Elzevira

An essay of André Aciman published in 'Alibis' Essays on Elsewhere (Ferrar, Straus & Giroux 2011)

De fragmenten uit liederen van Berio gezongen door Kathy Barbarian zijn interessanter dan het interview. Wat Luciano Berio over taal zegt is het volgende: Language is, as a philopher woult say 'a house of being' language is the mother of everything we are, we do, we know and voice is an expression of language. I think there are many things to discover not only musically through studying. And the relation language and music is one of the most experimental.

“But I allready take him to my parents every day for that very purpose”, protested my mother.

“That’s very good Gigi. Still that’s not the same thing.”she said raising her index finger.  The Princess (bijnaam van schoonmoeder) had not invited my mother’s parents  to the forthcoming celebrations, owing to the alleged difference in standing between the two families – not to mention the Syrian question.  “I want him to get distinguished” the Princess said. “Like my brothers, who are, as you know, tres comme il faut.”

Without thinking, my mother had already capitulated. 

When my father arrived late that evening, the first thing he did was show he was extremely displeased to find Aziza still there. 

“I don’t want her here all the time. Isn’t it enough that most of your deaf friends are here every day, do we need deaf servants as well?”

It took my mother a second to piece together the puzzle. 

“Is this going to end up with your mother taking care of him every other day? “she said pointing at me.

“Why not? He replied, going on the offensive now that she had found him out.   “I don’t want him growing up thinking he is either deaf or an Arab.”

My mother took this in silence.

“Meanwhile, poor Aziza stayed later than usual to finish ironing your shirts”. She flung open a cupboard and pointed to two stacks of neatly folded shirts.

“What do I care about shirts!”be shouted. 

He picked up one of the shirts, examined it as though looking for a crease, found none, then brought it close to his nose. He found what he was looking for.

“Let me be very clear: don’t ever let me see Aziza again,” said my father, losing his temper.  “I don’t want her nosing around my things, and I certainly don’t want that fetid odor of hers lingering in the house after she’s done cleaning it. Here,” he said, almost thrusting the shirt into my mother’s face to her sample the smell.

“It was washed this very morning,”she said.

“Smell again! It stinks of hilba! Hilba! Hilba!”he shouted as he picked up each shirt, sniffed it, and threw it on the floor.

“Get rid of her!”

My father was right about one thing: Aziza always trailed that oder of hilba, an auburn-colored substance that Egyptians drank in large doses for its alleged curative properties and which dyed their palms red and made their bodies exude what Europeans considered a repellent, dirty odor. My father called it une odeur d’arabe, and Arab smell, and he hated to find it trapped in his shirts, his linens, his food.

This odor was so unmistakable and so overwhelming that one could immediately, distinguish Westernized Egyptians who used a strong aftershave, from those who affected Western habits but whose minds, homes, and regimens were still steeped in the universe of hilba.  Even if an Egyptian had completely adopted Western ways, shed his native customs to become what my grandparents called an evolué, and wore a suit every day, learned table manners, kissed masmazelles’ hands whenever he greeted them, and knew his wines, his cheeses, and the required number of La Fontaine fables by heart, the fact that his clothes gave off the slightest trace of that telltale scent would make one think twice about his professed inclination for the West and suspect that not everyone in his Household-himself included- had risen above the dark, sinister underside of Arab hygiëne.

But there was another reason for my father’s visceral aversion to hilba.  He, like his mother, disliked all kinds of recognizable ethnic odors, thinking that the more Westernized a family, the more odorless its home, its clothes, its cooking.

It would never have occurred to either of them that all homes bear ethnic odors, and that anyome born in Alexandria would just as easily have sniffed out a Sephardi household like ours, with residual odor of Parmesan, boiled atichokes, and borecas, as they themselves could recognize an Armenian kitchen by its unavoidable smell of cured pastrami, a Greek living room by the odor of myrrh, and Italians by the smell of fried onions and chamomille. Working-class Italians smelled of fried peppers, and Greeks smelled a garlic and brilliantine, and, when they sweated, their underarms smelled of yoghurt.

“It smells as though an Arab caravan camped here overnight,” said the Princess when visiting us late one morning.

“I can smell her, I know she was here.”Though my father had pronounced a ban on Aziza, it was never enforced.

Andre Aciman explains what a writer is en how he started to write

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