Skip to main content
Read page text
page 114
EZZEDINE CHOUKRI FISHERE full. The one thing that nagged away at Rami was his sense of isolation. He could never reveal what he felt to anyone and, when he did try to convey this sense of isolation to Maria, it ended in a quarrel. He turned to Sasha – older and smarter than his younger daughter Marta – and tried to explain what he meant, but words failed him. He, a translator, couldn’t find the words in English to express exactly what he meant. This made him even gloomier and he was overcome by the distinct sense that this was just what isolation was: trying to speak to your own daughter in a language not your own, knowing you would never be understood in your own tongue. He fell silent and moved to another subject. Sasha, however, was going through that phase when young girls try to act the adult and listen in on their parents’ grown-up conversations. She wanted to break out of being a typical teenager, only talking about herself and ignoring everyone else, so she pursued it with him and, under persistent prompting, he began to talk. He started by telling her that his loneliness arose from his having had to rely entirely on himself in life. She retorted that this was how it was for everyone in America. He heard what she said all right but this wasn’t the only world he knew. There was another world, one he could still remember: “A world of family and friends, who help you when times are tough.You know they’re always there and they stand by you always, whenever you need them – emotionally, materially, whatever.” He told her many stories about his family in Egypt, whom he had visited as a child on holiday. He talked about the relatives, friends and neighbours with whom he had built real relationships and to whom he would return every year, finding everything as together and reassuring as ever, as if he had left only the day before. Sasha replied that people always exaggerate the allure of their past lives and he shook his head in sorrowful refutation. He told her that he had not made real friends in America – somewhere he’d lived most of his life – not in the way he had made them in Egypt, where he had only gone once a year when school was out. Some might attribute it to everybody’s lack of free time but the truth was that that was the way of life itself in America, full stop – that was the problem. He asked her if she could just drop in on her friends without phoning or scheduling beforehand and explained how absurd that would seem in Egypt.There, a friend was someone who knew they could drop in on you anytime. He kept talking and she listened, interrupting now and again with questions.The more she asked him, the more open he became with her, until he acknowledged that he sensed his separation even when talking to his wife and daughters in a language not his own. He knew they could never really share an appreciation of Egyptian movies starring Shadia, or Souad 112 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES
page 115
2012 INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTION Hosni, or Magda. They couldn’t truly listen to Abdel Halim Haafez together. He knew he had to translate everything when he spoke, as if he were still at work – a translator by night as well as by day, having to translate not just words but whole ideas. He had to explain what he meant every time he spoke of the things he loved or hated or when he told them about things that had happened in Egypt or were happening now. Isolation was to be a man in one place while those who loved you were in another. It was a divide he had to span whenever he spoke. Rami had not planned on telling his daughter all this and did not even know for sure if it was what he really felt. But when she asked her questions, he replied, and the confidence and warmth he sensed in their dialogue allowed him to open up and let it all out. As Rami was telling his clever daughter all this, he had no idea it would set off a chain of reactions that would lead to the utter destruction of his way of life. Rami’s downfall was not, in fact, a sudden plummet but a gradual slide through a sequence of events which could easily have been avoided. In fact, some of these events seemed disconnected and random at the time, but that is how these things work sometimes. Not all our choices follow inevitably on from what comes before. Sometimes we face a fork in the road and choose to veer one way and not the other, and that, in turn, places a new dilemma before us, and so it goes on. A year later, we find ourselves in a place we’d never dreamt of coming to. Sometimes we can reverse our path but most times we cannot do this, so we just carry on. Other times we fix on one path, knowing what a heavy sacrifice it will demand of us. Friends may try to turn us back, but we already know the price we have chosen to pay. It is not a price we had to pay, not a matter of fate, but it is one we pay to remain true to ourselves, whether it ends in triumph, destruction or who knows what.Then, twenty years later, we look back and can’t remember what sent us down that road in the first place. The chain of events which led to Rami’s ruin was just like that: a series of choices which he had spent little time debating when they arose, each leading onto another and, eventually, the wreck of the life he had built for himself over thirty years. He had unburdened his inner soul’s secrets to his clever daughter Sasha, had confessed to the loneliness which had beset him ever since he had landed in America. That confession had two consequences. The first was that Sasha – his older and smarter daughter – was totally thrown by her father’s words, though they confirmed what she had long suspected in her heart. Her father didn’t really love them at all but had ended up sharing his life with them, had just gone along with it all. She, her sister and her mother were on one side and her father – mute and BANIPAL 43 – SPRING 2012 113

Page Text

View plaintext

EZZEDINE CHOUKRI FISHERE

full. The one thing that nagged away at Rami was his sense of isolation. He could never reveal what he felt to anyone and, when he did try to convey this sense of isolation to Maria, it ended in a quarrel. He turned to Sasha – older and smarter than his younger daughter Marta – and tried to explain what he meant, but words failed him. He, a translator, couldn’t find the words in English to express exactly what he meant. This made him even gloomier and he was overcome by the distinct sense that this was just what isolation was: trying to speak to your own daughter in a language not your own, knowing you would never be understood in your own tongue. He fell silent and moved to another subject. Sasha, however, was going through that phase when young girls try to act the adult and listen in on their parents’ grown-up conversations. She wanted to break out of being a typical teenager, only talking about herself and ignoring everyone else, so she pursued it with him and, under persistent prompting, he began to talk. He started by telling her that his loneliness arose from his having had to rely entirely on himself in life. She retorted that this was how it was for everyone in America. He heard what she said all right but this wasn’t the only world he knew. There was another world, one he could still remember: “A world of family and friends, who help you when times are tough.You know they’re always there and they stand by you always, whenever you need them – emotionally, materially, whatever.” He told her many stories about his family in Egypt, whom he had visited as a child on holiday. He talked about the relatives, friends and neighbours with whom he had built real relationships and to whom he would return every year, finding everything as together and reassuring as ever, as if he had left only the day before. Sasha replied that people always exaggerate the allure of their past lives and he shook his head in sorrowful refutation. He told her that he had not made real friends in America – somewhere he’d lived most of his life – not in the way he had made them in Egypt, where he had only gone once a year when school was out. Some might attribute it to everybody’s lack of free time but the truth was that that was the way of life itself in America, full stop – that was the problem. He asked her if she could just drop in on her friends without phoning or scheduling beforehand and explained how absurd that would seem in Egypt.There, a friend was someone who knew they could drop in on you anytime.

He kept talking and she listened, interrupting now and again with questions.The more she asked him, the more open he became with her, until he acknowledged that he sensed his separation even when talking to his wife and daughters in a language not his own. He knew they could never really share an appreciation of Egyptian movies starring Shadia, or Souad

112 BANIPAL 43 – CELEBRATING DENYS JOHNSON-DAVIES

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content