Author Archives: carolcooper

WHY WORRY ABOUT SEPSIS?

Posted in Modern life, Pills by

If you know much about sepsis, chances are the condition has affected your family.

I’ve blogged about sepsis before, but the condition is still with us and has a high mortality. It kills about 48,000 people a year in the UK. Worldwide, someone dies of sepsis every 3 seconds. Survivors have a high chance of serious long-term effects.

Today being World Sepsis Day, I’m parking the levity once again and using this post to sum up – or update – what you need to know about sepsis. 

Understand what it is.

Sepsis is when the body responds to severe infection in such a way that it attacks its own organs and tissues. Without treatment, this quickly leads to organ failure and death.

Most people have heard of blood poisoning (septicaemia) which is much the same thing. But doctors now prefer the term sepsis because there isn’t always blood poisoning in this condition.  

Sepsis isn’t exactly a household name – yet. Personally I still think ‘sepsis’ sounds weaker than either septicaemia or blood poisoning, but we’re stuck with the term that scientists agree on.

Know the warning signs.

The symptoms depend on age, but the main point is that there isn’t any one specific sign like, say a swollen jaw with mumps. A child with sepsis can have a high fever, or an abnormally low one. The younger the child, the vaguer the symptoms.

Here are some signs to look out for in children (from the UK Sepsis Trust website):

In under-fives the symptoms can be particularly vague:

And here are some signs to watch out for in adults (again from the excellent UK Sepsis Trust):

If you just remember two things about sepsis, remember this:

You or your youngster will be more unwell than expected.

Things get rapidly worse, especially in children.

Understand who gets it.

Anyone can develop sepsis from a bacterial infection (or sometimes a virus or fungus). But some are more at risk, like the very young, very old, pregnant women, diabetics, and people on long-term steroids.

The initial infection can be a serious one like meningitis, or seemingly trivial, like a horse-fly bite.

scalpel

Surgery can be linked with sepsis, especially emergency operations on those in poor health, or with peritonitis or bladder infections.

And yes, Covid-19 can sometimes lead to sepsis too.

Know what to do.

Sepsis is a medical emergency and needs urgent hospital care. Don’t waste a single moment.

Sepsis isn’t one disease, but rather a syndrome that cuts across almost every medical speciality. The first doctor you see could be a paediatrician, a gynaecologist, an orthopaedic surgeon, or your GP, and sepsis may not feature at the top of their list. That’s why it’s so important for you to mention it. When you see the doctor or nurse, or speak to 111, make sure you say, “I’m worried about sepsis.”

Thanks for bearing with me. Hope you stay healthy.

Litmann type stethoscope

The UK Sepsis Trust is a wonderful charity founded to save lives and improve outcomes for survivors of sepsis – by instigating political change, educating healthcare professionals, raising public awareness and providing support for those affected. For their general info on sepsis, click here.

WHOSE STORY IS IT ANYWAY?

Posted in Modern life, Writing by

Most of the time, this blog has a jovial slant. This week, I asked my friend and thriller writer JJ Marsh for a more reflective piece on aspects of control. Here’s what she has to say.

Arguments often explode on Twitter (#notnews) and some issues surface again and again. In the book world, the question of cultural appropriation sets author against author, publisher against reviewer, and generates hours of heated discussion. As I write, a debate rages about a writer’s use of clichéd terminology to refer to people of colour.

The problem comes down to an old adage: Write what you know.

The writer did indeed write what she knew, about real children, but applied her own cultural lens. This upset many people devoted to shining a light on intrinsic racism.

Write what you know.

That advice carries a whole host of issues. Do we police our imaginations and stick to our own lived experience? Or are we able to step into other worlds with ethics and empathy?

It’s a topic I brood over often.

Not ‘just’ the race or gender discussion, but the topic of mental health. I’ve written characters of various nationalities, ethnicities and sexuality, but the area I feared to broach was the characters’ inner world.

When choosing to create a protagonist with bipolar disorder, I knew I was on shaky ground. I researched, learnt about how the condition can vary and/or develop, checked chapters with psychologists and those with experience to ensure my representation was authentic. The greatest feedback was from readers who recognised and appreciated a sympathetic approach to a condition that touched their lives.

