Reading is often voyeuristic. Cradling a book in your lap, with every turn of a page, you watch a character, you’re privy to his innermost thoughts, eavesdrop on his conversations, and sometimes even hear what other characters say about him. The talents of writer Anne-Marie Drosso indulge these voyeuristic tendencies in her recently published collection of short stories, “Cairo Stories.
In each story, the character is central. A cursory glimpse into their lives leaves the reader with a sense of a deeper understanding of human nature. Drosso introduces us to a young girl who is afraid of losing her mother’s love, an old man who’s struggling with a sense of belonging, and a young man who is trying to understand and mend the rift between his aunts and uncles. Other characters are distinctly unlikable, like the arrogant Pasha who wields his power over his family.
The title is somewhat misleading; “Cairo Stories is less about the city than it is about the people. With a few of the short stories Cairo only acts as a backdrop to the unfolding drama. Overall, Drosso has written some 40 short stories, about 25 were set outside of Egypt. For this collection, her publisher chose from the stories that were set in Egypt.
On the other hand, in some stories, the reader will get a true sense of Egypt. For example, “Egyptians Who Cannot Fill in a Form in Arabic, is uniquely Egyptian. An old woman, who has been born and raised in Egypt, but doesn’t read or write any Arabic, feels that she doesn’t belong, even after all these years. Applying for an exit visa, a civil servant at the Mugama taunts her about her foreignness. Following the revolution in 1952, the Egyptian nationality was being redefined, and Syro-Lebanese Mrs. T was one of its casualties.
Location aside, the one underlying theme of the stories, if any, is that they are about people, Drosso explained. Some of the themes transcend geographical boundaries and have universal appeal.
“I Want These Pills can appeal to many adults who have to care for an ageing parent who is growing more difficult as time passes.
Labeled an “old maid by members of the Greek-Egyptian community, in “Fracture a woman develops a crush on her doctor, looking forward to his frequent visits while she mends. Her nationality is irrelevant. She could be any lonely fifty-one year old woman in the world, longing for companionship, afraid to hope for more.
For Egyptians, especially those living abroad, the stories do evoke some nostalgia towards their home country. During the book launch in London’s Arab book publishing house Saqi, Drosso recalls an Egyptian who told her that reading “Cairo Stories had brought to mind memories of Egypt because the stories dealt with family relationships.
Drosso was born in Cairo in 1951, so were her parents, grandparents and possibly even her great grandparents. She was raised in the heart of downtown Cairo, Midan El Tahrir. Her childhood and adolescent years were spent in Cairo, and she left only to pursue graduate studies in Economics in Vancouver, Canada.
Though she ended up staying in Canada, she frequently went back to Cairo on visits since her mother still lived there. In 1999, she returned to Cairo, this time for more than a visit. She was joining her husband Robert Springborg who was working in Cairo at the time.
“My ties to the country were not severed after I left in my early twenties as I visited the country several times, she pointed out. “I spent three years there recently.
A Cairene at heart, it explains Drosso’s ability to create believable Egyptian characters. They are not romanticized. They are not tainted with presumptions. She is able to breathe life into them as if they existed and she was sketching them for a real life portrait.
The only reminder that they are the creation of the author is, at times, the dialogue. The characters often speak too formally. A nephew who is trying to convince his aunt to end her estrangement with her siblings tells her, “It’s so unlike you to be so intransigent? Wouldn’t “unreasonable or “stubborn been a more likely word to use in a conversation?
Drosso’s book is not one that you can leaf through quickly. Rather each story needs to be savored. She has a knack for creating a bond between the reader and the character in only a few pages. Then when the story comes to an end, the reader has to pause – sometimes reluctant to say goodbye to a character, wanting to know more – before he can be introduced to a new character.
Especially endearing is Tony in “From Alexandria to Roseville. Having grown up in the cosmopolitan “city of many languages, as he described Alexandria. Raised to switch easily between different languages – French, English, Arabic, Greek, Italian, to name a few – he struggles with the question “In what language do I think?
He writes to his son, explaining his sense of isolation in his late years: “I know enough about myself to know that I’m not the sort of person who wants ‘to belong’ – quite the contrary – and yet here I am claiming that I found it increasingly hard to socialize in the face of evidence that I don’t belong.
As you read the last lines of the story, it’s hard to let go. It’s hard to say goodbye, to Tony and many of the other characters.
“In a way much of my life has been spent writing, Drosso said. However, the nature of her writing took many forms; in academia, as a legal researcher, and writing legal decisions as an appeal commissioner. It was only when she stopped working and joined her husband in Cairo that she tried her hand at writing fiction.
“The fact that, suddenly, was not working gave me the opportunity to try and see whether I could write outside of the academic or legal box. That is how it started. When she moved back to London, she immersed her self in her writing.
At first Drosso was writing for pleasure, and gave little thought to publishing her stories. “At some point, [my husband] Bob [Springborg] and friends encouraged me to try to have some stories published. I was a bit reluctant at first but then let myself be persuaded and called Mai Ghoussoub at Saqi, she recalled.
Drosso’s first chat with Ghassoub over the phone was not encouraging. Ghassoub explained that there is not much of a market for short stories in but suggested that Dosso send her a few of her stories to read.
A couple of months later there was still no encouragement. Ghassoub had misplaced the stories and asked Drosso to send over other copies. “I was impressed with the fact that she had bothered to call me to let me know she had lost them when the possibility of Saqi deciding to publish them was small. She sounded like a really fine person.
“I sent her another couple of stories and did not hear for a while then I got another phone call from her. ‘Let s meet,’ she said. We did, Drosso continued her tale.
Ghassoub said she like the two stories she had read and was prepared to take a chance on Drosso and publish a small collection of stories that were set in Egypt, or somehow related to Egypt.
Drosso continues to write. She has just finished off the first draft of a novel set in Egypt, and has gone back to writing short stories. With her talent for creating memorable characters that strike an emotional note with the reader, this debut venture into publishing will hopefully be the first of many.
Cairo StoiesBy Anne-Marie DrossoTelegram Books, 2007
