Dina Hendawi is an educator, originally from New York, but currently living in Germany with her husband, two children, and a Samoyed puppy. She was the recipient of the Madalyn Lamont Award in Creative Writing and has published in Confluence: The Journal of the AGLSP, The Gravity of the Thing, The Bangalore Review, Dream Noir Magazine, and CC&D Magazine. She completed a BA in English literature from New York University, an MLA in liberal arts from Johns Hopkins University, and an MA in global politics from the American University of Cairo. Dina is currently conducting doctoral research on the representation of Muslim identity in Western literature at the University of York.
A Home Left Behind
Dina Hendawi, University of York
My parents shaped my observations of Egypt in my youth. There was a spectacular sense of cacophony and spirit to the way we entered the country—by way of Cairo International Airport. As a child, my line of sight was on the absurdity of it all, the determined thrust of so many heavily covered bodies converging then springing apart without notice. Families were moving with many children in tow; the men separated to hail for help with a fistful of pounds. Baggage handlers captured bags and tossed them like fishmongers on a wharf. Mothers were shrieking at lowly airport workers, and the children were rampaging the space with Godzilla-like sounds of play. There were incomprehensible voices asserted through loudspeakers and raucous laughter and cheer everywhere else.
It was a lot to bear and yet so exciting to witness. This was not the fast-paced disarray of New York; it was the clumsy endearing embrace of Cairo. My parents often kept their hands on my shoulders, my back, well-versed in the caution one must learn from living in America. However, they also knew that although the airport was chaotic, I would be safe amongst Egyptians because there was the shared sentiment to always protect the young.
Once we found our baggage, bringing more for the family we will see than for ourselves, we charted (as best we could) through the anarchy of arrivals and burst through the exit doors. In the way an artist exacts the technique of chiaroscuro in her painting, enhancing the beauty of light with its foil of darkness, the outside was a bright blessed beginning of my other life in Cairo. Waiting for us were the uncles and aunts and cousins, jumping and hollering with such joy and urgency. My parents let go of me, trusting me to follow, and clutched their brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, all together laughing, beaming, weeping. I had learned from early on to only show affection for my parents. My extended family did not pause to gauge my level of comfort, but rather squeezed me into their fleshy embrace, kissing me without warrant. I was stuck, not pleased, but somehow curious to know these people. They loved my parents with such abandon that I knew I must soon love them too.
My parents did not have much say once the family took over. My mother was in this car, my father in the other, and I would have to be sandwiched between loud fidgety cousins in still another one. I was in my uncle’s brick-colored Fiat hatchback. The weathered exterior with its rusted frame, a scattering of dents, and one cracked headlight was disconcerting to see—and the worn black interior was a crucible of misery in Cairene summer.
My uncle turned on the ignition and slammed the door, waiting outside. My cousins wedged me into the middle seat. I could smell the fumes enveloping the car while also noticing an old bedraggled man with a pail drifting towards my uncle. The old man mumbled some words and extended his rag towards the windshield. My uncle dismissed him with a flick of the hand.
My uncle then entered the car and promptly slapped my lap, startling me, and said: “Inti ayza AC?”
My cousins hopped in place, jerking the car without pause and chanted: “AC! AC!”
I nodded and said thank you, “shukran,” though he did not actually wait for my response. My uncle turned the knob and a blast of hot air filtered through the dusty vents. This was worse. My cousins and uncle peered at me, annoyingly.
“Lissa sukhn?”
Was I still hot? Could they not feel the unbearable heat themselves? I gave no audible response. I was holding my breath. The air was stifling.
He proceeded to turn the black knob to the next setting, more hot air churned in the car.
I was sweating relentlessly. It did not help that my cousins’ bodies were pressed against mine. I leaned over to turn down one of the windows. The handle was broken. A boy from the street appeared at the window holding a bundle of jasmine string necklaces. One of my cousins shooed him away. Why does my cousin think he can mistreat that boy? I wondered.
“Lissa?” my uncle asked.
