Hurriyya answered the door and shepherded us through in a cloud of ahlen-wa-sahlens. She looked to be a very fashionable forty-something. She wore Western (although still modest) clothing, and blond dye muted her silvering hair. We all shook hands and said “ho-arrr-yoo” and sat down in the drawing room (as I later discovered, only prolonged acquaintances merit access to the inner living room). A curious, curly-haired toddler puttered around us, and any attention earned the giver a beatific grin. Wish we could bargain with him. Hurriyya cooed and basked in our expressions of admiration. Suddenly it felt like we were family. How could the actual reason for our visit be something so unpleasant? I was soon to learn that this is the Egyptian way: the more pleasant it is for all involved, the easier it is to get your way, and, more often than not, the more pleased you are with the results. Hurriyya called her mother and sat down.
If we had found the daughter’s reception warm, Madam Afaf’s was ebullient. She descended upon us with kisses and a stream of burbling affection the bore no clear resemblance to the harsh voice I had heard over the phone line. “Oohhhhhh, massa’ al-khayr, habibiti, izayyik, oohhhh helwa al-banaat, etc.,” was the extent of what I got out of her crooning. As is often the case when I find myself in the eye of such a storm of effusion, I was struck dumb. I smiled with what I hoped was appreciative warmth but what I suspected (if I looked anything like Sarah) was apprehensive amusement. I wondered with some anxiety when the phone version of Madam Afaf might reappear. For now, she showed no sign of remembering why we had come at all; she sank with much ado into an armchair and began to tell us of her troubles. She had returned that very night from America, where two of her precious children had chosen to live. Between the extravagant gestures, eyes closed for effect and the bits of her monologue that I understood, it seemed that she found it all quite overwhelming and terrible that they had met with such success; even worse that she had had the occasion to visit them. “Oh! Ba‘iiiid minni! So far away!” I assured her that leaving my family the week before had been equally excruciating, which earned me coos of heartfelt empathy, “Aywa, habibti...” After all, I figured, it works both ways; surely this matriarch will have to humanize me if I refer to myself as a lost little girl. I sensed that her appetite for lost little girls to mother may well be nigh on insatiable. However, as I surveyed the artwork and antiques in her apartment, I gathered that her appetite for money could not lag far behind. Formidably sprayed and dyed hair framed her painted, emotive face, shimmery house clothes her slight physique. I awaited her next move and worked on my smile.
Sure enough, the wily Madam Afaf made a smooth transition: with such an extensive (and growing, as the toddler continually reminded us) network of relatives depending on her alone, surely we understood how crucial the income of renting this apartment must be to her! Should we pay less than 3,000, why, how was she to buy all of the nice things for it that we had asked? Of course, she wanted to buy them – she loved that apartment, helwa helwa that apartment, but how could she do so in the midst of her host of expenses and responsibilities if she offered the apartment for less? I tried to go for the shared empathy approach once more, expressing my appreciation for how hard it must be for her since I too struggled with finances as a lowly student. Hurriyya came to the rescue and switched the negotiations into English. She agreed quite readily to my demands concerning furniture and repairs, but no number besides 3,000 left her lips. Damn, these girls are good, I thought, realizing that by this time they probably actually believed in the lies they were telling us. I tried not to jump on the bandwagon, but . . . was it really worth it? Clearly I was no match for these fortune-seekers. As the negotiations speeded toward their crafted close, I threw out a last attempt: certainly I understood their difficulties and appreciated everything they had agreed to do. But unfortunately, I had promised our third roommate that the rent was less than 1,000 each . . . so I didn’t know if she would commit to living with us anymore. And it’s so hard to find such a good roommate! If only we could have the place for just 2,800 – but you say no. I abandoned the warm smile for an expression of regret so abject that I hoped it would appear that I had already resigned myself to losing the apartment.
