HOW DANGEROUS IS YOUR CHRISTMAS?

The season of goodwill comes with its toll of health hazards. Queen Victoria brought Christmas trees to this country, so it’s her fault that every year your living room becomes a right royal mess.

Tree needles really are an eyesore. Every hospital in the country sees injuries caused by Christmas trees, usually corneal abrasions from a branch or needle. Several of the 250 species of pinacea also cause allergic reactions on face and hands, and the trees with the most attractive smell tend to produce the least attractive rashes.

Traditional glass baubles originate from the storybook town of Lauscha in Germany. In the mid-19th century, their glassblowers began making fragile ornaments, silvering the inside and lacquering the outside. If you’ve had the good taste and deep pockets to buy these fragile balls for your tree, be careful. The shards can tear your skin to ribbons. Get hideous decorations from the petrol station instead.

Deck the halls with boughs of holly, but beware. Kids enjoy nibbling red berries. As few as 20 can cause a permanent silent night. Mistletoe is dangerous too. Eating more than 10 berries causes severe diarrhoea and abdominal pain. Luckily it’s usually hung out of reach. However you can catch plenty of other things from the antics beneath it.

Actually anything can happen at Christmas. It affects every organ in the body, starting in about September. The pundits agree that the brain is the first to go, helped by lashings of Christmas spirit. If one of your relatives is comatose on the couch, that’s the usual cause, although head injuries, diabetes, and TV programmes are other likely diagnoses.

Then there’s carbon monoxide poisoning, especially if you’re a Scrooge about boiler maintenance. Predisposing factors are conventional flues, high winds, double glazing, and tightly closing windows and doors to maintain a cosy fug. CO poisoning typically causes dizziness, confusion, headaches, and unconsciousness, though it can also mimic almost any condition.

It’s hard not to mention food when the average Brit puts away 7,000 Calories on Christmas Day, which is about four times more than necessary. This Christmas, especially up in western Scotland, more ulcers will burst between 5:00 and 7:00 PM than at any other time of the year.

Other parts of the alimentary tract are also at risk. Some people accidentally swallow sharp objects such as toothpicks along with their Yuletide fare. The elderly are especially prone to this, not because their faculties are impaired, but because dentures interfere with the sensation up eating something sharp.

One woman in her 80s developed peritonitis days after enjoying a traditional Christmas cake with all the trimmings. Surgeons removed a decorative plastic robin from her bowel.

Finally, here’s my Christmas cracker riddle for you.

What’s the difference between Christmas Day and Christmas Disease? Surprisingly, almost everything. Christmas disease is a form of haemophilia due to an inherited lack of factor IX. Without it, the sufferer haemorrhages repeatedly from skin, gut, joints, and muscles. Christmas Day, on the other hand, comes but once a year. There’s just one similarity. Both can bleed you to death.

Stay well and have a happy Christmas.

1Oct2022

HOW DO YOU FIND SOMEONE WHO’S MISSING?

Posted in Egypt, Family life, Places by carolcooper

How do you find your missing sister? Who can you even ask to help when you live in a police state? Not the police, that’s for sure.

This short extract from The Girls from Alexandria goes back to February 1968.

Monsieur Jean, we called the man. It wasn’t his real name. I wondered if he’d ever been a real journalist. Rashida served him coffee when he arrived, and she, too, saw his frayed cuffs and made her disdain plain.

‘Who knows why she left? After all, the brain is a mysterious box, especially a female’s.’ Monsieur Jean spread his hands and laughed at his own wit.

How dare he speak about women like this, and what did he know of the brain, anyway? He was just some old journalist in ragged clothes.

He extended his little finger and sipped his tiny coffee with huge noises. ‘She hasn’t disappeared completely,’ he observed when he’d put down the cup.

True, she hadn’t, because she’d sent postcards now and again. But she was no longer here in Alex with Mother, Father, and most of all me, her biggest fan, even if she did have a tendency to say I was a humara. Well, she could call me a she-donkey all she wanted if only she’d come home.

‘What is her name again?’ asked Monsieur Jean.

‘Simone. Would you like to see the cards she sent?’ Father handed him a small bundle.

‘Any letters?’

‘No.’

Monsieur Jean should have realised that letters took longer to reach Egypt, arriving weeks late, if at all, with a printed strip down one side of the envelope where the censors had slit it open then sealed it up again. Under Nasser, nobody ever wrote letters if a postcard would do.