Then I embarked on Wolf Tones, a novel about coercive control from the perspective of a vulnerable male. Abusive relationships take many forms, as I know from my sister’s role as a support worker. Most victims are women, but some are men. So how to tackle such an issue without diminishing the female experience, acknowledging how it affects men and shining a light on how coercion works?

After two years of research, I came to a conclusion.

It’s all about the narrative.

Every relationship is a story, told by the players themselves. To outsiders, the reality of fraying tempers or bad behaviour might be polished, even exaggerated, for comic effect. Within the relationship, people make up their own journey as they go along – negotiating problems, harmonising habits, confronting obstacles and adjusting their own happy ending.

What about coercion? That’s when one party wrests control and becomes the director, casting a partner or family member in a role they may not want to play.

The first element of redefining roles is by eroding their confidence. Psychologists and therapists point to several techniques by which the director destabilises the victim and convinces them to give up independence. These include criticism, gas-lighting (making one believe something has/hasn’t happened) and micro-managing everything that person does.

Doubt and dependence are harder to introduce when a person has a network of friends, fulfilling job ,and supportive family. That’s why a coercive abuser begins to isolate the victim from any means of emotional outlet. Friends pushed away, families distanced or even rejected outright – the abuser paints them all as the bad guys.

This last is a common occurrence – the abuser claims the status of victim, reversing the roles in order to destabilise and gain sympathy from the person or persons they attempt to control.

Once the manipulator has command of the console, the victim is reduced to no more than an avatar; allowed no choice over money, clothes, activity, or behaviour.

This pattern of behaviour is at the heart of my psychological thriller Wolf Tones. It’s not a puppet show portraying the above because each character has a history (good and bad), ambitions, connections, a sense of loyalty and the issue of class to navigate in a professional environment.

The setting is a classical European orchestra, but the story could happen to any of us. It all depends on the narrator.

If any of the themes in this piece affects you, here are two places where you can find out more: Women’s Aid and ManKind.

Wolf Tones is a work of fiction. This story belongs to Rolf.

Fifteen years ago, Rolf was destined for the gutter.

His luck changed. Now a cellist with the Salzburg City Orchestra, he has his dream job and dizzying prospects. All because of her.

Smart, sexy, well-connected, and crazy about him, Leonor is his fantasy woman. She made him and he’ll never forget it.

Neither will she. 

Read the first chapter here.

A big thank you to JJ Marsh for her thought-provoking post. If you have any comments, I’d love to hear them.

Wolf Tones is out on August 19. You can pre-order it here.

A BLOODLESS COUP IN ’52

Posted in Egypt, Family life, Places by

Around this time of year, my thoughts turn to the Egyptian Revolution of July 1952 when King Farouk was ousted. It began with the Free Officers Movement, a group of Army officers that included future president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Many books have covered this period of history, as well as the era of revolution and decolonisation that it triggered. Here Nadia, a fictional character from The Girls from Alexandria, gives her take on the 1952 revolution.

King Farouk on a coin

ALEXANDRIA, JULY 1952

I sat on the swing and watched Rashida pick vine leaves, yanking each one off with more force than seemed necessary. People thought six-year-olds understood nothing, but I knew very well that things weren’t right.

‘What’s going on, Rashida?’

Rashida continued harvesting leaves in thick silence, so I went back upstairs to the little sitting room where my parents often sat. Father was in a white vest, listening to the news on the radio, one ear touching the speaker.

I asked Mother what was wrong. She replied with agitated hand movements that there was a frog in a pan of water, coming to the boil. I would have asked what she meant, but the phone in the hall rang. She rushed to answer it.

The telephone had to be answered solemnly and self-importantly, and the receiver had to be clasped with two hands, in case a limp hold would lose the connection. All conversations involved shouting, as if the other person was in Zagazig and telephones had yet to be invented. Despite all the shouting, though, I comprehended nothing.

After the call, Mother settled again in her favourite chair, picked up her canvas, and resumed her vicious jabbing. She was doing even more needlework than usual. I couldn’t see any need for it, not when every table already had an embroidered cloth and every chest of drawers a runner. There was even a huge folding screen that did nothing except skulk in the corner of the dining room, looking sinister despite the fat pink roses stitched into it.

I did know, though, that a lot of the calls were from Cairo these days. The phone made a different dring if the call wasn’t long-distance.

