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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 October 1999 Issue No. 450 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 October 1999 Issue No. 450
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Interview Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A dying breed
By Yasmine El-Rashidi
Life didn't turn out quite as Fathi Mohamed Abdel-Latif expected. He never expected to be rich, or famous, or successful by society's conventional standards. And he isn't, really.
photo: Randa Shaath
But Abdel-Latif never thought he would meet the king, either, or Britain's former foreign minister, Anthony Eden, or world-renowned tennis players Björn Borg, Rod Laver, or René Dukich. Had his father not died, in fact, he just might not have met anyone at all. As it happens, though, his father did die, and he ended up meeting them all.
The son of a working-class Egyptian family, Abdel-Latif had four sisters. He bore the family name, was his mother's pride and joy, the man of the house full of women on Al-Nil Street. It was a sweet enough thing to be, in this male-worshipping society. Sweet enough, until in 1940, at the ragamuffin age of 12, he was taken away from his playground full of friends and sent to work.
"I had to help my mother and sisters," he says. "I was the only boy, and all of a sudden they needed my help. I had to work."
Send him off to work they did, at the Gezira Sporting Club, where he was jacketed in white, named the "cake boy", and placed under the protection of peculiar-looking men in tall white hats.
"I was quite shocked," he said, of the Western-style chefs; "I had never seen anything like it before." He had never been exposed to the dining, wining and dancing that went on, or to the gâteaux he bore precariously between the tables.
"I went around with cakes on a tray," he says, peering out from behind his thick-rimmed glasses. "After tea, I would make my rounds with my tray. They all thought I was cute."
He still is, in a way: he walks like a toddler, giggles like a teenager, and smiles at the old days with a glint in his eye worthy of a mischievous 12-year-old.
Clad in his deep blue galabiya embroidered with golden trimmings, the short, shrivelled Gezira Club sufragi (waiter) is now the oldest employee in the club.
"I saw the British officers, I saw the king, and now I'm seeing this new generation," he says, waving his bony hands. "I saw two kings: the real king, and the computer -- which is the king of this era."
It is an era in which children speak their minds, cricket has ceased to exist, and ham with scrambled eggs are no longer an option. It is an era detached from the Cairo of zaman (the past), where the princesses used to sit in the club's leather armchairs, tossing their curls about and laughing with abandon.
Abdel-Latif says they were days of simplicity and leisure, filled with scones and crumpets, cognac and brandy.
"Everyone ordered Campbell or Adam," he says, referring to the mix made with angostura bitters, or ginger ale and lemon. "But at 6.00pm, everyone wanted their whiskies."
It was the early 1940s, a time of war and uncertainty. Uncertainty not just for the country's future, but for what would be brought to the table at the end of the day.
It could have been bad news for the maîtres and sufragiyya, but the days of food rations were not that bad after all.
"The officers would give me three-piastre tips for five-piastre drinks," he smirks. "That way, they were sure I would save them a bottle of whisky every day."
They would gather in the Tea Garden each morning, afternoon and night. They were British officers, alone in Cairo, and this was their social club -- one far different from the Gezira Club of today. The king frequented this place, his hordes of followers in tow; it was a place managed by Captain Pilley and "Mr Hitches", a place where children were rarely seen, and where the Nubians enjoyed almost full sway over the kitchen.
In the tree-shaded Tea Garden, the officers would sit overlooking the cricket field, now track and soccer grounds. A light breeze would make its way through the gardens and a faint buzz of chatting would rise from the tables.
They would munch and chat, chat and munch in perfect British order. Breakfast was from 7.00 to 8.30am, tea from 4.00 to 5.30pm, and dinner started at 6.30pm.
In rule Britannia style, these were typical English meals. Teas of tea cake, crumpets, scones, toast and jam and butter. And of course dinners of soup, sole meunière, then a roast with potatoes and parsley. This repast culminated with the passing of the ever-popular liqueur tray -- Abdel-Latif's specialty.
