She is Where

Bella sits me down in her empty house and asks me if I want
something to drink. I say No, thank you.

Her place, two floors below us, has that old, lived-in smell: the
carpets are worn out by two generations of footsteps, the wallpaper is
a faded yellow, and the lamps exude a tired light. The side-tables are
filled with photos of her children and grandchildren, her smile, like
the lamplight, is tired but endless.

When we first moved into the old flat on Sultan Hussein Street with its
high ceilings and mirrored walls, Bella sent us cookies. A new family
moving into an old building, dating all the way back to 1905; we must
have breathed life into its damp and rusty air.

My sister Heba and I would spend hours racing down the endless
corridors, hiding in the large oak wardrobe, inspecting the flashy
chandeliers, feeling as if we had stumbled into a different age, back
to the glory days where women wore pearls and fur, men smoked cigars
and lunched at Pastroudis, and you could have a five-course meal for
only two pounds. Sometimes we would play out old movie scenes, laughing
ourselves sick over our Faten Hamama impersonations, and the fact that
our bathroom towels looked nothing like her French evening gowns.

Our laughter must have filtered through the building because Bella sent
a plate of cookies up to our flat. We loved her instantly.

Every Friday, her family would come visit; the voices of thousands of
grandchildren would fill the empty rooms and once again the place would
come alive, even for only a day. The kitchen would clutter and clang
with the sounds of maids and cooks washing, serving, stirring and
arguing, and beautiful smells would creep up through our window and
into our hungry mouths. Even then, surrounded by her family, Bella
would still think of us, and a plate of something delicious would be
sent up with one of the maids: honey cakes, sticky pastries, marble
cake, and aniseed biscuits.

Then we grew up, and Samy, her husband, died.

And for some reason, the children stopped coming.

Now she holds the door open for me and pleads for five minutes of my
time. It is humiliating to see a woman who once ruled a household beg
for company, like a queen forced to give up her crown.

I sit on her couch which is covered with cushions and woolen rugs; the
table holds three remote controls, the cordless phone, a jar of
pistachio nuts and an overflowing ashtray. I can tell she spends all
her time in this room.

She sits down and asks me about university, and as I tell her, I watch
her face, the bags under her eyes, the corners of her mouth, her chin
and I wonder how she still has the same face she had in her glory days.
But if you look a little closer, you will see cracks in the corners,
fading skin, and a pale sadness in her eyes. Like the old building we
live in, Bella seems to be a thing of the past, the wonderful days that
I just happened to stumble into.

Her husband's armchair remains next to the couch, still facing the TV,
empty, unused.

The rows of photographs are bright and polished, and as I look at the
faces, I wonder about them and why they have left an old woman in a
forgotten house.

I wonder if I should offer her my cat for company, and then it hits me,
ten years too late, the guilt that my friend is alone, and I have never
visited her.

When she sent us cookies, a friendship was sealed. A silent deal was
made: we should have replaced the ghosts of her children, we should
have gone down the two flights of stairs and knocked on her big black
door with a plate of Mummy's pineapple cake, or Heba's devil's food
cake, or even my oversweet brownies; anything would have been fine, as
long as we had given back.

But we didn't.

Bella sits with her sad eyes, and I shiver at the thought that someday
I could be her, left behind, alone in a house full of stale voices and
forgotten footsteps. I would send cookies to children, as long as they
come down and play for a while. And then I can watch as the voices come
back again, and the silence will no longer be stale.

She is beautiful, like her name, she is a forgotten glory, like this
town, and as much as I try to walk past her door, as much as I try to
pretend I am not here, I know that she, like Alexandria, is where I
belong.