‘Let’s see.’ The man picked up one of the postcards and held it up to the light coming through the only window. We were sitting in the basement, the one room that we were fairly sure wasn’t bugged. ‘Her handwriting is interesting.’

Father gave a polite smile. ‘In what way?’

‘I am something of an expert in calligraphy.’

Of course he was, I thought. ‘What do you make of her writing?’ I ventured.

‘It’s very mature,’ he said. Since Simone was twenty-four, this was hardly a revelation. He took off his glasses and twirled them in his fingers. ‘I suppose you have spoken to her friends?’

Mother fidgeted in her armchair. ‘Of course.’

‘In cases like this, there’s always something the family overlooks. But I have my methods,’ he assured us.

As a nice young Arab woman, I had to mind my manners, but it was hard to hide my impatience.

Father asked what he proposed to do, and the man outlined his plans. His account clearly aimed to impress, but it was just a long-winded way of telling us he would use the network of contacts he’d made over a thirty-year career in newspapers.

My parents thanked Monsieur Jean courteously, and he left, shoving on his battered hat and promising to be in touch.

‘C’est un pauvre con,’ Father said as soon as the front door had shut.

Mother glared at Father because un con is the height of vulgarity, and not at all the same thing as con in English, though he was probably one of those too. ‘But,’ she said, ‘he’s the only chance we’ve got.’

If that was the case, then we were never going to find my sister.

***

You can read more about Nadia and her missing sister Simone in The Girls from Alexandria. Shortlisted for the Rubery Book Award, it’s available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

6Aug2022

A VINTAGE SUMMER HOLIDAY

Posted in Egypt, Family life, Places by carolcooper

It’s a challenge to travel abroad from the UK at the moment, as I discovered when my last little holiday turned out to be a day trip to Luton airport. That’s why I thought you might enjoy reading about the leisurely holidays my family used to take long ago, when they lived in Alexandria. Way too long ago for me to remember, so it’s an extract adapted from my mother’s first book, Cocktails & Camels.

Every summer, like a swarm of locusts, Cairenes deserted the dusty, choking heat of the capital and swooped down onto Alexandria, avid for the cool city that they mocked the rest of the year. They came spilling out of trains, buses, and cars, frantic to get to the sea.

They came with their picnic baskets and their bedding—the government clerks and their portly wives, the shrill mothers-in-law covered with fat and cheap jewellery, the well-fed pashas twiddling their amber beads, the cooks, nannies, and suffragis—and they settled on the beaches until there wasn’t an inch of sand to be seen. At night, the locusts donned white sharkskin jackets and invaded the restaurants, cinemas, and casinos. The only thing for an Alexandrian to do was to pack his bags and take the first ship to Europe, usually with his car.

Back then there were no exit visas or travel restrictions of any kind. Most of these came with the Palestine War of 1948.

High up in the Dolomites, it was quiet and peaceful. There were only a few cows—and about half of Alexandria. “Chérie!” they’d cry to one another in surprise, even though they had come over on the ship together. “What brings you here?”

The answer was always, “I’m escaping from those dreadful Cairenes.”

It was an advantage to be able to speak Arabic without anyone understanding. Unfortunately, there were exceptions, like the time on a bus at Cortina d’Ampezzo when my sister Helen asked to change places because the old hag on her right smelled. The old hag turned round and told her in perfect Arabic that she was a very rude little girl.

My mother as child on a donkey in France

Some people were so excited when they found out we came from Egypt that they ran around screaming “The Egyptians are coming,” and “The Egyptians are leaving,” as though we were Pharaoh’s armies. They’d glue their noses to the license plate on the car as if studying hieroglyphics, and everyone suddenly had a passion for Egyptian stamps.

Two ladies approached us most forcefully one day. Mother was too taken aback to say a word.

“Take it easy, Ethel,” said one. “The poor thing obviously only speaks Bedouin language. Let me try to speak to her.” She bent down so that her nose almost touched Mother’s. “We’re Americans.” As though anyone within ten miles had any doubts. “America, Bay City, Michigan.”

“What’s your name, little Bedouin lady? I’m Mildred and this is Ethel. We’re travelling round the world playing the piano. At least, I’m the pianist and Ethel sings.”

