would

due course published

I

reject it.

the end point of this process of education that in Cairo

I

A

had pursued with such yearning did not so craved.

do

It

we asked nor

tions that

much

nect

it

was

had

I

had learned

I

to

essentially academic. Neither the ques-

the theories that

we

with anything that was real for

studied seemed to con-

me

or to take

— thought that remained

up or

my own

address the concerns that were at the heart of

thought

me what

after all give

was interesting enough, the work that

Cambridge, but

in

235

Border Passage

truly

life

and

private, unarticulated, relegated to

the midnight hours and the margins of consciousness.

One day

A

I learnt

secret art,

Invisible-Ness, I

think

it

it

worked

was .

.

called. .

— Meiling Jin But

what those years

forgot

I

in

Cambridge had been

for

me.

I

had gradually come about for me bemy academic work and the ideas and questions that had meanmy life, and forgot the feeling of unease and silence and limbo

forgot the disconnection that

tween ing in in

I

which

I

had existed

in those years

—

until

I

returned just this

last

year for a fellowship year in Cambridge. It all

began

who knows what

come back

to

me

to

within days.

—

just being in that familiar space.

It

was triggered by

Walking down the

corridors of the university library, going to the tearoom, looking out

on familiar

and

vistas, all places

feelings that

and

had made up

vistas redolent for

my

life in

me

of the people

And walking meadows along

those years.

and cycling into town through the familiar Backs (the

the river and the backs of colleges) and the familiar colleges.

As

it

turned out, of course,

and of unease and discontent

common

my own

experience of disconnection

in relation to

academic work was a

among many of my generation, particularly peoand white women. A sense of unease and discontent with

experience

ple of color

what was being purveyed

to us as

knowledge

in

our universities, and

236

Leila

Ahmed

the feeling that the real issues were being bypassed, were not even visible in the curriculum,

a major intellectual

would shortly

America,

fuel, particularly in

and academic revolution. Through the

seventies,

black studies and then women's studies programs sprang up on cam-

puses throughout the States. The founding of such programs reflected the growing understanding that what was being purveyed to us as

"knowledge" and "objectivity" and grand transcendent truths represented in fact neither "truth" nor "objectivity" but rather merely the intellectual traditions, beliefs,

and perspectives of white middle-class

men. For ours had been the era

when we were

taught,

more

or less as

gospel truth (academic gospel truth), that writers like D. H. Lawrence

represented great moral visionaries lett

would expose

for their

— the very writers whom Kate Mil-

misogyny

in

Not

iconoclastic book, Sexual Politics.

what

in

1970 was a

only, Millett

writers openly endorse the "natural" inferiority of

radically

showed, did such

women

but their

works were thoroughly riddled with contemptuous views of

and even

glorified rape

and other abuses of

ceptable norms. Until then

some time

after

we had been

would continue

to

women

be taught

vision,

who modeled

as ordinary, ac-

routinely taught (and for

—

it

took a while for the

feminist challenge to be taken seriously) that such great writers but writers

women

men were

for us, out of their

not only

deep human

men and human moral

the true nature and ideals of relations between

women. This was

the era, too, of the Kohlberg study on

development (published

in the early seventies), in

which Harvard

psy-

chologists maintained that the "rigorous," "objective" research they

had conducted showed that

women were

deficient in their sense of

justice and thus morally defective. These were the conclusions that

Carol Gilligan in another groundbreaking book {In a Different Voice,

1982) would take on and expose for their outright prejudice. She

showed how the male

bias of the researchers in this so-called objective

study was there in the very conception of the experiment, and in

its

questions and terms and conclusions, and finally also in the researchers' inability to grasp,

that

even

when

their

own

evidence pointed that way,

women's moral reasoning proceeded from a

different ethic,

an

A

ethic of "care" rather than of "principle"

no sense It

less

was these kinds of

— but an ethic

men

"moral" than that of the

tive" truth, that

237

Border Passage that

in

in the study.

things, presented as "neutral"

were our ordinary academic

fare.

and "objec-

These were the

and the views that we read and studied and versed ourselves exams. This insidious, built-in denigration of lived with

was

texts

in for

women was what we

and imbibed. In exactly the same way

in those days the

steadfast, insidious, built-in denigration of blacks,

Muslims, Arabs,

and people of other cultures and the colonized generally, was just the ordinary academic fare. (Not that studies written from this perspective are not produced today, but today there

a thriving culture of chal-

is

lenge and dissent that did not exist then.) In that scholarship, blacks,

women, Muslims, and

so on could be the objects of study, as in the

Kohlberg study, for instance. But they could not be

its

subjects.

The

perspective through which they were understood, measured, analyzed,

judged, had to be that of white men. Otherwise, the conclusions arrived at could not be considered "objective."

In America, social ferment and activism formed the backdrop to

the at

new

intellectual perspectives that

any rate

in

were emerging. In England, or

Cambridge, there was no

issues of race or of gender that

I

parallel

ferment either on

might have connected with. By the

my graduate student days had essentially acquiesced in and accepted my own proper invisibility from scholarship and the proper invisibility and object status of my kind. The passion and joy of thought and understanding would come back into my life only after had gone to Abu Dhabi to work and begun to feel driven by my end of

I

I

need

to understand, as the Iranian revolution crested,

Muslim women, and what began

possibilities lay

to read the exhilarating feminist

Placing

Muslim women

and among other

"One

is

I

see

it

ahead; simultaneously

I

books coming out of America.

at the heart of

things, (as

our history as

my own work was

now) a

in a way,

refusal of our invisibility.

not born but rather becomes a woman," goes Simone de

Beauvoir's famous dictum.

I

obviously was not born but

became black

238

Ahmed

Leila

when

I

became

went

to England. Similarly, of course,

woman

a

of color

when

went

I

was not born but

I

America. Whereas these

to

are political identities that carry, for me, a positive charge, revealing

my

and affirming connection and commonality, no

an identity

less a political construction, is

identity as

an Arab,

that, in contrast,

ex-

I

perience as deeply and perhaps irretrievably fraught with angst and confusion. It

was

began

first

Arab

Cambridge and

in

to suffer the

my

identity,

in these graduate student years that

mute, complicated confusions of

Arab

identity as an

in the

my

I

exilic

West.

Why now rather than when I first came to England? Many things now were different. I was no longer merely a visitor with a home in another land to go back I

encountered

would be

it,

slip

to.

As a

visitor,

I

by as of no great

could

moment

lived out elsewhere. This, obviously,

And England was

in a different time in

(somewhat

its

racism, insofar as

my

to

which

life,

was no longer the

history.

England was

significant black immigration,

let

Undergoing

case.

its first

for the first time dealing

hysterically) with the issue of color

and race on home

soil

rather than in the far-flung colonies. Racism, consequently, was far

more

insistently

and inescapably

a few years back. And regularly.

And

I

in the air

now

than

it

had been

just

was myself older and read the papers more

then, too, there was the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, which

unleashed in the press a deluge of frenetic, ignorant, biased, and outright racist views of Arabs. All of these in themselves

with for a young or

community

happenings. those days.

to turn to

with

and

would have been hard enough

knew one

to deal

experience of racism and no family

little

talk with

don't think there were

I I

woman

about these strange, unsavory

many Arabs

in

Egyptian, a Nasser enthusiast

Cambridge

who had

ernment scholarship and was friendly with the Egyptian consul. exceedingly polite to it

was routine

act as

him when

in those days, as

I

ran into him but

we

all

I

in

a govI

was

also avoided him:

knew, for Egyptians abroad to

government informers on one another.

My own rhetoric of

recent history and experience then in relation to the

Arab nationalism and

to that great

hero and leader of the

A

Arab world, Nasser, was part of the

my

underlay to in the

immensely complicating

difficult,

experience at this point of what

West. For where exactly was

no

certainly felt

I

239

Border Passage

loyalty

it

now

that

I

it

was

be an Arab

could take

my stand?

toward or solidarity with Nasser, with his

endless, empty, fraudulent rantings about al-Uraba all

to

that awful, badgering nonsense that

was fortunately no longer being

I

—Arabness — and

read about in the papers but

directly battered by.

On

the other

hand, the racism and ignorance and bigoted imperialist perspective with which both Nasser and the Arabs were often presented in the

on an emotional

British press were,

me.

I

level certainly, perfectly plain to

hated Nasser, but at the same time

saying about

him was

I

knew

that

imperialist, racist rubbish.

what they were

And

the flagrant

heartlessness and injustice with which the British press often wrote

of the Palestinians was also perfectly plain to me. things well. But

did not

I

know how

myself the complicatedness of I

my

to explain

position

and

I

knew

all

these

nor even understand feelings.

Emotionally

was

their spokes-

couldn't fully side with the Arabs insofar as Nasser

man and universally adulated hero. But it was even less possible for me to side with the bigoted British racists and their stupid diatribes against Nasser

and the Arabs.

Not only did ground with

we

have no community of people from

I

whom

to discuss these sorts of things,

did not as yet have a language with

which

to

my own

back-

but in those days

speak subtly and

complexly and in ways that would enable us to make fine but crucial distinctions in reflecting ject of being Arab.

on the highly fraught and complicated sub-

Touching

nationalism, loyalty, betrayal, ical ingredients

that

think about clearly.

as it

it

does on matters of identity, race,

had

all

the emotional and psycholog-

make a subject almost impossibly difficult to And over and above this, being Arab was pro-

foundly implicated, of course, in what has proven to be one of the most painful and intractable political problems of our day, the

Palestinian— Israeli conflict. It is

how it.

not at

to address

As

if all

this

me now that did not know back then this subject, given my own complicated awareness of were not enough, there was for me a further layer of

all

surprising to

I

240

Leila

Ahmed

complexity and connectedness to the matter that had been inscribed

my own

into

life

and history

ways that

in

I

would only come

un-

to

derstand fully in the process of writing this memoir.

Edward

when and

I

its

was

Said's Orientalism in the

part in the consolidation of colonial

has justly taken

many

appeared after

its

live

left

Cambridge and

hegemony, which today

place as a major text of our times, gave us (among

other things) a language with which to begin to talk of some

aspects of the experience of being Arab.

us a

I

Arab Gulf. This work, analyzing colonial discourse

way

to

Most

particularly

speak of being Arab in the West and of what

embattled in a sea of prejudices, prejudices that came

it

it

gave

was

at

to

us as

"knowledge" and as "objective," "neutral," "transcendent," "unbiased," "truths."

And this text

yet the

my own

burden of

history layered

with a degree of unease. Most

Orientalisms profound resonance to

difficult

my

and rhetoric of Arab nationalism. Nasser, pages only fleetingly, but he Said's general thesis

echoed

is

of

my

experience of

all

probably was

ears with the perspectives for instance, figures in

its

there as hero and only as hero. Even

for

me Arab

nationalist rhetoric, for of

course the notion that European attitudes and policies toward Arabs

were rooted a

in a

European hatred that went back

commonplace of

to

that rhetoric.

to the

Crusades was

The book even echoed,

too closely

me, the overly simple binary view of Arab nationalism, which rep-

resented imperialism as uniformly and comprehensively negative.

knew from my own its

legacy had also

and

my

doubt

life that,

meant

for all the real injustices of imperialism,

that

I

had had choices when

my

mother,

aunt Aida most vividly and unforgettably, had had none.

it is

I

No

part of the nature of grand, overarching theories, theories

that redefine, as Orientalism did, ways of seeing of an entire era, that

they will overlook or erase particular terrains of experience.

Still,

me

seem

then, a theoretical analysis of imperialism that did not

allow for the complexities that had been part of

could not ring entirely true.

my own

for to

experience

A Then

own

there was also the

scholarship. Lane,

241

Border Passage

way

whom

that the

book intersected with my

had studied with such closeness, ap-

I

pears in Said's pages as one of the villains of Orientalism.

Lane's work as well as pretation

did,

I

was not accurate.

had no doubt

I

Said, after

book with

deals in this

all,

Knowing

that Said's inter-

at all

scores of writers and centuries of history, and naturally he could not

have studied

these writers and

all

ticulous detail.

Nor indeed does

all

the inaccuracy of this or that partic-

ular reading alter the validity of Said's broad thesis.

how my own

easy today to demonstrate

and me-

that history in specific

not in fact contradict Said's thesis:

It

would be very

different reading of

all

that

show how

is

required

Lane does

is

that

little

Western

reproduced and affirmed the views and

tradition both

to

sumptions of their times and

one

writers working within the

complicate that thesis a

as-

sometimes, endeavored to work

also,

against them. But back then this detail further contributed to

my

sense of unease with the book.

And which

to

finally, too,

although Orientalism did give us a language with

speak of what

seemed simultaneously

it

was

to

to flatten

be Arab in the West, for myself

and erase other aspects of being

Arab. Powerfully and forcefully written from this base in the this place of exile

(nor, of course,

lem of how broader, I

set

it

— the book did not

more complicated

down some

West

at all address

me the probmy way through the

set out to address) or simplify for

to think about,

speak about, or make territory of

what

it

was

to

write these words, obviously, in the context of a

at that all,

and embattlement

had

it

be Arab.

memoir and

to

of the ways that this major text of our age intersected

time with

my own

consciousness and experience, and not at

of course, with the intention of offering here a comprehensive

analysis of this

complex work. In addition,

academics working today

mously indebted

Western world,

intellectually to Said's

Orientalism specifically. criticism but out of the

of the field

in the

I

write

need

like

the vast majority of I

am

naturally enor-

work more generally and

to

them now not to register a belated and to recognize the complexity

to voice

— and the world and experiences — with which we

all

strug-

242 gle in

Leila

our ongoing endeavor to speak and write of the

make up our might be said Said's

Ahmed

own

lives

and our world.

to be,

among

other things, the

monumental product

heroic and transformative struggle

tellectual landscape for

plexity of

what

it

was

all

for

of us

him

to

realities that

Said's Orientalism itself, in a sense,

— transforming the

of in-

— with the fraught and specific combe

.Arab.

II

(y\ /

n Becoming an J^rab

remember the very day that

I

became

colored.

Zora Neale Hurston

THE TEACHERme,

called

interrupting

I

on me

to read.

irascible

me and pounce on

woman, and

started haltingly.

correcting me, quietly at

stumbled on, with more and more

to stand over

I

I

first

but gradually, as

irritation, leaving

every mistake

had not prepared

I

She began

her desk

made. She was an

my homework.

"You're an Arab!" she finally screamed at me. "An Arab!

know your own

don't "I

am

And you

language!"

not an Arab!"

And anyway we

tian!

now

I

said,

am Egypbanged my book

suddenly furious myself.

don't speak like this!"

And

I

"I

shut.

"Read!" I

sat

on

stonily,

arms folded.

"Read!" I

didn't

move.

She struck go on forever, I

me

like

across the face.

something

was twelve and

I'd

in

The moment afterward seemed

to

slow motion.

never been

hit

before by a teacher and never

slapped across the face by anyone. Miss Nabih, the teacher, was a Palestinian.

A

refugee.

The year was 1952, was doing

to

me

the year of the revolution.

in class the

government was doing

What Miss Nabih to us

through the

244 media.

I

remember how

al-Arabiyyal Al-Uraba!

We

Ahmed

Leila

I

hated that incessant rhetoric. Al-qawmiyya

Nahnu

al-Arabl Arab nationalism! Arabness!

the Arabs! Even now, just remembering those words,

a surge of mingled irritation and resentment. Propaganda

And one

ant.

radio, there

it

could not escape

I

feel again

is

unpleas-

The moment one turned on

it.

the

was: military songs, nationalistic songs, and endless,

endless speeches in that frenetic, crazed voice of exhortation. In public

places, in the street,

it

the

filled

air,

blaring at one from the gro-

cery, the newsstand, the cafe, the garage, for

have

it

on

at full

it

became

patriotic to

volume.

Imagine what

it

would be

like

if,

say, the British or

French were

incessantly told, with nobody allowed to contest, question, or protest,

now European, and only European. European! EuroEuropean! And endless songs about it. But for us it was actually

that they were

pean!

worse and certainly more complicated. British or

equivalent would be

if

the

French were being told that they were white. White! White!

who we were unsettled and understanding of who we were and silently excluded

White! Because the

undercut the old people

Its

new

who had been

definition of

included in the old definition of Egyptian.

Copts, for example, were not Arab. In fact, they were Copts precisely

because they had refused to convert to the religion of the Arabs and

had refused, unlike us Muslims,

to intermarry with Arabs.

