56
PARTISAN REVIEW
furniture covered in grotesque fabrics whereon the dolls of the day strive
to prove to them "that the rich also cry" with grimaces and mimicry
that would make the worst provincial actor in Spain blush with shame. I
decided to walk in the opposite direction along the AI Azhar avenue
where I drove by taxi the previous evening, and followed the capricious
inspiration of my footsteps along the sidestreets of AI Ghuriya, on the
way to Khan al Khalili. The television counterpoint to the urban mass
through which I cut a path, which I dodge as best I can, and which I
inevitably knock and bump into, is suddenly sharply recalled, glaringly
confirmed: a carpenter and two apprentices are putting the last touches
to a paradigm of television furniture, one of those gilded armchairs,
covered in plush or red velvet, with curved backs and huge seats, pur–
pose-built, one could say, to greet stout bourgeois behinds, jubilant
pontifical buttocks. As I tum my smitten gaze away from the purple
throne I exultantly discover dozens of others lining up. The whole street
is manufacturing tawdry furniture whose natural destination will be the
lounges, repeatedly displayed on television, in the villas and apartments
of
the new class enriched by the
infitah!
On subsequent days, as I roam
around the poor districts of AI Muski and Bab al Jal, on every comer I
will come across new specimens of this armchair, whose unmistakable
style I shall dub Louis XXVI to distinguish it from the other Louis: the
beneficiaries of Sadat's unbridled opening-up of the economy would
easily confuse the dynasties of Pharaohs with the list of our Gothic kings!
Hardly have I got over my discovery than I must step to one side
to give way to a funeral cortege: the first of those I will have an
opportunity to witness later during my stay in the City of the Dead.
Friends and relatives of the deceased take turns to transport the coffin on
their shoulders with a swaying, almost dance-like rhythm; at the rear
women rigorously dressed in mourning also accompany the bier but
without gesticulating or wailing. Minutes later, by the door to a
mosque, I will come across another funeral retinue in which women
mourners seem to rival and spur each other on to greater moaning and
sobbing. I am now on the outskirts of AI Azhar and, through the pedes–
trian subway, I reach Khan al Khalili and the vast, well-tended esplanade
next to the Hussein mosque. On the terrace of one of the cafes, from my
seat amongst the
narghile
drinkers - in Egypt and Turkey, the same verb
(charab, icmek)
means both drinking and smoking - I can comfortably
observe the spectacle of the multitude going in and out of the sanctuary,
the door of which has been sheathed in a black canopy on the occasion
of the celebration of
milad.
The square has been closed to traffic and the parking of vehicles,
but after a brief discussion and a tip to the wardens, some taxi drivers get
