‘The Interpreter’ is the English version of Arabic novel ‘Al Tarjuman’, authored by Ashraf Aboul Yazid, an eminent writer and poet of Egypt
“Exile Brings Out Memories”
Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
“Memo Dad… Good morning.
Your wandering star writes to you from cold, distant, and also beautiful Toronto.
I resisted writing to you for the past weeks, but I followed your advice not to write until a month after my arrival, so that I could form a clear view to share with you, away from the cultural clashes that affect those arriving here.
At first, I want to introduce to you, Memo Dad, that the real surprise wasn’t “Toronto,” because I had gathered pictures and videos about it during my last year in Kuwait, which helped me preserve its landmarks. The real surprise was undoubtedly that Syrian lady, the poet and translator “Madeleine.”
Your friend, whom you said you met years ago in Damascus, still remembers every detail that passed between you two, and she even told me, almost dying of laughter:
“Exile brings out memories. I’ll only tell you about things the Arab censors allow!”
What I understood from you, Dad, is that she’s just a friend you met a few times at conferences when you traveled to the Syrian capital. But what I felt from her words was that she was the unknown lover!
I felt embarrassed as she almost devoured me with her gaze, and I began to wonder if she was a lesbian… I’m surprised now, did she exaggerate in her daydreams, and why didn’t you talk about her when I was with you in Kuwait? You just told me:
“Madeleine will love you as if you were her daughter!”
I found out how Mrs. “Madeleine” came here, and you might know the story, but let me repeat it.
After her husband’s death, she applied for immigration at the Canadian Embassy in Damascus with her son, who eventually married an American woman, after both he and his mother received Canadian passports.
They went through long years of suffering. She told me some of her stories while smoking heavily, looking at the smoke and describing it as circles of the lost years between two lives: spring in Syria, and winter in Canada. She prepared a cup of hot “Matta” drink, which she loves, and says it is the thread between her existence here and her memories in Damascus:
“Look, ‘Najma.’ We were ready to live in Damascus with very little. But the space for thinking had to be dormant. You had to remain like an abandoned land… deserted… even from being a parking lot for the cars of dreams. I’ll tell you a joke, even though, in Damascus, we didn’t tell jokes even in our dreams during the days of Asad. We were scared. But here, we only tell jokes… sometimes painful ones.
The joke doesn’t come from fear, but from defiance. And you in Egypt are lovers of defiance, and we envied your ability to mock…
A dog from Beirut met a dog from Damascus at the border. The first one was thin, and the second one moved with difficulty due to its weight. So, both agreed to swap places. The Lebanese dog wanted to live in luxury but couldn’t bear it for long. He went back to his Syrian friend, asking to return to his original place, repeating:
“I want to bark. I want to bark!”
“Yes, we couldn’t even bark”, she repeated.
Anyway, Memo Dad. It’s hard for me to talk more about what happened between us during the evenings in Toronto, but the geographical distance gives me strength, courage, and boldness. You often urged me to hold on to these qualities, to resist, live, and triumph.
Mrs. “Madeleine’s” apartment is small, a one-room place with a balcony overlooking a small garden between several tall buildings. The living room has a red sofa that can be unfolded into a bed, or folded back into a couch. This sofa became mine as soon as I arrived at her apartment on the seventh floor.
There is a very small television and a bookshelf occupying an entire wall with wooden shelves. She told me that she collects fragments of what was in her library she left behind before immigrating:
“Old libraries attract me as a flower attracts a bee. I can’t resist their honey. Half of my photos in Toronto were taken in libraries, and the other half with rare friends, natural landmarks in gardens, and while working.”
Mrs. “Madeleine” works, as she told me, as a translator, but, as I learned, she doesn’t have a regular schedule. Her name, along with the names of dozens of Arabs living here, is listed in several local agencies as translators from Arabic to both French and English, and they are only called upon when needed, such as in a court case, a conference with Arab guests, or institutions dealing with immigrants who need real-time translation.
There’s no doubt, Memo Dad, that I need extra money. I should suggest to Mrs. “Madeleine” that we share the expenses until I move to the university campus in two weeks when classes begin. Often, “Madeleine” sits to write news in a local Arabic newsletter about issues concerning immigrants from the East.
Mrs. “Madeleine” told me that she used to spend the best times at the library of the Cultural Center in Damascus, and when a friend visited her, she wouldn’t just take her to the top of Qasyoun, but would end the day with her at the library:
“Imagine, ‘Najma,’ that Toronto’s public library has 98 branches, with 12 million books!”
