Ruqayya was making slow progress. The moment she finished shaking one hand, more hands appeared. Then they started addressing her in the traditional manner, as the mother of her eldest son, “We hope all goes well, Umm Said!”
“Have a good trip and come back safe and sound, in sha Allah!”
“Give our regards to Abd el-Aziz!”
It took Ruqayya ages to reach the platform, where the train was already waiting. She made her way with her children trailing behind her and her brother scurrying along with the suitcase on his shoulder. She pulled herself together amid the well-wishers and caught sight of some women from the Balam family. She made her way toward them and embraced them warmly, and still holding the hand of the clan leader Abd el-Al’s wife, she said loudly so all could hear, “Thank you so much for coming. It means so much to me.”
Abd el-Al’s wife was so overcome by Ruqayya’s kind words that she embraced her again, looked her in the face, and with her voice full of feeling, she said, “God knows how much I love you, Ruqayya.”
“And I love you too.”
“You Gaafars are the cream of our town.”
“No, you Balams are the ones who have done the most for us all. It was Satan, may God curse him, who came between us. May God guide us all. Kith and kin may have squabbled with each other, but blood is thicker than water.
“May God preserve and look after you, Ruqayya.”
At that moment, Bashir came over to his sister, Ruqayya, and whispered something in her ear. She nodded and carried on talking to Abd el-Al Balam’s wife. It would not have been right for her to bring the conversation to an abrupt end. She knew that her every gesture with Abd el-Al al-Balam might be misinterpreted and could reignite the family feud again.
She carried on talking to the woman for a few minutes more and then moved off to greet some other people. This time, however, Bashir, almost hauled her by her galabiyya toward the train whose angry whistle and thick smoke augured its imminent departure. The onlookers all started shouting, and Ruqayya grabbed Saleha and Mahmud, and with Said and Kamel and Bashir following behind, she started running as fast as she could.
Ruqayya sipped her tea and a smile appeared on her face as she remembered how, due to the throngs of well-wishers, she missed the train that day. Whenever she recalled that to her neighbor Aisha, she would laugh heartily, joking about the stupidity of the Upper Egyptians. Bashir had to reserve new tickets for them on the next day’s train and then had to go around to all the houses in Daraw asking them not to come to the station again. All complied except for Abd el-Barr, son of her cousin Oways, who insisted on coming to see them off again. When her brother tried to dissuade him, he flushed with anger and said, “Just as she is your sister, Ruqayya is my cousin. I swear to God that even if she were to miss the train a hundred times, I would go to the station to see her off.”
Abd el-Barr indeed went to the station again, and Ruqayya was grateful to him for that. They had grown up together, and there had even been talk of marriage, but fate is fickle, and she knew that his insistence on seeing her off was not entirely innocent. Abd el-Barr might still have been in love with her after all this time, but she did not even dare to think about that out of respect for her husband, Abd el-Aziz, who meant everything to her. After twenty-five years of marriage, she could still recall her wedding as if it had happened the day before. That night there had been a huge feast, and celebratory gunshots had reverberated all over Daraw. The feasting went on for a whole week, and people commented enviously that the camel carrying her to her husband’s house was groaning from the weight of all the gold that her bridegroom had given her. It was a sight to remember. In Daraw she had a large house with a spacious sitting room, a garden with date palms, servants, jewelry, horses, camels, cattle and poultry, and, most important, a wonderful husband. He never behaved badly toward her or beat her. He never put her down, and she knew that he would never cheat on her. When at first she could not get pregnant, his mother (may God have mercy on her and forgive her) started urging him to take a second wife. She would say to him, within Ruqayya’s earshot, “You’re a man. You have to produce a son. Take another wife alongside Ruqayya. It is what God commands.”
Any other man would just have taken another wife. Had he done so, no one would have blamed him. He refused, however, and announced that he would have only Ruqayya, even if she could never have children. How could she forget such magnanimity? When his mother asked Shaykh Mash’al to make an amulet to help her get pregnant, Abd el-Aziz received him coolly and said, “You can keep your amulet. I will not do anything the Prophet forbids. Whether we have children, live or die, or manage to support ourselves—they are all matters over which we can never argue with God.”
