these people are moving!’
The heroine, Raja, played with her cat and another woman scolded her. A man kissed Raja, his daughter, thenkissed the woman who had been scolding her. A young man named Jalal (played by Abdal-Wahhab) arrived wearing a fez, and found Raja kneeling to pick up her broken necklace.
He knelt down beside her and began to sing, ‘No jacket, it makes me weep.’
After the film ended, the cinema remained dark. Manifa tried to hurry us out, but I wouldn’t budge. I wanted to stay in my seat. Why had the actors spoken with such a funny accent, I asked; I had understood little. They were talking in Egyptian dialect, Manifa said.
‘What is Egyptian?’ I asked.
‘There is a country called Egypt where all the films come from,’ she answered.
I wanted to tell her I’d like to get a jacket for Abdal-Wahhab, because he kept singing and crying, ‘No jacket, it makes me weep,’ but I was scared she wouldn’t let me. Could I steal Ibrahim’s tram driver’s jacket? I thought of its drab khaki colour and the sweat stains under the arms. Should I steal Abu-Hussein’s jacket? The sleeves would have been too short for Abdal-Wahhab and it wouldn’t even have reached his waist. Quite apart from these considerations, my brother-in-law prayed and read the Quran, whereas in the film Abdal-Wahhab actually spoke to a woman, sang to her, embraced her, then whistled as he hurried on his way. Such different men could never wear the same jacket.
That film, The White Rose , stayed with me. If I changed my name from Kamila, which means ‘perfect’, to Warda, which means ‘rose’, I told myself, I would be closer to the people in the film. I decided the movies were better than eating a whole tin of treacle, better even than talking to the Beirut girl or playing house in the vegetable patch with Apple.
After my trip to the cinema, I saw my easy-going brother Hasan in a new light. I nicknamed him the lute lover because he was obsessed with the lute. He loved to play it for Manifa and me when we visited him in his tiny room. I asked him in a whisper if he’d seen The White Rose and if he could sing like Abdal-Wahhab? He looked to left and right, then asked Manifa if her husband and brother Ibrahim were about. When she signalled no with a laugh, he began to hum and pretended to pluck a lute. Then he sang:
Oh thou rose of pure love,
God bless the hands that have nourished you!
I wonder, oh I wonder, oh I wonder.
Then he mimed holding a rose in his hand and gazing at the flower.
I asked if he understood the Egyptian dialect, because I hadn’t. Who had taken me to the film? Hasan asked, amazed. I lied and told him that I hadn’t seen it, but our sister laughed and admitted she’d taken me. From this I understood that she was not afraid of Hasan; unlike her husband or our gloomy brother Ibrahim. In fact, she joked with Hasan and laughed in his presence.
Some time later, when my memories of the film had faded, Mother took me to visit my poor sister Raoufa, whose husband beat her whenever she criticised him or asked about the money he lost on betting on horses. I was astonished when Raoufa broke down to Mother.
‘He’s left us here on the mat and betted away everything. Dear God, I’ve actually thought about going out on the street and begging,’ she said.
Despite Raoufa’s distress, Mother never offered to seek help from Manifa’s husband, nor from Ibrahim or Hasan, who had no money but might have brought her some breadfrom the bakery. I was so upset that I decided I should run away and live with the actors from the movie, in a place where people spoke to each other kindly and were concerned for each other’s welfare. I knew for sure that they were cut from a different cloth than me, because they had all been to school.
7 Peasant’s baggy trousers.
Stone-Bearing Donkeys
I N THE SPACE of a night and a day, our house turned into a home of weeping and wailing. Manifa died very suddenly of fever. She was
The heroine, Raja, played with her cat and another woman scolded her. A man kissed Raja, his daughter, thenkissed the woman who had been scolding her. A young man named Jalal (played by Abdal-Wahhab) arrived wearing a fez, and found Raja kneeling to pick up her broken necklace.
He knelt down beside her and began to sing, ‘No jacket, it makes me weep.’
After the film ended, the cinema remained dark. Manifa tried to hurry us out, but I wouldn’t budge. I wanted to stay in my seat. Why had the actors spoken with such a funny accent, I asked; I had understood little. They were talking in Egyptian dialect, Manifa said.
‘What is Egyptian?’ I asked.
‘There is a country called Egypt where all the films come from,’ she answered.
I wanted to tell her I’d like to get a jacket for Abdal-Wahhab, because he kept singing and crying, ‘No jacket, it makes me weep,’ but I was scared she wouldn’t let me. Could I steal Ibrahim’s tram driver’s jacket? I thought of its drab khaki colour and the sweat stains under the arms. Should I steal Abu-Hussein’s jacket? The sleeves would have been too short for Abdal-Wahhab and it wouldn’t even have reached his waist. Quite apart from these considerations, my brother-in-law prayed and read the Quran, whereas in the film Abdal-Wahhab actually spoke to a woman, sang to her, embraced her, then whistled as he hurried on his way. Such different men could never wear the same jacket.
That film, The White Rose , stayed with me. If I changed my name from Kamila, which means ‘perfect’, to Warda, which means ‘rose’, I told myself, I would be closer to the people in the film. I decided the movies were better than eating a whole tin of treacle, better even than talking to the Beirut girl or playing house in the vegetable patch with Apple.
After my trip to the cinema, I saw my easy-going brother Hasan in a new light. I nicknamed him the lute lover because he was obsessed with the lute. He loved to play it for Manifa and me when we visited him in his tiny room. I asked him in a whisper if he’d seen The White Rose and if he could sing like Abdal-Wahhab? He looked to left and right, then asked Manifa if her husband and brother Ibrahim were about. When she signalled no with a laugh, he began to hum and pretended to pluck a lute. Then he sang:
Oh thou rose of pure love,
God bless the hands that have nourished you!
I wonder, oh I wonder, oh I wonder.
Then he mimed holding a rose in his hand and gazing at the flower.
I asked if he understood the Egyptian dialect, because I hadn’t. Who had taken me to the film? Hasan asked, amazed. I lied and told him that I hadn’t seen it, but our sister laughed and admitted she’d taken me. From this I understood that she was not afraid of Hasan; unlike her husband or our gloomy brother Ibrahim. In fact, she joked with Hasan and laughed in his presence.
Some time later, when my memories of the film had faded, Mother took me to visit my poor sister Raoufa, whose husband beat her whenever she criticised him or asked about the money he lost on betting on horses. I was astonished when Raoufa broke down to Mother.
‘He’s left us here on the mat and betted away everything. Dear God, I’ve actually thought about going out on the street and begging,’ she said.
Despite Raoufa’s distress, Mother never offered to seek help from Manifa’s husband, nor from Ibrahim or Hasan, who had no money but might have brought her some breadfrom the bakery. I was so upset that I decided I should run away and live with the actors from the movie, in a place where people spoke to each other kindly and were concerned for each other’s welfare. I knew for sure that they were cut from a different cloth than me, because they had all been to school.
7 Peasant’s baggy trousers.
Stone-Bearing Donkeys
I N THE SPACE of a night and a day, our house turned into a home of weeping and wailing. Manifa died very suddenly of fever. She was
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