I wanted to tell you more about Mrs. “Madeleine,” but I will leave that for future letters and allow myself to talk about the city that has become mine in just one month, and about your “Najma” who has traveled to a sky I now consider far enough from your sky and my mother’s. She stopped talking to me since I traveled with you to Kuwait, thinking that I preferred you over her, and perhaps I failed to explain to her that I was searching for a better future, away from Egypt.
I used to hear my grandmother calling you “Memo,” the best thing she invented. I used to call you “Dad,” and now maybe it’s better to combine them, as the music of “Memo Dad” sounds beautiful to me. I think it’s more beautiful than the nickname everyone calls you—”The Interpreter.” I don’t see that name as befitting you. You are a remarkable translator, and I don’t say this because you’re my father, but because it’s the truth.
I hope to one day be like you, but I wouldn’t like my name to be “The Interpreter.”
You know, Dad, when I used to visit you at your office, and “Shankar” the Indian would call you “Mr. Mohsen,” I knew that was the most accurate definition. You are the “Mr.” who masters his mother tongue, just as you excel at translating a text “as it was born.” As you used to jokingly say. And you are “Mohsen” to everyone; the name fits you. I wish you were once kind to yourself. But, Memo Dad, I’m not saying all of this as flattery, but you can consider it a belated apology from me, and now is the time to explain why.
In my early childhood years, I only saw the image I never truly understood. My mother, always shouting at me, and you, patient, smiling, and calm. The quarrel between you would end, and you’d go to your wooden desk by the balcony, hiding your head among the dictionaries, lexicons, and stacks of books. When you needed a cup of tea or a coffee, you’d quietly enter the kitchen, prepare what you made, and return to your corner.
When my mother asked you for a divorce, you would leave her and go out. When she insisted, maybe for the tenth or twentieth time, you answered her and brought a pickup truck to carry a bag with some clothes and papers, and boxes for books.
From the balcony, I watched you as I cried, saw you put your books in the back of the open truck, where it would devour your papers like a monster swallowing a miserable being, and then I saw you get into the cabin seat next to the driver, waving goodbye to the balcony that had accompanied you for years, with a look of sadness.
I never forgot that scene. Afterward, my mother tried to reconcile with you, but you had made your decision, which you had postponed for a long time, as you told me during the family visits granted by law. My mother tried to prevent you from seeing me, but you forced her. As for her, she took revenge on me and forced me to only take the house system test so I wouldn’t go to school and see you, even by chance. She deprived me of you, of my friends, and of a normal life.
When I obtained my preparatory certificate, I insisted on my mother letting me go see you at my grandfather’s house. At that moment, I knew you were planning to travel to Kuwait, and you explained to me that some friends had arranged suitable work for you, which would allow you to continue your writing project alongside translation. You also shared the project you dreamed of for me:
“Najma, Papa… you will travel with me to Kuwait. There, you will get your high school certificate, and we will get you a scholarship to study in Canada, or I will have enough money for you to continue your studies there. You deserve a better environment. This is a promise from me if you accept to come with me… I will be more at peace than leaving you in Cairo with your mother.”
The moment I decided to travel with you wasn’t sudden. I was living with my mother, and I knew you were paying the alimony, and more, working for my happiness. But she never missed a chance to tell me about your faults; sorry, she used words far worse than “faults,” but she had to tell someone other than me because I was the only one who felt your pain at home.
When you told me about your secret plan, the important thing was to arrange it properly so that it would succeed. I later found out that after we traveled together, she filed a kidnapping case against you! When the Egyptian embassy officers in Kuwait met us, they received the lawsuit papers through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We sat with them, and they knew the details. They closed the case after I testified in your favor that I traveled to study.
What surprised me, Memo Dad, is that you never told me about Mrs. “Fawz” until after I received the scholarship. I realized you wanted to ensure my future and yours. Congratulations, Memo Dad. I’ve met Mrs. “Fawz.” A refined lady and a literary person, in a different atmosphere, she will surely value your work.
I’m happy for you, Memo Dad, despite the confusion I felt and showed when you told me about it for the first time. Maybe because I sensed some deception. The important thing is to be careful because, in the eyes of others, you came as a conqueror, taking a prize from their hands, considering her a Kuwaiti lady and wealthy.
Believe me, I’m the one who knows best that you’re not looking for spoils. I remember you rejected my mother’s offer to write the apartment she inherited from her mother in your name so she could get it back. You also refused offers to write blindly, as you described it, by prominent columnists for a tempting monthly salary. You rejected all of this, but Mrs. “Fawz’s” offer, as I believe, wasn’t just a financial offer but also an emotional one.
