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Al-Ahram Weekly 30 March - 5 April 2000 Issue No. 475 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 30 March - 5 April 2000 Issue No. 475
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Special Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons My mother and the colonel
By Fayza Hassan
"Only at a gambling table can one really know one's neighbour," my husband used to say. Not a gambler myself, I was never fully illuminated by this particular bit of wisdom, but on a different level, I can match my husband's belief with an equally incisive verity: "Only at the wheel of a car can true character be revealed." Few besmirching adjectives describing drivers' behaviour can be considered a novelty today, none in any case that I have not already used at one time or another and in various languages. Now, however, I find myself in the position of discovering an entirely uninvestigated field of car owners' wickedness, which behooves serious psychological exploration. I am referring to people's new parking habits and the aggressive tendencies that are growing by the day, in equal proportion to the diminution of available space. Looking back at the time when I was growing up, I can understand why my parents considered me insubordinate. I was not able to see it then, mainly because I shared radical ideas with my Western-educated peers regarding the amount of freedom we needed to be well adjusted. Taking our cues from the foreign novels we consumed voraciously, we made no allowances for the fact that we were not really living in Europe, no matter how much we wanted to delude ourselves, and therefore had to pay at least lip service to our indigenous customs.
We developed complicated alliances and strategies and used our not inconsiderable collective wits to keep out of trouble. We had friends who covered up for us, or chauffeurs who accepted our bribes. We invented additional classes, made up extra-curricular activities and tampered with our schedules. We rarely did anything "wrong" during these stolen moments, away from the vigilant eye of our parents. We did not need to. Outsmarting them was heady enough and the more we did, the more confident we became. Coming out of the university library one day with a friend, we were congratulating ourselves on having managed to light up and draw a few puffs from our cigarettes, undetected by the librarian, when a student on his way in said: "your mother is waiting for you outside." My friend, thinking the boy was talking to her, handed me her butt at once, and I walked out holding both our cigarettes between my fingers, only to be confronted with my own mother instead. That I succeeded in hiding the damning evidence was only due to my long habit of deceit. I became particularly proficient at concocting air-tight lies and quite certain that I could extirpate myself from any sticky situation with a clever story.
The turning point on this slippery road occurred one morning, when I made the fatal mistake of spinning my yarn unprepared, and over-enthusiastically. On my way to a party the night before, I had been given a midnight curfew, by which I had had no intention of abiding -- without, however, having planned callously to return after 4.00am. This is nevertheless what I ended up doing. I let myself in as the morning call to prayer was ringing out faintly in the distance. Mercifully, everyone was asleep and I slipped into my bed too tired even to think of a plausible explanation.
I woke up to see the sun high in the sky and my mother standing by my bed. I knew at once that she had heard me come in at dawn. To this day, I do not know what possessed me. I heard myself say: "I know I was awfully late last night, but I had such a fight with Colonel X. He told me that he knew you in the days when you were a Hungarian professional dancer." My mother's stunned silence encouraged me to go on and I kept embellishing my tale until I felt that I had created a small masterpiece of veracity. Neither Hungarian nor a dancer, professional or otherwise, my mother had always been very proud of her patrician origins. I expected her reaction to be one of noble indignation, leading her to forget my unforgivable tardiness. I had glimpsed Colonel X in the cloakroom as I was leaving the party. I had never spoken a word to him in my entire life, but for some unfathomable reason his face had stuck in my memory, prompting my present fiction. I looked at my mother, hoping to be forgiven already. "I had to set the record straight and tell him exactly who you were. One thing led to another and that is why I was so late, you see," I said self-righteously. I was not prepared for her astounding answer: "You needn't have bothered," she said rather lightly. "He is a very good friend and we could have cleared up the misunderstanding easily. He certainly did not guess who you were, and quite rightly so: his daughter, who is your age, is certainly not out cavorting at all hours. I'll tell your father to talk to him anyway."
For years thereafter, I remained terrified at the thought that upon meeting Colonel X by chance, my parents would remember to ask him about our mythical argument. I vowed never to lie again, if only I was not forced to own up to my disgraceful performance. I lost much of my effrontery. In fact, I almost stopped making up stories. My imagination seemed to have suddenly dried up. I developed gruesome nightmares in which the major, my mother and his daughter figured prominently. Only when I moved to Australia did I finally feel safely beyond his reach.