As a

result,

Copts (members of the ancient Christian church of Egypt) were the only truly indigenous inhabitants of Egypt and as such, in our

anyway and

in the notion of

Egypt with which

a very special place in the country. In the ever, they

new

I

home

grew up, Copts had

definition of us,

how-

were included as speakers of Arabic but they were not

the heart of the definition in the

way

that

we

But of course the people who were most

at

were.

directly,

although as yet

only implicitly, being excluded by the redefinition were the Jews of Egypt, for the whole point of the revolutionary government's harping insistence that

we were

Arab, in those

first

years following the found-

ing of Israel, and following the takeover of Egypt's government by

Men

with a

new

vision

and new commitments, was

to

New

proclaim our

A

245

Border Passage

unequivocal alignments: on the side of the Palestinians and Arabs and against Israel, against Zionism. Ever since, this issue has been the key

emphases Egypt's leaders have placed

issue determining the different

have proclaimed insistently and emphatically

on

its

(as

Nasser did) that we were Arab,

identity. If they

a confrontational, unyielding line

deal with the Zionists." If

it

on

Israel

and that

we were Egyptians above

we could talk, negotiate. Our new identity proclaimed openly our Zionism in

— and proclaimed implicitly our opposition

our midst, Egyptian Jews. For although

The word

also contained in the word.

moment

to define

all

(Sadat), then

opposition to Israel and to the "Zionists"

explicitly

distinguished from Jewishness, an undercurrent

was

we would take we would "never

has meant that

Zionism was

meaning "Jewish"

"Arab," emerging at this

our identity, silently carried within

it

its

polar

opposite

— Zionist/Jew — without which

actually

had no meaning. For the whole purpose of its emergence now

was precisely

to tell us of

relation to both terms,

parents

Joyce.

I

am

and

my

sure

I

in

sister's

me, abstractions. They were people

to

talked about,

my

and

and they were

own, including

my

my

broth-

best friend,

sensed these insidious, subterranean shifts and

rearrangements of our feelings that

was

it

Arab and Jew.

knew and saw and

ers' friends

new alignments and realignments

our

Jews and Copts were not,

my

hidden, silent connotation

new bludgeoning propaganda us. And I am sure that this, as

this

effecting, or trying to effect, in

well as the sheer hatefulness of being endlessly subjected to propa-

ganda, was part of the reason that

I

I

so

much

disliked

and

resisted the idea

was an Arab.

Nor was

it

only through the media that the government was pres-

suring us into acceptance of

its

broad

political

agenda and coercing

us into being Arab. For this was the era, too, of growing political repression and of the proliferation of the mukhabarat, the secret police

— the

era

when

political

opponents and people suspected of

being disloyal to the revolution were being jailed or disappearing. In this

atmosphere, being disloyal to the revolution and to the Arab cause

246

Leila

(being, as

it

Ahmed

were, un-Arab) became as charged and dangerous for

Egyptians as being un-American was for Americans in the McCarthy era.

The propaganda worked on me and on others. To question our Arabness and all that our Arabness implied became unthinkable. Only despicable, unprincipled traitors

complicated legacy that

this

as

Arab

is

The

my own

carefully until

I

my

I

examined

sense of identity as Egyptian and

my memories and

feelings, they

took this journey into history and into the history of the world

my new

me

my

I

— some of quite surprising and even — and trace the process and voyage of discovery it

itself

understandings of

my

past.

to the incident with

asked myself what this scene between

about

how

remained opaque

childhood. These pages both describe the information that

Thinking back

parents and family, from

standing of what

it

meant

I

Were

I

me and

whom,

began

this chapter,

Miss Nabih told got

certainly,

I

Why

it

was

my

When,

that

I

I

me

under-

was so

definitely

parents thought, but why?

they part of some

elite

imagined they were Egyptian while "the masses" knew they were Arabs?

my

was Egyptian and not Arab,

not Arab? Presumably this was what this a class issue?

which

be Egyptian.

to

stubborn, so convinced that

we

with

it is

following pages recount a personal odyssey through the pol-

shocking to

Was

And

entangled.

discovered and pieced together

and

thing.

emotions, and history of our becoming Arab. For no matter

itics,

of

would do such a

in fact, did Egyptians

milieu which all

along that

become Arab

— or have

always been Arab?

The answer

to this question,

which

I

assumed

I

would

find simply

by looking up a book or two on the history of Egypt, actually took quite a lot of detective work, for in

any of the books where

embarked

in search of

I

some

it

was not

had expected

clearly or fully addressed

to find

it.

It felt

esoteric secret. In the last

as

if I

had

few years there

has begun to be a scholarship piecing together the history of the rise of Arab nationalism, but as regards Egypt, barely sketched

in.

it is

a history as yet only

A The

story,

247

Border Passage

anyway, begins in Syria, in the

where the idea of an Arab

identity

nineteenth century,

late

and Arab nationalism

arose.

first

Prior to this, "Arab" had referred throughout the Middle East only to

the inhabitants of Arabia and to bedouins of the region's deserts.

was among the Christians of of Syrian

men who had

and cultural

Christian and

in particular

among

appeared, in part as a

first

revival

Muslim

and

a group

attended French missionary schools, that the

idea of Arab nationalism literary

Syria,

It

and

in part as a

way

movement

of

of mobilizing both

Syrians to throw off the domination of the

Is-

lamic Ottoman Empire. Egyptians,

who

in that era

were preoccupied with getting

rid of

the British, not the Ottomans, were either uninterested in or positively hostile to this strange Syrian idea of mil, the leading nationalist of the

an Arab

Empire.

to

And paranoid though

been some truth

to

Mustapha Ka-

day in Egypt, strongly pro-Ottoman

and pro-Islamic, denounced Arab nationalism fomented by the Europeans

identity.

as

an idea invented and

hasten the destruction of the Ottoman Kamil's notion sounds, there

may have

Historical records suggest that British officials

it.

were indeed already encouraging and supporting the idea of Arabism even before World

War

I

(that they did so during the

war

is

well

known).

Well into the

new Arabs nor tity

first

decades of

this century, neither the self-defined

the Egyptians themselves thought that this

had anything

to

do with Egyptians. For example,

conference was organized in Paris.

When

in

new

iden-

1913 an Arab

an Egyptian who was

at-

tending as an observer asked permission to speak, he was refused on the grounds that the floor was open only to Arabs.

During World

War

as an important idea

I,

the idea of Arab nationalism emerged again

— and again as an idea mobilizing people against

the Turks and their Islamic Empire. This time

it

took the form of the

British-instigated "Arab revolt," led by T. E. Lawrence. (The fact that this

famous

revolt

was

led by an

Englishman makes obvious, of

course, Britain's political interest in promoting Arabism as a fighting the

Once more,

Ottoman Empire and bringing about as with the Syrian

its final

way of

dissolution.)

form of Arab nationalism, not only

248

Ahmed

Leila

were Egyptians not part of

this

movement, they were,

if

anything,

inclined to be sympathetic to the other side. For one thing, this Arab

movement now tribal

involved mainly the Arabs of Arabia and nomadic

Arabs, people

whom

Egyptians regarded as even more different

from themselves than the Syrians. The distinction between

nomad

is,

Egyptians

Middle East, one of the fundamental

in the it is

a distinction that has

marked

settled

and

divides.

For

off their society

from that

of "the Arabs" (Arabians, nomads) since the beginning of their

civili-

zation.

In addition, these Arabs were fighting with the hated British, the

oppressors of Egypt, and against the Islamic Empire and the caliph of Islam. Egypt's Khedive Abbas had been sent into exile by the British for his

open sympathies with the Turks and the Islamic Empire, and

so also had the leader of the Nationalist Party,

Mohamad

The

Farid.

Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, in his novel Bain al-Qasrain (Palace Walk), set in World

War

I,

portrays his characters, the

"common

folk"

of Egypt, as praying for the return of Abbas and for the Turks to

"emerge victorious" and as declaring that "the most important thing of

all is

that

we

get rid of the "English nightmare"

liphate return to

its

former

glory.

and that the ca-

Aware of popular sentiment

in

Egypt, the British took care to represent the Arab revolt to Egyptians as a rebellion not against the caliph but against the "impious, godless"

Young Turks who were oppressing A

"the Arabs."

At the end of the war the British invited the leaders of the Arabs

to the Versailles conference but refused to permit the Egyptian leaders to attend. Still, the

Arabs reaped no benefits. In a series of

the European powers (Britain and France) dismantled the

Empire and distributed among themselves

its

former

the British, having induced the Arabs to fight with

treaties

Ottoman

territories.

them

For

against the

Turks by promising them independence, had also signed a secret treaty with the

divide

French (the Sykes-Picot agreement) undertaking

between them

after

the war "the

Empire." Formalizing their control over the just captured

into

spoils

territories that

they had

from the Ottomans, France took Syria and divided

two countries, Lebanon and

Syria,

to

of the Ottoman

it

and Britain took Iraq and

A

249

Border Passage

Palestine. Britain was, of course, already occupying Egypt. Similarly

the Balfour Declaration, promising Palestine, a land obviously with its

own

tional

inhabitants, to people living elsewhere

homeland

the British well as

Jews

for the

— had been issued

— designating earlier, in

it

a na-

1917,

when

captured Palestine. (There were, of course, Jews as

first

Muslims and Christians among the population of Palestine

when

the British captured

tinian

Jews that the British now declared Palestine a homeland for

the Jews but rather

—

as

but

it,

is

well

and hopes of European Jewry

Some

of this

I

was not out of concern

known

for a

—

I

already.

for Pales-

in response to the desires

homeland

in Palestine.)

knew about T. had known in a general way

knew

the Arab revolt, and

it

I

Lawrence and

E.

Arab nation-

that

alism was a recent idea. But only now, putting together the Christian

and missionary-inspired use the British

made

Ottomans, did

I

emerged I

origins of

Arab nationalism

in Syria

and the

of the idea to mobilize the "Arabs" against the

which Arab nationalism had

realize the extent to

way of opposing the Islamic Empire. And only now did which Egypt had not only not been Arab but

as a

realize the extent to

actually

The

had been mostly on the opposite

side to that of the Arabs.

exiled khedive and political leaders of Egypt supported the Ot-

tomans and hated the

And even

British,

and so apparently did the "masses."

the modernizing intellectuals,

pendence from the Ottomans, had personal

all

who wanted

many

with Turks and with Istanbul, which

ties

political inde-

their cultural, intellectual,

of

them

and reg-

ularly visited.

And

so already

my

understanding of Egypt and

Arabs was beginning to world was not as not after shifts

thus

all

I

where

Already

shift.

had assumed I

it

to

I

was beginning

be and

had thought they were.

and readjustments were involved far,

for

its

seas

Still,

me

in

relation to the

its

to feel that the

and continents

whatever internal

what

I

had learned

they were nothing to the geologic shifts and turmoil and

upheaval that

I

would

find myself flung

on, trying to piece together

up or

cast

what happened next

down by

as

I

read

— and reading now

about the history of the Jews in Egypt and about Egypt's relations to

Zionism and the Palestinians.

250

Leila

Ahmed

Eventually things would calm down. Eventually

I

would come

to

see that these facts, too, were part of the history of Egypt and that after all they fitted quite intelligibly into that history.

with, with almost every

new

detail

learned

I

tated into a state of general agitation,

my

feelings

— and

still, I I

finally, finally

blowing

jump up and walk and

facts. I'd

whatever

it

was

— why

understanding. Physically

could only read a paragraph or two at a time,

stumbled upon one or the other of these,

I'd just read.

Egyptians,

to begin

running the gamut

of shock, disbelief, shame, despair, and exhilaration tion?

But

found myself precipi-

I

I

exhilara-

could not

at least

sit

whenever

me, completely mind-

to

walk, repeating to myself

I'd

be rushing around saying

and Alexandria

to myself, joined their Zionist friends in Cairo

to cel-

ebrate the Balfour Declaration? There were Zionist associations in

Cairo and Alexandria then?

governor of Alexandria,

Egypt

— went

It

was okay

Ahmad

in

Egypt to be a Zionist? The

Ziyour Pasha

—

later

prime minister of

to a party in the city celebrating the Balfour Declaration

that culminated in their sending a telegram to Lord Balfour to thank

him?

Hours and hours and days of

would be interspersed

then,

this,

with enormous, crashing, paralyzing anxieties at the very thought of writing about Arabness. There was no question just have to leave it.

It

it

out. Just forget

was much too complicated.

I

couldn't do

it.

I'd

— Arab, not Arab —just forget

it

How

could

I

possibly deal with

all

this history?

The British

first

Jewish flag to

was made

department store Cairo) had had

fly

over Jerusalem after

its

capture by the

in Egypt? Joseph Cicurel of the house of Cicurel (a I

it

remembered from my childhood, the Harrods of made in his Alexandria workshops. Cicurel was

president of the Zionist association of Cairo.

And

at the

same time

he was an Egyptian nationalist?

He was

also a trustee of the

Egypt, the bank founded by the

Muslim

nationalist Talaat

Bank

of

Harb with

economy from EuroThe same was true of Leon

the object of wresting control of the Egyptian

peans and placing

it

in Egyptian hands.

Castro, the vice president of the

an Egyptian nationalist.

same

A member

Zionist association

and likewise

of the Wafd, the party leading the

A struggle for independence

251

Border Passage

from the

he was also a friend and

British,

Wafd and

staunch supporter of Saad Zaghloul, leader of the

the hero

of the Egyptian nationalist struggle.

On

and on, more such extraordinary

tionship to Zionism

— and also

about Egyptians'

facts

The Egyptian

to the Palestinians.

ernment sent a representative

— we

now

are

Hebrew

celebrations for the inauguration of the

1925

in

—

to

rela-

gov-

the

University in Jeru-

salem. This representative was none other than

Ahmad

Lutfi al-

Sayyid, the editor of al-Jarida, the paper that shaped the political

consciousness of a generation of Egyptians

— and

the

man who would

— my fathers generation

later facilitate

women's entry

when

Egyptian University. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, tinians

began publishing a paper

in

the publication of "Palestinian propaganda."

over the Wailing Wall and

to the al-Aqsa

mosque, also

invocation of the

name

Pales-

Egypt advocating their cause, the

Egyptian government several times closed the paper

flict

into the

Muslim

And

fears

wake of con-

about rights of access

in the early 1930s,

of Palestine in

down and banned

in the

it

even banned the

mosques on

Mean-

Fridays.

while several Zionist papers continued publication and Zionism was

not banned.

Reading such

the paralyzing anxiety things,

came

I

to

I

felt at

my own

feelings

and

the mere thought of writing about such

conclude that

dinarily figure in history to the political

and observing

facts as these

this sort of

information did not or-

books on Egypt precisely because, according

alignments of our day, alignments that

we

consider to

be entirely obvious and natural, they seemed so shamefully unpatriotic,

and so

disloyal

and unfeeling toward the Palestinians.

In the ensuing days

I

would begin

to

understand

how

it

was that

Egyptian attitudes had been so profoundly different from what they are today,

and

to that past

early still

life.

I

would come

and the ways

in

to

understand also

which

it

But even then, even when

find myself completely stalled

my own

connection

was interwoven with

I'd

understood

and unable

to

all this,

my own I

would

imagine

how I could

my

paralysis as

possibly write about these things. Still

feeling totally paralyzed,

I

began

to analyze

252

Leila

a product probably of

my

Ahmed

having internalized the taboos against ques-

tioning Arabness that had been part, after this insight

—

if it

was an insight

all,

of

my

— did me no good.

I

adolescence. But

was

still

perfectly

capable of silencing myself without any external prohibitions.

Quite a number of remarkable Egyptians,

I

discovered along the

way, had been suspected or accused of being either too pro-Jewish, too conciliatory, and too

weak on Zionism

or deficient in their Arab-

Among

ness or their loyalty to Arabness.

words or positions one way or another

those whose actions or

them open

laid

such charges

to

were Saad Zaghloul, hero of Egyptian nationalism. And Taha Husain

and Tewfik al-Hakim and Naguib Mahfouz, three of Egypt's Major

writers.

figures in the country's

American terms would be ner, F. Scott Fitzgerald,

to find that

plied

And

in

been suspected

all

of course there was

in part for his retreat

— from Nasser's position

The equivalent

Harry Truman, William Faulk-

and Eugene O'Neill had

of un-American inclinations.

gunned down

history.

finest

— and

all

as to Egypt's

Anwar

Sadat,

that such a retreat im-

fundamental Arabness.

But knowing this made no difference either. Nothing unfroze me. Then one evening as was walking home, something began to shift. I am not sure quite why or how things began to change but I know that the shift was connected to, or, more exactly, was the direct I

outcome hours. that

I

I

of,

was

the preceding perfectly pleasant but uneventful few in

Cambridge

for the year

pursued and pieced together

on a fellowship

this history)

(it

was here

and had gone out

to

hear a talk by the Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh. She'd come down from London to speak at the Oriental Studies Faculty. Hanan was already there when I arrived and rose to greet me, which took me by surprise: we had met only once, briefly and in a crowd, and I hadn't expected her to recognize me.

It

had

felt

good,

I

realized, sitting

down and looking around me, to be recognized and to be greeted in the way that, in the world in which I had once lived, one automatically greeted people or at least other women. The room was more

—

crowded than

it

had been

for the previous lecturers. Aside

and Bassim, who were the professors

some

students, the audience did not

from Tareef

at the Oriental Faculty,

and

seem the usual academic crowd

A

253

Border Passage

had

that I'd seen at other lectures. Hanan's reputation

out from wherever they were in their separate spaces a of the town's Arab and,

I

clearly

guessed from their looks, specifically Leb-

many

of

Here now

to

anese community. There were several older people there,

them women, honor one of

and

to

living, for

own,

their

whatever reason, in

this exile.

words

to take pride in her, to listen to her

remember.