In Kuwait, your smile returned. You would come back from your cultural meetings happy. I believe they were “cultural” meetings with Mrs. “Fawz.” The only two names that bothered you were “Mohyi Saber” and “Mustafa Sanad.” You would tell me daily stories full of disgusting tales. I hope that God helps you with them, as they are with you at the institution, and you have to see them every day.
What should I tell you about “Toronto”?
I admit, Dad, that from the first week, I realized that life in Kuwait was just a waiting station. There, we were waiting for something—a train that hadn’t yet arrived, a bus that no one boarded, or a car; that terror moving on four wheels among fools, or the plane that would carry you away from that static life, which seemed like a waiting station for death.
Now I understand the secret behind the eagerness of Kuwaitis to buy homes outside their country. It’s not just because of their wealth, but also due to the desire to have a real home in a real country. During my years of study, I learned that Kuwaiti heads of families buy apartments, houses, and palaces everywhere—in Beirut and Cairo, in France and Britain, and even in Indonesia and Bosnia. You explained to me that the Iraqi invasion taught them that their home was not safe, and that they needed to secure a home somewhere else, even though I believe the crisis has passed.
There was a Kuwaiti colleague of yours, whom I saw once, I think his name was “Al-Mudhefi”. He told you that after the invasion, he bought an SUV, always kept extra fuel canisters, foreign currencies, and that if he ever heard of another Iraqi invasion heading towards Kuwait, he would start his car and head south through the desert, escaping with his family.
You also told me about your Egyptian friend who came to Kuwait right after graduation. He married his Kuwaiti colleague, who loved his calmness, intelligence, and nature. But what was strange was his hobby; he used to go to the Kuwait airport every few days, sit in the waiting lounge, watch the air traffic control screens, and study the faces of those arriving, as if looking for his own face… when he first came to Kuwait.
Away from your waiting lounge, let me talk to you about Toronto… the arrival lounge here.
Maybe it resembles some of the promenades near Lake Ontario, where Toronto overlooks the northeastern shore. That promenade reminds me of the one in the Scientific Center in Kuwait, where the horizon was touched by some residential towers beneath heavy clouds… but the green here is incomparable.
The comparison game between Kuwait and Toronto started for me. The numbers say the population of Toronto is close to the population of Kuwait! I think one similarity is that half of Toronto’s population was born outside of Canada, as it is a destination for immigrants.
I wonder… can we live together here, and could you come one day for us to live together? It’s too early to talk about immigration to Canada. I know you have a marriage plan, and I have a university study plan.
Mrs. “Madeleine” took me on a paid historical tour. I treated her to a meal at an upscale restaurant in the posh Horseshoe Bay area. Mrs. “Madeleine” told me that a tribe called the Hurons took over the lands of the Iroquois tribe after centuries of the latter inhabiting the area. They gave the region around the lake the name “Tkaronto”, meaning “the place where the trees are on the water”, which later evolved into the current name. Doesn’t that resemble the history of Kuwait, whose name was derived from the small “kout” built on the shore, and in fact, Kuwait’s age is not older than that of Toronto!
The first wave of immigrants after the French arrived were the British and their allies. In 1787, these British bought a quarter of a million acres of Toronto and established a city called York, which became the capital of Upper Canada. They thought it was safe from American attacks. However, during the War of York in 1813, American forces took over the city, looted it, destroyed it, and burned its parliament. The name York was replaced by the current name, Toronto, on March 6, 1830, and it became the capital of Canada twice, with Montreal and Quebec becoming capitals for a time each.
After the establishment of the Canadian Confederation, Ottawa became the capital of Canada, and Toronto was named the capital of Ontario in 1867, after being the capital of Upper Canada only. It is now the center of everything in Canada—economy, media, and immigration. Fortunately, English is the first language here, which I prefer over French, as you know, “Memo Dad.”
As for the university, that’s a story for another letter. Here, I can receive transfers via Western Union, so don’t forget me for too long, “Memo Dad”. Fortunately, the Canadian dollar is less valuable than the American one, although I know you are generous with all currencies.
Your wandering star in Toronto…
***
(Continues)
Click here for Chapter 1, Chapter 2,
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Ashraf Aboul-Yazid is a renowned Egyptian poet, journalist, novelist, travelogue writer and translator. He is author of around three dozen books and Editor-in-Chief of Silk Road Literature Series.