This was, of course, a whopper. Sarah and I had no third roommate, much less one making demands, but Hurriyya went for it. Her brow furrowed, she translated my fictitious tale of woe for her mother. To my surprise and delight, the immovable Madam Asaf gave a gruff but understanding nod. Only for us, she emphasized. Because we were “nass kwoyyiss” (good people) and she only wanted to rent her beautiful apartment to “nass kwoyyiss.” We had won. Real smiles broke out on our faces and niceties flowed with renewed feeling. I complimented Hurriyya on her beautiful son, only to find that the toddler was in fact her grandson. I was quite honestly surprised and said so. This breath of sincerity refreshed me and delighted Hurriyya, who ran off trilling to her daughter to show herself. A mousy, bespectacled girl appeared from the back rooms of the apartment, looking not a day over nineteen. Damn. I congratulated her on her adorable offspring. She nodded and smiled and slouched and disappeared, leaving her firstborn to entertain his elders. Meanwhile, a cousin appeared at the door and Madam Afaf vanished into the inner living room to welcome her. As their inspired burbling trickled in, Hurriyya ironed out the details with us and brought us some Sprite. We clinked our glasses with contained glee, unsure if we were already transgressing the accepted limits of hospitality. We hadn’t meant to; nobody had told us to get up, so we had remained seated. In any case, the ladies handled their mannerless bumblers of evening guests with grace. If anything, Nabil seemed to stick out more than us; he slumped in his chair and spoke nary a word throughout the proceedings. I supposed his presence among the ladies at this hour had to be uncommon, although perhaps in his line of work he was used to it. Either way, he looked as uncomfortable as I would feel amidst a group of rednecks discussing their sexual exploits. Madam Afaf must pay him a lot.
Upon our departure (we had stayed for a good hour) Madam Afaf proclaimed us both “gamiiiiila” (beautiful) and congratulated us. We agreed to meet the next day to look everything over. I proceeded to spend the night awake concocting disastrous scenarios, but needn’t have worried. Within twenty-four hours, Sarah, our new roommate (a punchy and perky Georgetown PhD student I met at CASA orientation that morning), and I witnessed an overhaul refurnishing of the apartment, presided over by Madam Afaf herself. She fluttered about, dressed all in green and carrying a very fashionable handbag, touching things and clucking with approval or disapproval (at least this much detail I could surmise). Jen, to my relief and Madam Afaf’s delight, had lived in Egypt before and spoke much more dialect than I. Sarah had been working on a lease agreement with her lawyer boyfriend and hovered nearby with her laptop, ready to fight it out. But Madam Afaf showed no signs of sitting. She orchestrated the entrance and arrangement of two armchairs and two couches, one of which had to be disassembled to fit through our doorway. All the while she chattered along, every once in awhile asking Jen or me our opinion on her furniture selections. After a few such exchanges, I began to worry that I might be nearing the end of my “kwoyyiss” and “helwa” quota for the day. However, since saying either guaranteed me expressions of such utter agreement from my interlocutor, the temptation to repeat them overcame me every time. After all, the furniture was just as “kwoyyiss” and “helwa” each time she asked. This song and dance carried us on into the evening. As the sun sank lower and Sarah’s eyes glazed over, we began to wonder if some cardinal move needed to be made in order to initiate the business part of this encounter. Even when we got the little juggernaut to the table, she wouldn’t stay put. She would make some comment about how much she had done, shughl katir, and mention that without the money she couldn’t do much more. Well, let us give you the money! We all wanted to scream, but it took another half hour or so beyond that to get her to read through and sign the receipts we had made. I handed over 6,500 LE in a mixture of 100 and 50 pound notes, feeling very much like I was purchasing narcotics rather than three months in a Cairene apartment full of old lady furniture. Madam Afaf did not count the money, but she still looked like a pretty high roller stuffing the envelope (which just moments before had contained Jen’s CASA stipend) into her purse. What an old mixer, I thought fondly at her hunched green back. I met her honeyed smile with my own one last time before we slumped into the elevator to get some (fucking) water.
Mission accomplished? Hardly. We hadn’t been able to take out the full amount due to withdrawal limits, especially since one of us started this voyage with a pick-pocketing debacle, and Madam Afaf would not be handing over the key until she had another wad of bills in her crispy, manicured hand. Delivering said wad ended up including another visit chez Afaf. This time she answered the door herself, wearing a kind of iridescent nightie. She enveloped each of us in turn in her delicate, gnarled embrace, and much saying of izayyik and al-humdu-lillah ensued. Kwoyyiss. This deeper piece of business gained us entry deeper into Afaf’s home: she ushered us into the inner drawing room and produced a box of fig pastries. The decoration in the room did not seem to follow any particular theme: it included everything from Persian and Indian prints to a designer Barbie, as well as a photo gallery of Afaf relatives alive and dead. Madam quite nearly collapsed onto the couch next to me. How hot it was [in her air conditioned apartment], and she with so much work to do [in her nightie]. We agreed with the varying levels of emphasis that our commands of dialect would allow. I sensed that it would be awhile before the atmosphere was suited to handing the swooning Afaf 5,000 L.E. After a frame-by-frame presentation of the photo gallery (responses: “Ahh, helwa” [so beautiful] and “Allah yarhamhu” [R.I.P.]), the passing around of a dish of chocolates (by a stiff Nabil), and the drafting of new receipts (me copying Sarah’s lawyerische), it seemed like we were getting somewhere. Then the doorbell rang, and a cousin (or something), materialized and established herself on the couch opposite, gushing over what it seemed could only have been quite a troublesome day. She and Afaf crooned an elegant duo back and forth, the “owwies” and “allaaaahs” and “mishes” rising and falling in smooth waves. I wanted to play. I wanted to take part in this conversation, consisting of repetitious musical reassurances at over ninety percent. I wanted not to feel like an unresponsive pack of limbs with a strained smile on top. But for now, I figured I would try to take in other details. Like the fact that with the appearance of the cousin, Nabil had retired to the outer sitting room. I guess that in principle, he shouldn’t be here at all, except for his involvement in this piece of business.
