Sydney, Articulate Upstairs, August 2018
I hear my mother’s voice as I write the names of the streets on the long white wall, not repeating the names, because she never went to Paris–that place in her heart where everything was perfect– but singing softly. It is a call, something like the call to prayer I heard that day in Luxor at twelve noon as I opened the head-sized window for air and what the air brought with it was an impossible familiarity for I had been in Egypt barely a week and yet I felt that I had known that call all my life. It was a sound I could only have heard in the womb where they say some sounds are amplified through the watery fluid. The body calls mother to child, child to mother. So it is that pull I feel now in writing and hearing the French names that she would never have spoken. I wonder too about the dead among whom she walks. Perhaps it is something in the tone of those the city calls its own, some given a plaque bearing their achievements. Again, as I scrawl the instructions for walking the word où I note that my writing becomes smaller and my attempts to control the wayward slants remind me of her, of that C19th. calligraphic script taught to all convent girls as if the regular and disciplined rhythm of the strokes was intended to keep the beat of their hearts and minds in check. The O’s were the shape of their days and nights; g,j,p,q,y,z were letters that dipped briefly below the horizon line only to return swiftly. while d,f,k,h and l, slanted forward returning swiftly to a steady meridian leaving the search for freedom elsewhere. I wonder now, if this search for home is also not a search for freedom, the freedom not to belong in any one place. Is that the restlessness of my generation–the children of those who left their homeland for a better world and were content with their sacrifice. But it is we their children who watched them suffer the perilous journey to another life, we who saw some grow and prosper in the soil of a new land while others, though living, died for lack of sustenance.
Walking O: Paris 2017
Node:St. Etienne du Mont, 5 arr. The wedding - Saturday afternoon, summer 2017
The emptiness of the side street gave onto a wide avenue at the top of which sat the Abbèye, St. Genevieve, the patron saint of the city of Paris. There in the forecourt I passed a white convertible Volkswagen delicately decorated with sprigs of white gypsophila. At that moment the bells of the cathedral rang out in joyous clambering declaring the sweetness of such a moment and the hope it encompassed. I was unable to see the couple, surrounded as they were by a small, closely pressed, group, their presence announced by a flurry of white confetti thrown into a clear blue sky and carried by a passing breeze to the waiting car. I had no way of knowing whether they were young or older, if their hearts barely blemished were at the beginning of their lives, or whether they were older- grateful for another chance. The simplicity of the event brought back to me my mother’s own wedding which was by Egyptian standards, lavish . The photo, which is the only one I have of my parents lives together in Alexandria, shows four bridesmaids and two flower girls gathered around the bride’s white tulle train which is spread out at her feet like a large pond its laced border creating a frothy edge. My mother holds in her arms a large bouquet of flowers, roses and camellias, though the photograph is too indistinct to be sure. My father holds a pair of neatly folded white gloves and sports a pencil moustache to hide his youth, his nervousness; she was his love. In the thirty years that passed after his death my mother never spoke his name or mentioned him in any context except once.
It was the first week of their honeymoon. They had chosen the seaside, Le Mex perhaps. My mother who didn’t know how to swim had been carried beyond her depth to where she was unable to stand. My father, who equally could not swim had not jumped in to save her, she said, simply and without anger, when telling me the story. I don’t know what she expected of him. Perhaps that they should die together or perhaps she needed a reason to fall in love. She wanted to be struck with love, something which would give her life a flame. Or was it her imagination that needed the fire, the heat that the world obliged her to conserve. All that is over now. They both lie in the ground their bones far from one another as if they had never met.
