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Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 March 2000 Issue No. 472 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 9 - 15 March 2000 Issue No. 472
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Books Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Steak and bangers
By Fayza Hassan
Doug and I worked for the same insurance company in Sydney, Australia. He was just a minor clerk at the time, but I had no doubt that he would have a promising future. He was just turning 18 but had packed quite an impressive number of jobs into his résumé since leaving school. He had a single aim in mind: to make money, a great deal of it. He was not exactly what I would call an extrovert, but we started talking on our tea break one day and soon became good friends. As an older woman, I did not challenge his future in the company and he felt he could confide in me more than in any of his male colleagues.
Doug's father, who was reaching retirement age, had been a reputable landscape gardener. He was also a devout Catholic and had sent his three sons to a private school regardless of the financial sacrifices such an education had entailed. Doug had hated his childhood, which he considered to have been deprived. The other boys at school were much better off, he explained, and it showed. They had better sports equipment, better clothes to wear to church on Sundays and ready-made new uniforms, as opposed to those he and his brothers wore, which had been handed down from one boy to the next or, at best, tailored at home by their mother.
Doug intended that his own children would never have to be subjected to the same humiliations. One day, as he removed his school blazer in the boys' locker room, the sleeve of his home-made shirt had come undone. The boys had had a good laugh at his expense. There was also a difference in the packed lunch he and his brothers took to school. It was always a peanut butter or Vegemite sandwich. Only on very important celebrations, like his birthday, was he given a bread roll filled with a sausage roll. Other boys had that every day of the week. Noticing my surprise at the description of this delicacy, Doug explained that the most popular lunches at school were French fries in a bun or, more luxuriously, a piece of meat pie. "But if you had a sausage roll, then you were a king," he added wistfully. "Is that what you are having every day for lunch?" I asked him, amused, remembering the numerous strange-looking sandwiches he unwrapped carefully while watching the pigeons in Australia Square. "Yes," he said proudly. "Since I started earning a living, I have had them every day."
Doug lived at home, but paid his parents rent for his room. His brothers had moved out as soon as they had found jobs, but he found it cheaper to stay on, although there seemed to be little love lost between parents and son. One day, he came to the office fuming: his father, he said, had simply eaten the steak he had bought himself for dinner. I could not understand what the whole fuss was about, but Doug was so vehement about the incident that curiosity compelled me to ask more questions. "When we were kids, we had bangers [Australian sausage] and mash ever day except Sundays. My mum bought the cheaper variety, the one that went on sale for 20 cents a pound. She and my dad ate steak sometimes, but only at night, when they thought we were asleep. They never even gave us a taste of it while we were growing up. Now it's my turn to eat steak and theirs to sample the bangers!"
I was speechless. As a child, I had always been given the best food available and had come to regard this privilege as the inherent right of childhood. One of the stories often repeated at home was that of my grandmother, who lived for several months during the war on a sack of potatoes, while saving the little milk and butter she could find for her child. Once, she had been able to acquire a slice of meat. She had lovingly pan-fried it in butter for my mother, who gulped it down ravenously, only to notice afterwards that my grandmother was lunching on a piece of bread dipped in the fat from the pan. This must have indelibly marked my mother's attitude toward food. She was extremely generous with it, to the point of extravagance, no matter how careful she may have been in other areas. She would refuse to buy us an item of clothing for no good reason that we could understand, but never begrudged us the most expensive repast.
In time, Doug rose to a managerial position in the company and really took good care of his old parents. When he married and had a little boy of his own, however, he followed his parents' example. Like him, his son was not permitted to eat steak -- not before he could earn its price himself. "A character-building measure," he would add self-righteously.
