Woman on a Postcard by Dalia S. Mostafa
15 November 2022 { Reminiscence }
I was delighted to receive a postcard from my dear friend Hoda in Manchester, only two days after I arrived in Doha. She was congratulating me on the new post of associate professor in Anthropology at Georgetown University there. The postcard was of an artwork, a sculpture made with galvanised wire, by the artist Emma Stothard. Hoda knew that this particular image would bring a big smile to me because we went together to an exhibition organised by the artist at the Great Yorkshire Show two years ago, and we loved her style of work. We could relate to the various sculptures she exhibited, thinking that the use of galvanised wire somehow made each piece suggestive of something, as if hinting to a story. Hoda and I started imagining what those stories might be.
I kept gazing at the postcard which reflected what Stothard had produced of full luminous figures of a man, a woman and a young girl situated outdoors as though they’ve been on a walk through the park and then stopping for a break, with a view of the distant sea behind them. From the way they are dressed, they seem to belong to the Victorian era. While the man and woman give the impression they are involved in a conversation, the child, who appears to be around five years old, is playing next to them. I said to Hoda while we were exploring the artwork that the woman reminded me of my mother, Nabila, in her youth when we lived in Beirut.
It is in Beirut where I can recollect the happiest years of my childhood, because my mum was happy too during that time. My parents, who come from Egypt, lived in Lebanon from 1972 up to 1975 when my dad, Ali, worked as a journalist there. He was a dissident voice in Egypt, a leftist, who wrote critical articles about the new Sadat regime that followed the popular Gamal Abdel Nasser’s pan-Arabism era. My dad was a Nasserist and opposed Anwar Sadat’s policies of the ‘Americanisation’ of Egyptian society, imperial intervention and the open door economic policy. He was part of a revolutionary movement for change composed of workers, civil servants, writers and students who demanded social justice and equal work and education opportunities for all Egyptians. As a result, my dad was arrested and imprisoned for a year. Upon his release in 1972, he and my mum decided to move to Beirut to create some kind of stability for our small family. I was their only child then before my brother was born in the late 1970s. My parents did not know that they would have to seek safety in another country all over again just three years later with the eruption of the civil war in Lebanon in 1975. The war continued for fifteen years!
But the memories of those three years we spent in Lebanon are still etched on my mind. I have kept our numerous pictures from that time in a large album which I still browse through nostalgically every now and then. I was six years old when we moved there. We lived in a spacious, elegantly-furnished flat on the famous Hamra street in downtown Beirut. We had a view of the sea from the terrace, and we could also see the mountain and hills. They appeared magical, especially at night. For me, Beirut was the most exciting place .. I loved my school, I made new friends, and it was where I learnt swimming. My dad would take me with him almost every day after work for a swim to the Ramlet al Bayda beach during the summer months. He ingrained in me the love of water, sea, river, lake, swimming, snorkelling, and later on diving as well. I cherish those memories of us, just me and him, enjoying the refreshing water in the midst of summer heat, and feeling the thrill of freedom.
I can almost hear our laughter and the way he taught me the different types of swim strokes: crawl first, then breast, then back, and the dolphin style too! Daddy had a magnificent strong body, naturally tanned, which made him look so healthy. He was, still is, my hero. When I reached eight, we started swim races and sometimes I won. He would laugh heartedly and carry me on his shoulders to celebrate my victory. We felt safe, carefree and elated, very much so like the city itself. He enjoyed taking a break in the middle of our swim to have an ice-cold Lebanese beer and smoke a cigarette, while I relished in the snacks that mum prepared for me: sausage sandwiches (Lebanese style, with a lot of lemon, dill and parsley), French fries, zaatar and cheese pies, or tabbouleh.
My mum didn’t join us on our sea escapades most of the time. I used to ask dad why she didn’t fancy coming with us. He would answer in his pleasant deep voice: ‘Nabila loves the stable ground rather than the wobbly water .. but you and I are different, we are adventurous and like to jump into the waves’, and then he would hug me warmly.