Noeud: St Etienne du mont, 5°arr. Le mariage.Samedi après-midi,été 2017
Le vide de la ruelle débouchait sur la large avenue en haut de laquelle siègeait la sainte patronne de la ville de Paris. Là, sur l’esplanade, j’ai dépassé une Volswagen blanche décapotable délicatement décorée de gypsophile blanc. À ce moment-là les cloches de l’église s’envolèrent joyeusement en proclamant la douceur d’un tel moment et l’espoir qu’il renfermait. Je ne pouvais voir le couple, entouré comme il l’était par un petit groupe très serré, une rafale de confettis blancs lancés dans un ciel bleu clair, emportés par une brise passagère vers la voiture qui attendait, annonçait leur présence. Je n’avais pas de moyen de savoir s’ils étaient jeunes ou plus âgés, si leurs coeurs à peine TERNIS étaient au début de leurs vies, ou s’ils étaient plus âgés, reconnaissants d’avoir une nouvelle chance. La simplicité de l’événement me rappela le mariage de ma mère qui était , selon les normes égyptiennes, somptueux.La photo (qui est la seule que j’ai de la vie en commun de mes parents à Alexandrie) montre quatre demoiselles d’honneur et deux petites filles rassemblées autour de la traîne de tulle blanc de la mariée qui s’étale à leurs pieds comme un petit lac, sa lisière en dentelle comme un bord mousseux. Ma mère tient dans ses bras un grand bouquet de fleurs, des roses et des camélias, quoique la photo est trop floue pour être sûr. Mon père tient une paire de gants blancs soigneusement pliés et arbore une fine moustache pour cacher sa jeunesse, sa nervosité; elle était son amour. Pendant les trente ans qui s’écoulèrent après sa mort, ma mère ne prononça jamais son nom ni ne le mentionna à aucun propos sauf un:
C’était la première semaine de leur lune de miel, elle m'a dit. Ils avaient choisi le bord de mer, Le Mex peut-être. Ma mère, qui ne savait pas comment nager, avait été menée là où elle n’avait plus pied. Mon père, qui ne savait pas nager non plus, n’avait pas sauté pour la sauver, disait-elle, simplement et sans colère, quand elle me racontait l’histoire. Je ne sais pas ce qu’elle attendait de lui. Peut-être qu’ils meurent ensemble ou peut-être elle avait besoin d’une raison pour tomber amoureuse. Elle voulait être frappée par l’amour, quelque chose qui donnerait une flamme à sa vie. Ou était-ce son imagination qui avait besoin du feu, de la chaleur que le monde l’obligeait à garder. Tout cela est fini maintenant. Tous les deux sont enterrés, leurs os loin l’un de l’autre comme s’ils ne s’étaient jamais rencontrés.
Node: from novel: Alexandria-El Iskandariya: p207 Pont du Carousel
She is waiting for him as she has always done, scanning his face as he points the camera at her. She is used to his gaze and though she cannot see his eyes, masked as they are by the body of the camera, she knows by the tight marks around his mouth that he will click the shutter any moment. ‘Voila’, he says and walks across to her but she has already turned her back to watch the barge continue upstream its unseen cargo strapped beneath a series of tarpaulins. She feels the rough skin of his hand cup her shoulder as they stand on the crest of the bridge watching the dispersed leaves flowing towards them. Yesterday the wind had been biting, demanding, today there is a quietness, a white melancholy to the air but she does not notice. Today it is the tender yellows and oranges of autumn and the pale blue of the horizon that she notes dotted amidst the grey. There is, of course, always the child, his child, somewhere in the whiteness, but today she rests, her memory flowing quietly down the river.
Node: Rue Feuillantines
I remember the emptiness of the streets that warm Saturday afternoon. Was there something I didn’t know. Where were they those who walk intent on some pressing mission, crossing each other’s paths, darting between cars, disappearing into shop doors and reappearing again. That afternoon there were no passing cars, no pedestrians, the side walk cafes sat empty. I became a wanderer, an outsider, invisible no matter how busy the streets might later become. As I think about it now, it was the silence that carried me back to those rainy afternoons when, as a small child standing on a chair, I would bet on which of two raindrops, momentarily stopped on the window pane, would reach the sill first while I waited for my mother’s return.
Noeud: Rue Feuillantines
Je me souviens des rues vides en ce chaud samedi après-midi. Y avait-il quelque chose que je ne savais pas? Où étaient ceux qui marchent animés par une pressante mission, qui entrecroisent leurs chemins, se précipitent parmi les voitures, qui disparaissent par les portes des magasins puis réapparaissent? Cet après- midi- là, il n’y avait pas de voiture qui roulait, pas de piétons, les terrasses de café étaient vides. Je devins une vagabonde, une exilée, invisible, même si plus tard les rues se peuplaient.En y repensant maintenant, c’était le silence qui me ramenait à ces après-midi pluvieux de ma petite enfance où, assise sur une chaise, je pariais sur laquelle des deux gouttes de pluie, momentanément arrêtées sur le carreau de la fenêtre, atteindrait la première le rebord pendant que j’attendais seule le retour de ma mère.