Hanan, a

slight, beautiful

room

voice and the

its

to read in a clear, soft

and pleasure and

Her paper, about how she beof evocations of the streets and cafes of Beirut,

on people's

a writer, was full

and of

woman, began

quiet, a look of intentness

fell

anticipation already

came

drawn

good number

dusty, cluttered,

faces.

narrow bookshops, and of her youthful

and of

discoveries of the classics of contemporary Arabic literature,

poetry read and heard and ideas exchanged under the apple trees.

began, almost at once, to work

It

enchantment. As the minutes

its

me grew perceptibly happier, mellower, more relaxed. Even Bassim and Tareef, sitting facing me on either side of her dear colleagues both but men who, as knew, were somewhat skeptical of the fame of Arab women writers were looking mellow

passed, the faces around

—

I

—

and happy and I

to

relaxed.

They had

been won this

be writing, something that would affirm

Something that would remind our countries, our ways thing, whatever

of

clearly

found myself thinking enviously that

them

that

all,

are.

members

its

How

would sustain them. Sustain

thinking, listening to her quote

what wouldn't

I

give

now

write about

— but

What

us.

how

wouldn't

Arab poets,

I

to

have

me

all

to

like

in exile.

lovely our lives,

What it is,

a fine

in spite

I

I

give,

I

sat there

have had that in

my

nurtured her as writer;

those poets and writers to re-

and remind people of ?

appreciated them,

the poetry of a foreign tongue that

not have for

of

lovely our literature.

past, all that wealth of Arabic literature that

was quoting

would

my community

people say of us, what a fine thing

it is

I

be Arab; what a wonderful heritage we have. Something

to

member and

over.

was what

I

loved the lines she

way I might only somewhat knew. They did I

realized, only the

the resonances of lines learned long ago. Nor, of

course, since they were in literary Arabic, did they have the charge

Leila

:?-,

Ahmed

and redolence and burdened evocativeness of a language spoken in childhood and youth and in love and anger and just in the ordinary

moments

of living. But on the other hand they didn't have that wealth

and redolence

erature and language and it

Even though she

for her, either.

was herself a

clearly loved the

lit-

fine Arabic writer, for her too

was a language she had not spoken in childhood and did not speak

now. Nobody speaks

literary .Arabic

—or

maybe

just

some pedant

somewhere.

We

went afterward

and

league),

I

—

— Hanan. Tareef. Bassim. Zeeba 'another

with us. our talk pleasant, relaxed,

me what

I

The mood of the lectur easy. At some point Hanan

was working on.

I

was vague,

"I'm looking at Egypt's history.

little.

then for the rest of the evening

among

col-

for drinks at King's.

these friends.

I

I

even

a-

lied a

And

twentieth century.

said,

there like a Judas

felt guilty, sitting

a betrayer.

felt like

I

I

evasive, guilt).

Was

it

even imaginable

among them

— two Leba-

nese, one Palestinian, one Iranian, three of the four of

them having

that

could have responded, sitting there

I

been made homeless one way or another by

some

spin-off of that conflict

"Well, actually

^ptian

You see

I

I

am

identity.

remember

— was

it

Israeli

aggression or by

conceivable that

I

could

looking into this whole question of the Arab I

am

...

It

trying to really look at

it,

deconstruct

it.

was completely unimaginable, impossible.

inconceivable. I felt

like a betrayer.

Coming out onto Kings

Parade, afterwards, the night suddenly

balmy, the street almost empty though voices carrying clear, loud, the

nights

—

it

wasn't that

late,

people

s

way they do sometimes on summer

but not usually now. in winter, winter on the point of turning

—

to spring

I

walked on homeward, down Senate Hou>c Passage and

along the narrow road onto the bridge. The

nt

moon

over the trees in a deep, deep sky. I

who

did feel Ion, of course, and

were, in

some

because of "Arabness'*r kin.

more

at

I

did feel that

quite real sense,

Was

I,

my

I

was among people

coinmunity. But was this

for instance, really likely to feel

more

home, with someone from Saudi Arabia than with some-

A one, say, from Istanbul?

doubted

I

it.

(Saudis speak Arabic, Turks

though, was not the issue now.

don't.) This,

255

Border Passage

I

my feelings

realized that

of being completely prohibited from writing about Arabness were not, or not only, a response to old prohibitions or a fear of breaking

my

mental taboo internalized in adolescence. No,

fear that

not abstract betrayal.

been so

I'd

set

on

notion of Arabness.

this taking apart of the

essential, so necessary to

would,

I

was about

in this act of unraveling, cross over the line into betrayal real,

some

this act of unraveling,

had seemed

It

understanding what

it

to

was that

me

so

I'd lived

through, and essential and necessary also to freeing myself from the

unbearable in

lies

that I'd forever felt trapped in. Essential

one sense, and yet

me

to

proceed would inevitably, as

And

over the line into betrayal.

kin with,

I

wondered what

it

I

and

liked

into impossible lives, that

something that to

I

did not feel

I

was.

I

take

now, from

it

felt in

felt,

some sense

when weighed from their homes or

could possibly matter,

against the reality of people's being driven

penned

now

thinking about

so,

the context of having been with people

and necessary

it

had

A

felt

myself coerced into being

small, trivial nothing of a detail

put up with as a way of conveying to them solidarity and support.

But

Had

I

I

am

said

not here to betray,

it

out loud?

I

said, waiting at the traffic lights.

looked around

I

— there

was nobody there

anyway. I

a

lie

am

not here to betray.

about

who

manipulations,

I

I

am.

I

I

do not want

just

don't

to live

want any longer

can't stand to be caught

up

any longer with

to live with lies

like this forever in

people's inventions, imputations, false constructions of

what

I

I

am

think, believe, feel, or ought to think or believe or feel.

But how myself from If

who

and

other

I

—

if I

don't directly address this

— how

will

I

ever free

lies?

didn't live

living in Egypt,

I

where

I

live,

I

thought to myself,

probably wouldn't feel that

essary to extricate myself from this

it

if

I

were

still

was so absolutely nec-

enmeshment

of

lies.

In Egypt the

sense of falseness and coercion would be there in a political sense,

but at least in ordinary daily in the

West

it's

life I'd

impossible for

me

be just another Egyptian, whereas ever to escape, forget this false

256

Ahmed

Leila

constructed Arabness. that

I

am

grossly

somehow there, the notion And sometimes it's quite depending on how bigoted or ignorant

almost always

It's

Arab, in any and even interaction.

and offensively present,

the person

But

I

am

confronting

problem.

this is a

I

is.

realized

now. arising out of

their notion

of Arab, the Western, not the Arab, notion of Arab. So there are two different notions of .Arab that ily

am

I

me

of the puzzle .Arab

and

feelings

some ways, but they

beliefs that aren

are not,

— the

fact

I

am

— that for the moment

I

am

both heav-

Both im-

mine. They overlap in

But

this

was a piece

were two different notions of

would have it is

to defer figuring out.

that

I

am

not here to betray.

taking apart the notion of Arabness and following out the history

when and how we became Arab

just to

know

— not with the object

or as code for, the betrayal of anybody. For Egyptians to debate

of.

or question their Arabness as

false,

silent freight. t

sure, identical.

that there

Anyway, the long and short of

of

— both

weighted and cargoed with another and

puting to

I

trapped in

realize

I

now.

the Palestinians. as a covert

And

for anything.

and exactly

it

is

as

I

my own

My

I

is

usually code,

our responsibility toward

accordingly read by Arabs and by Egyptians

way of advocating

the Palestinians. But

code

"search'" for their identity

I

for debating the extent of

exploration of the question here

sole object here

know how.

abandonment

either support for or

for

is

is

of

not

only to see things, as clearly

what they

are.

And

to free

myself of

lies.

.And so in any case one reason that Zionism was permitted to be overtly present in Egypt in the late 1920s

and

early

1930s and that

prominent members of the government and of the governing classes were s\~mpathetic

what

is

to

Zionism was that Egyptians seemed not

obvious to us in hindsight

— that

to

making Palestine

know

into a

homeland for the Jews would eventually entail the expulsion and dispossession of the Palestinians. There had as yet been no large-scale immigration of Europeans

to Palestine and, at the

end of the 1910s

and through most of the 1920s, when troubles broke out intermit-

A tently in Palestine the

257

Border Passage

government and media

in

Egypt typically

re-

acted by exhorting the Jews and Muslims and Christians of Palestine to

work together

to find a peaceful solution, offering themselves as

mediators, and worrying that this reprehensible interreligious, inter-

communal this last

to

by reiterating their own

news of outbreaks of violence

total

and the government

commitment

—

own

such measures as ban-

in fear that interreligious hostilities

in particular anti-Jewish violence, as yet

spread to their

unknown

nation.

And

in Egypt,

would

land.

For, as of 1918, the modernizing intellectuals

Wafd, had begun

in Palestine

to preserving religious plu-

in addition took

ning Palestinian "propaganda"

and

country. Because of

concern, newspapers (or at least some newspapers) and the

government responded

ralism,

own

violence would spread to their

to

become

and

their party, the

the uncontested political leaders of the

and platform

in the early twenties their political goals

democracy, a constitution guaranteeing, among other things, the rights of the individual, pluralism,

mitted to the equal rights of

won

all

and an

implicit secularism

com-

Egyptians, regardless of religion

the support of the nation in a landslide election that carried small

villages as well as

major

cities.

These

goals, conceived

and defined by

the country's political and intellectual leadership, received the en-

dorsement of the populace as a whole. Egypt's experiment in ficult

circumstances.

The

democracy would be conducted under British, refusing to grant

dif-

Egypt complete

independence, retained important powers and sometimes interfered outright in the democratic process, at one point later forcing Egypt's king, literally at gunpoint (surrounding his palace with their tanks), to appoint the

plotted to wrest

prime minister they wanted. The king, for

power back from the government

these difficulties the country did

make

his part,

to himself. Despite

political progress

and there

were even some exhilarating times and significant achievements,

among them

the promulgation of a constitution in 1923, article 3 of

which granted equal

rights to all Egyptians, "without distinction of

race, language, or religion."

The same

principles were reiterated in

— 258

Ahmed

Leila

which went

Egypt's Nationality Laws,

into effect in

1929 with the

formal dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the replacement of

Ottoman

citizenship with a

brand-new

nationality, the Egyptian na-

These principles and a commitment to Egypt as a community were furthermore made clear and visible

tionality.

multire-

ligious

to all in

the composition of the government. Egypt's

first

his cabinet

When,

in 1924, Zaghloul

became

elected prime minister, Jews as well as Copts served in

— and indeed both Jews and Copts would continue

to serve

Egyptian government in the following decades.

in the

As

shows, then, not only was the country's political lead-

all this

ership deeply committed to the goal of preserving Egypt as a pluralist society; in addition,

Egypt and of friends

political

and cultural leadership, and they were the

and colleagues and co-workers of Muslim and Coptic Egyp-

Then

tians.

its

Jews were integrally part of the community of

there were other factors, too, influencing

related to the issue of Palestine.

Most

estinians then (or very few) in Egypt torical

community of

community. In a

community

Pal-

and certainly there was no

his-

there was a

historical Jewish

about half the Jewish community of Egypt

of about 75,000

— were

Egyptian Jews. The rest were

recent immigrants from other territories of the

from Europe. (These

Egyptians

no

Palestinians as

this era

how

obviously, there were

latter often

looked

Ottoman Empire and

down on

community, particularly the Jewish working

classes,

the local Jewish

who were

indis-

tinguishable in culture and ways from working-class Muslims and

Copts. Middle- and upper-class Jews, like Copts and Muslims of their class,

were

fast

And then

becoming Europeanized.)

finally there

was the

fact that Egyptians at this point

did not (and at any class level) see themselves as Arab or as having

any special connection with the Arabs, nor did they think that they

had any particular

interest in or special responsibility for

what

tran-

spired in Palestine.

Egyptian attitudes began to shift toward a sympathy with the Palestinians in the thirties, as the situation in Palestine began to change

when, with the

rise of

Fascism

in

Europe, European Jewish immigra-

A

259

Border Passage

tion to Palestine increased enormously. Palestinian political activism also increased.

Through the

and rebellions

thirties Palestinian strikes

and their struggles with Zionists were constantly By the late thirties the Palestinians had won the sympathies of Egyptians. Fund-raisers and various other events in support against the British

in the news.

of Palestine and in aid of Palestinian relief were held at

including by

Huda

Shaarawi's Feminist Union,

class levels,

all

among

the

first as-

sociations to organize a regionwide conference in support of the Palestinians.

Most important, ians

in terms of publicizing the situation of Palestin-

and mobilizing popular support

for

them, the Muslim Brother-

hood, dedicated to instituting an Islamic government in Egypt and to freeing

all

Muslim lands from

Palestinian cause.

Day and

four

It

It

began

to

imperialists, vigorously took

to address the issue of Palestine in Friday sermons.

was these

sorts of activities that, as

government had been attempting to a pluralist

gious

strife.

to suppress

up the

hold protest demonstrations on Bal-

Egypt and

And

its

I

mentioned

to suppress, out of its

earlier, the

commitment

desire to prevent the spread of interreli-

the government continued through the thirties to try

inflammatory pro-Palestinian

activities

and

to

keep Egypt

out of direct involvement in the question of Palestine. This was the position

assumed not only by the Wafd when

was

it

in

power but by

the several governments formed by different parties in this era. This

view represented, in other words, the consensus position of the governing classes across party lines.

And

so a

rift

began

to

form

on the issue of Palestine, not on the matter of sympathy

what Egypt's

estinians but as to initially,

as

not so

much between

political

in

Egypt

for the Pal-

involvement should be: a

rift,

the governing classes and the "masses"

between the government and governing classes on the one hand

and the Brotherhood on the other.

Through the

thirties the

nized grew steadily that the

demonstrations the Brotherhood orga-

more massive, and they began

government had,

all

along, feared they

to take the direction

would

take. In 1936,

the Brotherhood called for a boycott of Jewish businesses. In the

same

260

Leila

Ahmed

year, the first anti-Jewish graffiti to be reported in Egypt

appeared in

Port Said. In 1938, police clashed with Brotherhood demonstrators

— some of whom were shouting "Down with the Jews" — and

tried to

prevent them from entering the Jewish quarter of Old Cairo.

was

It

in the thirties that a

to begin with, all of

whom

had

— two or three men with the Arabs — began express

few intellectuals

links

to

the idea that Egypt should align itself with the Arabs and regard itself as Arab.

now

But

it

was probably the emphasis the Muslim Brotherhood

placed on this idea that helped spread

it

most

effectively.

While

the government had emphasized Egypt's heritage as quintessentially

and indissolubly multicultural (Pharaonic, Mediterranean, and lamic, as they put

it

in those days) as a

mined emphasis on pluralism

as a

way of

legitimizing

fundamental goal

its

Is-

deter-

for this country,

the Brotherhood countered by asserting that Islam and only Islam

constituted Egypt's defining identity.

had saved Egypt from from history the at the

its

It

was Islam, they declared, that

pagan past (thereby conveniently erasing

fact that the majority of Egyptians

time of the Muslim invasion)

had been Christian

— an Islam brought

to the country,

they stressed, by the Arabs. All Egyptians, therefore, and

owed

liberate

Arab lands from

By the end of the

all

Muslims

and had an obligation

a particular debt to the Arabs

to help

infidel imperialists.

thirties the popularity of the Palestinian

cause

and the growing influence of the Brotherhood were forcing the gov-

ernment and dominant ently. In 1939, a

political parties to slant their

writing an article declaring "Egypt

Through World War tions

message

differ-

prominent member of the Wafd made headlines by

II

is

Arab!"

overt political activism

were banned under the Emergencies Act.

and demonstra-

When

they resumed

after the war, the pro-Palestinian demonstrations organized by the

Muslim Brotherhood took

the course of ever greater intercommunal

tensions and anti-Jewish violence that the government and the differ-

ent political parties had

on Balfour Day attacks on Jews

in

all

along feared.

1945 and again

in

Huge demonstrations

1947

held

spilled over into violent

and now on any other group deemed

"foreign." Jewish,

European, and Coptic shops were looted, and synagogues and Cath-

A

261

Border Passage

Greek Orthodox, and Coptic churches and schools vandalized.

olic,

One synagogue was The unraveling of the fabric of

set

came

They

society are just dimly part

its

memories.

at play in the

that al-Na'rashi, the

Na'rashil"

fire.

of that old world and

my own

remember being

I

on

garden one dusk

when

killed al-Na'rashi! "They,"

I

know now, were

lim Brothers. There was somberness then in our home. I

knew

believe,

something

the Na'rashis. But not only somberness

electric, still there

they uttered the words and ine

them saying

to

the news

prime minister, had been shot. "Atalu

even

how

now

parents,

— there was

my memory, about how of this death. Now I imag-

in

they spoke

one another, the adults,

and troubled times, what next

Mus-

the

My

living

for the country,

through these crises

what next?

