29 March - 4 April 2001
Issue No.527
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 29 March - 4 April 2001 Issue No.527 |
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Forbidden delights
For my third birthday, one of my half-sisters bought me a special cake from Groppi. For a child brought up on boiled zucchini and carrots, steamed rice and lean grilled meat, the sight of the white cardboard box and the sweet aroma that emanated from it was almost too much to bear. I stood by the sideboard on which it had been placed and refused to go to my room when asked to do so at once.
The look on my face must have warned my mother not to take the offending gift away immediately, as her instinct dictated. I remember being aware of her anger and for the first time in my life I did not care at all. During the meal I anxiously followed the silent dialogue that was taking place between my parents, and only relaxed when I understood that my father's permissiveness had won the day.
Finally the cake was brought to the table and I gasped in awe. Half chocolate and half pure whipped cream, it promised a double dose of infinite pleasure. "Do you want a white piece or a brown piece?" asked my father. I couldn't decide and, after long minutes of agonising introspection, tears welled up in my eyes. "She wants both, of course," said my half-sister and I felt a surge of love for her, although my mother had warned me on many occasions not to trust my father's daughters. I will always remember the feeling of being transported into a fairyland as the velvety alternate spoonfuls of chocolate and cream slowly melted in my mouth.
That very evening, I ran a raging temperature and beside the foul medicine that I was forced to swallow, our paediatrician treated me to a sermon on the mortal danger incurred from ingesting whipped cream. I could not bring myself to blame the delicious food for my woes, but decided in a convoluted way that I had been punished for coveting it in the first place. From that day on, I forbade myself to ever conjure up the taste, which I had a hard time forgetting.
Years later, when I went to school, my mother endeavoured to choose my friends. She had a series of questions I had to answer before she approved of any of my classmates: Did she ride her bicycle to school unsupervised? Did she walk there accompanied by a servant, or did a chauffeur drive her? If the latter, was a parent or a (foreign) nanny in the car? How big was the car? In which part of town did she live? Did she learn her lessons properly? Etc... To my mother's already long list I added a question of my own: Did she eat whipped cream? An affirmative answer would trigger an alarm bell in my head and I would keep away, no matter how promising the relationship seemed.
I was rarely, if ever, allowed to visit my friends, and certainly not for a meal. Other families' standards of hygiene never seem to satisfy my mother and as she well knew, deadly diseases lurked under the nails of careless cooks and around plates that had not been dipped in boiled water. We were taking no chances.
One afternoon, however, my mother accompanied me to Nanette's house to attend her birthday party. She gave me a gift-wrapped packet, which she instructed me to present to the birthday girl and urged me to run along and have fun. "Remember," she said for the 10th time, "you can only eat a dry biscuit and drink light tea. Anything else will make you ill." I climbed the steps to the front door of the stately villa and was about to ring the bell when I was seized by terror. I did not even know Nanette, who was the daughter of one of my mother's friends and went to the English School. Why was my mother abandoning me? Didn't she care about me anymore? Our car had disappeared in the meandering streets of Garden City and I was too scared to try and run after it. Finally I rang the bell. Nanette was dressed in a prune velvet dress, neither a colour nor a material my mother approved of. Worse still, as I kissed her and offered her the present, I glimpsed the dining room table laden with cakes and sandwiches. Whipped cream seemed to be literally covering the display. To add insult to injury, the sandwiches were filled with hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise, white cheese and fish paste. There were even raw strawberries in the jelly! These all belonged to the category of foods that brought about violent death, along with the jugs of homemade lemonade filled with forbidden ice cubes.
I could not believe that I had been allowed to attend such a party. The only explanation was that my mother wanted to punish me for having eaten that cake on my third birthday, I decided. She had hated me all these years and wanted me to die. She was counting on my greed to get rid of me. Needless to say, I just watched my companions as they joyfully tucked into the succulent repast. When Nanette's mother asked me to join in, I burst into tears and after a while she left me alone.
It took me a long time to reflect that none of the little girls present that day had suffered as much as a slight indigestion. Sadly, however, by the time I finally managed to get rid of my phobia, real whipped cream had all but disappeared from pastry shops, replaced by tasteless white foam from a can. Fancy eating a cream puff filled with shaving cream.
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