He turned the AC all the way up and we were all in it then. My head felt unsteady with the unyielding heat, the suffocating air; the sun projected its stark predatorial light through the windows.
My uncle took one last look at me before saying: “Kifaya. IftaH shebak.”
My cousins erupted into laughter and then heeded our uncle’s command. He turned the AC dial off and my cousins pried the windows down with their own hands.
I did not at first get the joke. I then realized that I was the joke. My uncle, with one hand on the wheel, leaned back and patted my lap.
“You still hot?” he said with a mischievous smile.
I then knew the AC was always broken. Of course it was. I was the American twit expecting my dose of privilege—and they were the Egyptians who knew it.
* * *
My childhood memory of Egypt was a counterpoint to my life in America. I was restless in New York City. I had to be hard and vigilant. I relied on my intuition, enduring some unprovoked street exchanges. I leveled myself against the weight of living alone in a metropolis filled with corporate vipers and edgy misfits. Cairo was always on the horizon. I remembered the sandy-rose romance of my childhood summers—playing cards until midnight, drifting and splashing in the Red Sea, stopping at street vendors for pulpy mango juice, hearing my grandmother, Titto, beckon me from her terrace, buying Jelly Cola from the shop on the corner, and at last feeling, finally, the same as everyone else.
I had to live in Egypt, however, to know that my child-like view of life was a mere perception, a design to render its reality unseen.
I took a leave of absence from my teaching position in New York City and left to live indefinitely in Egypt. I fortuitously found myself seated across from the director of an American school in Cairo and was offered a job on the spot. I was naive and discovered later that I was handed a local contract. I came from Egyptian stock, so I would have to experience the disadvantages of a low-paying salary and zero benefits like the rest of the Egyptian staff. The international teachers, however, would be given every perk—even those who did not have an accredited teacher’s license.
Many of the American arrivals were first-year teachers. There were others who worked in organizations like the Peace Corps, as well as a few former retirees. There was a clearly delineated line between the two staff. The Egyptian teachers had to stand in the same queue as the foreign teachers on pay day. Some Americans walked out the windowless room counting Egyptian pounds in thickly padded envelopes. They were not always discreet about this, nor did they seem to care to be so. It was difficult for senior members of the Egyptian staff, the well-respected teachers who had dedicated decades to their job and cared for large families at home, to see a young American in her early twenties be given more than quadruple their own salary. They would have to make ends meet for the rest of their lives, whereas the foreigners would accumulate their tax-free fortunes and return to their countries to buy a home and retire early.
It became known amongst Egyptian staff to steer clear of Fatma on payday. Fatma was part of the cleaning crew. She appeared to look frail and brittle in her early sixties, but she was actually quite able. She seemed wiry, serving tea to all staff with a pertinent uneasy smile. She had a large family, most of them working as cleaners and bus drivers. They lived on the outskirts of Cairo in mere ramshackle spaces without doors and indoor plumbing.
Fatma was well aware of the envelopes stowed in purses, and I was guided to keep my bag with me at all times. Fatma served tea to the teachers while they waited in the queue. The young American staff often removed the glass from her tray with a swift “shukran” and then returned to their discussions in English. The older Americans, however, would take the time to chat with her in their gathered Arabic. Fatma often smiled and nodded but did not respond. She did, however, pay attention to the thick envelopes leaving the small office.
* * *
To grow up in New York means to often tell it like it is. My father knew I was a product of this dogged city and on many occasions told me to “fix my face.”
There was this colleague, Kimberly, to whom I often wished to say: “Fix your face.”
She could not be bothered with Cairo’s wretched poor. The streets were full of beggars. Children in filthy ragged gallabayas and unwashed bodies approached the foreigners for money. Kimberly often stood out with her fair complexion, defiant blue eyes, and a pierced nose. She looked with contempt at the helplessness of entire families living haphazardly on sidewalks. When these children spotted her and gathered in herds to block her path, all hands outstretched, and chanting with piteous eyes: “wannaby…please…wannaby,” her response was to look right through them, asserting herself through the throng. She cast piercing expressions of scorn upon the mothers who watched from the margins. These mothers in the meantime hoped their children might succeed in getting some change for bread—for at least the day.