And I remember the midnight-blue paper on the windows, plish when the daylight came through it, during the 1948 war Israel,

and being woken

entree, a

in the night

where everyone was gathered

door, to the

and taken downstairs

room with no windows and only

bombs

a heavy glass

pur-

with

to the

and ironwork

in the darkness, talking, listening

fall.

This was a few months before the assassination of Na'rashi

Nuqrashi)

And

al-

— as the history books, not my memory,

then, in retaliation for Na'rashi's murder,

tell

(al-

me.

Hasan al-Banna,

Muslim Brotherhood and its Supreme Guide, was gunned down. This I do not remember. The Muslim Brotherhood, by the founder of the

now an enormously powerful organization in the country with a vast membership and its own secret military units, was engaged through the forties in a terrorist and counterterrorist war with the political

establishment. Al-Banna died in the hospital to which he was brought

and where, by order of King Farouk, he was given no medical

treat-

ment. It

was by order of Farouk,

too, that

Egypt went to war with

Israel.

After the United Nations resolution to partition Palestine and Israel's declaration of statehood in 1948, the Egyptian political establish-

ment

— both government and opposition — had favored a cautious

re-

262

Leila

Ahmed

sponse, a verbal, not a military, response. But Farouk harbored

now

dreams,

Ottoman Empire was gone,

that the

He

declared caliph of Islam.

worried that,

if

of having himself

Egypt did not go to war

now, King Abdullah of Jordan, who had declared that Jordan would go to war, would reap glory on the battlefield and put an end to his

own dreams. And and

pre-empting the Egyptian government's decision

so,

in violation of the constitution,

into Palestine. After the fact, the

meeting

to

bestow a semblance of

he ordered military units to cross

government

convened a

hastily

on the

legality

king's orders.

The

opposition, however, and in particular the Liberal Constitutionalists

— who

(as the history

books put

it),

out of a "narrow Egyptian secular

nationalism" were "most impervious to Palestinian appeals" fiercely critical of this

But of course tinian appeals.

it

was not that Farouk had been pervious

Nor was

it

only Farouk for

up the Palestinian cause was

essentially

whom

tioning against a hasty military response,

to Pales-

from now on taking

an avenue to the fulfillment

of his political ambitions. While Na'rashi was

ing in

— were

government action.

making speeches cau-

Hasan al-Banna was

mosques the Muslim Brotherhood's readiness

declar-

for a jihad against

the Zionists. But he, too, was in reality furthering his

own

cause. In

the forties the Brotherhood, historians have speculated, had a trained secret

army of about 75,000 men. But they reportedly sent

Palestine campaign just 600. rians, to reserve

on the

By begun

most of

The movement was hoping,

secret units for

its

its

to the

say histo-

Egyptian war

—

its

war

cities of Egypt.

this point, that

to

is,

Palestine and the Palestinian cause had

be what they have been ever since in the politics of the Arab

world: an issue that the Middle East's villains and heroes would use to

manipulate people's sympathies and

ends and fantasies of power

to further their

— with what costs or benefits

estinian people only the Palestinians themselves can

Where

did

my

own

parents stand in

young and do not remember.

It

all this? I

political

to the Pal-

say.

don't know.

would be quite impossible

I

was too

for

me

to

A

263

Border Passage

have grasped what they said enough to be able to

say,

now, they said

this or believed that.

And

now

yet also

I

But the evidence clusive.

Some

things

I

think

I

have

is

Muslim

Brothers.

that a in

I

so vague, so insubstantial, so incon-

do know and do remember beyond a shadow

I

know that they definitely did not like the I don't remember any particular thing that they said remember this as a general feeling. And I remember

of a doubt. For instance,

about them, but

know.

man who was

some way, looking

I

a relative by marriage (a in

some way

and that he emerged from prison

at

younger

my father) was

to

some point

of King Farouk) and that he had tuberculosis

our house and that all

my

father,

making

clear to

(still,

remember

don't

I

any way that

in

my parents were

ing.

talk

And

father

and no doubt

now,

in the days

and that he came

to to

him

get treatment.

would now be able

to repro-

saving as they lived through these wrench-

ing times in the history of Egypt. But

them

I

man beholden

Muslim Brother

him (and evidently

of us) his total disapproval of his politics, helped

duce what

a

I

was

there, obviously,

and heard

some sense absorbed what they were

in

who

they were people

talked politics.

Over lunch when

early morning, sitting in

them

talk.

What

my

exactly

was the content of that

that

I

home and

remember when Na'rashi was

in the

we

half listened

grief

and somber-

mother's huge bed, where

ness that descended over our

to

my

came home from work and on weekends when we were home

from school and joined our parents. Over tea and the papers

to

say-

the feeling of charged tension

shot?

What

exactly did they say

each other? And what did they say when al-Banna was shot

— and

allowed to die, untreated, by order of the king? That's another thing

I

incontrovertibly

know and remember:

they

did not like King Farouk.

And what

did they say

when

there were riots in Egypt and attacks

on synagogues and churches? And what did they say as we

sat in the

dark in the entree, listening to the sound of distant bombs and antiaircraft fire

and then a nearer, louder, more frightening explosion?

What were

they saying about the war with Israel? Could they have

264

Ahmed

Lit la

been among those who condemned the king war? Could they have been

condemned

opposition,

among

those who. like the government

the government for "lending any semblance

Could they have been among those

of legitimacy" to the king's action?

who,

for getting us into this

Liberal Constitutionalists, out of a "narrow Egyptian

like the

secular nationalism" opposed the war? Could they have been

those

"impemous

should not go for

whom

to

grief

priority over

Though

to Palestinian appeals"

war with

Israel?

believed that Egypt

Could they have been among those

about what was happening

what was happening I

who

among

to

Egypt overrode and took

to the Palestinians?

do not remember their words,

would have picked up

I

the import of what they were saying, and their attitudes would certainly

have shaped

my

responses to whatever

I

encountered

at school.

Including, of course. Miss Nabih. I

did not know, until

have here

set

down,

I

read into this history and learned what

that there

had been Egyptians

— perfectly

I

ordi-

nary, decent, upright, principled citizens of Egypt, not disloyal, unpatriotic,

unfeeling people

other idea of Egypt and

its

— who

believed in something else,

society

and future, and who openly argued

some

against getting involved in supporting the Palestinians and going to

war with

My

Israel.

parents were the people that they were.

Of

the class that they

were, the milieu that they were, the era that they were.

And

they had

the feelings and beliefs about Egypt that they had. and the hopes for

Egypt that they had. Not indifference toward the Palestinians and their sufferings, nor

commitment

to

some "narrow Egyptian secular

nationalism." but quite simply loyalty to their the people nity

— Copts. Jews and

had been what

my

Muslims

own community and

to

— who made up that commu-

parents had steadfastly held on to and had

—

moved from. Loyalty to their actual community over and above some fictive. politically created community that the politicians ordered them to be loyal to. And. yes, their overall position reflected too their particular hopes for Egypt, and their commitment refused to be

to

what we today

a

modern version

call "pluralism."

of

But "pluralism"

what had been,

in

after all

is

merely

another world, another

era.

A and

their tradition ation, in Cairo

And

265

Border Passage

from generation

heritage,

to generation to gener-

and Alexandria and Spain and Morocco and Istanbul.

so this, then,

had been the source of those moments of

explicable exhilaration in the midst of turbulence

— my beginning

their notion of

always

what

and

still

They taught me it

was

to

over again

all

so well, instilled in

be Egyptian, that

still

I

me

so deeply

mourn and am

with an enormous sense of loss

filled

the thought of the destruction of the multireligious Egyptian

munity

that

I

knew. And

still

now news

to

my own

glimpse finally what had been the history and prehistory of conflicted feelings.

in-

at

com-

of intercommunal violence in

Egypt and of attacks on Copts (there are no Jews now) and of attacks

on Muslims

too, of course

guered community

—

is

— but

it

is

the Copts

almost the bleakest news

who are I know

the belea-

of

coming

out of there.

In 1941,

Anthony Eden, the

British foreign minister, proposed

the creation of an Arab League, to include Egypt. This British pro-

Was

posal precipitated an intense debate that polarized Egyptians.

Egypt Arab? Mediterranean? Pharaonic? Britain had put forward the idea as a counterproposal to an idea that Iraq had been advancing:

the creation of a federated Arab state, to consist of Iraq, Syria, Jordan,

and Palestine. Such a federation, should formidable

rise of a

new power

something Britain did not want. either.

As the region began

It

in the

it

occur, could lead to the

Middle East, and

this

was

was something Egypt did not want,

to adjust to the

disappearance of Turkey

as the center of

empire and the newly emergent countries began to

vie for regional

dominance, Egypt

—

at that point the richest,

developed and most populous nation in the region of ceding

power and influence

to Iraq or

most

— had no intention

Jordan or to any federation

of these. Thus, in 1943, the Egyptian government agreed to the British proposal

And

and the Arab League was formed

so here

we

strategy, officially

clusively Arab, as

are in 1945,

and Egypt,

in 1945.

for reasons of regional

becomes an Arab country, although not as yet exit would become under Nasser. And again, curi-

ously, Britain played the role of instigator,

and of midwife,

as

it

were,

— 266

Ahmed

Leila

to the birth of yet

another Arab nation. Once more, as with

its

lead-

ership of the Arab revolt, Britain's purpose in urging Egypt to define itself as

Arab was, of course, the furtherance of British

political in-

terests. It was as if we had become Arab, and all the region gradually had become Arab (when, once, only Arabia had been Arab), because the

Europeans saw us serve their

own

as Arabs

—

all

of us as just Arabs.

political interests

the dismantling of the

and

it

was

strategically

Ottoman Empire, the

and

because, to

own ends acquisition of new counder their mandate

lonial territories, retaining control of territories

—

And

in pursuit of their

politically useful to

them, in

this particular

era in history, to define us, and to have us define ourselves, as Arabs.

And

we had all complied, imagining our own interest, too.

gradually over this era

rectly or not, to be in

The Europeans were

defining us and we, falling in with their

ideas, agreed to define ourselves as

member

this, cor-

Arab

in the dictionary sense: "a

of the Semitic people of the Arabian peninsula; a

member

of an Arabic-speaking people." But the Europeans were also defining

us as Arab in quite another sense. Just as with the word "African" "a native or inhabitant of Africa; a person of immediate or remote

African ancestry; esp: Negro"

— there

is

no trace

inition of the word's pejorative connotations.

of what anyone or

who knows

means. This

who

has heard of O.

J.

in the dictionary def-

There

is

nothing here

Simpson or The

Bell

Curve

anything about American history knows that that word

is

the case also with the word "Arab," which similarly

comes, in European tongues, internally loaded

in the negative.

Such words carry within them entire landscapes, entire histories. The European powers defined us as "Arab" in this other sense by what they

did.

They defined us

when they who fought

as "Arab" in this sense

made an agreement with Sheikh Abdullah and those them independence and then broke

—

alongside Lawrence, promising the agreement.

They defined us

of Versailles and Sevres tories as

mere

when

spoils of the

as "Arab" at the

Peace conferences

they dealt with Middle Eastern

Ottoman Empire,

to

terri-

be divided between

France and Britain as booty, bargaining with one another for

this bit

A or that, drawing lines for the people

as "Arab"

when

maps with

their

little

concern

they designated an already inhabited land as a homeliving, then,

elsewhere.

They defined us

as "Arab"

they led Egyptians to believe that in return for neutrality during

the war they ise

and borders on

and lands they were carving up. And they defined us

land for people

when

267

Border Passage

and

— and

would get independence

exiled leaders

They defined us

and

when

as "Arab"

failed to

keep their prom-

on demonstrators who dared

fired

protest.

they set aside the results of elections

and forced the appointment of their chosen prime minister. "Arabs" meant people with

whom

you made

treaties that

you did

not have to honor, arabs being by definition people of a lesser hu-

manity and there being no need humanity.

It

to

honor

treaties

with people of lesser

meant people whose lands you could carve up and ap-

portion as you wished, because they were of a lesser humanity.

meant people whose democracies you could obstruct you did not have

at will,

It

because

behave justly toward people of a lesser humanity.

to

And what could mere

arabs, anyway,

know

of democracy and

demo-

cratic process?

Until now,

—

who had come to this land of Egypt Greeks, Rohad known that they were coming to a place of until now, had come knowing that they had as much to teach, as much to take, in terms of knowledge and

all

mans, Arabs, Turks civilization. All,

to learn here as

—

ways of understanding and of

how

on,

That, until now, was

had been.

it

The Europeans began freely

living, as to give.

writing their

and indiscriminately

when

all

meaning of the word "arab"

over the Middle East from about 1918

the region as a whole

fell

into their hands. Prior to this,

during their rule in Egypt, that meaning of the word had occasionally surfaced

—

at

Dinshwai, for instance

— but

it

had not been the domi-

nant, consistent hallmark of their conduct.

And

so in those years they scribbled their

meaning of "arab"

all

over the landscape, in their acts and in the lines they drew on maps, tracing out their cryptic

meaning

in a script at

and universal as the mark of

blank page of snow.

once cryptic and universal: as

a snake or the trail of deer

on a

268

And

tionaries trace

word. No.

Not etymologically,

too.

it,

It

entered

corrosively,

it

European meaning were

the

word "Arab," replacing Think of what

it

it

of the is

that dic-

with

itself

— leaving

it

word

from within,

up the

as

if

inside of

unchanged on the

in the negative.

"arab," then, hollowed out our word,

now

entirely with itself. Except that

word "arab"

it

to

did to the words ".African," "Africa": some-

The European meaning of it

changing

a kind of virus eating

how, somehow, loading those words

replacing

way

in the

meanings through transformations from word

the

outside.

meaning of the word "arab" would

in time, quite soon, their

enter our meaning of

to

Ahmed

Leila

in reverse. Like "black"

ours

is

their

and "Black,"

meaning

as in "Black

beautiful." It

sense of "arab," the European sense, with

this

is

negativities, that

myself trapped still

very

hide

my

in.

much

living in the

I,

This

is

the

cargo of

its

West, so often encounter and

meaning of

"arab,"

still

very

much

feel

alive,

around, that prompted me, for instance, to quickly

Arabic newspaper in

my

shopping bag so that people would

— and so react

to me, possibly, in some bigoted commonly do when they discover am Arab. more extreme than usual who spat at me on the bus Like the man in Cambridge when I was a student: smiling at first, asking me if I

not know

I

was Arab

fashion, as people

all

too

I

—

—

was

Israeli,

wore was

and then, leaning toward me, seeing that the medallion

after all .Arabic, spitting right at

of "arab" that

grow more

is

there in

my

me. And

it is

students' understanding

the

when,

one, because, until

me

an Arab until

I

had called myself

then, they had thought the word was an

And

it is

and

legal scholar Patricia

insult.

there in the countless microaggressions (as the noted author

Williams

calls

them) that ordinarily and

daily are part of the fabric of living for those of us in the

belong to a "race" charged, in it is

West who

this culture, in the negative.

there in the meanings threading Western books and films

and newspapers and so on. go to a film in which ally

as they

with me, they disarming!) reveal that they would

at ease

never have thought of calling

And

I

meaning

— why would

I

I

want

I,

know

like

many

I

know who

that .Arabs or

to subject

are .Arab, never

Muslims

myself to the

lies

figure.

Natur-

and racism that

A all

269

Border Passage

too often are part of such things? This goes, too, for popular books

on Arabs

—

they are

filled

their very popularity

usually an index of the fact that

is

with bigotries and dehumanizations masquerading as

truth.

But

it

would be another generation, not

not the generation

who would come it

my

parents' generation,

who had grown up admiring European

to see clearly

and

civilization,

what

to decipher for themselves

was that the Europeans had scrawled across the landscape. Nasser, born in 1917 and coming to consciousness, then, entirely

watershed year of 1918, was perhaps among the

after the

figure out (for

of what they had traced there

the identity "arab" into

its

— and

my

years before

got slapped for not

to

I

to

respond

surprise, fully grasped that

to

by

it

I

knowing that

I

was Arab. For Nasser

have understood that he was Arab precisely by intently study-

scape. Reflecting himself that he

was Arab, he

region,

and above

on when

it

made upon

was exactly that he understood

(he repeatedly returns to this) the history of

all

Palestine, as critical to his understanding of himself as

remember the my mind as

into

first

I

.

.

.

when

I

owners.

legal

Nasser goes on, "why

was angry

concerned

I

for this land

filter

went out with

every year as a protest against the Balfour

Declaration whereby England gave the Jews a national its

an Arab. He

am

elements of Arab consciousness began to

a student in secondary school,

fellow schoolboys

unjustly from

the land-

singles out the study of the recent history of the

wrote in his Philosophy of the Revolution: "As far as

my

crystallizing

he was Arab only a few

ing the marks and runes the imperialists had

I

to

obverse, "Arab," although even he, as

discovered to

seems

first

he was, whatever his flaws, an astute man) the meaning

left

my

which

I

When

I

home usurped

asked myself at the time,"

school so enthusiastically and

never saw

I

why

I

could not find an answer

except the echoes of sentiment." Gradually "a form of comprehension" began

when he

studied "the Palestine campaigns and the history

of the region in general" in military college, and finally that compre-

hension

crystallized

"when the Palestine

crisis

loomed on the

270

Leila

"When own choice

asked myself

I

of words

.

