“I’m studying,” I’d say nervously, hiding my drawing paper.
He’d nod like he understood and believed the lie. At the same time, his gestures and unexpected questions suggested he knew what I was doing.
“I want to see you at college so I can die happy,” he said one day.
It was a decisive night in March. I put away the drawings and focused on studying until the end of the year.
Yusuf Tadrus says:
I spent one year in Alexandria. My mother was nervous and happy and calling relatives who lived in Alexandria to tell them that Yusuf was coming to study at the College of Fine Arts. She introduced me to Rida Boulos, a scion of a family long in the leather trade. He was in his third year of studying architecture and lived in an apartment in Sidi Bishr. We agreed I’d live with him. I was anxious that summer, frightened of my mother’s overwhelming desire to get me away from the life of the alley.
My relationship with Rida Boulos eased the air somewhat and, perhaps for the first time, set the idealistic life of the Ankh Society against another way of living. Rida’s presence that summer gave me the vigor I needed. Despite his seriousness, he was preoccupied with girls like we were. We went out often, to weddings and parties. I’d boast about how girls were attracted to me, and he’d look at me with childish glee and say, “You lucky dog, Yusuf.” But I feared that attachment and avoided it. I tried to show it didn’t matter to me. We’d categorize the girls together: that one was like a princess, this one a saint. This other one was like the wicked witch, and that one might bring you to ruin and go through your pockets every night.
Rida was cheerful and outgoing, and wore his religion lightly. His heart wasn’t home to vague fears and anxious questions. He felt comfortable in the world and easily did things I thought required a slew of preparations. He’d pack a big suitcase and a tent and go to Sidi Abd al-Rahman alone to stay in the desert a few days. He’d do his share of work for his family. He’d travel to Upper Egypt. He went to Paris twice.
His way of acting and talking, his perpetual urgency, and his feeling that he shouldn’t waste one second stood in contrast to the lackadaisical life in the alley, which revolved around managing everyday affairs. And it was also obviously different from the philosophers of the Ankh Society. He’d laugh when I’d tell him about the society’s sessions every Thursday.
“They’re not living on this earth,” he’d say. “Life isn’t talk; it’s action, movement.”
He studied architecture and painted, and wanted to learn to play the lute. I introduced him to Amm Farid. I wondered how he could find the time amid his work to learn to play the lute.
He laughed. “I’ll keep at it until circumstances intrude and stop me,” he said. “At least I’ll have gotten something out of it to help me listen better.”
He had his own ideas, not formed from books but created from his own experiences and thoughts.
It was the first time the secretive salon and closed world of the Ankh Society was shaken. The contradiction added to my angst. I spoke with Bilal about it one day, and he said confidently that my friend was superficial, flaky, and didn’t live the authentic life—he lived by mainstream thought, not his own personal thought. The authentic life was something else. This idea of the “authentic” life preoccupied me. What was it and how could one live it? There was no manual. The plan they’d drawn up for it started to show cracks when confronted by the other worlds that opened before me.
That summer the covert war began between my mother and older sister. Futna was my father’s true mistress. She took care of everything, knew all the expenses, and amassed wealth she kept far from him and us. My mother’s aspirations began to run up against the parsimony with which Futna managed life. My moving to Alexandria and the expense of the College of Fine Arts sparked long discussions. Khawaga Tadrus didn’t get involved in them, leaving the conflict between the two women to work itself out.
Futna would reel off the costs of residency, living expenses, clothes, and college needs: that was a lot for an old man whose sight had gone. My mother would minimize things, saying she’d help with expenses from the stipend she got from the Holy Bible Association. She was fervent, and the conflict was settled.
On the eve of my travel to Alexandria my fears began. Rida had gone before me to take care of some business, and when I reached the Sidi Gaber station at night, the expanse of the square scared me. I’d visited Alexandria several times with my mother, and now I was standing at the station gate, feeling so small in that sweeping place. I took the tram and reached the apartment, and then I spent the night walking along the Corniche, unable to sleep. For the first time in my life, I was far away from the bosom, from the alley, from my father’s throat-clearing and my mother’s mumbled prayers. I was a child being weaned. Is that how to understand the pain of that year? Maybe there was something else I didn’t realize. Maybe I didn’t want that spaciousness and freedom.
In the first days at college, the fear grew. I had to push through the days.
“What is it, Yusuf? Are you made of wood?” Rida would tease.
But he misspoke—I was made of clay. The cause of my yearning for light was my earthy nature. I was from the alley, and I loved to play in that muddy water. I stayed up at night practicing painting fingers, faces, and feet. I’d study the anatomy of the skull, the shape of the eye, the details of neck muscles. Sometimes I’d long to paint something cheerful. I’d set up the easel and prepare the oils and start painting an ashtray on a small table.
I couldn’t paint anything properly. The proportions escaped me, as if my training had been poured into a void. When trying to place mass in a space, an essential skill for anyone who wants to be a painter, I felt like a blind man.
Rida Boulos liked some of the paintings and said I’d be an artist. Sometimes he’d set up his own easel and paint a teapot or chair with me, or an empty bottle. One day we painted three onions against the lead-gray wall of the room. I was worked up that day. I painted the three onions on a green tablecloth against a fire-red background. The painting captured the details faithfully but had a surrealist feel to it. Rida looked at it.
“I’m giving up painting, Yusuf,” he said.
And from that day, or maybe a little afterward, he no longer painted, like he’d made a decision. Despite his encouragement, I couldn’t continue. I saw the flaws more than my abilities.
Rida helped me my whole life. At that early stage of our acquaintance, he was bewildered by my nature and my neuroses. He’d say I needed to smash everything and paint whatever I wanted, whatever gave me pleasure, whatever I gravitated toward. I thought he was naïve—Bilal had equipped me with the proper geometric calculations for every good painting, and we’d often applied them to the work of the great artists, from the classical arts down to Egyptian artists. I was miserable because I couldn’t free myself of the manual I had brought with me from Tanta—of the special formula for evaluating artistic paintings—and I started to believe I wouldn’t be able to paint as long as I was incapable of creating the equilibrium and correct proportions that Bilal al-Sheikh had prescribed.
With time, I discovered that Alexandria was vaster than I’d imagined. Every day it expanded more and I grew smaller, until I imagined I’d vanish. Midyear, the problems between my mother and sister started because of my school expenses. The college was far beyond my family’s capacity, and my own psychological capacity. You need living expenses and clothes and other things. Rida Boulos’s sympathy confused me and made me feel indebted and paralyzed. I couldn’t bear it any more, and the situation became more difficult when I discovered Lamiya’s attraction to me.
One day Fatin sent a message with Rida. He seemed embarrassed when he gave it to me. He was prepared to help me in any way, but he was duty bound to give me the message first. He said Fatin had visited him suddenly at home and had spoken to him about my family’s circumstances. She told him my father was blind and couldn’t shoulder