“These homeless people always harass me, these taxi drivers always cheat me, these Egyptian men always go after me!” Kimberly ranted.
Some of her American peers concurred, matching her expressions of disgust with their own. There were some others, however, who were embarrassed, knowing her outward appeals of narcissism would misrepresent them all. These were the Americans who shared coffee with their Egyptian colleagues and visited their homes.
“…it is just because I am white!”
There was Egyptian staff who listened too. Some lowered their heads, hearing the disdain for their country as filtered through self-importance. Others, however, left the room, recognizing that some spaces would always be occupied by Ugly Americans.
I was furious and have since regretted my approach to her, but at the time it felt necessary to behave as I did. It was not just about her melodrama and desperation to be heard—it was her degrading presence. She had not suspected me to speak, seeing as how I may have looked Egyptian, but I was without question an American.
“Do you know that the government no longer subsidizes bread?”
“No,” she said, not anticipating my point.
“Do you know that these pestering children cannot read?”
“I am not surprised,” she said, lifting her brows.
“Do you know that when they see you, they actually resent you?”
She was silent.
“They cannot explain why it is. The history of this place is beyond them. But they do know with certainty that they dislike you.”
She is waiting for my point. Cautious eyes in the room watch.
“You see—what they cannot remember, but know in their souls, is that you represent the ones who dispossessed their ancestors from their land. You represent the ones who forced them to leave, to accept menial jobs in the city. And when those jobs disappeared, and so did their education, and so did their healthcare, and so did their shelter and food and dignity, they were forced to hold their hands out and ask you—the ones they resent so much but cannot articulate why—for money.”
Kimberly appeared unsure of how to proceed.
“I don’t mean to insult you. I just wanted to point out the facts.”
Flustered, she blurted: “Oh really? And what do you think you represent to them?”
I did not even pause to think of a witty return. I knew my honest answer.
“I’m one of many daughters who left them behind in the dust.”
* * *
I reexamined my childhood memories after living in Cairo. The poverty was there before, but I did not see it. I could not know nor comprehend the concept of class as a child, but it was quite apparent to me as an adult that my family shielded me from what they perceived was the disgrace of poverty. This was not their Egypt; therefore, they would shape it the way they saw it.
The Egyptians who struggled, however, were always there in the crevices of my memory. It was the disheveled boy, younger than I, who delivered bread from the bakery. The older head-covered woman with arthritic hands who came to clean my grandfather’s home. It was the girl who was turned into an indentured servant by her family and stayed with my aunt’s neighbor. She was nearly the same age as the neighbor’s children and yet not allowed to play with them. It was the teenage boy who delivered dry cleaning by bike and cried at my aunt’s door, confessing he had lost her blouse and taking a beating later from his father. It was the doorman and his family of six living on the ground floor in a space not adequate for even one. It was the streets, filled with people and children, lost, vulnerable, and trafficked. I saw them and did not see them. I knew it but also did not understand it.
* * *
The puppetmaster often draws his strings, lifting an arm, turning a leg, convincing those who watch his puppet that it is indeed real, autonomous, narrating its own story to a fair conclusion. It is when the puppetmaster presents himself on stage, bowing before an audience who applauds for his sheer mastery in wielding his lowly puppet, that his presence is a stark awakening of power. The puppetmaster dominates the puppet and the puppet merely exists for the puppetmaster.
The British entered Egyptian consciousness well before its occupation. It snaked its way into Egypt’s being through industry and innovation, through ideas and modernity. The British knew that Egypt believed itself to be a rising global partner, a country geared towards progress and development. They were not brash in rejecting this self-belief, they did not balk at the sheer audacity of Egyptians believing themselves equals with Europeans; rather, they used it to eventually sever Egyptian society into its disparate parts. Egypt was not prepared for the disassociation from what she was to what she would become. Occupation is not just a physical ordeal—it is one that thwarts the spirit.
