The Sea Circle

 

 

 

Mansoura Ez-Eldin

 

My brown bangs hung loosely on my forehead, they chose to be curly for the day.

It was a sunny day, I was five years old and feeling confident in my brand new, dark olive dress that looked like a caftan. Back then, caftans were quite trendy; a trend that reached us in the countryside nearly a decade too late. The dress was decorated with a golden print of grape leaves, and I remember feeling exhilarated about showing up to my youngest uncle’s wedding in it. Upon recalling the memory, I can still see bits and pieces of the picturesque landscape, with its vibrant colors and the turquoise sea that would guard our way to Alexandria; a city that emerges from the corridors of ancient history, no less. At the time, I knew nothing about history, but my mind was overflowing with myths, folk tales and all kinds of fairytales, something I can only thank my grandparents for.

 

Alexandria was the first real city I was about to see; in my mind it was a mythical land where the Mediterranean exists. My memory wants me to believe that when inside our rented car–a seven passenger Peugeot- it seemed as if we were surrounded by water on three sides; right, left and in front of us, in the faraway distance, the clear, blue liquid was sparkling like a mirage, even though, anyone who has travelled the road from the Nile Delta to Alexandria knows that these images aren’t what you’d see.

 

I had never been in a moving vehicle for such a long period of time, so naturally, I felt sick. My father ordered the driver to stop for a while. He hugged me as I vomited on the side of the road. I felt tiny and swamped by my embarrassment, especially when I noticed a café by the sea where a bunch of people were chatting and laughing, though thankfully, without taking notice of us.

 

They resembled the men and women I would always see on television; educated, elegant creatures who were out of my league, as if they were inhabiting a movie or more precisely, a photograph.

 

The driver brought a bottle of water and my father helped me wash my mouth and face. We all returned to the car where I was tucked under the warm arm of my dad who was oblivious to the fact that I was engrossed in watching the unconcerned, lighthearted people who were having fun by the sea.

 

A few years later, my mum planted seeds of doubt in my head about this memory. She was positive I didn’t attend that wedding, that my father went with my uncles and my grandma while I stayed with her at home. I was about to say that maybe this memory was of another visit to Alexandria that included me, but she added that I had never been there nor had I seen the Mediterranean before.

 

She wouldn’t change her mind even when I confronted her with an old photo in which I was sitting on my father’s lap, wearing my dark olive dress and my curly bangs. Everything about that picture - the only one I had of myself from my early years - suggested that we were at a wedding or at least a party, but she insisted that the photo must’ve been taken on another occasion, but definitely not at my younger uncle’s wedding.

 

The picture was not solid proof in my mother’s eyes and my memory about the cheerful, urbane people sitting in the café and of our journey in a rented car gradually began to fade, so I opted to believe her.

 

She told me once that I was beautiful and intelligent, but my mind was full of senseless thoughts and ghosts! She believed I had so much potential that was constantly wasted on all my absurdity.

 

"Your memory doesn't remember things, it invents them. You have a lying, deceitful memory and this could be a curse!" she added in her usual melodramatic way.

 

I think I would’ve cried if it weren’t for the comforting voice of my astute grandpa as he replied to her: “or a blessing.”

 

Was I cursed or blessed with such a highly volatile memory? I could never tell, but I trusted my grandpa, even with him constantly making up unbelievable tales just to entertain me. His most interesting, yet farfetched ones, were related to water: The Nile mostly and the Mediterranean occasionally. The Red Sea hardly made an appearance in his fabrications, even though he had lived in Suez for a short time.

 

“The best years of my life,” He would say with a nostalgia-soaked voice every time he mentioned his days as a young man in that city, though never referring to the Red Sea. He would occasionally refer to it in other contexts but without calling it by its known name. Instead he would call it "Al Mallih"; which means The Salty, as if it was the only salty sea in the world.

