Although I lived in 3 houses while in cairo, my memories of the house on road 17 are the clearest. The first house we lived in was Villa 26 road 12. Not far from us lived Mr Muneer "the Bee man" and the old League of Nations building with flags still out front was somewhere down the road. I lived next to a girl named pamela and across from a boy named Tareq. Tareq had a sister, Magda who was a few years older than we were. She was beautiful, quiet and reserved. Tareq's mother loved roses and the front of her small place was filled with a multitude of roses. Tareq and I went on adventures thru hedges to find guava trees and other fruit trees. Our villa on road 12 had 3 Bashmallah trees. If there was ever a fruit that came out of the garden of Eden it was the bashmallah (Loquat in english) small, sweet it was a delight to eat. Pam who lived next door had older parents who we didnt see much of, and she had a nanny who had severe burn marks on her arms and legs. Pam was one of the oil families that was there. They had all thier funiture and belongings shipped to them, had commissary rights so they had american food. Kirk used to climb the bashmalla tree near her side of the house and pretend to be a monster in the tree to frighten her. It is in this house that I first heard the sounds of machine guns and bombing. Indeed shortly after moving there, alot of the american families left and we were one of a few handful of families that remained in Egypt.
Storys I will write, like Toad Fort, 14 piasters for a goat and Lost in the Khan al Khalili were from this time period. That first winter, it rained in Cairo. A rare phenomenon, and it collapsed the roof of our house and so we moved temporarily to a house in Digla, right accross from our School's new location, Cairo American College K-12. We were there a year and then we moved to the Villa on Road 17 that would end up being my family home til I was 23. Villa 52 road 17 was a white house with yellow shutters and its where Sylvia lived 2 doors down. It is here, in this house that I know best, that my stories are usually set.
In Egypt, My father was embarrassed to find out, American families had servants and so the storys are also include Salem, our Gardener, Omm Nadia the washer woman who later was upgraded to Housemaid, and Ateya the cook.
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What is interesting to note, is that my father immediately wanted to get rid of the servant and not have them. The University Liason officer told my father....... you want to tell Ateya, a father of 10 children that you do not want him...........for the cost of 30 dollars a month?......... he said it in such a way he made my father very ashamed.....so we kept Ateya and Salim ( we also for a short time had a gardener named Sayeed (means happy) and a Boab (gate guard) named 'am Abdu (uncle abdu) and of course Umm Nadia (mother of Nadia) her real name was Lawahiz. (she was also mother of Sultana and Mohammed).
ReplyDeleteThe servants all had daughters my age that I sometimes got to play with. Ateya's daughter was Karamella, Salim's Daughter was Badraya and Umm Nadia's daughter was Sultana.
When we were temporarily moved to the house in Digla.....it was near the military camp behind our school. There were alot of military men loitering about trying to get a look and the American girls in school. Our house was assigned a Boab ( a person who guards the house). His name was Aam Abdu. (Uncle Abdu). he patrolled the house and grounds and the entire block to protect our house and other american houses (they all had Boabs too). All my life I felt safe because of the system of Boabs in all areas we lived in. When walking home on dark streets at night you learned to find out where the Boabs were to be able to call for help. Most cases it was never needed except to give you a feeling of safety. There was one night, I was attacked but someone and knocked into a ditch. The next thing I remember was Am Abdu patting my face asking me if I was alright. Although at that time he was no longer my Boab, he escorted me back to my house. the culprit was of course being held (and beaten with bamboo stick) by the other boabs. The man was beaten all the way down to the police station. In most Islamic countries it is a crime against her dignity to even touch the end of a womans scarf much less knock her into a ditch.
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