Node: Jardins des Plantes; Alexandria- El Iskandariya p.161
They sit together the old woman and the younger one, silently, quietly. And to a passer-by it might seem as though it was just another day that two women are sitting one next to the other enjoying the warmth of spring and the green of new leaves. The same passer-by might be forgiven for thinking that they know one another well as there is often between those who have grown close no need for words. It is when Mme. Giraudoux has accepted the inevitable that she turns to Anna and places her hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. ‘Do you remember, my dear, the way the bombs lit up the sky and the light, like puppet legs walked across it’ , she says. This time it is Anna who bows her head not to hide but to unearth, to find…’yes, yes, and the way we had to wait for the thunder to arrive and we would count together. Yes, I remember, and how I would shiver even though it wasn’t cold and how you would put me on your shoulders and carry me around the rooftop and I would pretend to be a giant.’ Now she turns and faces the old woman and the space that had opened up in her is gone, its boundaries dissolved but she, herself, knows only that her breath moves more easily.
Node: Rue des Écoles, Bricolage
Some years ago I bought two summer hats for a few euros: one as yellow as sunflowers, the other as orange as the fruit. At the end of my journey they travelled back with me to serve in a garden full of camellias and roses high up on a plateau that separates the Great dividing range from the wild oceans of the south coast of N.S.W., a very different landscape to the one in which they were made. Woven from river reeds and coloured with dyes of onion skins they began their journey on the banks of an African river that flowed through flat savannah lands some distance from any ocean. Somewhat misshapen and discoloured now, they sit on a hook and function as odd companions, witnesses to unknown and faraway hands. Over the years I searched many times, unsuccessfully, for this bric-a-brac shop and finally abandoning hope, thinking it had perhaps closed, its multi-tongued objects gone. But strangely enough, at the very end of walking the letter O, part a project that asks ‘where is my home’ I found it, perched securely where it had always been on the corner of a side street that gave onto a wide avenue called Rue des Écoles.
Noeud: Rue des Ecoles, Bricolage
Il y a quelques années j’ai acheté deux chapeaux d’été pour quelques euros: l’un aussi jaune que des tournesols, l’autre aussi orange que le fruit. A la fin de mon séjour, ils voyagèrent avec moi pour servir dans un jardin plein de camélias et de roses en haut d’un plateau qui sépare la Cordillère australienne des océans sauvages de la côte sud de la Nouvelle Galles du Sud, un paysage très différent de celui où ils avaient été faits. En roseaux de rivière tressés et colorés de teintures de peaux d’oignon, ils avaient commencé leur voyage sur les rives d’une rivière africaine qui coulait à travers la savane plate à quelque distance d’un océan. Un peu déformés et décolorés maintenant, ils pendent à un crochet et font office de camarades excentriques, témoins de mains inconnues et lointaines.
Année après année, j’ai cherché maintes fois, vainement, ce magasin de bric-à-brac et finalement j’ai perdu espoir, pensant qu’il avait peut-être fermé et que ses objets multilingues étaient partis. Mais, assez étrangement, à la toute fin de Marcher la lettre O, partie d’un projet qui demande « où est ma maison? », je l’ai trouvé, solidement perché où il avait toujours été, au coin d’une ruelle qui donnait sur la large avenue appelée Rue des Écoles.
Node: St. Medard, Rue Censier, p138 Alexandria-El Iskandariya
Three jade diamond shaped patches of light fall across Mme. Giraudoux’s hand as she raises the cigarette to her lips. It is a colour that has pursued Anna all her life. She cannot see it without hearing the rustle of silk, but now, instead, she hears the church bell its rough clang promising continuity, bearing witness as it has done every hour for four hundred years. She sits behind the old woman in the darkened space lit only by the flicker of candles and the last of the pale green light seeping through as if they were in a diving bell at the bottom of the ocean, the space of the alcove sufficient only for two supplicants to kneel or sit. Not since her childhood - when she had constructed a cubbyhouse at the end of the garden in Hurstville and made sure that it was completely sealed, except for a viewing hole through wich she could navigate both earthly and celestial beings and where aided by her ever ready torch she read Treasure Island and later Cheri –had she felt that she was entering a labyrinth.
Walking U: Paris 2017
Node: Rue Gay Lussac
Forty years have passed since I stood some distance from a public fountain of some note and watched a young woman seated beside it suddenly propel herself forwards from her stilled position in one motion, to walking swiftly away in the direction she had been facing. I cannot be sure but I think the fountain was the one outside the National Gallery in London, the one that has at its centre the column with Nelson towering above the square. Again I remember little about her except one thing that has remained with me ever since. It was the way she lifted herself, her head bent down like a swan, then up n one single beautiful thrust forwards. Her body following this singular motion, as clear and decisive as the first time we fall in love. She had been sitting unobtrusively still surrounded by water falling into a jade coloured pond. I will never know who she was nor will she ever realise that one moment in her life would be remembered by a total stranger for almost half a century.