When Father returned to the hotel and heard this, he refused to pretend to be a Bedouin or to live in an oasis in the middle of the Sahara, even though Mother implored him for the sake of Michigan.

He did, however, suggest that Ethel and Mildred join us for a drink and perhaps perform for us afterwards. They did. It was a riot, with half the people in the hotel running down to see who had been murdered. We learned many interesting things about the natives of Bay City, Michigan.

Europe was all right for a holiday but there was no place like Alexandria in the whole world. As we returned, we leant over the rail of the SS Ausonia and watched the pale yellow outline of Alexandria come into focus. The pilot’s launch flitted lightly across the water, the green flag with its crescent and three stars flying in the wind, and soon the pilot was climbing up the rope ladder followed by the port authorities and a few shaweesh (policemen) in white uniforms and red fezzes.

The quayside itself was a mass of galabeyyas—the long robes worn by most of the less affluent Arabs—and red fezzes. Everyone shouted and waved handkerchiefs. Sleek new cars and battered taxis inched their way through the crowd, honking their horns at length, and a group of ragged-looking men, ropes tied round their middles, chanted in refrain as they hauled an enormous crate away from the ship.

At the bottom of the gangway, one policeman, the corners of a checked handkerchief showing under his fez to keep the sweat from falling into his eyes, noisily came to blows with a man selling rugs. The man, with the unshaven look of a badly-plucked chicken, screamed at the top of his voice that the whole of the police force were sons of dogs, and that this particular policeman was something quite unprintable.

It was good to be home.

***

THE BEST LAID PLANS

Posted in Family life, Modern life, Writing by carolcooper

Did you start the New Year full of plans and resolutions? I know many did. Yet, nearly halfway through January, they find themselves unable to progress with new activities. It’s not necessarily lack of drive. Author Ann Richardson shares her thoughts on lack of energy.

All my life, I have felt out of sync with many assumptions of popular culture. One of these concerns leisure, such as finishing work for the day and going to a wine bar. The high point of the year is the summer holiday when you can finally lie down at the beach and avoid anything like ‘work’.

But a lot of people – like me – are more driven by the desire to do something, preferably something of value. To someone with this mind-set, the main use of doing nothing is to rest the brain and body, so as to fire on all cylinders for purposeful activities. Lazing around is not an end in itself.

There are many ways to be ‘useful’ – caring for others, building things from scratch, getting things done around the house, or doing something more creative.

We may not do these things well or be happy with the result. The key point is that the activity is important to us and helps us feel that time was well spent.

What makes us so clearly one way or the other? It could be nature, nurture, or a combination of the two. My mother had a professional job while she raised three children, and I also attended a school whose motto was In truth and toil.

Whatever the cause, one sad discovery about growing older is that we get tired more easily. We lose our youthful resilience and our batteries run down faster. This starts at different ages for different people. It seems to creep up when we’re not looking and, as far as I can see, it worsens each year and saps our energy for getting things done.

For those eager to be active, lack of energy is incredibly annoying. It means we can’t work for long periods without becoming tired. And the definition of that long period slowly shortens from a day to half a day to even an hour.

The body becomes a battleground – our head wants to get something done, but our body rebels. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, as the saying goes. At the end of a day, we find ourselves disappointed with the paltry amount accomplished. And we had such great plans.

It’s not so different from the Covid-related lockdowns people have suffered in the UK and elsewhere. They are a kind of imprisonment that stops us doing what we want. One of my grandsons called it ‘being under house arrest’.

Lack of energy is close to house arrest too.

Ann Richardson

There are many causes of energy loss so I won’t offer any advice on what to do about it. But, if you enjoyed this post, I can recommend Ann Richardson’s latest book The Granny who Stands on Her Head.

18Dec2021

TAKING PHOTOS THAT CAPTURE THE HOLIDAY MOOD

Posted in Family life, Modern life by carolcooper

Chances are you’ve already seen the photo of an alleged party that took place last Christmas.

I can’t reproduce the photo here but, if you take a moment to check out this date online, you’ll find a jolly image of 24 people and a tempting buffet. Many of the group are wearing paper hats, and one even has on a House of Commons Christmas jumper (allegedly). Given Covid restrictions, such an event shouldn’t have taken place at the time, but I can only admire the photographic skills involved. Everyone is smiling at the camera, the food is still appetizing, and it’s all in focus. That’s a full house in my book.