‘Trunk,’ one of my parents would exclaim, and there’d be a race down the parquet corridor to pick up the receiver with even more haste than usual. Nobody would say why our relatives from Cairo had taken to phoning so often.

I hung around doorways. I lurked outside rooms. I stayed awake after being put to bed. If the door of my bedroom was ajar, it let in a rectangle of light from the kitchenette where Rashida sat with magazines that she could not read. The jingling of bangles and the turning of pages usually soothed me to sleep, but Mother and Rashida had recently taken to whispering in the kitchenette.

As soon as I got out of bed and tiptoed to the door, they stopped. Mother put on an innocent face, and Rashida assured me she was just saying her rosary.

When the revolution came in late July, it took three days to unfold. It began in Cairo with soldiers in the streets and, Mother told me, the announcement that the army had taken control of the country. Things were changing. Rashida prayed even more fervently, kissing her cross and the medallion of St Anthony on the gold chain around her neck. St Anthony was the one to pray to if you ever lost anything. He’d even found Rashida’s pink handbag when she’d left it on a tram, as she often reminded us. This time, however, Rashida refused to say what was lost.

The Royal palace at Montazah, Alexandria

I was exactly six years, six months, and two days old when, on the twenty-seventh of July, Father told me that King Farouk had fled Egypt on his yacht the night before. It was then my solemn duty to inform the dolls in my pram that the King had gone and that soldiers were now in charge.

***

There’s more about Nadia, her sister, and the making of modern Egypt in The Girls from Alexandria – available as paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

IF CARLSBERG GAVE WRITING ADVICE…

Posted in Writing by

They say writing is a solitary activity (no, not that one). After all, an author sits in isolation, ploughing a lonely furrow that meanders from page to page. But there’s a community of other writers out there and, when I got stuck with my manuscript, I turned to author friends for advice. Here are some of their very best tips.

First I consulted historical novelist Liza Perrat. ‘Write the first draft without editing,’ she says. ‘Just get the story down.’ Editor, author, and writing coach Lorna Fergusson is one of many who agree. ‘Keep going and don’t stop to check a fact or agonise over a wording. Insert XXX and go back to it later.’

As author Debbie Young explains, ‘Writing and editing use different parts of the brain, so do them in separate sessions.’ She adds that writing the first draft by hand helps connect with the creative brain more readily.

I too find that using a pencil helps the writing flow, but it doesn’t always help the quality. What if you find yourself, as I did, mired in reams of Proustian prose, only without his madeleine or his talent?

Jane Davis brought me back to reality. ‘Make sure there’s conflict on every page.’ If you don’t know Jane, she writes award-winning novels set mainly in London.

This conflict thing is easier said than done. I think I ended up boring my own cat.

I should have taken author Linda Gillard’s advice. Pretty sure she was reminding me not to bore readers when she said, ‘If you don’t want to write it, no one is going to want to read it.’ I must say I’ve never lost interest in Linda’s novels.

Sometimes it’s hard to keep up the momentum. Prolific author Jean Gill has something to say. ‘My top tip is always to stop writing when you know what’s coming next. That way you start again with enthusiasm. There’s nothing worse than facing a blank page because you wrote all the scenes that were in your head.’

When it comes to editing, you have to be ruthless, just as Samuel Johnson put it.

But don’t throw those passages away, warns Liza Perrat. ‘I’ve learned the hard way never to delete anything. I wanted to use some characters and scenes left from my first novel that was never published. But stupid me had cleaned up the folder, and the stuff was gone for good.’

I have been known to rescue discarded papers from the wheelie bin, but it’s harder to retrieve files deleted from your computer.

Another gem comes from Amie McCracken, author, editor, designer, and all-round publishing guru. ‘My number one self-editing tip is to read out loud. There’s nothing like it to help you catch errors, but also to feel the cadence and flow of your words.’

My own writing tip? I have two. One, keep a notebook to make sure you don’t forget any good ideas. Someday, to paraphrase Mae West, it may keep you.

Two, keep reading good books.

If you have any favourite writing tips, I’d love to hear them.