.

makes

.

Ahmed

why I was

clear,

so angry." Anger, as Nasser's

was the key emotion

in the early

formation of his nascent identity as an Arab.

Spring

is

here.

The crocuses

are out

on the Backs. Rivulets of blue,

all

along the

pathways, vividest, vividest blue, and gashes and splashes of

it

on the

verges and under the trees.

Why loss

then, walking through this, did

— measureless, measureless And

years,

is

so that,

O my

what happened

loss

daughter, to us.

I

suddenly

feel this

sense of

— sweep through me?

is

what happened. That,

in those

12

TO J^MERICA Recently I

and

the

was

man

"What

asked,

said,

"Do you

country are you

found Egypt being uprooted from Africa part of the Arab world.

Now I

Egypt can be found, nor do

from?"

consider Egypt to be in

no longer

know

I

if I

after it

too,

know

am

I

said Egypt,

Africa?" So

had ceased

United Arab Emirates,

deserts, mountains,

Arab, or African

transformation of

Abu Dhabi, had

its

I

arrived,

history.

A

offered to use his

And

.

feminist

vivid blue Persian

earlier Zayed, the sheikh of

oil

wealth to finance education,

all

the people of the region, in-

cluding in neighboring emirates, which leadership.

.

undergoing the most momentous

few years

housing, and medical treatment for

.

a small country of spectacular

and oases on the shallow,

Gulf, was, at the time that

to be

the continent in which

Nawal El Saadawi, Egyptian

The

I

now

united under his titular

thus the people of the region,

who were

principally a

Bedu, nomadic people, were in the process of being settled and the country as a whole was being catapulted almost instantaneously into modernity.

To had

provide

its

people with these

new

amenities, the country had

to look to other countries for skilled personnel,

above

all

to other

Arab countries.

When

I

and they looked

got there the foreign pop-

ulation of non-local Arabs, consisting of Egyptians and Palestinians

but also of Syrians, Jordanians, and others, outnumbered the local

Bedu population by

six to

one. These other Arabs were the doctors

and nurses, the architects and teachers and headmasters and headmistresses.

The need

to

house

this vast and, as

it

were, invading pop-

ulation of foreign Arabs, as well as to house the local people, cities,

272

Leila

and

in particular

Abu Dhabi, had

Ahmed arisen almost overnight out of the

sands. Ten years earlier there had been no constructed building in Abu Dhabi, which was now the capital, only tents and reed huts; no building other than the whitewashed fortress that stood now in the

middle of a .And

7

city

of towering high-rises.

Abu Dhabi

did

somehow have

the air of a place conjured up

overnight out of the sands. Silhouettes of cranes stood against the

horizon whichever direction one looked, two or three buildings going

up

at

once alongside each other. Nearby would be other new-looking

buildings and ones alongside

them

moment, both new-looking and

derelict eyesores. Blocks

Many

too fast and were poorly built.

two or three years and then had such apartment block that

I

one and the same

that were, at

had gone up

buildings were habitable for just

be abandoned. There was one

to

my

passed in

afternoon walks along the

corniche: a grand blue-and-white tower block standing like a ship with a

commanding view

of the sea, gleamingly

new

— and

derelict.

I

would

hear the sea wind that always blew here, whistling and moaning

through tling

gaping, darkening

was often conscious

— modern

new and

all

it,

as

if

to pick

Abu Dhabi

it

apart.

of the foreignness of

all

and

also the invasion of other Arabs

and

smothering and overwhelming the local Bedu culture

name

in the

something

in

at

buildings, higgledy-piggledy city, construction cranes,

derelict buildings,

their cultures

—

windows and doors, whining and whis-

and tugging and fidgeting

I

this

its

of modernity and education.

It

often

seemed

like

— dream, nightmare — conjured up just yesterday out of the

sands and that surely

like a

dream would any moment pass away.

Left

to the workings of nature, to the deft, steady pickings and fidgetings

of desert, sea, wind,

all

of this surely,

I'd find

myself thinking, would

quickly disappear and the old desert simplicity once It

more be

restored.

was not an unpleasing thought. In

all

of

Abu Dhabi

there was only one place that had

intrinsic loveliness: the old cient,

whitewashed

studded wood door, in the local

sheltering palms

And

so

I

and a small thicket of

sensed even then that

I

fortress built, with

style,

beside

it

its its

own an-

a cluster of

vivid, yellow -flowering shrubs.

was witnessing

loss:

the vanish-

A ing of

Bedu

culture,

its

273

Border Passage

banishment

edges of

to the

life, its

smothering

by a supposedly superior culture bringing, supposedly, "education." sensed this but After

all,

wasn't

all this

do believe that

I

I

was

I

right in

know

don't

coming

to this

my

feeling that

life

understanding

one more piece

also understanding

would

I

of Arabness, identity, language, culture.

reflected

I

it

was witnessing inferior

find myself suddenly

enigma

in

my own

My understanding of the in

my own

life

would,

on Abu Dhabi, be forever changed.

was placed,

I

whose task

I

many ways

in that central

meaning of mother tongue and mother culture as

was sensing.

the answer even now.

the imposition of a profoundly different and in culture. In

I

— education, modernity, improvement — a nec-

essary and incontrovertible good?

But

what

didn't quite understand or trust

I

I

was

as

soon as

I

arrived in the country,

to oversee the

on a committee

development and reform of education

throughout the Emirates. In the preceding few years schools had

opened

fast

to revise

and without much planning, and we were required now

and

rationalize the curricula

tion.

My

ians.

There were no

as a

committee

fellow committee locals

and plan the future of educa-

members were

Egyptians and Palestin-

all

on the committee, although we reported

to the minister of education,

arrangement was

who was

a local. This

Advisers and advisory committees were

typical.

made up of foreign Arabs, and the people to whom they reported and who held the highest posts were locals. The latter were drawn from among those few who had had a formal education and there was only a small handful in the country and from among the sons of

—

—

important families.

members of the committee were men. In those days were no more than three or four people in the entire country

All the other

there

with Ph.D.'s, and

I

was one of them.

possible to appoint me, a

We to see

woman,

It

was

this that

to this high-level

began our work by polling the

locals

education developed. Meanwhile

we

about all

had made

how

they wanted

also visited schools,

observed classes, and interviewed teachers and students. In I

also

began

to

meet with

local

women

it

committee.

to hear directly

my

case

from them

274

Ahmed

Leila

how they felt about women's member of the committee who was

strictly

were not

One

education.

could do

room

Egyptian

I

since local

did not

first

at the

women

I

I

her in the recep-

sat waiting for

my

Gulf for several years and had been

in the

Gulf Arabic was

interpreter, for to begin with,

hidden in a black abaya, (the Gulf word for milayya). that this

was some simple woman waiting,

the questionnaire, asking her about

probably in her

fifties

and was

I

meet

went through

education. She was

nonliterate.

women

course, she said,

to the highest levels

women and

We both

like us, to

with Mariam, but she turned out to be Mariam herself.

Of

woman com-

c

assumed

society

interviewed was Mariam, from one of

scarcely intelligible to me. In the corner sat a heavy

up

Bedu

meet with men who

Women's Center with my companion, Gameela, an

who had been

assigned to be

pletely

was the only

relatives.

of the

the ruling families of the Emirates. tion

this,

women

segregated and local

Of course

should have the right to education

and of course they should be able

to

pursue

whatever profession they wished.

What about tionnaire

Who

—

I

— women's

asked, going on to the next item on the quesrole in Islam

and the requirements of Islam?

had founded Islam, Mariam instantly

retorted,

was

it

a

man

woman?

or a

Startled,

my companion, who was

robes and head veil of

strict piety,

dressed in the Egyptian-style

murmured, 'The Prophet Muham-

mad, peace and mercy be upon him!" "Exactly!" said

Mariam. "And whose

Mariam was engaged

side d'you think he

right then, she told us, in

was on?"

an argument with

Fatima, the principal wife of Zayed, the ruler, and with other as to

A

what should be the emblem of women's centers

gazelle

had been proposed,

Abu Dhabi, meant it

to

she was a doctor or engineer. in effect, she said,

what

it

was

woman

A

Mariam wanted

with some sign indicating that

gazelle

really

in the Emirates.

honor Zayed, whose emirate,

partly to

"father of [place of] the gazelle."

be the face of an unveiled

women,

sounded

doing was

like a nice idea

but

insidiously associating

A women

Border Passage

nonhuman

with animals and

275

and that was a dan-

creatures,

gerous thing to do.

Mariam was among

women I would meet

the most remarkable and forthright of the

but

like her,

all,

women, and many

the importance of education for

same

different ways, those

and a secure confidence

were firm and passionate about had, though in

qualities of strength, directness, clarity,

in their

own

Moza,

vision.

for example, a

cousin of the ruler: in her late twenties and too old to have benefited

from the country's educational revolution, she attended classes

and would continue

literacy

to attend to within days of giving birth.

She had herself founded and endowed the Women's Adult Education Center where she took the her

own

she wanted other

right,

able to pursue

care for the ates,

many

Those

it.

Women's

women

of

classes.

A woman

women who

in

craved education to be

taking the classes) existed throughout the Emir-

them funded by

local notable

women. and passion were there

too in the

generation. Hissa, for example,

of fifteen

I

met

off against her will

enormous wealth

centers offering literacy classes (and child

qualities of resolve, spiritedness,

new when

of

her,

who was

a youngster

had been removed from school and married

when she was

twelve

— and had then appealed her

case to the president, through his wife Sheikha Fatima. Islam gave

her the right, she'd insisted, not to be married without her consent

and the

and she demanded both. She won. She

right to education,

intended, she told

me

as

we

strolled in the school yard, with its white

colonnades and splashes of bougainvillea, to become a petroleum engineer. Hissa's story

was unusual, but the schools were

women

as spirited as she

become

engineers, architects, scientists.

who had

full

of young

every intention of going on to

Few wanted

to

major

in

lit-

erature and the humanities, the subjects that in other countries girls are culturally steered toward.

Here

it

seems they were steered by

their

culture in quite another direction.

became ordinary for me extraordinary women, to observe the Soon

it

which they expressed

their opinions

to

be in the company of these

clarity

and forthrightness with

and went about

their lives,

and

276

Leila

also the sense of

humor and

their gatherings

and

handful of local

Ahmed

laughter that they frequently brought to

to their perceptions of their situation.

women had had formal

Only a

education. Like the local men,

they held responsible positions, though less public and powerful ones, It became room and observe

as headmistresses, say, or regional educational directors.

ordinary too, then, to wait in an office or reception

one of these younger formally educated

Once

black c abaya. let it

drop or cast

Naturally

it

in the privacy of

it

women

off altogether to reveal

was soon quite obvious

son, the local culture bred people

arrive,

wrapped

to

an elegant pantsuit.

me

who were

that, for

whatever rea-

intellectually strong

unafraid, including confident, clear-minded, utterly tenacious

who needed no clarity, vision,

in the

an all-women's space, she would

and

women

instruction from anyone in the qualities of strength,

understanding, imagination.

As the responses

became evident

that

to it

our questionnaire began to come

was not only the

women

in,

who

here

it

quickly

staunchly

supported women's education. Overwhelmingly the local men, too,

were

in

women

favor of equal education for

sex felt about segregation and about lives

women. They

believed that

should be able to qualify for any profession. Whatever either

women's pursuing professional

within a segregated context, they clearly did not want to see

women

held back intellectually or prevented from pursuing the pro-

fessions they wished.

These views, though,

I

soon discovered, were not echoed on the

committee. Dr. Haydar, the chair of the committee, instructed us, as

we reviewed

the responses and prepared to reformulate the country's

educational goals, to set aside the local people's views regarding equal

education for women. The majority of our respondents were uneducated people, he pointed out, and most in fact were

illiterate.

had these nice hopes and wishes about equal education

for

They

women

but their lack of education meant they didn't have the knowledge or capacity to foresee the consequences of policies in the

educated people could. That was

why

way

they had us here, to

we them

that

tell

A

277

Border Passage

of those consequences and to

them how,

tell

rationally, to develop

their society.

Haydar, a Lebanese a complicated person.

some way deeply

who had

studied in Egypt and America, was

The notion of women's

how

things spun out of control

societies treated

was

clearly in

antithetical to him; a tone of sneering bitterness

crept into his words whenever he spoke of of

equality

women

as

and

Invariably his example

it.

into destructive chaos

equal was America, where perhaps,

mised, he had suffered some awful rejection

when I

sur-

— but who knows, per-

haps not. In America, he said on one occasion, they had either given or were about to give in positions in

women

the right to serve in the army, including

which they would have men serving under them.

"Can you imagine

a pregnant

woman," he

said,

making the

ges-

ture of a swollen belly before him, "giving orders to her soldiers!"

He

looked round at us, laughing a humorless, scandalized laugh. Laughter

ensued from

all

around me. For some reason that moment has

stuck with me. If

women had

degrees in engineering or some such subject, he

asked, would they be willing to be the servants of society? If we, the

committee, did what the locals said they wanted, the entire basis of society,

which rested on women's

role in the family and, frankly,

their being willing to be the servants to

Of course

these people thought of such things?

Our

not!

job was exactly to think of these things and to plan an edu-

cational future for the country that principles

on which,

was consonant with the Islamic

as the national constitution declared, this society

was based. He was himself, Haydar one

else in the Emirates

told us,

who openly

an

atheist.

(I

knew no

declared his atheism and this

was, here, a courageous act.) His personal beliefs, however, were relevant,

he

said,

it

we came up with an ciples to

on

men, would be destroyed. Had

was simply

his professional duty to see to

ir-

that

educational program that conformed to the prin-

which the country declared

itself

committed, and Islamic

principles were completely clear as to the role of

Haydar's

it

women.

comments met with nods and general approval from

all

— 278

Leila

We

around me.

should begin, Haydar then proposed, by cutting down

on the math and science

hopeless

—

all this

was

I

classes being offered in

girls'

schools and

home economics.

substituting, say,

Of course

Ahmed

was appalling

totally

to

me and

the situation seemed

outnumbered. But there would be a

satisfying

resolution.

Brooding on

who were

all this

and on the gray-faced men on the committee,

so casually preparing to blight the hopes of the local

women, and on

the fact that these

men were

nonlocals from other

Arab cultures who were now imposing the narrow, bigoted ideas of their

own backgrounds on the locals, I decided to talk to Ibrahim, the He was a local and my immediate boss. He had

director of education.

been the person responsible Ibrahim,

women. As

I

for

my being appointed

knew, was strongly

committee.

to the

in favor of equal education for

a boy he had attended the only school available in the

region before

oil

wealth, an English school funded by the British gov-

ernment. Then he had

won

a scholarship to England,

where he earned

aBA He

listened to

Moza and (It

to

what

I

the other local

had

to say

women what

had been he who had suggested

know

the local

en's Center,

women.) So

and over a

directive

I

week

I

to

in that

evening

I

should get

at the

Wom-

Moza about the math and we on the committee got a

drop

this

scheme. Thereafter

didn't

much worry when Haydar came up

with some similar idea.

listen

and mildly demur or even

appear to agree

just let did,

one of the

that he

—

had got a

am

hoped

sure

that

I

afoot.

It

bemused look on Haydar's

— and then

always worked. face

I

I'd

I

whenever he

as if despairing of these foolish, unpredictable locals call or a

committee was not I

at times

women know what was

confess, enjoy the

I

announced

tell

told

or two,

from above instructing us

I

the committee was planning.

in the first place that

dropped

glass of tea

science classes. Within a

and then suggested that

now

to

do

note from the minister telling him that the this or that.

that in appointing

would come

me

to that

committee Ibrahim

to serve precisely the role that

I

did.

I

believe

A that

I

was

279

Border Passage

in fact recruited to

be an

Ibrahim's against the

ally of

attitudes that had inundated the Emirates from other Arab

stifling

countries.

It

had been Ibrahim's mentor, Mr. Taylor, who had been

responsible for hiring me.

One

cold day in England, settling

down

the end of a long day's teaching to prepare the next day's classes,

about

fallen to worrying

my time,

took up

all

up that

day's Times,

and

at I'd

my finances. My part-time job, which actually

paid very meagerly.

where

I'd

And

so

on an impulse

I

picked

noticed an ad for a job in the Emirates,

applied.

Mr. Taylor, the Emirates' educational representative in England,

had responded to

my

have

tem was

at once, inviting

me down

to

London. He was

application, he said quite openly. Their

suffocating, he told

thrilled

whole school

sys-

me, under the by-rote Arabic educational

system that they had imported wholesale (along with teachers, teaching methods, syllabi) from other Arab countries, particularly Egypt.