The British did not at once impose stringent authoritarian measures but instead ruled indirectly, shifting through political spaces so that the people believed they were handed privilege when they were actually dealt some disparaging hands of policy. What the British offered in one hand—constructions of transport systems and irrigation projects—they took away with the other—the exportation of raw materials and the limitation of educational opportunities. The Egyptian landed class saw its relations with the British as a new future of prosperity while the working peasantry found themselves dispossessed, unable to pay the exorbitant taxes. The professional classes blazed into a future rife with opportunity and wealth, while the lower classes were stripped of every chance, turned into migrants living on the margins of urban life, seeking out the only possible employment left: domestic work.
Independence was a mirage and Egypt began its dance between coercion and consent. Movements of anticolonialism bolstered the way for Abdul Gamal Nasser and his nationalistic rhetoric. He made promises and then took some away. He was hailed a legend for standing up to the British and then in the haze of emancipation jailed Egyptians who defied his leadership. The British may have left but they positioned structural constraints within Egypt’s economy. And despite Nasser’s call to reject foreign capital, the ruling class sorely needed the British to venture into more than just agriculture.
Anwar Sadat opened Egypt to the global market. He made Egyptian businessmen wealthier; he channeled capital away from the public sphere and into the private one. Reform programs were no longer about social services, about lifting the poor, but quite plainly about subsidizing the rich. Thus the gap grew wider and the notion of emancipation was a tragic idea in the wind.
* * *
Kimberly was quite lax about her belongings and did not realize her money was missing until the end of the day. She shouted with the enormity of her ego.
“It was here in my bag! Someone took it!”
The school supervisors and director were notified and while Kimberly raged through staff rooms wielding her voice like a foghorn: “I have been robbed!” many assumed silence. Most of the Egyptian staff expressed distress for Kimberly but also quietly knew that it must have been Fatma who stole her money. If they spoke up and reported Fatma, her lot would be much worse. She would be on the streets, her children and grandchildren would suffer, they would indeed become beggars. But before all that, Fatma would be humiliated by the supervisors, the director, and eventually the authorities. They would berate her like a child, curse her, threaten her for creating disharmony amongst the international staff. The Egyptian teachers saw themselves on the cusp of poverty and knew the fate of the streets should belong to no one. They also knew that Kimberly would be taken care of by the school—perhaps reimbursed fully. There was no question that if the same occurred to their own wallets that they would not be addressed as victims by their bosses; rather, they would be admonished for not knowing better.
The Egyptian teachers confessed only to each other that they found it amusing that of all the teachers, Fatma selected to steal from Kimberly. Was this an act of retribution? Kimberly never interacted with Fatma—if anything, she paid her no mind. The teachers wondered whether Fatma was much more astute than they thought. Fatma stole from Kimberly because she felt Kimberly deserved it. She stole from her because it would at last be Fatma’s own kind of metaphorical emancipation from an existence in which she had no say.
* * *
I was unusually lethargic, experiencing onset heat stroke while waiting for my number to be called at the Egyptian driving authority. I was nudged gently by the dada, the office cleaning woman. I then awoke to a gathering of concerned people. They all seemed like grandmothers and uncles and cousins although they really were just strangers.
The dada looked gently into my eyes, laying a hand on my forehead.
“Agblik haga? Shay?”
She offered me some tea. She extended a hand to help me sit up. Some others checked my number with the front desk to see if I was missed. I nearly cried.
“Inti kwayis…inti kwayis,” the dada lulled beside me, “you are okay, you are okay.” She took my hand between hers and waited for my color to return.
“Merci. Shukran. Thank you,” I said, not quite regaining hold of myself.
“Khaleek,” she patted my arm. She told me to wait and I did. I left my hand in hers, growing emotional.
“Ismik ey?”
She wanted to know my name.
“Dina.”
“Ahlan wa Sahlan ya Dina. Welcome.”