At last some change in current alerted the garrulous cousin that an important item of business was at hand and could not continue until she departed. But hey, wouldn’t that have been patently obvious? What I can gather is this: yes, of course the cousin realized once she saw us that Madam Afaf was engaged in trying to seal a whitey-size deal. However, since custom does not allow one to say, “I’m busy,” or even ‘My peerless cousin, you are the light of my eyes but if God wills it I will have 5,000 pounds if you swing back by in fifteen minuetes.” So instead, the unannounced and ill-timed visitor must be shown at least a modicum of hospitality, but probably more. Because here’s the catch: while the visitor recognizes the inconvenience of her visit, the concept “inconvenience” must not exist for the visited. Thus an orchestrated exchange follows, in which the “always convenient” visitor receives the accepted amount of attention and offers of snacks, until the host manages to slip in an indirect suggestion to terminate the visit. I think, anyway; maybe it’s the guest’s responsibility to find some graceful way to excuse herself without making it sound like she feels shooed away. Whoever set the ball rolling, we hid sighs of relief when the two women stood up, still jabbering and gesturing. The cousin gave us her regards (“Nice doooooo metyou) and passed into the entryway with Madam Afaf, where the final stages of their engagement-breaking took place. I wondered if she was seizing this opportunity to say, these silly American banaat are about to pay 600 more for the apartment than the tenants last year. Gameel mish kida (nice, huh)? In general, I wondered how much liberty these folks took speaking about us in front of us, knowing that particularly Jen might understand them. Nabil moved back into the inner sitting room. Yo. We whispered to each other in English, feeling a bit rude but not knowing whether striking up a conversation with Nabil would even be considered acceptable. Still, he looked so bored and awkward perched on his chair there by the display Barbie that I wished I could say something to ease the waiting.
Afaf shimmered back in after dispensing with the cousin, and reinitiated our business with a long apology over the cousin’s appearance. Ma‘leysh, mish mushkil, etc. (no prob) were repeated a sufficient amount of times to convince her that we were not thoroughly disgusted with her hospitality. Which must of course be the ultimate failing for such a cultured woman-of-the-world as Madam Afaf. Indeed, she did on many occasions reveal the extent of her multicultural prowess: she pegged Sarah as a German from the German accent she applies to her Arabic, and displayed her limited but graceful command of French upon request (I thereby discovered that Madam Afaf “adorrrrrres Parrrriiiiiis”). Our knowledge of other places and languages seemed to raise us in her esteem, and she took frequent occasions to murmur to her self, “Helwa, al-banaat . . .” Well, niceties aside, these banaat helwaat were about to fork over a pretty helwa chunk of change. I counted it in front of her this time (okay, I just wanted to thumb through those bills again) and we signed two identical contracts. I give Madam Afaf props for not cackling fiendishly when I gave her the money. I sure would have wanted to, but I suppose old mixers of her caliber would hardly bat an eye. Truth is, everyone can relax once the money has been transferred from hand to hand. Madam Afaf even went so far as to assure us that we needn’t worry ourselves over all of these receipts, because she wasn’t like some of these other landlords lurking out there, she would be like a mother because we were “nass kwoyyiss.” We assured her that of course, we trusted her, but had been ordered by Sarah’s lawyer husband to make everything official. This warmed the heart of old Afaf, who asked Sarah where this husband was. Tee hee, he’s in New York unaware that the girl he met on a bus is now announcing him as her husband all throughout a foreign land. Sarah took this opportunity to inform Madam Afaf of his imminent visit. “Al-humdu lilleeeeh,” the heartfelt response. Sarah glows a whole bunch and I can see that announcing herself as a demure woman married to an absent Jeff suits her, perhaps even more than pursuing an elusive Jeff through the infuriating labyrinth of New York schedules and egos. Maybe I had better start up a husband fable myself if e’er I aim to entertain a gentleman caller, although our landlady seems to belong to a more liberal sector of society.
