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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 March 1999 Issue No. 421 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 18 - 24 March 1999 Issue No. 421
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Not yet
By Fayza Hassan
Laila woke up that morning with a feeling of impending doom. As she lay in bed, she forced herself to examine her problem coldly. Her husband's new boss was coming to dinner tonight. First impressions are so important, Laila had thought when Issam had told her. Together they had worked out an appropriate guest list. A novice in the art of hosting such an important event, she had called her friend Mona at once, to get some proficient advice. Mona had not minced her words. Issam and Laila's apartment was definitely not about to feature in House and Garden. As a matter of fact, the entire dining room would have to disappear, together with the sofa and two awful chairs in the entrance hall, she had said. "I can lend you some decent furniture and we can ask Aliyya for her French chandelier. It will look quite smart over my table," Mona had declared with expert authority. Laila was confident that her friend had impeccable taste and she had become quite excited at the prospect of a temporary change in her surroundings, but had soon realised that it was easier said than done. "What do I do with my own things?" she had asked Mona. "Burn them," had been her friend's light-hearted answer.
As a future bride, Laila had been allowed no say in the decoration of her own apartment. Her mother had been in charge. She had wanted her daughter to have "real furniture, not the fragile, worthless pieces with which stupid girls equip their apartments these days." Laila had not agreed with her mother's choices, but had not wanted to enter into endless discussions at the time. Now she was permanently stuck with the imitation Louis XV dining room and the enormous light fixtures in faux crystal. Mona was right of course. The small rooms were crowded in an awkward way. After four years of marital life, the chairs were still uncomfortably overstuffed and there was way too much gilt everywhere. Yesterday, Mona had come to help and they had tried to cram all the ungainly pieces into the bedroom, but even after removing the door from its hinges, had not managed to get the dining room table past the tiny corridor. Laila had then toyed with the idea of renting storage space, but the dinner was tonight and her mother would be coming tomorrow as usual for their Friday lunch. Laila would never be able to replace the original furniture on time. What would her mother say? She would be terribly hurt, of course. Besides, the expensive dinner was taking up almost all their spare cash; transport and storage would probably cost more than they could afford.
Laila began to get ready. She still had to prepare the salads and check the table linen. She also needed lots of flowers. Mona would be sending a donkey cart around with the tables and chairs and she had to make room for them one way or the other. She busied herself throughout the day, but when the cart arrived with Mona's furniture, she had still not figured out what to do with her own. "Where do you want this?" asked the man carrying an exquisite round table in. Laila looked helplessly around. "In the dining room," she said, making up her mind and showing him the way. "Place it in the corner here," she told him decisively, "and start moving this table and the chairs to your cart, then come back for the buffet." In no time, all the unwanted pieces had been loaded onto the donkey cart, replaced by the more elegant table, chairs and knickknacks, courtesy of Mona. "Go around the block a few times," Laila ordered the cart driver. "I'll tell you when to come back. Do as you are told and I'll pay you well."
She was giving the final touches to her makeup when her husband walked in with his boss. The other guests quickly followed. According to Mona, the evening was a great success; "but I wonder," she says, "how many guests noticed that, every half hour or so, a man kept calling from the street, 'Is it time, Madam?', and whether anyone observed Laila surreptitiously leaning out the window to holler 'lissa (not yet)' in reply."
When her mother came for lunch the next day, things were the way they had always been and Laila was able to recount, quite truthfully, that she had been endlessly complimented on the elegance of her apartment.