***

In keeping with my recommendation to read good books, you may enjoy Pandora’s Boxed Set. It’s a collection of novels by ten award-winning women authors, to be published this year in two parts, first part No Woman is an Island and the second Not Little Women. The first is out on July 20 and the second in October. You can pre-order the first part today from your favourite bookseller (the second will soon be available for pre-order as well).

I’m thrilled to be included alongside authors like Jane Davis, Jean Gill, Liza Perrat, Linda Gillard, Clare Flynn, Lorna Fergusson, Jessica Bell, Amie McCracken, and Helena Halme. Here’s the foreword by Jean Gill.

Hope was left in Pandora’s Box, when all the evils were released into the world.

The Pandora’s Box series brings together award-winning and risk-taking international authors in an unforgettable showcase, with five books in each collection. Never has it been more important to collaborate across borders and to use the power of storytelling to express the rich variety of human experience. This has been the main principle underlying our selection and we also chose stories we couldn’t put down, characters we cared about, and writing that stopped us in our tracks to savour a phrase or an observation.

The novels in No Woman is an Island travel through time and space, from medieval and modern France through England in two world wars to present-day Scandinavia. Although very different, they all show the impact on women of events over which they have no control. No woman is an island.

Happy reading.

DO YOU SUFFER FROM LOCKDOWN MEMORY LOSS?

Posted in Modern life by

What have you lost during lockdowns 1, 2 and 3? Apart from such things as evenings with friends or outings to the pub, I mean. You’ve gained the ability to bake sourdough bread but, if you’re like a lot of people, other skills may have gone AWOL.

Take driving. Now that freedom of movement is returning, many find themselves flustered behind the wheel. In a snap poll conducted by CarWow, three-fifths of Brits surveyed felt anxious about post-lockdown driving.  

FreeImages.com/Jeramey Jannene

Motorway driving seems the most challenging, along with parking especially if, like a lot of people, you never quite got the hang of it in the first place. With my living-room window giving directly onto the street, the evidence is right in front of me.

You think driving should be like proverbial bike-riding? Maybe it is. But let me tell you that, when I tried to cycle after some decades, I’d lost all sense of balance and toppled over for no reason on a perfectly smooth road.

Why does that happen? It’s that old use-it-or-lose-it. No wonder going back to normal can feel like an alien world.

Even using your own feet can seem a trial. Neither my friends nor I can tolerate heels any more. It’s as if our feet have someone got wider after slopping around in slippers for months. Who knew?

Waistlines have inexplicably spread out too. I blame jogging bottoms, especially since the only jogging I’ve done is to the kitchen.

To combat post-lockdown sluggishness and avoirdupois, David Lloyd Clubs are running a six-week programme with volunteers working towards their health goals with personal trainers, nutritionists and psychologists. It’s called Team PB. PB for Pot Belly, perhaps?

As for libido, that too seems to have gone south for many. It’s difficult to prioritise intimacy when you’re stressed and the future looks uncertain. Watching the box is far simpler.

Here’s another reason why brain function may have suffered. Research from Johns Hopkins shows that, for those between 30 and 50, every extra hour of TV time daily translates into a 0.5% reduction in the volume of grey matter in the brain – in other words, the volume of nerve cells.

The road back to normal may prove long and winding, and I won’t be making the journey in high heels, but there’s a lot to look forward to. I might even want to travel again. Now where the heck is my passport? Bet it’s expired.

What do you think will prove hardest for you in the weeks and months to come? I’d love to hear.

THE “REAL” EASTER

Posted in Family life, Places by

Tomorrow, May 2nd, is Eastern Orthodox Easter. My mother’s family weren’t Greek, but, like many people in Alexandria, they were Greek Orthodox, a form of Christianity that goes back to the middle of the first century in Egypt.

Photo by Sorina Bindea via FreeImages

I know next to nothing about the Coptic religion, even though there are many more Copts in Egypt, but I can tell you a bit about Orthodox Easter.  It’s a huge festival, one which Nadia in The Girls from Alexandria knew well. As usual, impeccable behaviour was expected of 8-year old girls.

Easter Sunday, 1954

The Greek Orthodox clergy were always invited. The whole tribe had invaded our sitting room, with their long black robes, white beards, and massive crosses. To top it off, they wore ridiculous headdresses that I wasn’t supposed to stare at, even when my big sister Simone whispered that one of them looked like Rasputin, whoever that was.

