Anatomy of a love affair
Its spontaneous sprouting, how it bloomed and prospered, began to wilt, and finally decayed.
We had a good life in Alex, almost universally believed to be the most salubrious, most cultured city of Egypt. We had a fantastic villa in the quartier select of the coastal city, with a gorgeous view of the Med from our balcony. Is there a better beach in the world than Cleopatra Beach? Dad was in carpets, a trade which in view of the tens of thousands of tourists coming here every year, was very lucrative. Our friends were not restricted to the Jewish community. We had an active social life, not only did we enjoy listening to the oud or watching belly-dancing, with my Muslim friends, we even learnt to play the instrument, and taught ourselves those lascivious dances. Not that our dads approved, but with controlling parents, one learnt how to do things under the radar.
Our family wasn’t even religious. We went to the Eliahu Hanavi synagogue on Saturday more as a social event than a religious one. At home we spoke Arabic, but were taught French and English. Rich Egyptians like us loved to show off our French culture. A la recherche du temps perdu! We had many friends from the expatriate French community. Where else would daddy have sent me but to the lycée français d’Alexandrie? Yddish, which none of us spoke properly was only used to talk to great aunts and grannies.
Obviously, at the end of the second world war, we were shaken by what we heard about Auschwitz and the holocaust, but Aliyah was not on the horizon as far as the Gabay family was concerned, we were Egyptians, with deep roots in the land of the pharaohs. Israel was for the Ashkenazis. Then the six-day war happened, when the atmosphere changed overnight. Our Arab friends never said anything untoward, but the spontaneity between us was gone, although nothing changed between my best friend Azadeh and me. She was fragile and fragrant, and I never dared tell her everything she meant to me, afraid that the intensity might have scared her away. Whatever happens, there will always be a corner in my heart where memories of her will live on forever. After so many years, I still dream of us two walking hand in hand on Cleopatra beach one sunset, my throat aching with an undefined longing, my pounding heart keeping the words I had rehearsed so often in the past trapped.
I had been married off to Sol when Israel inflicted a calamitous defeat on Sadat, who we had all welcomed on the scene after Gamal Abdel Nasser, who we did not trust. It was not a great love match. We just did it to please our fathers. Sol had been a skirt chaser, with Jewish, Muslims, Christians girls falling for his oily charm, as well as foreign tourists who came to Alex in droves, searching for sun, warmth, and Arab virility. To be honest I was never all that interested in romance or the opposite sex. Was it Azadeh, or had it been just a passing phase?
I think Sol’s reason for wanting to leave Egypt for Israel was more to do with his fear that a jealous Arab husband might carry out a serious threat made to him.
We had been hearing enticing things about the newly created Israel, about the dynamism of this new nation and the prodigious progress they had made in all spheres of life. They had made the desert bloom, had initiated new techniques for desalinating sea-water, had developed technology rivalling the best in the western world. Nobody doubted that it was only a matter of time before they made their own A-bomb. Their Arab neighbours were no longer considered a threat, as the six-day-war had shown. Sol had decided that we would go, and I had no say in the matter, but I had no idea how we would be making a living, seeing he never finished his accountancy course. On the other hand, the Jewish Agency had assured us that there was always an opening somewhere in the country.
If you look at an Atlas, you would be forgiven for thinking that the easiest way of going from Alexandria to Haifa would be to put on your swimming suit and dive in the sea at Mamoura and head north-east, but it was a little bit more complicated. We took a ferry to Nicosia, stayed overnight in Cyprus, and caught the Nicosia-Haifa ferry next morning.
It was nothing like what I had imagined. I thought Jews the world over would be like us, fun-loving, cheerful and welcoming, dying to get to know who you were and to become your friend. The immigration officers treated us like we had committed some undefined offence. Then, shock horror, we, who had lived in millionaire’s row in Kafr Abdu, were taken to Bat Yam, then considered the arsehole of the promised land, and dumped into a hovel there by the Jewish Agency. A place which stank of urine, overflowing with kids in rags, mostly Arabs or poor Jews from Libya or Yemen. The noise of screaming kids and arguing neighbours was only tempered by loud cacophonous Umm Kulthum singing Enta Omri from three different locations. This sounded surreal, but brought me some unexpected comfort. Sol glared at me, as if it was all my fault. The job the Agency forced on him was not much better than that of a glorified messenger in an office in the Eli Cohen housing estate, in an area known for drugs, prostitution and gangs. Do this to me, he said, I who fucked the American consul’s sister! In this decrepit city, there were no American consul’s sisters, which means that Sol had to content himself with Arab prostitutes. They suggested that they would find me “something useful”, but that was obviously a low priority, as it would take three years before anyone remembered that promise. Or was it a threat?
