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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 June 2000 Issue No. 486 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 June 2000 Issue No. 486
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Babes in arms
By Fayza Hassan
Between 1962, when we married, and 1967, when we finally left for Australia, my husband and I gradually forfeited all our foreign friends as well as our lifestyle. As he battled with Egyptian bureaucracy to get our documents together for emigration, my husband took refuge in dreams of faraway lands. We would first tour Europe, he would say, poring over maps; we could stay in Paris, and maybe London for a while. One of his best friends and associates had settled recently in Milan. We could surprise him with a call and also go to Rome for a couple of days.
It was obvious that his choice of venue for starting a new life scared him more than a little. He wanted to hang on to familiar places before taking the step of no return. He was lucid enough to know that at his age, he would neither find employment in his beloved Europe, nor would he, once settled in Sydney, have the time or money for leisurely transoceanic holidays. As one of the victims of the Nasser regime, he had watched helplessly the transformation of the quality of life he had known and wanted now to "purify" his vision by immersing himself in things beautiful -- and permanent.
As it happened, his dream remained an exercise in futility. No country granted temporary visas to emigrants who were expected to proceed directly to their final destination. Meanwhile, however, with the blockade of the Suez Canal, our options were restricted to either flying to Sydney, or taking the old maritime route around the Cape. Flying was out of the question, my husband decided: we were leaving in the middle of winter, which in Australia would be the middle of summer. The shock, he said, would be detrimental to our little daughter's system.
Short of taking the coveted extended holidays, he placed his hopes in the long sea voyage during which we would be able to tour the Canary Islands, Durban and Perth. It was not the old world to which he was attached, but a great opportunity to learn about lands that we would barely have heard of in other circumstances.
More maps and guide books appeared and basic facts on these exotic countries summarised for the benefit of our three-year-old, who could not have cared less. Listening to the grownups' discussions, she had become seriously disturbed. To alleviate the trauma of parting with her family and friends, we had endeavoured to spin the tale of a wonderful talking doll that we would buy as soon as we arrived at our destination. Australia, we told her, was an extended Toyland. Since Egypt at the time was rather short on luxury goods and toys, she had not been spoiled like the previous generation with the beautiful play-things that our parents used to purchase from Cicurel and Hanneaux. As we waited for our final travel permits, the imaginary magic doll was endowed with more and more fantastic features, their enthusiastic and minute description replacing bed-time stories, especially when she asked in a little voice when her grandmother would join us in Sydney.
Eventually the time came. I was so stunned by the enormity of the step we were taking and which I had believed would never actually take place that I failed to recognise the child's panic symptoms. I just stupidly kept talking to her about the doll and how in the new country everything would be beautiful and green and exciting.
The trip was a disaster, our daughter refusing to leave the cabin and sobbing bitterly until she dropped off to sleep. She wanted to go back to her room, have lunch with the family, go to her school and play with her old toys. She did not want a talking doll which she would hate, she screamed. For our bad luck, she had met a girl her age travelling on the same ship, who actually owned such a specimen, an evil-looking, bald, pink baby doll, which screeched "mama" and "dada" in an awful mechanical voice once a string was pulled in its back. My daughter felt cheated: she had been made to exchange the warmth of a loving family and a perfectly happy life for a monstrous gadget that she wanted nothing to do with.
Day in day out, I sat with her in the stuffy cabin trying to console her. When we arrived in Durban, my husband decided that we would not give in this time and would take her forcefully off the ship and on a tour of the city. We had already missed out on Las Palmas and he was not ready for a repeat performance. Carrying her off in his arms, he shouted desperately over her screams that we were going to get her the doll this minute. It was not really his fault that, almost running out of the port area, he was confronted with a rickshaw driver, complete with huge feathers and war paint, who tried to grab the child from his arms in a ploy to let him agree to a ride. He was wise enough, however, to put down his daughter's subsequent complete lack of faith in his promises to this unfortunate incident.