Lunch was in the formal dining room. It had a mirror-topped table that reflected the vaulted ceiling so it looked like a tomb. Worse, on the wall in front of me hung a painting of a pile of fruit with a dead rabbit lying beside it. A photographer took pictures for the newspaper. My sister Simone and I had to put on a camera face for ages, even though I was ravenous and Simone’s tummy rumbled. Little girls should be seen and not heard. Ever, really. They were meant to stay in their place. A preparation for life as a woman, I could see that.

Thus we stood still where we were told in our smocked dresses and frilly socks. I looked away from the rabbit.

Everyone had to kiss the Patriarch’s ring, including Mother, whose hand was normally kissed by other people. Simone got introduced to the Patriarch before me. The holy man’s beard had twitched as he rested his hand on her head. But, when presented with his ring, Simone refused point blank to put her lips anywhere near his fingers and ran out of the room. I would have followed her, had I been as brave.

Easter depends on the calendar, and, while most countries use the Gregorian calendar, Eastern Christianity still uses the Julian calendar which makes Easter fall later. Since 1752, therefore, Eastern Orthodox Easter has rarely coincided with what most of you think of as the regular Easter.

My  family tend to call Orthodox Easter ‘the real Easter’ but, in the interests of fairness and chocolate, they now usually celebrate on both dates. CHRISTOS ANESTI. Twice!

***

The Girls from Alexandria (published by Agora Books) is out as an ebook, audio book, and paperback.

10 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT ALEXANDRIA

Posted in Places by

In its heyday, Alexandria was one of the most cosmopolitan cities on earth, as many people know. But there may be other things you don’t yet realise about Egypt’s second city.

1 Yes, there are Alexandrias other than the one in Egypt, but – and this may come as shock to American readers – Alexandria, Egypt, was not named after Alexandria, Virginia, however old and quaint you may consider that city by the Potomac to be.

2 The Macedonian king Alexander the Great founded Alexandria in about 331 BC. He also founded some 20 other cities named after him, but the one in Egypt became the leading Mediterranean city. That was the beginning of Greek influence in Alexandria, which to some extent still endures today.

3 Pigeons aren’t treated as rats with wings, as they are in Britain. Grilled or stuffed with rice, they are dinner. Not quite my taste, to be honest, which is probably why I haven’t been in a pigeon restaurant since 1971.

4 You don’t have to go to Cairo to see sphinxes. There are loads of them in Alex (some of them discovered underwater in the harbour) and they’re not all missing their noses like that battered old sphinx by the pyramids of Giza. Here’s one by Pompey’s pillar.

By the way, the pillar was actually built to honour Roman emperor Diocletian, but apparently someone misread the inscription at the base.

5 The cosmopolitan nature of Alex lives on after death, if the catacombs at Kom el Shofaqa are anything to go by. These are tombs in Roman, Greek, and Egyptian styles. Some statues are Egyptian but have Roman clothes and hairdos. I like to think this embodies the city’s inclusive spirit.

6 When it comes to Alexander the Great’s tomb, though, nobody knows where it is. Alexander died at the age of 32 and his body was moved from his first burial site. It’s not clear what happened after that. Many believe the tomb is somewhere in the centre of Alexandria, and archaeologists have devoted decades to digging for it, so far in vain.

7 Mohammed Ali looms large in Alexandria. There’s a huge statue of him wearing an impressive turban and brandishing an even more impressive sword. Born in 1769, Mohammed Ali was actually Albanian and didn’t even speak Arabic. All the same, history dubs him the founder of modern Egypt. He reformed laws, improved the economy, and, most progressive of all, he allowed the establishment of a School of Medicine to train women.

Mansheya Square, Alexandria, via Wikimedia Commons

8 You may see loofahs grow on trees. They’re not sponges at all, but a type of squash that grows very well in Alexandria, with its abundant sunshine and moderate temperature. You can grow Luffa aegyptiaca in northern climes too, especially if you treat it like a greenhouse cucumber vine.

9 Considered as gods in Ancient Egypt, cats are everywhere in Alexandria, though they favour the fish market at Anfoushy. “Affection for cats is part of Islam”, decreed the Prophet Mohammed. When the Prophet came across a black-and-white cat breastfeeding her kitten during one of his campaigns, he changed the course of his soldiers. He later adopted the cat.  Named Muezza, she was undoubtedly the favourite of his many cats.