Meals were served in style on glimmering silver platters brought in by waiters in spotless white cloaks, deep red Nubian slippers, and deep green satin sashes embossed with each waiter's number. In 1944, Abdel-Latif passed the initiation rite, earning his own "number 11". The tables were numbered from one to 30, with the exception of bad luck 13, which was designated as "12 piste".
It was all done in unison -- until the king appeared, that is.
Everything about the king was different. Not just his title, but his size, the way he ate and what he ate. He was the odd one out, really.
"He was a big man," Abdel-Latif says, smiling. "We had to make him a special chair because he couldn't fit in these normal ones."
His grand appearance was marked by an entourage of followers including the infamous Pouly, whose presence at the club always meant that the king himself was there too.
They would make their way to the Tea Garden or dinner pavilion and hail Abdel-Latif. Instantly, the kitchen would leap to work.
"He only ate chicken legs," Abdel-Latif says, the amusement still sparkling in his eyes. "We would get him a serving platter of 20 or 25 chicken legs, and he would eat them like an expert."
Taking each drumstick in his hands like a cob of corn, His Majesty would lower his moustache over the stick and munch like a typewriter, working from left to write. Stop. Next line, right to left. Smack his lips and start on the next one.
"All 20 of them!"
He was a strong man by Egyptian standards. So strong that even his chest hairs stood out from under his shirt, Abdel-Latif recalls. "Quite something, quite something."
The time itself was quite something. A time of 35-piastre dinners, 1.5-piastre packs of cigarettes, and 90-piastre starting salaries.
"My mother was thrilled with my first paycheque," he says. "And then the next I got a raise. LE1.20."
And then LE3.50. Enough, he says, to buy everything. Even a wife.
In 1949, with some earnings saved up and a LE10 loan from the club, Abdel-Latif took a spouse.
"The ten pounds paid for a whole wedding!" he says, shaking his head in disbelief at his past life. "And furnishing a flat was so much simpler then: a four-poster iron bed, a wood cupboard, a gas stove, a washbasin, two chairs, some metal serving plates and a teapot."
Plus LE35 for the bride-price. And with a measly five piastres, he could buy his wife two kilos of meat.
"It was such a life," he reminisces, "such a life."
And then things moved on. Except for the few elite Egyptians who had been let in after World War I, such as Qadria Foda, Seifallah Youssri and Shazli Pasha, the club in pre-revolution days had been colonial in the true sense of the word. But with the revolution came the Egyptians, and with the Egyptians, things changed.
Slowly, the wine and whisky disappeared off the tables, the ham and bacon disappeared from the fridges, the English signs were taken down and Arabic ones put up in their stead. The children started trickling in, then the trickle became a swarm.
No longer were there Tuesday wine-tastings and Wednesday dine and dance nights. No longer were there cricket games and polo matches, or three- and five-piastre drinks. And in no time, there were no more British brigadiers to tip Abdel-Latif for their secret stores. Times changed, and everyone moved on.
Although he is nostalgic for the old days, Abdel-Latif too was forced to move on, to being the "number one" sufragi, earning LE80 a month; to serving Egyptians; to cashing his pension.
He is now 12 years past his government-imposed sell-by date, yet he is still going on. "There's no way I can stop," he says. "The club
is in my blood." Abdel-Latif once gave retirement a shot. Four days later, he was back at the club.
"I got depressed," he says seriously. "I spent four days just wandering the streets, not eating, barely sleeping. I had to come back. This is my home."
Although he now only makes LE40, serves the older crowd at the 1935 Lido building, and knows only a handful of the members, he still goes on.
Where he once saw bikinis, he now sees veiled women; where he once served whiskey and gin, he now serves lemon soda and Coke. And where British army officers once dashed from post to post, children and teenagers play racquetball, soccer and Frisbee. Memberships, which once cost LE50 for life, are now worth thousands of pounds.
"This is a new era," he says. "Today it's all Marina and satellite and videos. Ayam zaman [the 'good old days'] are gone."
In his eyes, a new era is soon about to begin. An era of underground shopping malls and a parking lot beneath the club's golf grounds. All that remains of the old days are what few records there are on paper. For Abdel-Latif believes that the people from back then, like the club's beds of London lavender and Sussex azaleas, are a dying breed.