I seriously contemplated suicide, but was so depressed I did not have the energy to carry it out.
Then one morning, I met Amara in the street market in Balfour Street. She was speaking Arabic to an Arabic fruit merchant, and I smiled at her. Hal anta arbiyat? she asked me, and we immediately started nattering in Arabic.
‘Amara,’ she said, ‘Amara Bani Khalid.’
‘Amira,’ I responded, but she misunderstood.
‘No, not Amira, Amara.’ I found this very funny, and we laughed immeasurably.
‘I am Amira Gabay. Or if you prefer, Amira Mendes-Avril, since I married Solomon.’ It is remarkable how this trivial little coincidence cemented what was to become our lasting friendship.
Even in Alexandria, two women sitting in a cafe hardly attracted attention, but in Bat Yam people stared. Surprisingly she lived in the same sprawling building as me, but at the opposite end, and on the sixth floor. For the first time since setting foot on the ferry to Nicosia, I felt my jaws relaxing.
I think you and I are gonna be friends for life, Amira, she said, reading my mind.
She was a Negev Arab, or Bedouin, and her parents and siblings were still nomads. However, at an early age, an uncle_ someone from her tribe anyway, in your tribe every adult is an uncle_ took her to live with them in Be’ersheba so she could go to school there. She had hoped to go to teacher training, but dad said she should marry. Like her, Noureddine was brought up by a sedentary uncle, also in Be’ersheba, although the two of them never met until the day of their betrothal. He had done very well at school, had gone to college of technology and had ended up a mechanical engineer. He had not found a job in Israel, and worked in Qatar, visiting her one long week-end every month. I gathered that she was not devastated by this arrangement.
I was surprised and pleased that like me, she did not wish to dwell on superficialities, ready to say things one does not usually reveal minutes into a new friendship. She was fond of her Noureddine, he seemed nice and treated her well, but they were not Layla and Majnun. I was surprised to hear myself telling her that my Sol was a waste of space. She stared at me open-mouthed. Can’t be that bad? she hoped. Worse than I’m saying, I said. I think that was what sealed our friendship. She was going to take me under her wings.
The coffee here is awful, I said, but she demurred. This was what coffee had always tasted to her, she protested, nothing wrong with it. Suddenly she told me that Noureddine’s parents who lived in a village north of Be’ersheba had received a government notice that as the village was an illegal one, they would be relocated to a siyagh, a permitted area. I was surprised that she seemed to think that this was only a minor problem. I would be livid, I told her, this fucking government had no right to treat people like cattle. Yes, she agreed, but Bedouins often erected huts and houses without permission, it’s understandable, there were laws. But the fucking land was theirs, yours, to begin with, no? In our culture, she explained, land did not belong to anybody, it belonged to everybody. I hope they refuse to budge, I said. Amara had no idea, but was not too concerned. In her experience, the Israeli government had harsh laws, but was always fair, we shall see.
From that day we began meeting every day. Often I’d go to hers, where we’d play records of Farid Al Atrash and her sister Asmahan, or play the oud. She had a lovely one Noureddine had brought from Doha. I am a little bit ashamed of introducing her to haram wines, and when we had imbibed, we’d put on fancy skirts and do belly dancing. Two or three times a week we’d go together to the market, often stopping in a tea house, drinking mint tea and quaffing baclavas. Genteel women were well-advised to steer clear of the mean streets of Bat Yam, but I suppose we both enjoyed the adrenaline flow the hint of danger generated in us. Besides, we had no choice, for who would do our shopping for us? We told each other everything, there was no no-go area. I readily told her details of my catastrophic marriage.
‘My husband never sleeps with me,’ I moaned, ‘he even prefers prostitutes.’ Amara was shocked.
‘Is he blind? Why would anybody pay good money to whores when he is married to the most beautiful woman in Bat Yam?’ To be honest, I thought that I was the only person who nurtured this extravagant belief about my appearance. It was therefore very pleasing to hear the opinion voiced by someone else. I opened wide my eyes to express my disbelief.
‘I find myself thinking of your beauty before closing my eyes every night,’ she muttered looking away. I knew then that she felt the same way as I did. Azadeh never gave me that chance. I put my hand on hers, and she blushed.
I told her how unwelcome I’d felt since arriving here, how disappointed I was to find the locals so cold and reserved.
‘They didn’t spray you with DDT in Haifa, did they?’
‘No,’ I explained, ‘that practice was discredited and stopped in the early sixties. As did the x-rays which killed so many people or gave them cancer.’
