Vus led us up the stairs of the large marble-fronted building. On the steps, a black man dressed in dirty clothes grinned and bowed: "Welcome, Mr. Make." Vus put some coins in the man's outstretched hand and spoke to him in Arabic. As we walked into the building's cool dark corridor, Vus told us the man was Abu, the boabab or doorman, and he would deliver our bags. At the end of the corridor, he unlocked a carved door and we entered a luxurious living room. A gold-and-red-striped satin sofa was the first object which caught and held my attention.
A muted tapestry hung on the wall above another rich-looking sofa. In the middle of the room a low table of exquisite parquetry rested on an antique Oriental rug.
Vus wondered aloud if I liked the room and Guy made approving sounds, but I couldn't imagine how a landlord could leave such important and expensive pieces in a rented apartment.
Guy shouted from a distance. "You should see this, Mom."
Vus took my elbow and directed me into the next room, where a Louis XVI brocaded sofa and chairs rested on another rich rug. The dining room was filled with French antique furniture. The large bedrooms held outsize beds, armoires, dressing tables and more Oriental rugs.
I grinned because I didn't know what else to do. When we reached the empty kitchen, a little sense returned to me.
A soot-encrusted lamp sat on a ledge with stacked plates, a pile of cheap cutlery and thick glasses.
Vus coughed, embarrassed. "They use this"—indicating the lamp—"to cook on. It's a Stemo stove. Uh... I didn't get around to fixing up the kitchen yet. Anyway, regular stoves are very, very expensive. I thought I'd wait until you arrived."
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"You mean, we own all that crap?" I must have shouted because Guy, who was crowded into the small room with us, frowned at me, and Vus gave me a haughty, angry look.
"I have tried to make a beautiful house for you, even to the point of ignoring my own work. Yes, I've postponed important PAC affairs to decorate this apartment, and you call it crap?" He turned and walked through the door. Guy shook his head, disgusted with my lack of gratitude and grace, and followed Vus out of the kitchen. Their silent departure succeeded in humbling me. Vus was a generous man. Indeed, I had only seen that kind of furniture in slick magazine advertisements, or in the homes of white movie stars. My husband was lifting me and my son into a rarified atmosphere, and instead of thanking him for the elevation, I had been sour and unappreciative.
A profound sense of worthlessness had made me pull away from owning good things, expensive furniture, rare rugs. That was exactly how white folks wanted me to feel. I was black, so obviously I didn't deserve to have armoires, shiny with good French veneer, or tapestries, where mounted warriors waged their ancient battles in silk thread. No, I decided to crush that feeling of unworthiness. I deserved everything beautiful and I merited putting my long black feet on Oriental carpets as much as Lady Astor. If Vus thought he wanted his wife to live beautifully, he was no less a man (and I had to get that under the layers of inferiority in my brain) than a Rockefeller or a Kennedy.
The luggage had been placed in the middle of the floor of the first living room. I heard Vus's and Guy's voices from the balcony, so I went to join them with a smile warm enough to melt the snows on Mount Everest.
"This is the most gorgeous house I've ever seen." Vus nodded and smiled at me as if I were a recalcitrant child who had recovered her good manners following a foolish tantrum. Guy grinned. He had known his mother would come through. We stood looking down on the back of a man who was bent weeding what Vus said was our private garden. We had a doorman and our own
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gardener. That information was a fair-sized lump, but I swallowed it.
The first weeks in Cairo were occupied with introductions to freedom fighters from Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, North and South Rhodesia, Basutoland and Swaziland. Diplomats from already-independent African countries dropped by our apartment to meet Vus Make's American wife, who was trying to be all things to everybody.
Jarra Mesfin, from the Ethiopian Embassy, and his wife Kebi-detch Erdatchew came early and stayed late. Joseph Williamson, the Charge d'Affaires from Liberia, and his wife A. B. invited us to the Residency.
I was the heroine in a novel teeming with bejeweled women, handsome men, intrigue, international spies and danger. Opulent fabrics, exotic perfumes and the service of personal servants threatened to tear from my mind every memory of growing up in America as a second-class citizen.
Vus, Guy and I had lunch near the pyramid of Giza, where we watched camel riders lope around the bottom of the Sphinx. Car radios, nearly turned to their highest pitch, released the moaning Arabic music into the dusty air.
1 had hired Omanadia, a short stubby older woman from Sudan, as cook-housekeeper after Vus said my reluctance to have a servant in the house was not proof of a democratic spirit, but rather of a bourgeois snobbism, which kept a good job from a needy worker. Anyway, she was a cook and knew how to manage the little Sterno lamp which remained my only stove.