 

He disclosed to me once that he worked in a minor job with a group of British people, but he never revealed any further details about the nature of that job nor about those people. His secrecy encouraged my imagination to envision thrilling scenarios about his past. For some mysterious reason, I was tempted to link those British people to the vibrant group by the sea, the group I remembered so hazily, it felt as though they had never really existed. I’d always wonder whether some forgotten photo had inspired me to invent those laughing, chatting men and women, in the hopes of making sense of the memory. I searched in vain for such a photo.  Instead, I had a framed picture of my younger uncle and his bride standing side by side at their Alexandrian wedding. The picture hung on the wall above my bed, and never failed to make me feel uncomfortable, it felt as though it was there just to taunt me. The young bride was beautiful with her wide smile and raven black hair, but her arrogant eyes made her seem untrustworthy. I would try to convince myself that her wedding dress was the reason behind my odd feeling towards her; that it was not simple enough, decorated with too many white silky roses and with multiple layers, that made the couple seem artificial and untouchable to me. At the time, I refused to admit to myself, that the origin of my discomfort was the art of photography itself. One day, I was playing and bouncing around on the bed and the huge framed picture, in all of its pompous glory, fell on my head, giving me a slight concussion. It felt as though Photography had a soul that had decided to haunt me. Or perhaps the spirit of the young married couple’s wedding was unsatisfied with its disposable place in my memory and decided to assert a more permanent location where it knew nothing could make it leave, not my mother’s skepticism, not even my own desperation.

 

As a child, I had hated being photographed. Actually, hatred is an understatement; it was more of a phobia. My maternal family was obsessed with photography. Almost every day, they practiced a sort of holy ritual; after finishing their daily tasks, they would put on their best clothes and gather to have a group picture taken. It was always the same: my grandparents sitting in the middle surrounded by their four sons, three daughters and many grandsons and granddaughters, everyone except for their prodigal, weird little granddaughter, who used to panic every time they tried to include her in their staged routine.

 

My complicated relationship with photography as a kid was a puzzle to those around me. I couldn’t really explain to them why or how much photos terrified me. I spent a lot of time staring at pictures that turned people I knew and lived with into silent, immoveable copies of themselves. They seemed unreal, daunting. So, to protect myself from becoming another ominous mummy, frozen out of the river of time, I would scream and run away whenever they invited me to join them in their sacred ritual. I remember running all the way down a dusty road that leads to the Nile, where I would stay alone staring at the water like a sad Narcissus until my family had finished their photo session.

 

The Nile was a sort of haven to me, my most pleasurable times were spent on its banks. My grandpa owned a banana plantation by the river, beside it stood a tiny forest of Eucalyptus where the kids of the family loved to play and kill time. Every year at Sham Al- Naseem feast (spring feast) we had company; a group of Copts would spend the feast quite near to the clearing in the middle of the Eucalyptus forest. I would watch them, fascinated by the way they enjoyed themselves, by their liveliness and simple bliss. I was invisible to them. They were technically trespassing on my grandfather’s plantation, yet, they seemed confident compared to my timidity and caution. Ironically enough, they seemed unreal as well, as if my stalking was able to turn them into a mere object of spectacle. That’s probably the reason why they’ve always reminded me of the urbane group in the vague memory of my so-called visit to Alexandria.

 

My first definite encounter with the sea came around rather late. I was 27 years old when for the first time I saw the Mediterranean in Alexandria, and stood on the beach carrying my one-year-old daughter. In addition to my vivid memory of it, I also have unquestionable proof this time; a photo of myself wearing a printed blouse, looking and feeling confident next to my husband while hugging my little angel, unaware of any potential stalkers.

 

Fourteen years later I sat on the other side of the Mediterranean, to be precise in the south of France with a group of fellow writers. We were talking loudly and casually making fun of ourselves when I noticed a bambi-eyed, blonde little girl watching us in admiration from afar. None of my companions seemed to be aware of her presence and I pretended not to be either. However, I couldn’t help but let myself wonder if she was seeing the Mediterranean for the first time, and if so, I’d love to imagine that we’d still be alive in her memory nearly four decades later.