Now

Ibrahim, a brilliant young

man whom he had known

had been appointed director of education and meant this

to

all

his

life,

change

— and someone of my background could be of enormous help

him

in this task.

all

to

Mr. Taylor had been headmaster of the school that

Ibrahim attended and had been in the Emirates several years before oil

was discovered. As director of education, Ibrahim had considerable power, but he

was not a member of an important family and,

as these things

still

counted, he had to use his wits to bring about the outcomes he

wanted. His superior, the minister of education,

who was from

prominent family and had a B.A. from Cairo, had the power ride his decisions

mittee.

and

to accept the

He was much more

of equal education for

The was not

divide

on

a

to over-

recommendations of our com-

ambivalent than Ibrahim on the question

women.

this question, as

I

gradually

at all a straightforward divide

came

between

to understand,

women and men.

While the nonlocal Arab men on the committee were opposed equal education, the local

men

as a

cated in England, was in favor of

it

to

group were not. Ibrahim, edu-

— but so also were others, among

280

Leila

them the

Ahmed

and the barely

nonliterate

literate,

ident of the country and a nonliterate man,

ing in equal measure to men's and

Among

men

local

including Zayed, the pres-

who had committed

the divide was between

men who were women

ambiv-

— mostly

alent about or even opposed to equal education for

men

fund-

women's education.

educated in the Arabic and primarily in the Egyptian educational

system

— and men who supported equal education. A small minority

of the latter group had been educated in the English system; the rest

were nonliterate or barely

who belonged

At the time

something

cational system

through

it

—

in other words, they

was clear

me was

to

that there

more oppressive toward women

men and

seemed

seemed

It

that

all

distinctly

of non-local Arab

tually.

literate

men

were

fully to the oral, living culture of the region.

to

to close

seemed

to

be

in the attitudes

that the Arabic, Egyptian-inspired edu-

have a perceptibly negative effect intellec-

down

instead of opening

the minds of people who'd been

—

them up closing them down women.

in all sorts

of ways but particularly in regard to

What tween the

realize

now, was the profound gulf be-

oral culture of the region

on the one hand and the Arabic

I

was observing,

I

culture of literacy on the other. Oral cultures here in the Gulf, as

indeed everywhere

else, are the creations of living

men and women and

communities of

represent the ongoing interactions of these com-

munities with their heritage of beliefs, outlook, circumstances and so on. But the Arabic culture of literacy, a culture

whose language no-

body, no living community, ordinarily speaks, clearly was not the product, as oral cultures are, of people living their lives

and

creatively

and

continuously interacting with their environment and heritage. Ngugl

wa

Thiong'o, the Kenyan writer

and imagination

this

who

has pondered with great depth

question of the relation between mother tongue

and culture and the written language, describes his mother tongue as the language that people used as they worked in the

guage that they used It

was a language

to tell stories in

alive therefore

and

a language

the lanfireside.

with "the words and images and with

the inflection of the voices" of the people nity,

fields,

the evenings around the

whose words had

who made up

"a suggestive

his

commu-

power well beyond

A

the immediate and lexical meanings. tive

281

Border Passage

Our

appreciation of the sugges-

magical power of language was reinforced by the games

we played

with words through riddles, proverbs, transpositions of syllables, or

through nonsensical but musically arranged words. So we learned the

music of our language on top of the content. The language, through images and symbols, gave us a view of the world." All of Ngugi's

and

words apply

Gulf Arabic and Egyptian Arabic

to

to all the varieties of vernacular Arabic,

moment

none of which

dard Arabic, the only written form of Arabic that there in the

at the

has a written form. But Ngugi's words do not apply to stan-

world

around the in a field

—

is.

Nobody

except maybe academics and textbook writers

fireside telling stories in

anywhere

in the

—

sits

standard Arabic, no one working

Arab world speaks that language, and no

children anywhere play word games and

tell

riddles

and proverbs

in

standard Arabic.

But

if

this

language and

its

culture are not the language and

whose culture

culture of a living community,

that

is it

being

is

dis-

seminated through the culture of literacy that Arab governments are zealously imposing on their populations through schools and universities

in

no

throughout the Arab world? Rooted in no particular place and living culture,

values do

its

texts

from

whom

does this culture emanate and whose

embody? Presumably they

are the values

and world-

views of government bureaucrats and textbook writers and of the

lit-

erate elites of today, along with those of the Arabic textual heritage

through the ages on which textbooks and the contemporary culture of literacy continue to draw.

The Arabic

medieval Islamic heritage that

I

over the centuries primarily by

men

men who

literary heritage, like the

discussed in chapter

5,

was produced

and, by and large, by middle-class

lived in deeply misogynist societies.

perspective, recycled today in textbooks

Presumably

and continuing

the Arabic culture of literacy, that imparts to that culture negative flavor in relation to I

women. But here

I

am

it is

their

to feed into its

distinctly

only speculating.

have not researched the sources, origins, and creators of this Arabic

culture of literacy.

Whatever

its

sources and whoever

its

creators,

it is,

as

I

observed

282 it,

Ahmed

Leila

and oppressive culture.

a sterile

Abu Dhabi,

as

I

remember my uneasy

I

prevailing culture of literacy inculcate I

was witnessing the

cratic culture

in their

it

ture.

And

this

Ironically

on young minds and the gradual erasure of was being done

in the

name

in this

young charges, that

tragic imposition of a sterile, inferior

and vibrant and much richer and more humane

vital

feeling in

watched Egyptians and Palestinians trained

local

bureau-

their

own

Bedu

cul-

of education.

enough, the steady spread and imposition of

this cul-

ture of literacy throughout the Arab world seems to represent a kind

of linguistic and cultural imperialism a class imperialism that

is

—a

linguistic, cultural,

being conducted in the

name

and

also

of education

and of Arab unity and of the oneness of the Arab nation. Steadily throughout the Arab world, as

this

Arab culture of

literacy

marches

inexorably onward, local cultures continue to be erased and their

and cultural

guistic

And we

silence.

would

if it

creativity

condemned

are supposed to applaud this, not protest

are supposed to support

came

I

to

making up my own

name

lin-

permanent, unwritten

were any other form of imperialism or

This variety of domination goes by the

As

to

political

it

as

we

domination.

of "nationalism," and

we

it.

understand

all

this,

history suddenly

fell

another piece of the puzzle into place. For

I

realized that,

Gulf Arabic and Gulf culture were different from standard

just as

Arabic and the Arab culture of literacy, so also were the language and culture in which

For

me

I

grew up, Cairene Egyptian culture and language.

too, then, this

language of standard Arabic was not

tongue and the values purveyed by the Arabic

texts that

my mother

we

read were

my mother culture. The characteristic, defining flavor of culture, my native Cairene culture, was perhaps above all that it

not those of that

so richly and easily blended into

its

own unique

Cairo brew a wealth

of traditions and provenances and ways and histories and memories: Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Morocco, Istanbul, Alexandria, a village in Croatia.

In

where

all I

of Egypt there was no school that

I

could have attended

could have read books and learned to write in

my mother

A tongue, the language that spoke, and that

I

was

283

Border Passage

we spoke

at

home, that everybody

completely fluent in,

words rich

its

the inflections and music of the voices that

why Egyptian

political reasons.

The

in Cairo

me

with

loved and with the im-

I

ages and riddles and syllables of our games. There

reason

for

no

is

linguistic

Arabic could not be a written language, only situation

would be

parallel to Italians or

French

people, say, finding themselves unable to write in Italian or French

and being compelled instead

my

Whatever school

to write only in Latin.

parents sent

me

Arabic or English,

to,

I

would have found myself imbibing a culture and studying a language and learning attitudes that were

which

I

home

lived at

in Cairo

entailed alienation from

from the language and

different

from those of the world

in

and Alexandria. The choice either way

my home

home language and

culture and

oral culture of other Cairenes. In short, the

choice was always only a choice between colonialism and colonialism,

and domination.

or at any rate between domination

This was, for me, a liberatory understanding. Surely

be able to cast off completely the

Nabih combination also enabled

completely

me

I

had always

to

me

to

It

was somehow closer

now

be a nonsensical, unreasonable feeling.

Now

realized that in fact English felt

it

was more

it:

that English

felt

I

like

fluent in standard Arabic.

than was standard Arabic. Until

to Egyptian Arabic

had seemed

more

understand something that had previously seemed

illogical.

and more kin this

to

for not being

now I would

on me by the Nasser-

guilt laid

more

like

Egyptian Arabic because

both are living languages and both have that quick-

ness and pliancy and vitality that living spoken languages have and that the written Arabic of our day does not.

I

have yet to hear or read

any piece of Arabic poetry or prose by a modern writer gorgeous and delicate and poetic and moving, artificial.

There

guage that

is

is

is

that,

however

not also stilted and

a very high price to pay for having a written lan-

only a language of literature and that has only a distant,

attenuated connection to the living language. I

am

not,

I

should say, implicitly arguing that

we should do away

with or stop teaching standard Arabic, for of course usefulness as a lingua franca.

And

I

know

too

I

recognize

how complicated

its

the

284

Ahmed

Leila

issue

is,

among

other reasons because Classical Arabic (albeit

ferent again from Standard Arabic)

and

know

I

many major

that

— consider

Naguib Mahfouz

the language of the Quran,

is

writers of literary Arabic

literary Arabic, the

— including

Arabic of the edu-

cated classes, to be the only acceptable vehicle for literature. So certainly not arguing against our continuing to teach, study literary Arabic.

enormous

linguistic

And

world.

am, however, making a plea

I

am

I

and cultural

dif-

I

am

and learn

for a recognition of the

diversity that

makes up the Arab

arguing for our developing a creative approach that,

instead of silencing and erasing the tremendous wealth that this di-

would

versity represents,

foster

it

and

foster the development,

on

at

an equal footing with standard Arabic, of written forms of Mo-

least

roccan, Gulf, Egyptian, Iraqi, Palestinian, and other Arabics, and also of the non-Arabic living languages of the region, such as

own

Berber. European nationalisms have devastated their

guages

—Welsh, Scots, Breton — languages now struggling

comeback. Let us avoid that

and

Nubian and

rejoice in, this wealth

out to suppress

history. Let us find a

and

diversity that

is

way

local lanto

make

a

to celebrate,

ours, instead of setting

it.

Public space in the Emirates was overwhelmingly men's space and

one

felt in

it

—

felt

I

town

al-Ain, the

to

—

an intruder. This was particularly true

like

which

I

now moved

the newly opened university.

I

to take

up an appointment

remember looking out

whether

stood, weighing

woman

I

saw a male

alone. If

I

my bungalow

it

would

this

be interpreted,

tion?

clothing

More

say,

My

— no head

casually

I

it

in plain sight of passing cars (not that

would have

felt safer

had

it

been a busy

be construed as a flouting of local custom? Might

by someone speeding by in a car as a provoca-

And what would

this landscape.

could set off on a long walk out here. Oc-

figure trudging along this road, but never a

walked along

there were that many; road),

I

at

longingly in the

afternoons onto the empty desert avenue on which

casionally

in

I

wear?

I

would stand out too

distinctively in

normal dress here was conservative Western-style veil,

no long gown. That was how

wore pants

I

went

to work.

— taking care that they were on the

loose,

A baggy side

— and long-sleeved blouses.

walk along that road, and so

my

the oasis behind

285

Border Passage

I

It felt

too risky, too exposed to

my

never did, instead taking

bungalow. There, for one thing,

encountered men, except for old men.

I'd

come

across

I

walks in

very rarely

young women

there sometimes, tending to the land or bathing with their children

women, but never young men. Presumably they had left behind this traditional way of life for the opportunities of the city. In the oasis, moreover, with its footpaths winding among in the spring reserved for

the fruit groves,

did not feel exposed to people passing in cars.

I

Sometimes,

too,

would take

I

my

walks in the zoo. Zayed, the

country's president, a passionate falconer, was passionate also about

the preservation of the wildlife of the region avid animal enthusiast generally.

a fine zoo. For

some reason

I

And

found

—

oryx, gazelle

— and an

so al-Ain, his native town,

enormously comforting

it

to stroll

chim-

there, hearing the animal sounds, stopping to observe giraffe,

panzees, zebra

— zebra,

captures so perfectly.

had

a strange brush,

Jahangir, a

Mogul

those creatures whose magicalness Jahangir

"It is as if left it

the painter of fate," he writes, "with

on the page of the world." Like Rumi,

king, wrote in Persian.

This was a time of great solitude.

I

had

course, but no intimate friends in al-Ain.

my

social acquaintances, of

When

some school

attending meetings, or going to

most of

had

I

was not teaching,

or college event,

I

spent

time alone. Living in that bungalow perched on the edge

of the desert,

I

had, whichever

setting always before

way

I

turned, the beauty of al-Ain's

me. To the west were the ribbed, windswept

dunes of the ancient Arabian Desert, mesmerizingly perfect

in their

formations. At sunset their rose-beige crests and hollows (in which nestled just one solitary thorn tree) turned a startling fiery red.

To

the

south was the rock face of the great mountain Gabal Akhdar, Green

Mountain. And

in the distance

From my back window sunken

oasis

behind

I

below the mountain were lush oases.

had a view of the tops of palm

my house from which came,

trees in the

every morning and

evening, a loud burst of birdsong.

And

yet in

partly real,

I

some ways

felt

too,

ways that were partly imaginative and

connected with not just one community but two.

286

Leila

And both

enriched

my

solitude

Ahmed

and made

this a time, indeed,

not of

loneliness but of solitude.

The immediate and real community with which I was connected was that of the local women. And it was a community that, just as was

Girton's had been,

at

once new and unfamiliar but

also, in its

underlying ways and rhythms, deeply familiar. Outwardly some of these ways were extremely novel, enough for all,

first

of

when

as

time and observed

all

me

how

things were at her palace.

was the informality of the gathering and the

rank wasn't of

be riveted by

to

it

visited Fatima, the president's principal wife, for the

I

much consequence. The

Fatima's chauffeur, a young Egyptian

Most

striking

feeling that social

British ambassador's wife

woman

and

were

in a pantsuit,

equally part of the company, sitting about on the sofas around the

room and apparently conversing on equal servers, standing by ready to top

vehemently and forthrightly

moved

—

footing.

Even the coffee

up our cups, joined

— not timidly but

in the general talk

Fatima and other prominent local of the ordinary

people

whenever they

felt

to.

like

women's

community of women

women were

very

in this small

much

part

country where

them were the patrons of the women's schools and the

college (which

was part of the

university)

— and they were

often the chief guests at school and college celebrations.

On

these

occasions the students often presented plays they had written. They

would

strut

robes of

make

about on stage with painted mustaches and the white

men and

utter vacuous

and hilarious pomposities that would

the audience, consisting entirely of

women and

girls

(and

little

boys) in this segregated society, dissolve in laughter, guffawing and

applauding. Informality reigned here, too.

and her entourage,

say,

would often

The

chief guests, Fatima

arrive late, the festivities of

course awaiting them, and once the dances, prize awards, plays, and

musical performances began, the atmosphere would continue to be informal, people chatting,

running telling

to the front of the hall

them

And

nobody

to sit

this,

I

sitting rigidly attentive, children

and joining

in the dancing,

nobody

still.

realize

now, was familiar space. Like Grandmother's

A corner room at Zatoun,

287

Border Passage

like the

balcony at Alexandria,

this

was space

not at the center but on the margins of society, a place with perspective,

its

own

rather skeptical, often

grand, important, and self-important people space.

My aunts Aisha and

own

its

amused view of

all

who occupied

the

center

Nazli and Farida, too, had leaped to seem-

ingly reverent attention in Grandfather's presence

— and then, when

he was gone, had done, in Grandmother s room, wonderful, hilarious

and send-ups of

imitations

his imperious ways. (Laughter, that refuge

and consolation of the powerless. Vehicle of scathing and skeptical critiques sometimes, but slipped in simply as entirely harmless hu-

some fundamental level and perhaps without my even recognizing it, I felt deeply at home. It was also a place of respite and sanctuary that, I am sure, must have helped sustain me when I had to venture once more into what mor.) This space was space in which, at

was the very

visibly

and palpably masculine space of the public world.

Overwhelmingly the people

in the street

were men. Passing a mosque

on a Friday

at the

end of prayers, one saw men, only men, flowing

out from

doors.

Even

its

market one saw mostly men, although modern than Abu Dhabi, a place where

in the

in al-Ain, a place less totally

the older ways of living were

still

present in the surrounding oases

and mountains, there was a small women's market on the outskirts of town. Local

women

brought their produce there to

on the ground beside baskets of dried peppers or

sell, sitting

masked

spices, the edges of

the brilliant silver-edged pantaloons that they wore (magenta, orange,

green) just showing under their outer garments.

But simply stepping out into the

street then,

one became instan-

taneously aware of the masculine domination that defined this society

and of the at

any

restrictions that

either in

England or

experience,

hemmed

in

women's

lives in a

way

that

had not observed and experienced as so blatant a

rate,

in Egypt.

why Western women coming in their

necessarily or uniformly so at visual signals

made

all

fact

can understand, having had that

I

to Egypt, say, in the nine-

teenth century, were convinced that the oppression of

was so much worse than

I,

own

countries

women

— when

— simply because

it

there

was not

dress and other

the gender division of society so obvious. This was

288

Leila

how

too. reacted in the Gulf.