He fell silent for a short while and then added sarcastically, “If you are such a good friend of the genies, Shaykh Mash’al, why don’t you ask them to cure the rheumatism eating away at your bones?”
After two years of trying, they were blessed by God with six children, of whom two died, leaving them with four. Then came the great ordeal of her husband’s bankruptcy. Praise be to God. The Lord chooses some men to receive his bounty and exposes others to catastrophes. Who ever thought that she would end up starting a new life in Cairo? Abd el-Aziz worked his fingers to the bone to provide them with a decent living: he rented a spacious flat in al-Sadd al-Gawany Street in the Sayyida Zeinab district. It had four rooms and a sitting room, plus a room on the roof with a separate entrance and staircase. The rent was high, and the needs of their children cost a fortune, not to mention the cost of looking after the ever-present guests, as well as the expenses of food, tobacco and clothing from time to time. God gave him strength, and somehow he managed to find enough money and to cope with his menial job—even though his whole life long he had been a property owner in Daraw. When he handed over to Ruqayya his first set of work clothes, a yellow uniform with brass buttons, to be ironed, he just said, “I work as a storeroom assistant, and this is my uniform.”
At that time she made a huge effort to hide her feelings. She prattled on about inconsequential matters and laughed as she carefully ironed his uniform. She folded it into a small case, said good-bye as he went out the front door and then burst into tears. Would Abd el-Aziz Gaafar, a man from a decent family, have to do a menial job for all eternity?
God be praised for everything. She stopped daydreaming, glanced at the clock in the sitting room and noticed that it was after nine. She rushed into the bedroom, opening the door quietly, and looked at Abd el-Aziz’s face as he slept. How she loved this man. She loved him for his strength, his determination and his pride. How could he cope with all these ordeals? Many other men would have given up the ghost, but Abd el-Aziz was a believer and accepted whatever God dealt out to him. She shook him gently to waken him, and he got out of bed. He took a shower and made his ablutions before saying his morning prayers and getting dressed. As he was sitting down to his breakfast, she set her plan into motion. She sighed and said, “May God give you the strength to support us all, dear Abd el-Aziz. May he grant you sustenance so you can sustain us.”
There was silence. Abd el-Aziz carried on carefully cracking his boiled egg, and as he laid the pieces of shell on his plate, he asked her calmly, “Is there something you want?”
Ruqayya sighed and whispered slightly apologetically, “The ration book for the cooperative shop…”
“At the end of the week, God willing. Anything else?”
“By God, I’m a little ashamed to mention it. You know how troublesome Said can be, but he has set his heart on buying a new shirt.”
“Whatever.”
He finished eating, lit a cigarette and sipped his coffee. Ruqayya seized the opportunity and moved the subject on a little. She smiled and said, “I have a request, my darling Abd el-Aziz, and please, I beg you by the Prophet, don’t embarrass me for asking you.”
“Well?”
“I want to sell two of my bracelets and buy a Singer sewing machine. You know I
have always loved making clothes. I could buy a sewing machine and do some piecework. Even if I don’t earn a fortune, at least I will be sitting respectably in my own home, and every extra piastre will help us.”
Abd el-Aziz looked at her. He gave her that familiar look of someone who does not like what he has heard. He responded in a tone of sour derision, “You want me to come home from work and find you busy with customers?”
“A bit of work never hurt anyone.”
“So the Gaafar house will become a seamstress’s workshop for all eternity?”
She knew he would never agree, but she did not lose hope.
“All right. Let’s forget the sewing machine. Now, Saleha…”
“What’s the matter with Saleha?”
“If she were to leave school and stay at home, we’d save the school fees.”
“Shame on you, woman. So I should work my fingers to the bone to pay the school fees for Mahmud, who is stupid and keeps failing, and we should keep our brilliant and clever Saleha at home and throw away her future?”
