Charmed by Colette Rossant's childhood memoirs, Apricots on the Nile, WFI asked the author to reflect on her colourful early life in Cairo.
Paris was my home until I was five years old. I was born there, to an Egyptian father and a French mother, and we lived there until 1939, when my father fell very ill and my Egyptian grandfather summoned us to Cairo. My parents and I moved in with my grandparents, who lived in a four-storey house built in the early 1800s by my great-grandfather in Garden City, an elegant residential quarter near the Nile. When we first stepped through the tall cast-iron gate into the lush garden, my grandparents embraced me and welcomed me home. Grandpapa led me to an enormous mango tree that dominated the garden and told me he had planted it on the day I was born. I believed him then, but later realised this was just a story to make me feel special.
My father died a few months later and we found ourselves joined to the rest of the large extended family. My Aunt Fortunee lived one flight up with her husband and three children; Uncle Victor, with his wife and their children, resided on the third floor; and on the top floor were cousin Lydia, her husband and their four children. French was the family's common language, but I learned Arabic in order to converse with the staff in the kitchen (my favourite place) who ran this complicated household.
From our first days in Cairo, my mother withdrew into the role of a young widow, leaving my grandparents with the task of raising me. For the next five years I hardly saw my mother, and the large house became my haven and my whole world. Grandpapa was tall and portly, with a shock of white hair and a big moustache that curled upward. When leaving for the office in the morning, dressed in a three-piece European suit, with a traditional fez-like red felt tarboosh on his head and a watch chain across his round belly, he looked very stern and dignified.
My cousins were all afraid of him, but not I. At home in the evenings, he would sit on the wide terrace, watching the sunset and swishing a horsetail fly-swatter from side to side. I would snuggle on his lap and listen to stories about my great-great-grandmother, a 'princess' who had left Turkey to follow her husband to Egypt. He said that I looked like her and I believed him. Grandmama was a diminutive woman, always dressed in black, her henna-dyed hair pulled back in a chignon, with a cigarette eternally dangling from the corner of her mouth. She spent her days trotting around the house, supervising the help and taking a special interest in the goings-on of the kitchen. She was the queen of the house and I, like the other children, admired her very much.
Every morning she waged battles over the day's menus with Ahmed, the Sudanese, French-trained cook. He would propose such dishes as fish in aspic, ballottines of duck or soufflés. Grandmama loved all things Egyptian and believed in the restorative power of leeks, which she insisted be served often. She and Ahmed argued with great shouts, their battles invariably ending in compromise. A meal might begin, for instance, with a delicate herb soup called melokhia served with steamed rice, followed by a French-style stuffed roasted squab on a bed of her curative braised leeks.
I loved going with Grandmama in a horse-drawn carriage to the noisy, dusty market. In the fresh vegetable section, she would buy young okra, small, intensely red tomatoes, courgettes and cucumbers. She chose her aubergines painstakingly. At the poultry counter, she invariably said to the butcher: "The birds had better be tender and plump or young, because they weren't last time."
At the fruit stand, she would sit down to sample before buying. A boy would offer her strong coffee from a shiny silver tray and, as she discussed the quality, ripeness and price of the cherimoyas and watermelons, I'd eat my fill of both. Back at home, I would sneak to the kitchen to see, smell and taste what Ahmed was preparing for dinner, while Grandmama sat with her daughters on the terrace, munching on pumpkin seeds and gossiping.
A large pot of fragrant ful medames (small brown broad beans) was always being warmed on Ahmed's stove. This dish, a staple in Egypt, is bought from street vendors and eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner with pickled beetroot and hard-boiled eggs. In my house, ful was meant only for the staff. Yet because I was passionate about it, Ahmed, risking my grandmother's admonitions, would ply me with the dish, mashing the beans with vinaigrette.
On the first Thursday of every month, Grandmama received her many friends. I loved being in the kitchen on that day to see Ahmed move like a whirling dervish. The women would arrive at four o'clock, gossip for a while and then settle into their poker or canasta games. At seven the men showed up, the card games stopped and dinner was served, buffet-style, in the dining room.
The elaborate spread would feature platters heaped with Egyptian and other Mediterranean foods - kobeiba (cracked wheat mixed with beef); vine leaves stuffed with lamb and rice; grilled quail wrapped in vine leaves; assorted salads; Grandmama's delicately smoky baba ganoush and her famous sambousaks - golden pastries filled with cheese. Another table offered puddings, including my favourite, zalabia - small fritters doused with orange-blossom syrup. I wasn't allowed to join the party but Ahmed always filled a plate for me.
On Wednesdays, Fatma, a huge, lumbering village woman, would come to the house to do the family wash. Later, all the women in the family would meet in Grandmama's living room to drink muddy Turkish coffee. Then they would flip their cups upside down so that Fatma could read their fortunes.
Soon after I turned 15, my mother decided that she had had enough of playing the widow and, on the pretext that I needed a good education, took me away from my loving Egyptian family and took me back to live in Paris with her parents. Egypt was entirely removed from my life and replaced with all things French. I longed desperately for Cairo, for my Egyptian grand-parents, for Ahmed and his ful medames, for the smell of cumin and coriander, and for the gentle gossip on warm evenings.
At 18 I married a young American architect and sailed for New York. Not long after I arrived, I discovered Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn with its many Middle Eastern food shops. Childhood memories rushed forth as I searched the crowded shelves. Relying on my recollections of our Cairo kitchen and the exotic flavours that lingered in my memory, I tried to duplicate the foods of my childhood. I wrote each recipe down to pass on to my children. When my children were grown, I wrote Apricots on the Nile for them and my grandchildren, to tie them to me and my past.
'Apricots on the Nile' is published on 5 March by Bloomsbury, priced at £12.99 (wfi Bookshop price, £9.99, plus £1.99 uk postage & packing per order.)