Francis: the hero betrayed by his memory
Surrendering to chance can be risky, or more than risky, immature. But chance and immaturity have always taken me on a trip to amazing places, and this time the trip has been, With all the letters, a trip to the past.
I write from a house built by a British military man in 1936, in the heart of Cairo. At times I write, at times I stop and look around me, at times I hold my breath (the dust, more than emotion, plays an important role in the latter). The windows are huge and through them all the life of the Egyptian capital enters. There is a water seller who serves small crystal glasses filled with liquorice water to the sellers of watermelons and these, turn, They sell fruit to neighbors who take down a basket tied to a rope, so as not to have to go down to the street to buy. Dogs take a nap next to the garbage, and cats conquer windowsills.
Chance and immaturity have always taken me on a trip to amazing places
There is a little cafe right below my house, run by a lady with a girl's face who cooks like angels. I live intoxicated by the aroma of lamb meat, the taameya, fresh bread, the very strong coffee to wake up the brain when all the blood works in the stomach.
Every day, when I come home full of heat and dust, the honey and sesame sweets seduce me from the stalls that mount in the portal. I always buy three or four and savor them as I climb the uneven steps of the building. The neighbors greet me under the burqa, sitting on the landing,smiling with his eyes. Children mix with cats, and sometimes you don't know what is a boy and what is a cat.
The neighbors greet me under the burqa, sitting on the landing,smiling with his eyes
Then home: the trip to a past that speaks of a thousand pasts and stuns me. Drawers full of old photos (some date from the year 1900). Coptic books written in monasteries in the middle of the desert in the year 1826. A skull, that all the doctors who have lived here, have used in their studies. A controversial book, very controversial, belonging to military intelligence in the era of Nasser, containing documents about the Sinai war.
As you see; a beautiful puzzle that I have to ride against the clock. The only person who can tell me the story of the books, of the skull, from the war, Of the photos… etc., you have 95 years, a white mustache that makes you look like a wise mouse, a smile that lights up the world a thousand times and an early Alzheimer's that sometimes makes him forget that he is a hero, and turns him into a little boy who pees on himself. Is called Francis, but I call him Guedo, what does grandfather mean in arabic.
I spend hours sitting showing him photos, asking you questions and taking notes and more notes
I spend hours sitting showing him photos, asking you questions and taking notes and more notes. I ask him to translate documents for me. When he gets tired and goes to sleep, I lock myself up to dust off more books and more photos, to select everything, to caress treasures. And I pray that the disease doesn't take away the memories before it can save them.
My intention is to be able to share the story with you in a few months or a year, perhaps more, but on the way to show you treasures that I find. Here are a few:
-Photo 1: This was the last photograph taken of Assad, grandfather of our Guedo. Today he told me that he died the victim of a curse in Luxor. At that time most of the small pharaonic ruins were not controlled, and anyone could go and open the graves or just browse. Asad, according to Guedo, picked up the canotic jar containing the eyes of a mummy. He died a week after being portrayed, because photography after all is an eye; he stole some eyes and one eye captured his life.
Guedo's grandfather died a victim of the curse of a mummy in Luxor
-Photo 2: I have saved this skull, used by all the family doctors in the first anatomy classes, because it gives me anguish at night. Guedo has proudly told me that he paid a sum that in euros would be about 2 the 3, so they dug up a guy, they will clean the skeleton, and send it home so your daughter could study anatomy. I asked him if he knows the guy's name and he told me that as long as he has no name it is only bones, that he could not have the head of a man whose name he knows. It wouldn't be polite.
-Photo 3: Guedo, when I was a baby, in his father's arms and accompanied by his two aunts. The father, like him when he grew up, he was a high rank in the army. The whole family was very religious, coptic, And every Sunday before or after going to mass they took their pictures to send their friends the photos with their best clothes..
I spend hours trying to figure out, with my little girl arab, these beautiful words
-Photo 4: Coptic Book of 1926. It is exciting to be able to caress a book like this. I spend hours trying to figure out, with my little girl arab, these beautiful words. When I understand something it is exciting. When do not, I just pronounce slowly, feeling very lucky.
-Photo 5: I took this photo from the living room window, fascinated by the history of the neighborhood where I live. The street was known as "The street of books", because all the shops were bookstores. A few ago 20 years they began to change the books for toilets, because they were more profitable. And i think, with regret, that is true: people shit more than they read, pardon me. Although, as the wise Aida says, one of the people for whom I give thanks to life: "Toilets can be a good place to read".
Hopefully, and as it says Kurt Vonnegut "if chance allows", I can move on, and hopefully you accompany me on the way.
If you want to know more about Africa Karibuni projects: http://www.karibuniafrica.org/
Comments (2)
Lydia
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Wonderful text, Mary.
You never cease to amaze me.
I hope that Guedo continues to tell you things so that you can continue sharing them with us.. Thanks.
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MDV
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Thanks again for your wonderful ability to count.. Follow!
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