my cousin smells – that occupied my sin-charting angel, like a passive–aggressive driving instructor totting up minor faults. But there were also the major indictments. For instance, at the age of nine, as I was daydreaming in a lesson, I unthinkingly drew the outline of a bum on the Quran – thereby committing the ultimate defacement and simultaneously betraying an unconscious association between anal sex and religion that’s probably straight out of the psychoanalysis textbook. This blasphemy was a crime of such gravity that there was an entire school inquisition, with all the kids in my year group forced to produce writing samples. There I was, sitting on the sizzling hot concrete outside the headmaster’s office, trying to figure out how many good deeds I’d need to settle the insurmountable difference, yet also plotting to botch the test to get another child in trouble.
I got off the hook. After my writing sample was checked, I was told I could go home. On the bus back from school, I remember staring at the sandy pavements, and being struck by how many heavy rocks and boulders there were lying around all over the streets. I counted each one I could see, feeling the weight of every stone in my conscience, all colliding together to create an avalanche of heavy guilt, knowing that some poor Muslim child was getting the punishment of their life for defacing the Quran with an arse.
This obsessive sin collecting had developed into a pretty debilitating OCD by the time I was ten. Here’s how it manifested. Since doctors were highly respected by my family and community – particularly male doctors – I told my parents I wanted to be one, and asked them to enrol me in an after-school first-aid club (and you thought Glee Club was as lame as it gets?). It was here that I learnt of an acronym that ensnared my brain – DR. ABC. It’s short for Danger, Response, Airway, Breathing, Circulation, and it’s the order of things to assess when you see someone in peril. You look around to evaluate the threat of surrounding Danger. You make noise and prod to see if the victim in question Responds. You ascertain whether their Airway is clear. You check to see if they’re Breathing. And you search for a pulse to feel for any Circulation. DR. ABC. It was the key to saving life. DR. ABC. It was the key to doing good. While the exhausted angel on my left shoulder forever beavered away, turning every single moment in time into a concoction of misdemeanours, I had DR. ABC at the forefront of my consciousness, driving me towards the light. Let me explain.
In the first stages, I muttered DR. ABC under my breath at any chance I could. Obsessively repeating DR. ABC meant I wouldn’t have the mental capacity to commit a sin. While my left shoulder was sinking under its wealth of sin, DR. ABC was like a lifeguard, rescuing me from a tarry ocean of transgressions. Let’s say I was sitting at home, with my brother and father yelping while the football played on TV; my DR. ABC incantation would stop any sinful, negative thoughts from forming, such as hoping the TV exploded. During Islamic Ramadan, a month during which we fasted all day as a demonstration of our piety, any internal dubiousness I had over Allah’s rationale to starve his people was diverted by DR. ABC. When my subconscious felt like I was plummeting down a sharp steep cliff edge, DR. ABC was a bit of rope to hang on to, slowing down the inevitable descent. DR. ABC became my form of control. But then, like all systems implementing order, it started to control me. And eventually, it enslaved me.
In periods where I felt especially rotten inside, it would come out with a vengeance. For instance, if I was having a bad day and someone spoke to me, I would count the number of syllables they used through the acronym DR. ABC. So let’s say a classmate at school said, ‘Amrou, do you have a spare rubber?’ That’s nine syllables. And so, in my head I would mutter DR. ABC until I reached nine syllables – D. R. A. B. C. D. R. A. B. Ending on B, my eraser-depleted classmate would now be characterised as a B in my mind. Then imagine the teacher chimed in: ‘Amrou, hand in your homework.’ Seven syllables, D. R. A. B. C. D. R. – R. So they became an R. And on and on this would go, exhaustingly charting the letter-position of everyone who spoke, balancing the syllable counts of the room like a juggler on crack, all to uphold the fascistic order of DR. ABC.
DR. ABC, my new male oppressor, was always buzzing about, calmed only by being with Mama.
As Allah and DR. ABC enacted a mental tug of war with a masculine brutishness, Mama offered a mystical feminine grace of a different order entirely. While public expectation called for a strict separation of the genders, the rules seemed to fall apart for us in private.
I think this was particularly due to the peculiar set-up of our family unit; for the most part, my brother was raised by my father, and I was raised by my mother. (This is why Ramy doesn’t play much of a part in this book – well, until right at the end, when he steps in and has a very significant role.) Weekends were centred around what Ramy and I wanted to do. Ramy enjoyed playing football and going to the arcade; my father was passionate about football, and enjoyed the camaraderie this gave him with Ramy. Baba was also usually drained from his long weeks at work, and enjoyed any activity that required no emotional commitment. My favourite pastime was going to the mall with Mama, and I spent most weekends watching her try on clothes and get her hair blow-dried at the salon (how I loved observing her gossip with the hairdressers, marvelling at the waves of her rich Arab hair and hearing the chorus of laughter that greeted her anecdotes). Whenever Mama was driving, I always seemed to be in the front seat of her car; Ramy was Baba’s passenger. Among relatives, it became a family mythology that Amrou was Mama’s and Ramy Baba’s; in all honesty, it sometimes feels like we had separate childhoods with little overlap.
‘Amoura,’ Mama sang from her bedroom one evening, a tune that I was more than happy to follow. For I knew what this musical tone meant. ‘Yes, Mama?’ I said with a performed coyness, knowing full well the treat that awaited me. Mama was going out to dinner with friends, and she needed help deciding which pair of shoes to wear. Her left foot flaunted a short-heeled, patent silver, open-toe number – divine – while her right foot donned a more sensible boot, though not without its embellishments, which included studs, and gold eyelets for the laces. Like a runway model posing for a designer, Mama switched from profile to profile so I could assess the full picture before giving my vote. I went for the silver (a total no-brainer). My mother winked at me, then fetched a baklava sweet from her make-up table, which she fed me as she stroked my hair, chanting, ‘My clever boy. My clever, darling boy.’ Mama and I knew that she was going to choose the silver shoe all along, but this performance was all part of our secret language. She knew I was illiterate in football, but the grammar of glamorous footwear – in this I was fluent.
There were other iterations of our secret club. When my brother and father went to play in the park, I would stay in to ‘finish my homework’. Once the echoes of football studs against the marble floor were no more, I emerged from my bedroom to be with Mama. This usually entailed me sitting with her on the couch as she painted her nails, smoked her cigarettes, and gossiped on the phone to a background of whatever the Egyptian networks were airing on our TV. It was during one of these sensory sofa experiences that I witnessed the magic of Umm Kulthum.
As Mama was flicking through the channels, a powerful voice flowed out of the TV screen. The moment this happened, Mama put down the phone, and both our heads turned simultaneously. This sonorous voice had the depth and gravitas of a gargantuan black hole that nothing would escape. The vibrato of her chords felt more like a tremor, as if each note was sending the room into a seismic shock that grabbed your insides until you were crying without realising. And not only was her voice able to take up – even alter – space, but her presence was of a might that I’d only ever associated before with the force of Allah. A large woman, she stood rooted to the spot onstage, her hair towering above her in a perfectly constructed up-do, her ears enveloped by enormous oval diamonds, and as she sang each heartbreaking note, she wrung her hands together with all the intensity of a grieving mother.
‘Mama … who is that?’ I said. My voice came out whispering and faint, as though Umm Kulthum had sucked in its power to strengthen her own.
‘Hayatti (‘my life’), that’s Umm Kulthum: she was the most famous singer in the world.’
Mama explained how Umm Kulthum (1898–1975) – oddly,