Guy was enrolled in the American College at Mahdi, and was picked up daily in a bus for the fifteen-mile ride out of Cairo to his school. He might have felt the need to show off for his schoolmates and new teachers, or the abrupt cultural change may have prompted him, but whatever the reason or reasons, he did extremely well in his studies. There was no need to urge him to do his homework, and the mood which had visited him in the more recent months in New York and San Francisco was dis-
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pelled. In Cairo, he had a clarity, was cheerful, garrulous and my young son again. We engaged each other in a contest to see who would have the largest Arabic vocabulary and speak with the best accent.
There was an Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference in downtown Cairo and Vus thought I'd like to attend.
The sight of the huge auditorium made me catch my breath. Long tables, banked at an easy incline, held headsets and microphones, and men of every color, wearing various national outfits, wandered the aisles, conversing loudly in many languages strange to my ear. The arrangement of seats, the microphones and the multinationals reminded me of the General Assembly of the United Nations, my heart thumped and I reached for Vus, who, hating public displays of attachment unless he initiated them, stepped away, but stayed close enough to whisper.
"They don't make you nervous, do they?"
I straightened myself and pulled as far from him as he had withdrawn from me. "Not at all. I don't frighten easily."
That was more mouth than truth, but I put my head up and walked down into the mingle of men. Vus caught my arm and stopped me.
"I want to introduce you to your fellow countryman." I looked around to see a thin young man, dressed in a well-cut suit, smiling at me. He was of one piece. His eyes were almond shaped, his face long and gently molded into an oval, his smile was long and thin, and he was the color of a slightly toasted almond. Vus said, "This is David DuBois. He is a journalist in Cairo, and my very good friend. David, meet my wife, Maya."
His first words were a healing balm spread on an ache I had not distinguished. "Hello, Maya Angelou Make. I've heard about you. All Egypt will be happy to welcome you. And they say you can sing, too."
The voice of an adult American black man has undeniable textures. It has a quality of gloss, slithery as polished onyx, or it can be nubby and notched with harshness. The voice can be
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sonorous as a bass solo or light and lyrical as a flute. When a black man speaks in a flat tone, it is not only intentional but instructional to the listener.
I had forgotten how much I loved those sweet cadences. I said, "I surely want to thank you. I'm glad to be here."
We smiled at each other and embraced. Maybe he had missed hearing a black American woman's voice.
The cocktail parties at home increased. Vus had to make contacts, and he also had to entertain them, their wives and friends. When he was in Cairo, the house throbbed with activity. I learned
to cook elaborate dinners without pork and served chilled fruity unalcoholic punches when our guests were Moslem. Roast hams, rice with ham, spinach with salt pork and peas with pig knuckles, with Scotch and gin, were served to African and European guests.
I began to notice the undeniable link between Vus's journeys and our entertainment schedule. When he returned from Algeria, which was independent and militantly anticolonial, his spirits were high and he strutted through the house with an air of insouciance. At those times, he wanted to be alone with me and Guy. He would describe the successful Algerian revolution as if the seven-and-a-half-year rebellion had taken place in South Africa rather than at the continent's most northerly tip. Guy would listen, his eyes gleaming, his face immobile, as Vus told us proudly of his conversations with Ben Bella or Boumedienne. Trips to Ghana also resulted in proud reports of the Nkrumah government and homey conversations. We three would play Scrabble and listen to music. Then in our dim bedroom, he would take me into his arms delicately. My body was the prayer wheel where he placed all his supplications. Love-making became a high celebration, rich and sacred, a sacramental communion.
Conversely, when he had traveled into southern Africa, without passports or documents, when he doffed the tailored suits and handmade shoes, and wore the open sandals and blankets of
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tribesmen in order to reach a stranded party of escapees, he returned to Cairo quickened, tense with wakefulness. The whites of his eyes were always shot with red lines, and his attention was abstracted with what he had seen, and where he had been.
He was hardly in the house before he would pick up the telephone.
"Are you free this evening? Come over. My wife will cook her famous Afro-American food. We'll drink and eat. Come."
The invitation would be repeated several times before he would ask if I had something I could prepare in a hurry. Invitees would troop into the apartment, eat and drink copiously, talk loudly with each other and leave. Occasionally during the gatherings, David DuBois and I would find a quiet corner and talk about our folks back home.
David's journalistic assignments involved all of Europe, Africa and Asia, and marriage had broadened my interests to include the mercurial politics of those areas as well. However, while the conversations around us swelled with concern over Goa and India, Tshombe and the Belgian-owned Union Miniere, the Lebanon and Middle East crisis, we wondered how the black parents in America could let their little children walk between rows of cursing, spitting white women and men, en route to school? What would happen to the children's minds when uniformed police sicked dogs on them just because they wanted to get to class?
At a certain point, we always stopped the self-pitying and reassured ourselves that our people would survive. Look what we had done already.
David and I would begin to hum softly, one of the old spirituals. (He always insisted on starting with his favorite, "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, When I Lay My Burden Down.")