I.

street, there

was,

it

moment one

For the

stepped into the

black and white. The local

literally in

women

white and the

Ahmed

men wore

black. .And in this often unimaginably hot. un-

imaginably humid climate,

men wore

and

light airy robes

women went

about masked and in layers of clothes, muffled also in an outer layer of heavy black.

My

connection with the second community that buoved and sus-

me was entirely imaginary. In my first months working with local women and learning from them, learning from their attitudes

tained the

and perspectives and from I

had begun

have

to

my

stores for feminist books.

I

summer

Americans

illuminating.

in

— Kate

me

good number of

a

free time

immersed myself

found exciting and

I

among

Daly,

others.

Academic

read on, no longer seemed, as they did by the end of

I

I

searched the book-

I

Elaine Showalter. Patricia

Millett.

Spacks. Adrienne Rich, and Mars things, as

my

those that

at least all

all.

vacation.

brought back with

such recently published books and them. They were

When

consciousness raised as a feminist.

returned to Cambridge for the

in

and determination.

their clear-sightedness

my

graduate years in Cambridge, distant and irrelevant and merely "ac-

ademic." Things began to theory.

And

I

began

learn already from the that

it

fall

to learn

into place.

women

was from here, from

I

began

to see the point of

from these writers what

this

of

I

Abu Dhabi, women

had begun like

to

Mariam:

vantage point on the margins, that

I

could begin to examine, analyze, and think about the world of which >

part in a

way

that finally, for

me. would begin

to

make

Other moments from those days that have remained as marking, I

v as

sun was

It

my mind

somehow, turning point-

coming out of the

setting.

figure of a

in

oasis after

one of

my

walks, just as the

Coming toward me. on the dune just ahead, was the

woman

carrying a huge bundle of firewood on her head.

was exactly that moment of translucent luminosity which,

latitude,

sense.

comes immediately

after sunset,

and

for

in that

an instant her form,

outlined against the sky. was caught up in that luminosity.

"Cursed be she. the bearer of firewood!" The words come

in-

A my mind

voluntarily into

— words,

as

we drew

"Salam

be with you!"

aleikuml" — "Peace if

"Aleikutn a-salam!"

firewood: she enters In fact all

had

I

slightly

cursed.

it

It is

then, unexpectedly,

It is

thus,

found myself think-

I

woman, bearer

thus that she

is

itself forever to

forever captured.

How

exactly

this curse

had

— a curse

woman, bearer

it

Muhammad

in

of firewood

—was judged

number

had decided which words were

to

I

Quran

did not exist during his

which utterances of the Prophet,

Who

had had the power

to

make

Another moment.

I

was

women

in a lecture hall at the university, at a

in early Islam.

It

was a timely moment

such a lecture. Just across the Gulf, the Iranian revolution was

and

cresting,

erful, frightening

for

these

and how exactly had they made them?

public lecture on

the

tremendous

it

small,

oil

seemed, to success. Iran,

like Iraq,

for

in full

was a pow-

neighbor, always apparently harboring predatory de-

vulnerable states along the Gulf with their

wealth, and

tiously to be watched.

The

it

was a country, therefore, always cau-

possibility of the Islamic revolution's suc-

cess in Iran triggered anxiety in the Emirates and a

conservatism with regard to position of veiling it

life-

be regarded as part of the Quran, part of the eternal sacred

decisions,

sires

knew,

of years afterwards. So who, then,

exactly,

word of God, and which not?

flood

to

himself was nonliterate and that a com-

plete final written version of the

time or even for a good

first

come about, I some sense at-

be part of the Quran, part of the sacred eternal word of God? of course, that

of

of the Prophet's, then his wife, the "car-

wondered, that these words, taching

— and

misremembered the words. The verses curse

Abu Lahab, an enemy

of firewood," an enemy, too.

rier

she called out to me,

friends.

responded.

I

closer,

she enters the scripted world of Arabic,

ing, that

of

we were

remembered them, from

I

the Quran. Just then, as

she smiled warmly, as

289

Border Passage

women

— toward,

on nonlocal women, women

seemed, the Emirates feared that

rection Iran might use local

if

move toward

for example, the imlike myself.

they did not

noncompliance with

move

this

Above

all,

in that di-

and similar

"Is-

lamic" practices as an excuse to invade the country.

The

lecture

was being delivered by one of the professors

in the

290

Ahmed

Leila

Islamic studies department, an Iraqi who, as recently divorced his wife

option

them. She, as

I

now

know, had

to

his right in Islamic

young children, even though

take custody of his

who had no

and exercised

happened

I

it

meant

law to

that his wife,

but to return to Iraq, would hardly ever see

knew, had been utterly distraught. The audience con-

mainly of men, but in the back of the hall were some young

sisted

women, two

college

was not proper

When

or three of

for us to

sit

them my

students.

anywhere except

I

sat

with them.

It

at the back.

— he was both an — one of the young women rose and

the speaker drew his lecture to a close

eloquent and a handsome

man

challenged his reading of history. She challenged

it

on two grounds.

he was giving the Sunni perspective as op-

For one thing, she

said,

posed

(Sunni and Shi'a are the two main branches of

Islam

to the Shi'a

— somewhat

vide).

like,

but also not

Consequently the very same

and vice

praise could be represented negatively, thing, he

had chosen

to focus

on women whose

wives and mothers, whereas he had leaders, great warriors.

The

the Catholic-Protestant di-

like,

women whom

left

out

he had chosen to versa. For another

virtues

were as good

women who were

lecturer's response,

whatever

it

great

was, was

unmemorable.

We

exited

— into the public world, the world where the presence

and imposition of a purely masculine order on everything foundly in evidence. The to the

women's

as Girton, desert.

women

students took the college bus back

college, which, like Girton

was located on the very

And

I

drove off

first

as

I

and

outskirts of

market

to the

and then home. The mosque,

so pro-

is

for the

same reasons

town and well

to pick

into the

up some provisions

drove past, was letting out a knot

of men.

Somewhere all

in that time

this, this history

of

I

began

to

form the idea of looking into

Muslim women, and

of sifting through the

material to understand what our history had been and what our

sit-

uation was and what future we could look to as Muslim women. And somewhere in that time I began to form the project of going to America. In

America

I

would be able

to read

and research

acquire the tools and methods of research that

freely

women

and

to

there were

A developing and using so I

me

found that in

my

settled there. All three

advance in their professions

beyond a certain point. In America, they

Even though people had

ent.

had

siblings

told

me, things were

differ-

you had the

ability

their prejudices,

and the qualifications you could move forward been carefully putting aside part of to finance

It

for

Europe (England, Switzerland, and Germany had

their bases) they simply could not

been

much

could not stay in the Gulf

I

America rather than England was the natural place now

to think of, for all three of

had

Because of the Iranian revolution,

brilliantly.

was, in any case, thinking that

longer.

291

Border Passage

my

if

And

in America.

salary so that

I

had

I

would be able

such a move.

was no easy

transition, the transition to

America and

wom-

to

en's studies. First of all, live

American feminism was not anything

had imagined. Reading I

had,

its

— whereas,

of course, the living feminism

once on these shores was anything but a affair. Militant, vital,

—

what

I

suppose, formed a notion of feminism as tranquil, lucid,

I

meditative

any or

like

thoughtful texts in the quiet of the desert,

all

encountered

tempestuous, passionate, visionary, turbulent

of these might be

more

apt. In the gatherings of feminists

at the various conferences, meetings,

and public lectures that

single-mindedly threw myself into attending exhilarating energy

I

lucid, tranquil, meditative

and

I

— there was a kind of raw,

a sense, intellectually, of freewheeling anar-

themselves caught up in some holy pu-

chy. Almost as

if

rifying fire that

was burning away the dross and obscurities from

people

now

felt

their

minds, freeing them to dream dreams and see visions and to gather themselves up and prepare to it

as

it

unmake and remake

And

all this

was tremendously exhilarating and

with exhilaration

came shock. For

I

naturally

exciting.

made

conferences of attending, and often participating els

the world, remake

had never been made before.

in,

But along

a point at these

sessions

and pan-

on Muslim women. Not that these were common. The women's

studies conferences

I

attended

when

ber one at Barnard, and another in

— rememBloomington, Indiana — focused I

first

came

in

1980

I

292

Ahmed

Leila

on white women and were overwhelmingly attended by white women. But such sessions on Muslim women as there were left primarily

me

nearly speechless and certainly in shock at the combination of

hostility

and sheer ignorance that the Muslim

cluded, almost invariably encountered.

We

panelists, myself in-

could not pursue the

way

vestigation of our heritage, traditions, religion in the

women were

and rethinking

investigating

in-

that white

Whatever aspect of

theirs.

we

our history or religion each of us had been trying to reflect on,

would be besieged, tions

at the

end of our presentations, with furious ques-

and declarations openly dismissive of Islam. People quite com-

monly did not even seem

to

know

between the patriarchal vision

that there

was some connection

be found in Islam and that in Ju-

to

daism and Christianity. Regularly we would be asked "Well, what about the veil" or

none of us had mentioned it

was completely

"What about

belligerently,

clitoridectomy?"

when

either subject for the simple reason that

irrelevant to the topics of our papers.

The

impli-

cation was that, in trying to examine and rethink our traditions rather

than dismissing them out of hand,

we were

implicitly defending what-

ever our audience considered to be indefensible.

Christian

—

—

just intrinsically, essentially,

archal in a

way

and irredeemably misogynist and

change our traditions but giving up our cultures,

and adopting

And

so the

patri-

that theirs (apparently) were not. In contrast to their

situation, our salvation entailed not arguing with

ditions

the further im-

that, whereas they white women, women, Jewish women could rethink their heritage and and traditions, we had to abandon ours because they were

and presumption was

plication

religions

And

first

and working

religions,

and

to

tra-

theirs.

thing

I

wrote after

my

arrival

and within months

of being in America was an article addressing the extraordinary barrage of hostility and ignorance with which I

moved among

were engaged

own

that

found myself besieged

as

community of women. They were women who and rethinking their

in radically rejecting, contesting,

traditions

women

this

I

and heritage and the ingrained prejudices against

formed part of that heritage but who turned on

me

a gaze

completely structured and hidebound by that heritage; in their

atti-

A

293

Border Passage

women

tudes and beliefs about Islam and

in Islam, they plainly re-

vealed their unquestioning faith in and acceptance of the prejudiced,

and often ridiculous notions that

hostile,

their heritage

had con-

its women. I had come wanting to read and Muslim women, but it was this that com-

structed about Islam and

think and write about

manded my attention as the subject that I desperately had to address. The first piece I wrote, "Western Ethnocentrism and Perceptions of the Harem,"

still

rings for

me

with the shocked and furious tones of

that initial encounter.

My

first

year in America, 1979, was also the year of the Iran

hostage

crisis,

which

felt

I

and

I

am

sure

now

that the hostility toward Islam by

myself besieged was more pronounced than usual because

of that situation. But as

I

would learn soon enough, the task of ad-

dressing racism for feminists of color in the

West

is,

and has

to be,

an ongoing and central part of the work and the thinking that we

no

ordinarily do,

And of

my

so

tiation

my

than the work of addressing male dominance.

less so

experience of American feminism was a kind of

first

and baptism by

fire

into

ini-

what has indeed been an ongoing part

thought and work ever since. Back then, though,

it

was

early in our understanding of the racist gaze the white feminist

ment turned on women of other

cultures and races.

still

move-

Audre Lorde,

at

a conference in 1976 (in a presentation much-anthologized since),

was among the

first to identify,

and speak out

against, this strand in

white feminist thought, and June Jordan, Bell Hooks, and others

fol-

lowed up with work on the subject.

my

Also making experience than a job in

might otherwise have been was the fact that

it

women's

and had applied

experience of America a more arduous

initial

studies. for

I

had come intent on working

I

took

in this field

an advertised position as a part-time lecturer

at

the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Although the pay was low,

I

felt

that a part-time job

whose scholarly productions about which

would

give

I

me

had

still

been reading out

an enormous amount

the time,

no doubt needed

I'd

was the sensible way into the

to do.

I

thought, to do

all

field,

in the desert but

to learn.

A part-time job

the extra reading that

I

294

Ahmed

Leila

Of course

found that

I

my

part-time job, as

was only technically part-time. In

fact,

so often the case,

is

preparing classes, teaching,

and attending meetings took up every moment of

my

have never worked so hard in

life

my

as in

my waking

making those years so tough. Teaching

system in a but

am

I

new country must

sure that

ticularly at that

my

I

couple of years in

first

America. Of course, too, the fact that everything was tributed to

life.

in

new to me cona new academic

always entail demanding transitions,

having joined a women's studies program, par-

moment

in the history of

women's

studies in America,

more established department,

rather than, say, taking a job in a

cre-

ated a whole set of unique hurdles and difficulties.

Women's I

studies programs in that era, including the

program that

joined, had an embattled and precarious relationship with the uni-

versity.

There was sometimes open

from faculty members

hostility

in

other departments and, occasionally, condescension and a presumption that the

women's studies

cated fanatical

faculty

women. For me,

as

must be ignorant, underedu-

someone coming from abroad who

had not been part of the American feminist movement, there was one very particular difficulty that that,

I

had not anticipated when

by working hard and reading widely,

ideas, theories, perspectives that

not quickly master a lot of

needed

I

them through

them had not

imagined

could quickly master the

I

to

be familiar with.

I

could

reading, for the simple reason that

yet found their

way

into print.

heard passionately voiced and argued around

by students were part of a

I

me

rich, vibrant, diverse,

The

ideas that

I

by faculty and also

and

internally con-

tentious cargo of debates that had been generated by an intellectually vital social

women's

movement. This was what

studies

—a

living social

I

had stepped into

movement

in joining

of quite extraordinary but

as yet mainly oral intellectual vitality, about to spill over

and become

a predominantly intellectual, academic, and theoretical force rather

had

than, as

it

ment.

was the ideas

It

in part

been

in

its

beginnings, an activist social move-

that people

and meetings and exchanges

had developed

in their encounters

in their involvement in this

and the continuing evolution of these

ideas, that

movement,

were providing the

A

295

Border Passage

foundations of women's studies.

stepped, that

I

is

to say, too, into the

stream of what was as yet a largely unwritten oral culture

movement, a culture

living culture of the feminist

to

my

There were often passionate debates, both among in the feminist

community more

was

become

quite fu-

was a history here, a common, shared

clear that there

evolution, in the course of

colleagues

widely, between, say, Radical

feminists and Marxist feminists, debates that could rious. It

oral,

no guides, no maps, no books.

as yet almost

and

— the

which there were

which particular

positions, in relation to

this or that issue,

had been progressively defined and sometimes had

become

But

polarized.

to

someone

arriving

these positions and issues were and

passion was, at

first

nothing, or very

Moreover,

they should generate such

anyway, profoundly unfathomable.

little,

in those days, that

me and make

enlighten

why

from the Arab Gulf, what there was

could read that would

the issues, debates, and history accessible.

and history that

this culture

I

And

formed nearly everything

in

women's

had not been part of

I

in-

studies, not only intellectual

is-

sues but also ordinary routines and exchanges and conversations.

was to

this culture, for instance, that

determined that

be made by consensus and not by vote.

of dress

— as

the days

strict here, in its

way, as in

when whether you shaved your

where you stood on the internal feminist gree of feminist enlightenment. In

It

all

It

decisions were

determined, too, the code

Abu Dhabi. For

those were

wore a bra signaled

legs or

battlelines and/or your de-

Abu Dhabi

about appropriate dress and the meaning of

it

had been easy

this or that style,

to ask

but here

not only were you supposed to just know, but supposedly there was

no dress code and people here ventured the question in actly

how

women's studies culture culture to

me

to

which

my

I

in

I

was emphatically

early innocent days

And

they wished.

— as

so there were

which

I

told

when

— simply dressed

many ways

in

I

ex-

which the

found myself was an unknown

had no key and maps. But,

culture, after a period of intense immersion,

my

as with

any other

confusion naturally

resolved into comprehension.

Another

difficulty arising

from

my

being in women's studies was

296 one

my

shared with

I

studies as yet

had no

colleagues.