Noeud: Rue Gay Lussac
Quarante ans ont passé depuis que j’étais debout près d’une fontaine assez célèbre et que j’observais une jeune femme, assise tout près, abandonner sa tranquillité, se lever précipitamment d’ un seul mouvement, pour marcher vivement dans la direction en face d’elle. Je ne peux pas en être sûre mais je pense que la fontaine était celle qui est à l’extérieur de la National Gallery à Londres, celle qui a en son centre la colonne avec Nelson dominant la place. Je me souviens peu d’elle également, sinon d’une chose qui m’est toujours restée depuis.C’était sa façon de se redresser, la tête d’abord inclinée comme un cygne, puis en l’air, d’une seule belle poussée en avant. Son corps suivait le mouvement singulier, aussi clair et décisif que la première fois où nous tombons amoureux. Elle était restée assise, discrètement immobile, entourée par l’eau qui tombait dans un bassin couleur jade. Je ne saurai jamais qui elle était et elle ne réalisera jamais qu’un moment de sa vie allait être retenu par une parfaite inconnue il y a presque un demi-siècle.
Node: The Egyptian Cafë, Rue Arbalète
Having finished the letter U, I turned back and retraced my steps to Rue Arbalète thinking that I would have a coffee in the café on the corner of the rue Mouffetard, which had come to have such significance when writing the novel. As I approached the café where I had often sat wondering which chair Mme. Giraudoux would have chosen to drink her glass of wine and tell her stories, I passed the Egyptian café whose walls were painted a dark red-brown. The loose arrangement of objects in the window had about it something careless and yet specific. Brought into relief and turned into a mini stage by a faded, calligraphic cloth hanging behind them, they appeared deliberately chosen. Two colourfully painted toy figures no bigger than six inches, complete with turbans and curled moustaches leant crookedly against an equally small billiard table. One of the figures looked beyond the other to a broken plaster relief of an Egyptian queen. Beside the miniature scene was a hookah its smoking pipe coiled in a calligraphic character of its own, the blue base echoing the one outside, beckoning on the street. The hookah reminded me of one of the rare stories my mother told her life. It concerned her grandmother who loved smoking, which was frowned upon for women of that time. To overcome this problem my great-grandfather, who, my mother said, loved his wife greatly, would bring her a hookah after dinner, when she would sit in the parlour surrounded by its velvet, rose embossed wallpaper and rocking back and forth, puff gently away. ‘That is how she died,’ my mother said, ‘one evening, she rocking back and forth, I a small child playing at her feet’.
Noeud: Le café égyptien, rue de l’Arbalète
Ayant terminé la lettre U, je fis demi-tour et rebroussai chemin vers la rue de l’Arbalète, pensant boire un verre au café du coin de la rue Mouffetard, qui avait fini par avoir tant d’importance quand j’écrivais le roman. Comme j’approchais du café où je m’étais souvent assise en me demandant quelle chaise aurait choisi Mme Giraudoux pour boire son verre de vin et raconter ses histoires, je passai devant le café égyptien dont les murs étaient couverts d’une sombre peinture rouge-brun. Dans la disposition approximative des objets dans la vitrine il y avait quelque chose de négligé et cependant intentionnel. Mis en relief et transformés en mini scène par une étoffe fanée calligraphique qui pendait derrière eux, ils semblaient délibérément choisis. Deux personnages à la peinture multicolore, qui ne faisaient pas plus de six pouces, ornés de turbans et de moustaches frisées, s’appuyaient de travers contre une toute aussi petite table de billard. L’un des personnages regardait au-delà de l’autre un relief en plâtre cassé d’une reine égyptienne. A côté de la scène miniature il y avait un houka dont le tuyau s’enroulait dans un style calligraphique qui lui était propre, sa base bleue faisait écho au houka du dehors, qui invitait le passant. Le houka me rappela une des rares histoires que ma mère me raconta de sa vie. Elle concernait sa grand-mère qui adorait fumer, chose qui était désapprouvée pour les femmes de cette époque-là. Pour résoudre ce problème mon arrière -grand-père, qui, disait ma mère, adorait sa femme, lui apportait un houka après le dîner, quand elle était assise au salon, entourée par le papier peint en velours gravé de roses, se balançant en avant et en arrière et exhalant doucement des bouffées de fumée. « C’est comme ça qu’elle est morte un soir» disait ma mère, « elle, se balançant en avant et en arrière, moi, petite fille, jouant à ses pieds »
Node: Café Mouffetard
I often sat in the café Mouffetard imagining where Mme. Giraudoux would have chosen to drink her glass of wine and tell her stories. The far corner perhaps, where, illuminated only by two brass lamps, a soft yellow light shone through skirt-like glass shades. In the days when I searched for a café in which to set the story I had thought it would be one in the Rue Mouffetard because, in those days, it was the kind of area that a middleclass Egyptian woman might have settled in. I had already written the opening scenes in which Mme. Giraudoux sat at a table her back against a wall covered in painted, white lilies, a glass of wine to her lips. I found the café I had imagined not far from where I was staying, in the rue Faubourg St. Antoine. It was all there–the white lilies painted on the wall, the tables and their glass shades, the split leather armchairs dotted around the room. To my astonishment I had imagined a place that really existed.