Amara said that she had been shocked when she first heard about this, as she had always found officialdom courteous and helpful to Bedouins. I was surprised to hear that, but also pleased. I would have thought that as an Arab she wouldn’t have any great love for my new country, but she implied that there was a lot to admire and hardly ever had anything negative to say about my new country. I did not share her blind acceptance of everything the regime did, but her lack of resentment gave me some satisfaction.
Having had a life of privilege in Egypt, we never spent time arguing about the rights and wrongs of the creation of Israel. We never questioned the lack of democracy of Arab countries, the dissolute lives of oil sheikhs and their spoilt princes, but when my new countrywomen boasted about how everything in Israel was hunky dory, this got my goat. There were so many things I could see which were unacceptable, and my view did not change with time.
After six months in the country, I arrived at a surprising conclusion: The white Jews, the Ashkenazis, had it made for them, but for the rest, it was very much like the Blacks of South Africa.
Was I ever in love with Amara? I doubt it. I know that I loved Azadeh whole-heartedly, although we never even kissed. With Amara it was predominantly physical. We were both lonely, and found comfort in each other’s arms. We were truly comfortable with each other, enjoyed each other’s company, but the sex was almost incidental. We did it, and never talked about it. We said things like I love you so much. It was the ‘so much’ which jarred. I could not imagine telling her that I could not live without her. Something which I was always telling Azadeh, albeit only in my head of course.
Then Sol discovered God. He met Rabbi Eliezir at the tennis club, and for some reason they became friends. There must be something wrong with that rabbi, I thought. Sol made me go to the synagogue with him one Saturday, and in no time at all, we began socialising. At first, becoming friends with Hanna felt like betraying Amara, but obviously one can have more than one friends. Eliezir must have had a good influence on Sol, as I noticed a sudden change in his behaviour towards me. To my surprise, one day he went down on his knees and asked for my forgiveness, and promised that he was turning over a new leaf. Henceforth, he would never shout at me, never look at another woman as long as he lived, and he was going to complete his diploma in accountancy.
In bed he had always been a selfish lover, but now he was bending over backwards to please me. And he did. For the first time in my life I began taking pleasure in het sex.
However, nothing was going to dampen my sessions with Amara. She was not jealous and was pleased for me that my marriage was working. She intimated that should I contemplate phasing out our illicit encounters, she would learn to live with it, as long as we stayed friends. Are you kidding? I said, I am a firm believer in having a cake and eating it too. I was pleased that our friendship did not suffer from this new situation.
Hanna was a great apologist for the regime of Golda Meir, and I think that the fact that we had a woman prime minister was what made me modify my jaundiced view of the country. Hanna was a convinced zionist and made it her duty to indoctrinate me. I knew what she was doing, but I began seeing things differently. She never stopped pointing out that Israel was 0.16% of the rest of the Arab world, and asked why did everybody talk of our stealing other people’s land. She made me wonder if the world wasn’t indeed antisemitic. According to her, we didn’t invade and conquer the Negev, it was dry and arid, the Arabs were doing nothing to it, we developed irrigation techniques and made it bloom.
When I mentioned this to Amara, she demurred at first, but conceded that it was true.
‘Hanna said that Bedouins misused the resources. You used up land, and when there was nothing left, you upped and moved.’
‘Not as simple as you say, there’s such a thing as nomadic life, as Bedouin traditions, but up to a point she’s right.’
‘But they gave Noureddine’s parents a new place, you said.’
‘I don’t know the details, but yes.’ I was surprised she seemed to accept this as a fact of life.
Shortly after, Noureddine flew in from Qatar, and together they went to Bershe’eba to visit his parents. I never saw Amara so angry as when they came back from the Negev.
After the initial notice to relocate, to which they paid no attention, the taps dried up, and electricity was cut off. On top of that the municipality stopped collecting garbage. They still would not move. Finally the bulldozers came and flattened their huts. Amara and Noureddine had no idea they were living in a tent, still refusing to move, when they visited. Although they arranged for a human rights lawyer to sort the matter out, Amara was convinced that the case was lost.
‘Why the fuck do they want more military bases?’ she cried out in despair.
‘Well my dear, you and I know that we’ve got Arab enemies surrounding us, what else can we do?’ I might have been quoting Hanna. I was shocked at her reaction.
‘It’s Hanna, isn’t it? She’s brainwashed you, she turned you into a far-right zionist.’
‘Hanna has nothing to do with this,’ I protested, although I knew that she was right.
‘You used to say that Israel defeated the Arab armies in six days, they don’t need to use Nazi methods. They’re gonna send us to the gas chambers next.’ That was a scandalous thing to say.
‘Shut the fuck up, you Arab bitch.’
We made up after a while, but never would we rediscover our peerless friendship. Never again would we even embrace and hug.
And I was to discover a short while later, that Sol and Hanna had been fucking like rabbits.