10 Alexandria’s sunsets are spectacular, with every shade of pink, purple, and red. As the last slice of the sun sinks into the sea, there’s a momentary green flash, but you must be quick to see it. The flash is when you can make a wish, in the brief instant before the sun drops like a rock into the horizon and the sky suddenly turns dark.

***

You can read more about Alexandria in my brand-new novel The Girls from Alexandria. There’s a giveaway to celebrate the paperback publication next Thursday – head to @AgoraBooksLDN on Twitter to enter.

THE COWS OF CAMBRIDGE

Posted in Animals, Places by

It’s been quiet in this town lately. There are far fewer tourists since Covid hit, and most students are having to study remotely. But Cambridge still has a few new arrivals. This young herd arrived on April 1. Here they are, slaking their thirst in the brook 20 minutes after the transporter off-loaded them.

Like all newly arrived freshers, these guys stick together at first, but they soon learn to stretch their legs.

Grazing on common land in Cambridge is a tradition that goes back centuries. Bullocks and heifers normally arrive sometime in April, and may stay as long as six months, the state of the vegetation permitting. Common land is surprisingly near the city centre.

I won’t dwell on what happens when the cattle leave, but they seem to enjoy their time in Cambridge. Favourite pastimes include paddling, munching on willow, and getting to know the students.

There’s normally one bullock or heifer who is especially sociable. Here’s Panda Eyes making a friend in 2019.

And another one. They smell remarkably sweet up close, as long as you’re at the right end.

In 2020, we knew this one as Poop Face. Well, how would you describe these distinguishing features?

His, not mine!

Poop Face was so gregarious that several locals thought of adopting him. He also got himself into the Cambridge News AND The Sun newspaper for being so inquisitive about people’s rucksacks, picnics, etc. Unfortunately he nearly choked on discarded packaging, and survived only because someone had the presence of mind to fish a crisp packet out of his throat. Every year one cow or bullock dies here from choking on garbage, yet people still leave their litter.

Every year’s intake is different. I look forward to getting to know our new arrivals and watching them grow and learn, and just enjoy life while they can.

They’ll get used to the other young people, and their bikes.

Some may appreciate being serenaded while bathing.

If I don’t answer the phone, I’m probably spending time with these magnificent beasts.

PS In the interests of fairness, I have been asked to point out that Oxford has cattle too.

SPEAK TO ME OF SUEZ

Posted in Family life, Places by

In this short extract from my novel The Girls from Alexandria, ten-year-old Nadia gives her take on the events of Suez.

ALEXANDRIA, 1956

It began on the twenty-sixth of July when I was ten and a half years old, or, as I preferred to put it, nearly eleven.

The whole thing was about a canal and a dam. President Gamal Abdel Nasser was a big man with a muscular jaw and impressive teeth that he showed all the time.

via Wikimedia Commons

That night in 1956 was the fourth anniversary of the revolution. Nasser celebrated by giving a long speech right here in Alexandria, in Mansheya Square by that statue of Mohammed Ali Pasha wearing a turban and brandishing a sword as he sits on his horse.

Mansheya Square, Alexandria, via Wikimedia Commons

I enjoyed listening to Nasser on the radio because I could understand his speeches. Unlike other important men who make themselves sound clever by using formal Arabic, Nasser spoke a colloquial language that every Egyptian could follow, even a child of not quite eleven. That, I thought, was much cleverer.

Whenever anything interesting happened, I was sent to bed instead of being allowed to stay up, so I missed the big speech. Mother told me about it the next morning, which was hardly the same thing. I was especially sorry to have missed the firemen dispersing the crowds in Mansheya Square.

We were all upstairs by the air conditioning which was on at full blast against the sweltering heat. Father and Mother told Simone and me that the Suez Canal now belonged to Egypt instead of France or Britain. That meant it would raise lots of money for Egypt and would pay to build a High Dam at Aswan.

It was a good thing that the Suez Canal had been nationalised. Unless you happened to be Britain or France, I supposed.

