A smooth operator

By Fayza Hassan
Self esteem was not a trait encouraged in children of my generation: le moi was haissable and the general idea was never to think of oneself, let alone highly. Consequently, most young girls that I came across during those days had huge inferiority complexes that they often carried throughout life, powerful obstacles to potential accomplishments. Not Alice. Her parents were apparently unaware of the fact that proper education consisted in putting down one's children and keeping them in the dark as to whatever qualities or abilities they may have had, whether physical or intellectual. Alice's parents simply doted on her.
We met when we were both in our early teens, and within the first few minutes of our acquaintance she had informed me that she was irresistible to boys. This was really shocking, since even admitting to oneself that a member of the opposite sex had noticed one was reprehensible, to say the least. Alice flaunted her appeal, and did not seemed distressed by the fact that it was not done. To boast about one's attractiveness was unthinkable, especially that, even by today's sometimes puzzling standards, Alice was no beauty. She was petite and painfully skinny, had small beady eyes hidden behind thick glasses, limp hair and a bad case of juvenile acne.
I could not put down her assertions to raving madness, however. Her best friend, Louise, who had been to summer camp with her numerous times, confirmed that Alice had always been the most popular girl in the group, since childhood. She herself had actually helped Alice many times in her nocturnal escapes from the dormitory to meet one boy or another in the garden. "All the boys have always been crazy about her," she said with a loving smile.
Louise, a classical beauty with stunning blue eyes and honey-coloured curls, was a self-deprecating youngster like the rest of us. She admired Alice unconditionally and was awed by her poise and audacity. As I came to know the two girls better, I realised that Louise thought of herself as ugly and of Alice as beautiful. The fact that Alice was generally lazy and not given to completing her homework in time seemed to add to her aura. As we battled with our lessons, she read magazines and romances and claimed to know about life.
I should mention that, unlike the rest of us, Alice was very devoted to her family and had none of the problems girls our age were experiencing at home. She was allowed to go out as much as she wished and to set her own curfew, on the assumption that she was responsible enough to know what was best for her. She also went shopping alone for her own clothes and decided how much time and attention she was willing to allocate to her studies.
"You don't need to be bright at school to be successful in life," she explained seriously. After seeing her on a regular basis for a while, I stopped regarding Alice as a fool. She had a point, I reflected. From then on I found wisdom in what she said and convinced myself that, although it took some time to grow accustomed to her kind of beauty, there was undeniably something there. After all, none of us had doting parents and a beautiful, worshipping best friend. Deserving such devotion surely required some extraordinary quality. Alice, meanwhile, kept the fires burning by regaling us with the various episodes of her rich love life.
Years went by with Alice bent on her untraditional course. Meanwhile, more conservative Louise met Tony, and in time they became engaged. Alice considered Tony slightly intellectually deficient, but he was extremely good-looking and a "nice" boy in every respect. He and Louise made a stunning couple and it was a pleasure to see them together at the club. Alice was often with them and it was a known fact that she would be maid of honour at their wedding and godmother to their first child.
Around that time, I married and moved to Alexandria. I forgot about Louise and Tony, Alice and her boyfriends. Many of my friends left Egypt and when I came to Cairo, I found none of the old group at the club. One day, however, I ran into Jeanine by chance. We talked about the good old days. I remembered that she had had a secret crush on Tony for a while. "How is Tony?" I asked. "He is in Beirut," she said with a smile. "They just had their second child; but you know, it was over even before he married, I met Alex then and realised that Tony would have been a big mistake. "And how is Louise?" I wanted to know, now that Jeanine had given me the green light to mention her name. "Are the children boys or girls?" Jeanine looked at me questioningly. "Didn't you know? Louise is in Paris. She works for an insurance company there. Tony dumped her a week before the wedding. He married Alice."
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