“Her future is to get married and have children.”
“As long as she wants to keep studying, that’s what she must do.”
“I’ve got another thought.”
“You’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, Umm Said!”
He spoke the latter words as he stood up and unhooked his tarboosh from the peg, and as he was straightening it on his head, he said, “Don’t worry, Ruqayya. We’ll see, by the grace of God. I’m certain.”
3
It was sheer madness.
From where Bertha Benz lived in Mannheim, it was more than a hundred kilometers to the town of Pforzheim, where her mother lived. How could she ever have imagined that she could cover this distance in the carriage? After all, what did she know about this machine she was driving? Just a smattering of information she had gleaned from Karl. She had only seen him drive it once—when it had moved forward some small distance and overturned with him in it—and now she was planning to cover a hundred kilometers nonstop. There was no thinking it over. She had been so moved by her husband’s despair that she was now rushing headlong into an act of folly. She was as sure to fail as the day is long. She was on her own now. She tried to control the accursed carriage, with her sons on either side fighting off sleep, perplexed at what their mother was doing. As she drove, Bertha discovered that the steering lever was not finely tuned, so there was a delayed reaction whenever she tried to move it left or right. She also noticed that the carriage was quite light in weight and bobbed up and down like a boat on ocean waves. Quite a few times, it shuddered and almost toppled over. Each time, she shouted at the boys to keep tight hold of the front rail. Then she discovered that the carriage ground to halt at the merest hint of a gradient. At every hill, she and the children had to get out and push. Then the fuel ran out.
She left the boys in the carriage and rushed off to the nearest pharmacist’s shop, where she asked for ten bottles of gasoline, which at that time was only used for domestic cleaning. The old pharmacist’s curiosity was aroused, and as he was packing the bottles into a bag, he asked, “I feel certain that madam must live in a very large house to need all this cleaning liquid.”
Bertha smiled shyly and answered, “Please come with me for a moment.”
The pharmacist hesitantly came from behind the counter, smiling with astonishment, and followed her into the street.
“I’m using the gasoline as fuel for this.”
He had heard about the invention and showed great curiosity and enthusiasm, inspecting the carriage as if it were a recently landed creature from outer space. He insisted on helping her. She opened the fuel cap, and he slowly poured the gasoline into the tank until it was completely full. Bertha climbed back up onto the seat and tugged on the drive belt. The carriage gave off a screech and the usual puff of smoke. The pharmacist clapped his hands in delight, and Bertha called down to him in gratitude before the carriage lurched off.
Then it was the turn of the cooling system to break down: the water ran out, and the engine became red hot. Bertha turned it off and, leaving the boys behind in the carriage again, set off on foot with Karl’s special rubber can to find a public tap in the park. She hoped that would be the last disaster, but it was far from it. The car soon shuddered to a halt again. Bertha got out and discovered that the carburetor was blocked. After a few moments’ thought, she took out one of her hairpins and, with the tenacity of an ant, used it to give the carburetor mesh a good poking. But this time when she tugged on the drive belt again, the motor did not respond. She pulled it again and again before it finally started turning, and the carriage set off. Ten full hours later, during which all sorts of problems and delays had occurred and after bouts of hopelessness, frustration and despair, Bertha drove the Benz carriage into the town of Pforzheim. Before going to her mother’s house, she stopped at the telegraph office. In her haste, she left the engine running and ran in to send the following telegram to her husband, “Today, the Benz carriage has traveled over a hundred kilometers from Mannheim to Pforzheim. Karl, we have done it. We are proud of you.”
The following day, Bertha drove the carriage back to Mannheim. Profiting from the previous day’s mistakes, this time she brought a large pitcher of water and a number of bottles of gasoline. She borrowed needles from her mother for unclogging the carburetor. All these preparations cut two whole hours from the journey. Words cannot describe the state Karl was in when Bertha and the children got home. He was standing in front of the house, and as soon as the carriage appeared in the distance, he started calling out and clapping. When Bertha proudly stepped down from the carriage, he rushed over to hug her and shower her with kisses. Karl would write in his diary, “At some point I was so alienated from everyone that I started to doubt the value of what I was doing. But one person’s faith in me never wavered. One person who deserves the credit for everything I achieved. My wife, Bertha.”