I never found another like it. One morning as I was passing, I saw her, Mme. Giraudoux, as she had been written, back against the painted wall, a distant stare on her face, occasionally focused on the glass in front of her. The checked woollen coat she wore buttoned to a V, revealing little except a bare neck. The café was here as was she-just not where I would have expected her to be. Maybe she could not bear to be reminded of Egypt that day just as I had not been able to enter the Egyptian café near the rue Mouffetard. Bereft of Arabic words and no memories of which to speak, save my birth in Alexandria, I could only stand outside bearing unformed and unsayable thoughts. What was real and what was imagined had swapped places or perhaps they had always existed on a continuum, a sliding abacus of time.
Noeud: Café Mouffetard
Je me suis souvent assise au café Mouffetard,et je m’ imaginaits où Mme Giraudoux aurait choisi de boire son verre de vin et de raconter ses histoires. Le coin là-bas peut-être, où, éclairé seulement par deux lampes en cuivre, une douce lumière jaune brillait parmi des ombres de verre qui faisaient comme une jupe. Pendant les jours où je recherchais un café dans lequel planter l’histoire, j’avais pensé que ce serait l’un de la rue Mouffetard parce que, à cette époque, c'était la sorte de quartier où une femme égyptienne de la classe moyenne pouvait s’être établie. J’avais déjà écrit les scènes d’ouverture dans lesquelles Mme Giraudoux s’asseyait à une table, le dos contre un mur couvert de lis blancs peints, un verre de vin vers les lèvres. Je trouvai le café que j’avais imaginé pas loin d’où j’habitais, dans la rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine. Tout y était: les lys blancs peints sur le mur, les tables et leurs ombres de verre, les fauteuils en cuir fendillé éparpillés autour de la pièce. À ma grande surprise, j’avais imaginé un lieu qui existait réellement.
Je n’en ai jamais trouvé de semblable. Un matin, comme je passais, je l’ai vue , Mme Giraudoux, comme elle avait été écrite, le dos contre le mur peint, un regard fixe et distant parfois concentré sur le verre en face d’elle. Le manteau en laine à carreaux qu’elle portait boutonné jusqu’à l’encolure en V qui révélait peu de choses à part un cou nu. Le café était là, comme elle, simplement pas où je m’attendais à la trouver. Peut-être qu’elle ne pouvait pas supporter qu’on lui rappelle l’Egypte ce jour-là juste comme je n’avais pas été capable d’entrer dans le café égyptien près de la rue Mouffetard. Dépourvue de mots arabes et sans souvenirs desquels parler, à part ma naissance à Alexandrie, je ne pouvais que rester dehors en proie à des pensées inachevées et indicibles. Ce qui était réel et ce qui était imaginé avaient échangé leurs places ou peut-être avaient-ils toujours existé sur un continuum, un glissant boulier de temps.
Noeud: Paris, 2017
C’est quoi cette langue Française dans laquelle j’ai passé ma vie, la plupart de cette vie silencieuse qui existe quelque part dans mon corps et que depuis quel que temps coulent de se corps comme l’eau qui mouille le sable pour un moment bref avant de s’en aller. Voila pourquoi je suis venu te voir, pour que tu me rapelle ses mots, cette vie.
The written fragments above were largely spontaneous and unedited. Though not intended, all have within them something that is missing.