At other times, he would bring a book and read avidly while I build sand castles on my own or find other kids to play with. I hardly saw him meet with male friends in those days as though he was sinking deeper and deeper into his inner private world.
My mum had her own group of friends whom she liked to socialise with. They went to a sports club close to Rawshe by the Corniche. It was a posh club where my dad didn’t really feel at ease fraternising with her friends. They didn’t like to discuss politics, a topic he was passionate about. They were rather elitist, mingling within their social bubble, which did not agree with his political views. I wonder what exactly had attracted my parents to one another and enthused them to get married. They were worlds apart and their interests used to lie in totally differing things. They didn’t argue or raise their voices in front of me; it was just this atmosphere of suppressed, tense quietness between them that I remember from our years in Beirut. Unlike dad who hailed from a humble peasant family, mum was pampered and sheltered by her wealthy family, wasn’t interested in political ideas, and was only happy in the company of her friends, playing tennis and shopping for new clothes. But she loved me more than anything else in the world, and I adored her.
Perhaps the reason I never asked either of them sensitive questions about their relationship was because I knew how much they both loved me, each one in their own way.
I once went with mum to the sports club in Rawshe. I had just turned nine and she wanted to give me a small celebration among her friends. It was late summer, a little breezy by the sea, so she put on a dress with long sleeves and a hat to keep her hair tidy. I remember details of her outfit because she looked beautiful and chilled on that day. It was a blue dress with tiny orange flowers, tight around the chest, and had a thin orange belt which accentuated her waist. It was tight around her hips and then fell down to her ankles. Mum wore gorgeous black shoes with high heels, which made her look taller and slimmer. From a distance, she resembled the woman in Stothard’s artwork, but without the parasol!
We went for a short walk and then she stopped near a leafy bush, hidden from the view of her friends, who sat at a table by the sea. I was playing and jumping around her when a tall, handsome man in a nice black suit came towards us and spoke to her in a soft voice. He was Lebanese, and he wore such a dazzling perfume that I still remember its fragrance until the present day. They shook hands and exchanged a few greetings. I wasn’t taking much notice of what they were saying as I had just spotted a kitten hiding in the bush and I was trying to make friends with her. But I could sense that my mum was overjoyed to see the cool man. The only phrase that attracted my attention was when he said to her: ‘You look stunning in this dress .. it suits you perfectly.’ I remember glancing at him when I heard this, and then glanced at her. They were looking into each other’s eyes and smiling. It was the kind of look that expressed a thousand feelings, in silence. It seemed to me, even as young as I was, that the whole world was theirs at that specific moment; as if time suddenly froze and they didn’t need anyone else. As though my mum had forgotten that I was right there standing next to her!
I saw him give her something which looked like a letter. She took it quickly and put it in her handbag. They didn’t stay together for much longer, but even such a brief encounter appeared meaningful in some way which I could not quite comprehend at the time. After the man had left (I never knew his name or saw him again), she asked me not to mention him to her friends or to my dad: ‘I trust that you will keep this little secret between the two of us only.’ And I have kept her secret in my heart and never told dad about the man in the smart suit.
But this was roughly the last time I saw my mum really happy, feeling the full joy of her beauty and femininity. A couple of months later, the war broke out in Beirut and shortly afterwards we had to move to a new country, this time Kuwait, where my dad found another post at one of the emerging newspapers. My mum couldn’t be her free-spirited self again after we left Beirut. Those were the days when I lived with a happy Nabila, a woman that took pride in her youthfulness, spreading radiance wherever she went. Life’s circumstances took my mum away from the city she loved, perhaps even from the man she loved. We never spoke about him again. In fact, I had forgotten all about him until I saw the sculpture piece by Emma Stothard. It’s astonishing sometimes when one realises how small our world is. I could see a shadowy image of my mum, the anonymous man, and myself on the postcard.
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