Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar Read Free Book Online Page A

all day,” I heard Naima tell him one morning.
    That same afternoon he asked me to pack some beach clothes. “We are going to Alexandria.”
    Abdu drove us the following morning, and although Alexandria was only three hours away, for some reason Father insisted that we set off at six in the morning.
    The Magda Marina seemed dull and depressing in comparisonto the places Mother used to take us. I could not wait for the two weeks to end and to return to Cairo.
    I could not have felt more differently the following summer, the summer we met Mona, when I prayed each day would last forever.
    She was twenty-six, Father forty-one and I twelve: fifteen years separated them, and fourteen separated her from me. He scarcely had any more right to her than I did. And the fact that Mother was also twenty-six when she and Father married did not escape me. It was as if Father was trying to turn back the clock.
    In the early autumn of that year, after our first summer with Mona, he ordered Naima to pack up Mother’s things. And when she did not immediately comply, he repeated his order, using the same words spoken in the same tone, which was both gentle yet not to be questioned. As soon as she began, a new quality of silence descended on the room. He stood by, pretending to be looking through some loose sheets of paper. I watched helplessly as the sealed cardboard boxes began to mount in the hall.
    “What are you going to do with them?” I asked.
    He did not respond.
    “You can’t take them out of here,” I said.
    He looked at me and I knew that, if I were to take my eyes off his, Mother’s things would disappear to some storeroom in the apartment block.
    A couple of days later he ordered a carpenter to constructa wardrobe across one end of his study. Mother’s things were unpacked and put there.
    He then flew to London, where he and Mona got married. I did not attend the civil ceremony, which Father had assured me was going to be “a quiet affair attended only by Mona’s mother and, maybe, a few of their relatives.” School, of course, was the excuse why I could not come along. But later, when their photographs gradually replaced Mother’s pictures, I discovered that also present on that day were Hydar, Nafisa and Taleb, and other Arab-looking people, probably exiles from our country, their wives and children standing beside them.
    At first Father did not say anything when he saw me peering at the photographs. Then he came into my room.
    “Those people you saw in the pictures: they were passing through London.” Then he returned again. “And what is wrong with having a few friends attend a happy day?”

    I had gone with Abdu to collect them from Cairo International Airport. On the way Abdu stopped by a florist.
    “Nuri Pasha, I think it would be very thoughtful if you got them flowers. Your father would appreciate that.”
    I thought of what excuse I could give. Then, to make up for the hesitation, bought a huge bouquet whose giant fan could barely fit in the boot. Abdu carried it behind me into the arrivals lounge. The smell of jasmines, orange lilies and roses competed for space. Then Mona and Father appeared.Behind their linked bodies there were two men, each with a trolley high with luggage.
    She moved in with us, in the Zamalek apartment Mother had picked for its intimate view of the Nile. During those first few days I almost forgot our time at the Magda Marina. Every morning Father took his car to some appointment or meeting and Abdu drove me to school. Mona, more comfortable in the world than Mother had ever been, spent most of her time at the Gezira Club, where she played polo and tennis and drank tea with people Father and I were never introduced to. She had that English quality of placing the people she knew in compartments, as if fearing they would contaminate one another. Before long she had formed a wide circle of friends. Eventually, it would become necessary to resent her.

    But then in November, under the