We thank Madam Afaf what we hope is an acceptable number of times (in the double digits) and rise to begin the final stages of our disengagement. Nabil got paid for his pains, which I imagined made the stiff evening worth it, and she salaamaed and mabrooked us out the door. Whew. We all hopped in a cab with Nabil, with whom I still had not figured out how to behave in public. We had set off for Madam’s without him originally, not having understood that he was to accompany us. When he discovered that we had departed, he chased us down, calling out for us to stop. Unfortunately, we have all by now learned to tune out such requests from the street loiterers, and we walked on without turning our heads. By the time he caught us, he had attracted all kinds of other attention, and another man bobbed alongside our now united band, badgering me with questions. Nabil did nothing to dissuade him, and I didn’t know whether to be rude to him or ignore him, or whether the situation required some polite, dismissive statement beyond my cultural and linguistic proficiency. He finally wore out and went away. There sure are a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands around here. I’ve begun to switch the chicken with the egg and suppose that perhaps the hassling is just one among the many results of having too many loiterers about. If jobless Minnesotan men lined the curbs of St. Cloud, the ladies would get comments, you bet, and probably more offensive ones. So who are all these guys, and what are they doing out here all day? They don’t appear to come from any specific age group or social class; you pretty much get the full gamut, although the cocktail changes depending on the neighborhood and time of day. You have your teenage boys with hands stuffed in the pockets of tight jeans, challenging you with impudent eyes and suggestive comments. You have the little old men in kufas squatting by various wares or seated on stools, either in groups or alone, who view your passing with a brow-furrowed mixture of incomprehension and disapproval. You have the bored shopkeepers ranging in age from twenties to fifties lolling in front of their empty shops, usually grouped together, inviting you to buy what they’re selling. Then you add in the loiterers-on-wheels, the parade of passenger-less taxi drivers who honk and slow down one by one, shouting “taxiii!” in hopes of gaining access to your unwitting Western generosity. Now, how could you assemble such a sausage fest and not expect the women to get a little bit of trouble, especially ones deemed by their skin color to be loose and lascivious? I excuse them, every one. Besides, now at last I have a place to BE: our beautiful apartment, on the seventh floor of 40 Mesaha Street. Huge windows that slide open at waist height face west toward the Nile and downtown Cairo, with palm-tree-adorned sporting grounds directly beneath. The common space contains our own personal jungle of small palms, ferns and vines disseminated amidst the brand new furniture. Sarah has noted on various occasions that Egyptians tend to over-furnish. Over-furnished or no, plenty of space remains: gleaming hardwood floors provide ample sliding space (see Dave Eggers’ A.H.W.O.S.G. for diagrams). The older furniture in the bedrooms (best described by Sarah as “Pretty Pretty Princess” themed) kind of cracks us up, but adds all the character Calvin’s dad could ask for. Most of the doorknobs, except for a few that have been noticeably replaced, are porcelain with miniature paintings of a small boy and girl in various bucolic settings.
Trilling and bustling in the glow of feminine industry, we three ladies spend the evening spreading ourselves and our stuff out in the new space. We discover by the by that the former residents of the apartment left a considerable amount of their belongings behind. I suppose I am getting my come-uppance for bequeathing my entire estate at 270 Vanderbilt to my friend Erik out of pure laziness (and presence of shared literary interests), although most of the “presents” are in Jen and Sarah’s rooms. It just so happens that the former inhabitant of Sarah’s room was a young American journalist taken hostage in Iraq this past winter. While we reckon that she had to leave in a hurry and we understand, we are wondering what to do with all of her jewelry, clothing, and um, confidential documents. Perhaps everyone who warned me before coming to the Middle East to “not to get abducted” should not catch wind that for the moment, I seem to be following directly in the footsteps of an abductee. Spectre of kidnapped journalists aside, it filled us all with inordinate glee to have a Home under our feet and over our heads. We scrubbed out our dusty drawers with love and pretended not to notice when the smoggy air drafting in made them dusty again right away. We put up posters of Arabic vocabulary that we found in the closet. We told stories and chugged three three-liter bottles of water. We became a family (Sarah: stay-at-home Daddy who tapes down the peeling linoleum; Me: Sugar-Momma who funds the project and checks the expiration dates on the weird stuff left in our cupboard; Jen: super-ambitious daughter who handles the locals for her poor, immigrant parents). We live in Cairo.
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