I usually get pictures exhibiting canapé debris or dismembered turkey because I didn’t think to take a snapshot until late on. And someone is always blinking or playing the fool.

In the harsh light of experience, I offer you a selection of images that perfectly capture the holiday spirit and say a lot about how to take pictures. Or not. Let’s kick off with Thanksgiving when I met my brother’s adorable new puppy.

But which end of Althea is which? With the benefit of hindsight and a full SD card, I can tell you that it’s almost impossible to do justice to such a furry dog.

A professional photographer once told me that one important thing to ask yourself about a picture is “What does it say?”

This one says that my stepdaughter is stunning, even with a light fitting sticking out of her head.

And this snapshot from Arlington Cemetery says that it’s best if your other half isn’t waving his umbrella or making hand signals.

It’s also good advice to get as close as you can to your subject. Abraham Lincoln was obliging. It helps that he’s been sitting still for over 100 years.

I was so pleased this juvenile swan let me approach that I forgot to take my thumb off the lens.

What does this next effort say? It says wait till the swan finishes toileting.

As Christmas trees go up, so do energy prices. Now this photo is in focus, perfectly lit, and taken at a jaunty angle. I’m rather proud of it. Shame it’s only a gas meter.

Nowadays, seasonal photos tend to include lots of Covid tests. For a festive effect, you could place your test cartridge on champagne boxes (see left). It may be the closest you get to a party this Christmas.

I don’t normally take many pictures of liquor stores unless they’re rather special. Whether open or closed, this one in Washington, DC is redolent of atmosphere. It’s also right next to where I lived nearly 60 years ago and it remains practically unchanged, making it a period piece. Historical and in focus. What a result.

Cheers! Have a wonderful Christmas, one and all, and do take lots of photos.

21Jul2021

A BLOODLESS COUP IN ’52

Posted in Egypt, Family life, Places by carolcooper

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.

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.

1May2021

THE “REAL” EASTER

Posted in Family life, Places by carolcooper

Tomorrow, May 2^nd, 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.

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.

26Mar2021

SPEAK TO ME OF SUEZ

Posted in Family life, Places by carolcooper

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.

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.

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.

16Mar2021

COCKTAILS & CAMELS

Posted in Family life, Writing by carolcooper

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.

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?

3Mar2021

THOUGHTS ON WORLD BOOK DAY

Posted in Animals, Family life, Places, Writing by carolcooper

World Book Day is about every child and young person getting a book of their own, but it has also made me think around the topic of children and books.

I was about four or five years old when my mother began writing her first book, Cocktails and Camels. She did it in my room, it being the sunniest one in my grandparents’ house in Alexandria where we all lived.

As if that weren’t bad enough, silence was required while my mummy filled reams of paper with her pencilled scrawl. Sometimes she stopped to smile at what she’d written, and occasionally she even laughed, but she rarely read any of it out loud to me. Here’s a tip if you ever want to annoy a child: make sure they have no idea what’s going on, then demand they keep absolutely quiet during it.

After some time, I piped up. “I’m going to write a book too!”

Because it’s also #throwbackThursday aka #TBT, you’re getting this of my mother and me in the garden.

I did end up writing books and, like my mother, I use pencil and paper for my first drafts. The novels are entirely made up, but where do the characters come from? I don’t know. They come from here and there, I suppose, from snatches of conversation or a chance sighting of someone so offbeat that they beg to be put in a book.

They also come from ill-defined experiences that go way back and suddenly decide to leap into my head. This they usually do in the middle of the night, and I have to jot it all down on paper lest I forget, which I’m told can be annoying when it happens at 2am, and again at 4am.

As I recall, my mother was apt to do this too. And no, it’s not ‘annoying’. I prefer to think of it as the circle of writing life.

I’m very proud of my mother and all her books, including those for children, but especially this one as it’s a warm and witty tribute to the cosmopolitan Alexandria that I loved and was home.

And now my childhood has led to a novel set in the same world that no longer exists. You may know this already from my frequent mentions of The Girls from Alexandria which is out next month. I’m sorry that my mother isn’t around to enjoy it, or to hear me say how much I owe her.

***

Enough of this wallowing in sentiment. It’s not just World Book Day and Throwback Thursday. It’s also Mishmish’s tenth birthday. Her name is Arabic for apricot and she is a goddess.