Berrada - Like a Summer Never to Be Repeated

First published in 2009 by

The American University in Cairo Press

113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt

420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018

www.aucpress.com

English translation copyright 2009 by Christina Phillips

Copyright 1999 by Mohamed Berrada

First published in Arabic in 1999 as Mithl sayf lan yatakarrar

Protected under the Berne Convention

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Dar el Kutub No. 16148/08

eISBN: 978 161 797 158 7

Dar el Kutub Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berrada, Mohamed

Like a Summer Never to Be Repeated / Mohamed Berrada; translated by Christina Phillips.Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2008

p. cm.

1. Arabic fiction I. Phillips, Christina (trans.) II. Title

892.73

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 15 14 13 12 11 10 09

Designed by Adam el Sehemy

Printed in Egypt

To my friends in Egypt: too many for me to count.

And to Leila, I dedicate to you these tales of Egypt,

whose love also brought us together.

Part One

Holes Unceasingly Filled

Memories are a betrayal of nature

Because the nature of yesterday isnt Nature.

What was is nothing, and to remember is to not see.

Pass by, bird: pass by and teach me.

Fernando Pessoa

The Threshold of

Bab al-Hadid Station

H AMMAD READ WHAT HE had written on a white sheet of paper ten years earlier:

Bab al-Hadid Square. August. The midday sun blazed as he stepped out of the train station in Cairo, his suitcase in one hand and a cardboard box containing a dark blue suit he bought the night he left Paris for Rome in the other. He wasnt yet seventeen....

He paused for a moment and let his thoughts wander: Why begin with Bab al-Hadid Square? Wouldnt it have been better to begin with his familys farewell in Rabat or with boarding the boat in Casablanca on July 13, 1955 heading for Marseille, or at dawn in the train station in Paris on his way to Rome?

There were many possible beginnings. Hammad supposed that the clamoring image of Bab al-Hadid Square, swelling with activity, cars, the yellow tram, and people, had lodged itself in his mind, especially after he had arrived there several times and seen it in the film Bab al-Hadid depicted from a perspective that blended reality with the dreams and illusions of the sensual actress Hind Rostom, with her relaxed, light-footed gait. Besides, there was no absolute beginning, he said to himself. What he was going to write was clothed with imagination, interjected in time and space, and constructed from words. And it would soon be razed by other memories as they burst out suddenly from some corner of his unconscious. He thought a little and added: Ill write what I remember then edit it and embellish it creatively until I have an ample account, into which Ill have woven all that insists on inhabiting the page lest it fade in my memory.

Hammad was almost seventeen when he decided to travel to Cairo to finish school, as Arabic education in the private schools set up by the Nationalist Movement did not include the baccalaureate and tightened French authority meant it was limited.

If he chose Cairo rather than Damascus, as others had, it was because of the many scenes his memory had accumulated from films like Long Live Love, Forbidden Love, and Love and Revenge and songs by Abd al-Wahhab, Farid al-Atrash, Asmahan, and Umm Kulthum. The names of certain writersTaha Hussein, Tawfiq al-Hakim, al-Manfaluti, and Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyidhad also snuck into his soul through the reading he undertook on his own in Bab Shala Library, close to Muhammad V School. Only now, as he walked out into Bab al-Hadid Square carrying his suitcase and suit in the scorching August sun and clamor of the street, the like of which he had never experienced in quiet Rabat, did he understand that he was entering an unknown world which bore no relation to the city he saw in those chic, romantic films. He looked right and left and turned around, following the brown figures in gallabiyas of all colors with cotton skullcaps on their heads despite the heat, the women, who were mostly wearing black milayas, and a few men in European-style suits and red tarbooshes. It was a very different mix to the one he had left behind in his own country. There was also the yellow tram that cut through the middle of the square, and the pushcarts and bicycles that never seemed to stop. He tried to ask for the address of the North African Lodge where a friend who had arrived a year earlier was staying. He used what classical Arabic he knew to ask a man in a striped gallabiya with a white turban on his head, How do I get to the North African Lodge in Agouza, please? He spoke quickly and falteringly and the man had to ask him to clarify what he was saying a number of times. The exchange failed so he tried again with other people. Passersby gathered round to get a good look at this guy who appeared to be an Arab but couldnt speak Arabic. When Hammad recalled that awful episode, he couldnt remember exactly how he finally got to the North African Lodge in Agouza or how he handled being lost before finding his friend Nabih, who embraced him warmly and cried, Cairo celebrates. Welcome. Praise God youre well. The words coming out of Nabihs mouth had the same accent as the people Hammad had spoken to in Bab al-Hadid Square and heard in films. So his friend, who was laughing loudly and slapping his back exuberantly, had mastered the Egyptian dialect. Nabih laughed a lot as he listened to Hammads account of Bab al-Hadid Square and his problems communicating. Dont worry, he said, Well teach you Egyptian in a week. Youll be a nightingale. No offense but, as they say in Morocco, youre like an Arab in a strange land! Some students began to emerge from their rooms to say hello and ask about affairs in Morocco and news of the struggle. One of them was Abd al-Qadir. He was tall, slim, and good-looking with smooth brown skin. Hammad quickly recognized him, for he had been the hero of a romance at the Muhammad V School before traveling to Egypt. He had acquired a reputation after writing a letter to a pupil he liked, which began, Love dropped from the sky. You must acknowledge it. The pupils passed the letter around secretly and watched the two of them walking among the other girls and boys in the fifth form. There would be further romances for Abd al-Qadir in Cairo, for he seemed made to dress elegantly, flirt with girls, and stay up late as was the custom in Cairo.

When Hammad asked his friend Nabih about a student called Barhum, whether he had arrived yet from Morocco, Nabih said he had turned up a month ago with his friend Alaa. Their risky attempt to escape on foot to North Morocco had been a success. Hammad was delighted. He had made friends with Barhum through an exchange of letters after reading a prose poem of his in a Moroccan magazine and finding it echoed some of his personal feelings. They met up in Rabat and formed a strong friendship through mutual literary interests and the prospect of escaping to Egypt: Hammad via a trip to France organized by the Department for Youth and Sport, which was under French supervision, and his friend across the borders between the two Moroccos of the time: Spain and France.