Surely exhibitionism was a part of our decision to sing in a room of talkers, but a deeper motivation was also present. The lyrics and melody had the power to transport us back into a womblike familiarity. Admittedly, Africa was our place of genesis, long, long ago, but more recently, and more dearly known were the sounds
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of black America. When David and I lifted the song, diplomats and politicians, women on the make, and men on the run, freeloaders and revolutionaries, stopped haranguing, flirting, jibing, imploring, pontificating, explaining, and turned to listen. First half-heartedly, informed by the knowledge that we were airing melodies written by the last large group of people enslaved on the planet, courtesy forced them to attend. After a few verses, the music made its own demands. They could not remain ignorant of its remarkable humanity. I could not read their minds, but their faces were wide open with allegiance to our songs. Vus, conscious of their attentiveness, paid tribute to our survival and by joining in helped David and me to reestablish for ourselves a connection to a bitter, beautiful past.
16
Omanadia came to the balcony on a lovely summer afternoon.
"Madame?"
I had arisen from a nap in the cool bedroom. I felt refreshed and indulgent. "Yes, Omanadia?" She could not have the rest of the day off, if that was what she wanted. I needed a little more pampering.
"Madame, I stopped the rug man again. You were sleeping."
"What rug man?" I was awake, but slow.
"The man collecting for the rugs. He hasn't been paid for two months. And the two furniture collectors." She laughed roguishly. "The other maids down the street tell me when they're on Ahmet .Hishmat, so I don't open the door."
Because of her age and sharp tongue, Omanadia was the bane and the pet of shopkeepers, younger servants and doormen. She knew all the gossip and most of the facts concerning people in our neighborhood.
"Omanadia, how much do we owe?"
She tried to keep a straight face, but her eyes danced. "How
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much, madame? But Mr. Make would not like me to say. He is the man, madame."
"How much, Omanadia?"
She made her fingers an abacus. We had only paid a tenth of the price on the rugs. We owed over half the cost of the bedroom furniture. We had not paid anything on the embroidered bed linens or towels. The two living rooms and the dining-room set were way overdue for payment, and our rent was two months in arrears. I thanked her and told her to take the rest of the afternoon off.
The specter of the New York City deputy sheriff stood in the doorway, hid just behind the heavy drapes, waited nearly visible in my well-tended flower garden. Eviction in New York was bad, but at least I was at home, where my friends would have helped if I called on them. And always there was Mom. I could have gathered my son and flown back to San Francisco. But if we were thrown out into the streets of Cairo . . . along with the other homeless waifs, whom could I ask for help? When I was young, poor and destitute I had resisted welfare in the U.S. I certainly wasn't about to ask for assistance in a country which was having trouble feeding its own nationals.
I had to get a job.
David answered his telephone and when I said I had an emergency, he agreed to meet me at a tearoom in downtown Cairo.
The restaurant was luminous with crystal chandeliers, polished mahogany counters and jeweled women drinking Turkish coffee from dainty china cups. It was the wrong setting for my pitiable tale.
David had chosen a table in the center of glitter, and when he held out a chair for me, I decided to lie—to tell him the emergency was contrived, that I just wanted a chance to get out of the house. Or that I was planning a banquet and couldn't decide on a menu. He ordered whiskey and I prattled about embassy parties, and dinner near the pyramids, and how well I was learning Arabic, and how Guy was settling down in his new school.
I noticed he hadn't smiled once. When I finally stopped chat-
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tering, he asked quietly, "The emergency. What is the emergency?"
"Nothing really." We had had no time to build a friendship. I was about to use him simply because we were both black Americans. My mother's saying, "We're colored but we're not cousins," echoed in my mind. I shouldn't presume that our uniqueness gave me license to ask him for a favor.
"Does it have to do with Vus?" He looked at me directly and I thought, Doesn't everything have to do with Vus?
I said, "I'm getting a little bored sitting at home. I've worked all my life. So really, I thought maybe you might know how I could get a job. Just to have something to do."
He relaxed and grinned. "You want a job? Nice women don't work in Cairo. I thought you knew that. Why don't you join one of the women's organizations? Or set up a club among the wives of African diplomats. You could write some articles for black American newspapers. The Amsterdam News or something. Nothing to do?" He laughed. "Girl, I thought you were serious."
I was more than serious, I was desperate. And putting on
silly airs, I had appeared to David like the frivolous women I scorned.
"David, I'm broke. Every piece of furniture in that house was bought on installment. The rent is past due, and Guy's school fees are in arrears. I don't have enough money to go back home and I can't stay here unless I get a job." The smile faded from his face and he nodded. "O.K., O.K. I figured it was something like that. Maybe. Maybe, I can get something for you. I'll do what I can. What about Vus? Will he let you work?"
"If I can get a job, I'll handle the rest of it. I've been through too much to turn back now. I've been a frycook, a waitress, a strip dancer, a fund-raiser. I had a job once taking the paint off cars with my hands. And that's just part of it."
David shook his head. "Black women. Huh, huh. O.K. Let's have another drink. I'll call somebody I know this afternoon."