And

An

no

set syllabi,

scholarship to draw on.

essentially

no

texts,

women

the novels and stories by

would soon be the

new

that

field,

women's

solid, extensive

so even devising courses

them together from photocopies was

putting

that

Ahmed

Leila

a

and

demanding

body of

syllabi

task.

and

Even

were already being used and

staples of feminist courses in literature

were

not yet in readily accessible form or were just being published and

movement and

reissued, in large part thanks to the feminist

mand

And

the kind of material that a few

to be available

on feminist theory, on women

created by women's studies.

years later

would begin

women

of color in America, on available. In short,

women's

in Islam,

studies

was

invented, created, and developed as a a

I,

newcomer, were

and so on, was still

My

field.

also not yet

in the process of

being

colleagues as well as

groping our way forward in this as yet un-

still

and indeed uninvented

studied, uncharted,

the de-

without textbooks, without established

territory, for the

most part

without a body of

syllabi,

scholarship raising the questions that needed to be raised, setting

them

out, analyzing

We And

are now, of course, in quite another place. I

am now

women

becomes in

at the

my

For thereafter stories. It

of

them, complicating them.

end point of the

life

becomes

story

I

set out to tell here.

part of other stories,

American

part of the story of feminism in America, the story

America, the story of people of color in America, the

story of Arabs in America, the story of

Muslims

in

America, and part

of the story of America itself and of American lives in a world of dissolving boundaries

and vanishing borders.

There are more Muslims today copalians. I

We did

in

America,

it is

said,

than Epis-

not have, on these shores, an auspicious beginning.

think of Bilalia Fula, buried here, after his years of slavery, with his

prayer rug and his Quran. to this

country in shackles

his autobiography in

America.

I

— one

I

think of Al-Hajj

when he was

of the

first

Omar

ibn Said, brought

thirty-seven, as

he wrote

Muslim autobiographies

in

written

think of the countless others brought here in the same

A way,

who

Border Passage

297

held on in their minds as long as they could to the world

they were from, passing on to children and grandchildren, however they might, their vanishing memories.

But

this

beginning.

now

is

another time.

We

are

on the point of a new

EPILOGUE

miRO cy^OMENTS

WAS AT

I

the Hilton, where

me

Cairo, had put

pick

me

up. Hala,

stay with her for

Zamalek

up.

now

my

I

my

host, the

was waiting

American University of

for

my

a distinguished economist,

was taking me

When

remaining days in Cairo, in the apartment in

we

she arrived

sat out for a while

Zamalek just opposite. Beyond

now almost

extended

on the balcony over

modern

city

it,

on the

to the pyramids.

and Old Cairo

— was

Nile's

and of the island of

western bank, the city

Most of Cairo behind

us.

— the heart of

But standing

corner of the balcony and looking back, one could see just a the old city and, past the Citadel, with

its

it,

the purple outline of the Mu'attam

famous pencil-thin minarets against the

set sky, a sky perceptibly all

those

many

more polluted now than when

I

hills

I

arriving,

I

of

and sun-

lived here

years ago.

had a population of perhaps a million was now home million.)

in a

little

lilac

Cairo's traffic problems were enormous. (A city that in

had thought

I

might make

—

to

my

day

to nearly ten

abandoned any thought of nostalgic expeditions

that, before

Ain Shams, for instance,

even though house and garden were gone, or Zatoun, still

to

that she shared with her mother.

drinks, enjoying the spectacular views of the Nile

the

old friend Hala to

a school. Given Cairo's traffic, just getting there

still

there and

would have been

— 300

Ahmed

Leila

a major undertaking. Having plunged at once into the business of

preparing, revising, and delivering lectures,

was now

it all

I

in fact

had

— which was probably

And, of course,

it

was quite

all

time

little

comparing how things had been and how

for nostalgia or for

different

to the good.

me

different. Particularly striking to

was the prevalence among women of some form of Islamic dress but

of

all

it

now modern

Islamic dress. There were no milayyas to be

seen in the streets, no simple way

like that

by which you could im-

As I knew, the veil no longer meant The women wearing it were quite likely to be educated professional women, working women, upwardly mobile women. The veil did not connote for them, as it had for my grandmother, women's seclusion, invisibility, confinement to the home. mediately

what

class difference.

tell

had

it

my

in

Quite the contrary

day.

—

meant

it

exactly the opposite:

it

was affirmation

of their right to work and to be in the public world pursuing profes-

and working

sional

explain this,

let

Why?

lives.

would take

It

many

there

was

to the vitality

— change

that

was

city,

now

with

pre-Nasser era.

It

back not

this city

many forms

many histories, And this sense

of belief.

to

me,

intellectual

and a sense of an almost

palpable vibrancy and ferment: this place that was (as millennia) a meeting place of so

high-

to Nasser's days but

was a sense of the enormous

and cultural richness of

— and

its

and overpasses and various other features new

a feel to Cairo that harked

thought, so

visually very

because people were dressed so differently

other ones just in the appearance of the

rise buildings

to

in Egypt.

Despite this enormous change

the

two

alone the rest of the tremendous cultural transfor-

mation going on

striking simply

a chapter or

so

it

has been for

many ways

of

of the complexity

and mental aliveness of the place was there despite the growing presence of fundamentalism and fundamentalism's deadly intent

to curtail

freedom of thought. Everywhere I

I

went

I

experienced this vibrancy. Almost everyone

met seemed passionately engaged

plicated that

moment

went

into

of history

making

it

and

and

in trying to

understand

this

com-

in analyzing all the different strands

all its

conceivable outcomes.

And almost

A

Border Passage

301

everyone was utterly committed to standing against the tide of fun-

damentalism and

and preserving

to fighting for

right to think

and speak

have in other places. life

on the

line for

Galal Amin,

who

had an edge that

freely

could

It

your

mean being

beliefs.

At

freedom

to ideas it

to speak,

and

didn't necessarily

willing literally to put your

one of the journalists

least

to the

to laugh,

ened by fundamentalists simply

Of

had had

his life repeatedly threat-

for his being forthrightly critical of

course, though, the

community

I

had tapped

through the American University included some of Cairo's most

and distinguished

met,

I

along with his intellectual acuity and courage also

had a tremendous capacity

their positions.

their

commitment

to write, to think. Here, moreover,

into

lively

intellectuals. Still, the exhilarating intellectual vi-

brancy of almost every party and gathering (almost every time,

come away

feeling the

way one does

conference) was so remarkable that weren't perhaps

some unintended

thought and speech threatened

—

I'd

after a particularly exhilarating

began

I

to

wonder whether there

benefits to having one's

in the

way

freedom of

that hanging, as they say,

it not only focused the mind made one prize and understand all the more acutely how important, how vital, indeed, to one's life and well-being it is to question

wonderfully focuses the mind. Perhaps

but

and

reflect

on and openly share one's

Hala pointed out

to

me, as we

ideas.

sat in the fading light,

where Em-

baba was. Embaba was reputedly the "hotbed" of Islamic fundamentalism.

Municipal services to the

Rubbish was

left to pile

up and

district

were appallingly poor.

rot in the streets for

months, water

pipes broke and were not repaired for weeks. Police regularly con-

ducted antifundamentalist raids there, arresting people nearly indiscriminately

—a

man might

be arrested and

left

to languish in jail

simply because he had a beard. These kinds of conditions and gov-

ernment behavior would drive almost any population most anybody

to turn violent.

Hala asked. What did Clearly, nothing

She pointed out Mahfouz, the

it

What was

crazy, cause al-

the government thinking of?

expect?

was simple. also the houseboat

novelist, held his

on the

river

where Naguib

weekly open gatherings. The funda-

302

Ahmed

Leila

mentalists

use the word "fundamentalist" in the way that

(I

monly used, although there to its

are

known beaten path

enormous academic debates raging to kill

that he took daily

as

him. Mahfouz had a well-

and always

at exactly the

time, walking from his house to the cafe he frequented

was advised

change

after this threat to

was not now,

he

in his eighties,

was making

and stabbed

He

his writ-

And then one morning,

punctual way along his route, he was attacked

his

— but fortunately survived.

impossible not to be affected by these incidents and threats,

It's

nationally and internationally. There

background who

is

engaged

anything touching on Islam awful element that

The

is

probably no writer of Muslim

in seriously thinking

who

and writing about

not perennially conscious of this

is

now makes up

the world in which

we

live.

next morning at Hala's, \ini Shaarawi called to say that she

would be accompanying

mothers grave to her,

and back. He

going to change the habits of a

said,

for the sake of these fanatical people.

life

same

his routine but refused.

and the routines whose rhythms were the rhythms of

lifetime

as he

com-

appropriateness) had announced that they considered his work

blasphemous and that they meant

ing

it is

a friend the following day to visit the friends

at the Arafa, Cairo's City of the

she said, that

I

might

like to

Dead.

It

had occurred

go with them, for afterward they

me to \isit my parents' graves. is Huda Shaarawi's great-granddaughter. She had come

could take Nini

hear

my

nected. In no time I

we were

to visit

Arafa

is

knew

their

my

way around.

affinity

—

in

with

It

and

seemed

to feel quite

would spontaneously be Nini

offer. It

parents' graves but

a vast, mazelike place

was beginning

my

talking like old friends.

immediately accepted her

mind

to

and when we chatted afterward we instantly con-

lectures,

I

I

had been very much on my

had been wondering how. The

needed

go with people

to

who

a nice coincidence that, just as

I

concerned about finding someone, Nini

offer herself.

It

seemed

right, too, that

whose great-grandmother's words

my own mother — who would

mother's and father's graves.

I

it

had sensed

be accompanying

me

should a

deep

to visit

A Hala went

Border Passage

off to work,

dropping

her friends to do an interview.

I'd

me

303

found myself embarked on the

project of doing video interviews with Cairo tally,

and certainly without having

video camera with

me

house of one of

off at the

originally

women

almost acciden-

planned

to Cairo, intending to interview

the mothers of friends so as to record generation. But once

I

how

life

I'd

brought a

my

aunts and

it.

had been

began interviewing people

for that older

found myself

I

completely riveted by the process: by the unexpectedly intimate

mosphere that comes into being

as people reflect

on

at-

their lives in

response to the questions of a stranger and, even more, by the revelations of the profoundly different Cairo lives

my

decided to give the time

and

left

I

I

had interviewed

in various walks of

retaries,

I

was learning

of.

So

I

remaining days in Cairo to these interviews. By

life:

women

at all sorts of social levels

writers, artists, intellectuals, maids, sec-

accountants, doctors

— and one businesswoman, a self-made

millionaire.

That morning

A

was interviewing Nadia, who worked

I

reserved, thoughtful-looking

ing

room where, the previous

interview.

woman, she

sat

on the sofa

day, her mistress

had

as a maid. in the liv-

also sat for

Nadia wore a handsome blue dress donned specially

an

for the

occasion and a mandil, a decorative scarf tied tightly round the head that

is

conventional dress for maids. She began responding to

my

questions self-consciously but gradually lost her awkwardness as she

became absorbed father

dren.

in thinking

about and looking back

had died when she was

They

left their

home

six,

at

her

life.

Her

leaving her mother with five chil-

to live in a

room on

the roof of a relative's

house. Her mother went to work as a maid, during the day locking the children up in the infant,

was

left in

room on

the roof for safety.

The youngest, an

Nadia's care. Later Nadia went to school for a

couple of years, then at ten to work as a

live-in

maid

in a relative's

house. She had worked ever since. At twenty she married, but

her husband took a second wife, she divorced. She was

young children

whom

left

when

with two

she alone supported from then on, raising them

with the help of her mother. Her daughter was just completing her schooling; she was very smart and was going to be a teacher.

Her

son,

— 304

Ahmed

Leila

who was

also smart but not academically inclined,

had dropped out

of school and was an apprentice mechanic. She didn't live in where

she worked, because of her children. The family had a two-room

apartment, which they shared with her mother, in the suburb of Boula' Da'rour, about an hour by bus from where she worked. She loved to read, she told me.

And

only at that point

— not when she'd

been talking of the hardships she'd overcome, but now, only now did she cry, tears quietly running

We

made our way

down her

face.

across Cairo in Nini's car, Nini at the wheel,

along the long straight avenue that

is

the final stretch of the route to

the Arafa. Directly ahead of us, dusty and barren, were the Mu'attam hills.

Below them were the

roofs

and domes and occasional minarets that make up the Arafa, the

City of the Dead.

It

and dust-colored low

beige, ochre,

in fact, a vast city

is,

different districts, the region of the

unto

itself,

with

own

its

mausoleums of the Mamluk

alty

standing out distinctively against the horizon because of

sity

of minarets and

grander, browner,

its

flat

more ancient

roy-

den-

its

buildings.

People stood on the roadside holding up flowers for

sale,

and

along some stretches there were just baskets of flowers, mostly of marigolds, no one attending them.

had only been

I

to the Arafa

once as a young

companied my school friend Nawal I

had found

it

a city, a bizarre

utterly

gruesome and

and macabre

mazelike as you

city:

wound your way

unlike a city in that

of

In fact,

all,

poor,

those

I'd

for the burial of her father, terrifying.

The

ac-

and

place looked like

there were streets and avenues and

farther

and farther

in.

But

it

was

the houses were unnaturally low, because

all

A

parody of a

the Arafa housed a huge population of the

living. First

everybody here, of course, was dead and underground. city.

when

narrower and narrower and more and more

alleys that got

alleys,

girl,

who tended

who depended

to the graves lived there;

for their livelihood

then there were the

on the customary

charities at

a death (shureik, a special kind of plaited, sweetish bread, dates, silver coins).

Today the Arafa

is

also

where the new homeless of Cairo, often

recent migrants from the countryside,

live.

Cairo's City of the

Dead

A houses,

it is

Some

Border Passage

said, a million or

parts of

it

two (nobody

305

really

knows) of the

living.

were more populous than others. The alleyways

we made our way toward the plot belonging to the family of Nini's friend, Amna, were quiet and almost deserted. But as soon as we pulled up, people somehow materialized as if from

into

which we turned

as

nowhere and immediately formed a knot around the

car, invoking

God's mercy on our dead and reaching out their hands for alms.

Once

inside the enclosure,

was quiet again. In one corner

all

mosque and beside it a beautiful, delicateThe couple who lived in the room over the portals and

stood a small open-sided leaved tree.

tended to the plot brought in the flowers that white gladioli and white roses

— placing them

Amna had

brought

on the white

in vases

marble markers with gold lettering (giving the names and dates of the dead) that were in the center of the mosque.

On

We

the back wall were inscribed several verses from the Quran.

took our places on a bench within and listened as three men,

sitting cross-legged

on mats on the

floor,

chanted

in turn

from the

Quran. I

caught the words "nur c ala nur"

light

upon

the verse from which they came, a favorite verse

dered

if

Amna

and

I

do not permit

Sufis,

I

won-

she, like Nini,

if

me

of undergoing

when she

initiates to reveal

lived in France.

openly that they

took this to be the reason underlying Nini's ambiguous

The Shaarawis had

and Nini had

Recognizing

and had hinted that she had been

Sufi path during a period

Sufi orders

are Sufis

words.

on the

Nini had told

in Sufism.

a transforming religious experience

Some

among

had herself selected the passages and

had a particular interest

initiated

light.

at

lost their

wealth in the Nasser revolution

one time been homeless and alone.

I

do not know

the exact circumstances. For a stretch of time she had survived by

sleeping at night in the different

mosques of Cairo. Then the family

of one of her friends had taken her in and, soon after, she had re-

ceived a scholarship and been able to go on to college. After the

visit at

Amna's mother's tomb we began

through the Arafa's narrow

more

exactly

my

alleys,

looking for

to drive slowly

my own

family's (and

mother's family's) burial plot and enclosure.

We

306

Leila

Ahmed

stopped

many

give the

most cursory, vague directions through

we had no success and in the end had to give up. It was disappointing but we had not been enormously hopeful to begin with, for I had not managed to get much information other than the name of the general district. Calling my aunts for directions I'd discovered that my aunt Nazli did not know how to get there herself, having always relied on other people to take her. And Aunt Aisha, who did know, was in great pain from a backache and unable not only to accompany us but even to do much more than territory.

I

times to inquire, but

my

even called

did not, but

this very

got from her, instead, a long account of

I

family had at

first

complicated

paternal cousin, just in case she knew. She

how my father's own

insisted that he be buried in Alexandria in his

family's burial plot

and then had relented because of Mother's pro-

testations that they should be buried together.

I

had not known

until

then that people were supposed to be buried back with their natal

(And perhaps they are not; perhaps

families.

family pride.)

My

this

was

just a matter of

parents could not, in any case, have been buried

side by side because, as

I

understand

it,

in the labyrinth of under-

ground corridors and chambers with which burial plots are

honeycombed, men are buried

corridor and burial

women

in

chambers along one

chambers along the

in

in the Arafa

other.

side of a

These practices of

chambers and so on are those only of Egyptians, perhaps only

of Egyptians buried in the Arafa. Supposedly they go back to Pharaonic times and have nothing to do with Islam, although those practicing

This

them

is

when

A

believe that they are thoroughly Islamic.

how

it

I finish

always

is

a poem.

great silence overcomes me,

and

I

wonder why

I

ever thought

to use language.

Jalaluddin Rumi, the poet whose words these are and

whom

I

have quoted a couple of times in the preceding pages, lived in Konya,

A in Anatolia,

and died

Border Passage

in 1273.

At his death

307 all

of Konya mourned.

Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus, as well as Muslims, walked in his procession, weeping.

Rumi's

cat,

who had meowed

piteously through his last illness,

refused to eat after his death and died a

week

later.

Rumi's daughter

buried her at his side. Symbol, she said, of Rumi's deep connection

with

all

beings.

1

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