Outside looking in

By Fayza Hassan
Some lucky people believe the world revolves around them. From the very beginning, I was convinced that it revolved around others. Why I cast myself in the role of outsider I will probably never know. With the perception of exciting events happening around me came the realisation that I was not part of them.
Yet I longed to belong to an imaginary crowd that I pictured in my mind as having inconceivable fun, a sort of secret society endowed with the privilege of belonging to a world I defined as magic. The feeling of being constantly on the wrong path increased with time, although my parents' behaviour seemed to intimate that their status was equal, if not superior, to that of their acquaintances.
Growing up, I decided, based on some misconstrued observations, that to deserve the aura of brilliance that I coveted, one had to live in an apartment in Zamalek and go to an English school. We lived in a villa in Doqqi and I went to the French Lycée. Tennis, I thought, lent its players the required charisma; I was firmly directed to play golf, at a time when no youngster would have wanted to be seen dead on the course. Viareggio and Rimini were the places to be in summer. We took our holidays in unknown little villages in the Swiss Alps. Nuances maybe, but they all added up to deprive me of the basic requirements for belonging to the inner golden circle.
Later, when I began to date, I bitterly observed that I was approached by the less popular boys and only asked to parties that were non-events. For years, I believed that there was a great deal going on, only it was always happening where I was not.
"The world is a beautiful place, but I am looking at it through a window," I complained to my mother. "The world is an awful place, and you are in the front row," she replied, dismissing my feelings of alienation.
When I first met my husband, I immediately recognised that he was one of the blessed creatures. He was not only part of the in crowd, he was its hub. Nothing of importance happened of which he was not an active part. His life was one big party of the kind I had so badly wanted to attend. He was indeed surrounded by an aura, and after we began to date, I was allowed to bathe abundantly in its light. Gone were the sad Christmas parties and New Year's Eve pot luck dinners, the Sham Al-Nessims at the Gezira Club. Now we were the ones organising the festivities; the others just followed.
I was buoyed up by what I called real life, but when our first child was born, my husband fell in love with domesticity and suddenly became much less eager to polish his shining halo.
Soon, we were having our first Christmas alone at home, and although I took pleasure in attending to every detail of a dinner for two, I began to worry secretly. When he declined several invitations in a row, I worried some more. Was I going to resume my watch behind the window? Finally, I wondered aloud if something was wrong. "On the contrary," said my husband gaily. "I was waiting to meet someone like you, and now I see little point in nightclubbing." It was awfully sweet, but shouldn't he have warned me beforehand? Hadn't he noticed that I was basking in my rise to stardom?
That summer we rented a house, not in but on the outskirts of fashionable Agami. "We will not be staying in July and August," my husband announced at once. "Too many people, too many parties. I can no longer stand the crowds." We made good use of the house before and after the season. Sometimes, I met some of the revelers on the beach. They were in the process of closing their summer houses. Most of them were leaving Egypt. It saddened me: not only was I back on the outside looking in, but the show was losing its protagonists.
"Let's go to Agami for Sham Al-Nessim," I pleaded with my husband the year we too had decided to emigrate. It would be our last Sham Al-Nissim in Egypt. I knew that whichever of our friends was left would be there, and I dreamed of times gone by. A few phone calls later, we knew where the action would be.
We set out early that morning with our daughter and a car well stocked with food and drink. I remember noticing that the sky was not really clear on the horizon as we reached the desert road, but the full-blown sand storm still caught us by surprise half-way to Agami. At first my husband seemed to take it in his stride; soon, however, visibility reached zero, and we had to pull over. Leaving the main road, we ventured a few metres into the desert, just far enough to get irremediably stuck in the sand. We spent the rest of Sham Al-Nessim in the car, fearing for our lives. If our friends out there were living the life, the sand, beating against the rolled-up glass, obscured the view. And when we were finally rescued I knew that we, a safe and sound family, were the real centre of the world.
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