For a while after that, I forgot about canals and went back to puzzling over Uncle Selim. Selimkept a thin book in his pocket. Whenever I took an interest in it, however, his reptile eyes swivelled towards me and I’d have to look away. I only glimpsed it once before he whisked the little book back into his breast pocket.

‘Poetry and papyrus,’ Tante Zahra scoffed between burps.

When term started, I consulted the encyclopaedia in the school library. Papyrus came from a plant in the Delta, though that did not enlighten me about Selim. For good measure, I looked up palimpsest as well, its entry being nearby. That was all about scraping something off a parchment to use it again.

Pontus Edenberg/FreeImages

As it turned out, I didn’t get a chance to visit the school library for ages after that. In October, some countries got angry with Egypt for taking a canal that should have been Egyptian in the first place. Father and Mother did not fully explain it but, in no time at all, France, Britain, and Israel all ganged up to declare war on Egypt.

Abdou stuck blackout paper on all the windows, and every night we heard air-raid sirens and anti-aircraft guns. That’s what my horrid cousin Victor called them. With schools shut, he was in our garden more than ever. He told me that the guns were at Smouha, barely a few kilometres away, but I insisted that didn’t scare me at all, so there.

Simone knew better. She hugged me and reassured me that everything would be all right. ‘You can sleep in my room,’ she said.

I padded into her room when the lights were out, leaving my teddy bear behind. I didn’t want my sister to think I was still a baby. What with the guns and Simone’s feet, I barely slept at all while sharing her bed, but at least there was the chance that some of her courage would rub off on to me in the night.

***

The Girls from Alexandria is out on April 1, and features this stunning cover designed by Emma Rogers.

COCKTAILS & CAMELS

Posted in Family life, Writing by

I’ve mentioned my forthcoming novel The Girls from Alexandria a fair bit recently, but it’s a while since I shared something from Cocktails and Camels. Sixty years on from when my mother wrote it, I still think it’s one of the most entertaining books ever. And no, I’m not at all biased.

Published NY, 1960

Grandmother, a beautiful green-eyed woman with jet-black hair, had come from Damascus at the age of thirteen to marry Grandfather, whom she had never set eyes on before.

Grandfather had originated in Lebanon, studied in Paris, then emigrated to Egypt and prospered as a merchant. Although the marriage was one of convenience, as marriages often were, it seems to have worked out. My grandparents had eight boys.

Mother and Father were less fortunate. They had us —three daughters. A daughter was not only nothing to write home about, it was something one should definitely not write home about. As for having three daughters, it was a calamity. Obviously someone had given Mother and Father the Evil Eye.

The Evil Eye was, like the British, very active in the Middle East and responsible for everything that went wrong. If someone admired your new dress and then you spilled coffee all over it, it wasn’t that you were clumsy. It was the Evil Eye.

But, if Father was disappointed at having three daughters, he never showed it. Father never showed anything, which was very smart of him but most un-Arab. He faced his fate very well, far better than Maha, the Lebanese nanny who had been with Mother before she was married.

Maha was a big moon-faced woman with brown velvet eyes and pierced ear-lobes from which hung tiny blue beads which were meant to ward off the Evil Eye. She seemed to have been put together out of a series of cushions and looked like a Michelin advertisement.

Because she was flat-footed, but mainly because she was Lebanese, she padded around in bedroom slippers which she had turned down at the back. Her elephantine tread was always accompanied by the soft clinking of thin gold bracelets on her plump wrists. They were her entire fortune and she added one whenever she had saved some money.

Once a week on her afternoon off, she painted her eyes crudely with kohl and stuffed herself into a corset and high-heeled shoes several sizes too small. Then, pirouetting clumsily in front of us, she’d say, smiling like a child, ”I’m not all that fat, am I, my darlings?”

When I was born, Maha sobbed for a week. She did not throw her arms up in the air and cry, ”Mabrouk, mabrouk, congratulations, may the little one live to be one hundred,” and then bake some very special Lebanese dish which would sit on our stomachs for the rest of the night.

She did not utter one single little mabrouk. Such congratulations were used for happy things like baby boys, and really important things like having a new dress or getting over a corn on the foot. But having a girl was not a corn on the foot. It was a pain in the neck. As for being a girl—well, maybe one could live it up in England or the United States, but in the East it was something to live down.

Things have changed so much for women. Or have they?