But why speak now of what I only later understood. Why not rather remember the gnarled trunk of the sycamore and the soughing of the leaves when I sought shelter at its foot from the scorching sun and my favourite toy, the wooden crocodile that snapped its jaws and showed its red gullet when I pulled it along the paved street on a string. The neighbours’ children would gather to stare at it in wonder. I won many a honey sweetmeat, many a shiny stone and snippet of copper wire by letting others drag it along and play with it. Only children of the eminent had such toys, but my father was given it by the palace carpenter, whom he had cured of a boil that prevented him from sitting down.
In the morning, my mother would take me with her to the vegetable market. She never had many purchases to make, yet she could spend a water measure’s time choosing a bunch of onions and the whole of every morning for a week if it were a matter of choosing new shoes. By the way she talked, one might have judged her to be rich and concerned merely with having the best. If she did not buy all that took her fancy, then it was because she wished to bring me up in thrifty ways. Therefore she said, “It is not the man with silver and gold who is rich but the man who is content with little.” So she would assure me, while her poor old eyes dwelt longingly upon the brightly coloured woollen stuffs from Sidon and Byblos, as fine and light as down. Her brown, work-hardened hands caressed the ostrich feathers and the ornaments of ivory. It was all vanity, she told me and doubtless to herself. But the child’s mind rebelled against these precepts, and I longed to own a monkey that put its arm about its master’s neck or a brilliant- feathered bird that shrieked Syrian and Egyptian words. And I should have had nothing against necklaces and gilded sandals. It was not until much later that I realised how dearly poor old Kipa longed to be rich.
Being but the wife of a poor physician, she stilled her yearnings with stories. Before we fell asleep at night, she would tell me in a low voice all the tales she knew. She told of Sinuhe and of the shipwrecked man who returned from the Serpent King with countless riches. She told of gods and evil spirits, of sorcerers and of the Pharaohs of old. My father often murmured at this and said she was filling my head with nonsense and vain thoughts, but when it was evening and he had begun
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to snore, she would continue, as much for her own pleasure as for mine. I still remember those stifling summer nights when the pallet scorched my bare body and sleep would not come, and I hear her hushed, soothing voice, and I am safe with her once more. My own mother could hardly have been kinder or more tender than simple, superstitious Kipa, at whose hands blind and crippled storytellers were sure of a good meal.
The stories amused me, but as a counterweight, there was the lively street, that haunt of flies, the street that was filled with countless scents and smells. From the harbour, the wind would bring the fresh tang of cedar wood and myrrh or a breath of perfumed oil when a noble lady passing in her chair leaned out to curse the street boys. In the evenings, when Amun’s golden boat swung down to the western hills, there arose from all the nearby huts and verandas the smell of fried fish mingled with the aroma of newly baked bread. This smell of the poor quarter in Thebes I learned to love as a child, and I have never forgotten it.
It was during meals on the veranda that I received the first teachings from my father. He would enter the garden wearily from the street or come from his surgery with the sharp odour of ointments and drugs clinging to his clothes. My mother poured water over his hands, and we sat on stools to eat while she served us. Sometimes while we were sitting there, a gang of sailors would reel along the street, yelling drunkenly, beating with sticks upon the walls of the houses or stopping to relieve themselves by our acacias. My father, being a discreet man, said nothing until they had gone by but then he would tell me, “Only a black man or a dirty Syrian does that in the street. An Egyptian goes between walls.”
Or he would say:
“Wine enjoyed in moderation is the gods’ gift to us and rejoices our hearts. One cup hurts no one, two loosen the tongue, but the man who drinks a whole jar wakes to find himself in the gutter, robbed and beaten.”
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