The news from Mannheim and Pforzheim spread all over Germany and then to Europe and the world beyond. Karl Benz was soon flooded with offers, and he started manufacturing automobiles, slowly and cautiously at first, but then he began churning them out. A large part of public opinion was still fundamentally opposed to his invention, whether out of religious scruples or ignorance or because of the noise and smoke that the vehicles produced. Some, especially in the countryside, would run along behind the automobile, swearing at the driver, throwing rocks or hurling enormous tree stumps in its way. Those were the last desperate efforts in a battle whose outcome had already been decided.
Automobiles started to spread at an astonishing rate. On September 13, 1899, the first automobile fatality occurred. An American man named Henry Bliss was crossing the street in New York City when an automobile ran him over, crushing his skull. His death engendered real fears and a far-reaching controversy about the dangers posed by the new invention, but popular enthusiasm for it did not die down.
A great leap forward was made by the American Henry Ford, who started mass-producing cars. His strategy was to reduce the profit margin but increase the volume of production and sales. This was based on a simple conviction—that the employees of his own factory should be able to afford an automobile. And so the automobile went from being a toy for the rich to an accessible means of transport that changed people’s lives and way of thinking completely. Great distances were no longer daunting. An automobile owner could work far away from home; he could take his family to the beach and have them home in the same day. The automobile established man’s sense of independence and individuality and confirmed him as master of his own destiny.
Egypt, at that time under British occupation, was no different. In 1890 Egyptians saw their first automobile. It was a French De Dion-Bouton, imported by Prince Hassan, a grandson of Khedive Ismail, who loved adventure and innovation. He exposed himself to great danger when he drove his automobile, with two friends in it, from Cairo to Alexandria along an unpaved agricultural road. The tri
p took ten whole hours and cost a fortune, as the vehicle damaged many fields of crops and hit quite a few cows and donkeys. The prince handed out cash to the peasants on the spot. Egyptians fell in love with the automobile. In 1905 there were 110 in Cairo and 56 in Alexandria. By 1914 Egypt had imported 218 automobiles. The ever-increasing numbers proved the need for an automobile club to deal with all related necessities, such as issuing licenses, surfacing roads, setting speed limits and creating driving instruction and vehicle maintenance manuals. After repeated efforts over the course of twenty years, the Royal Automobile Club officially opened in 1924.
The Club’s founders were all foreigners or members of the local Turkish aristocracy. The first chairman was Prince Omar Toussoun, and King Fuad consented to be the patron. Elections were held for the administrative committee, and an Englishman, James Wright, was appointed managing director. Everything was done to make it a carbon copy of the famous Carlton Club in London. The building itself was an architectural jewel of traditional elegance.
When the administrative committee sat down to draw up the Club’s rules and bylaws, two problems arose. First: Should the Club allow Egyptians to become members? This idea was rejected by a majority, led by the Englishman Mr. Wright, who declared, as he lit his pipe, “I should like to make clear that our job in this Club is to ascertain a policy for automobiles in Egypt. Egyptians in general, even if they are wealthy and educated, are not qualified to make such decisions. The automobile is a Western invention, and it is Westerners alone who should decide policy. I don’t expect Egyptians to do more than buy them and ride in them.”
After many frank expressions of opinion, an Italian member who spoke Arabic warned them that they were in danger of raising a stink in the Egyptian press, which in turn would affect automobile sales in Egypt. He said, “National sentiment in Egypt is inflamed against the British occupation. At any moment this sentiment could change into xenophobia and the declaration of a commercial boycott. We don’t want that. I think we all want to see Egyptians buying more and more automobiles.” The words reverberated in the boardroom, and other members took heed.