As
for my umbrella, I got it from One Pound World in Manchester; I was on
my way to Portland Street for the VISA interview when it started to rain
heavily. The first thing I thought about was taking the bus… but when I
saw One Pound World an advertisement moved like a banner in my head:
‘With a pound or more you can get an umbrella for life, for life, and
enjoy walking… enjoy walking in the rain..’ I went inside, had a look
around and did not see umbrellas. I asked the shop assistant; he pointed
to a stall: red and black umbrellas were lying in a cardboard box; I
quickly grabbed the red one, paid the money (a pound and half by the
way!) and walked –diligently- figuring out my way to Portland street! I
finished my VISA errand and in a matter of two days, this red crab
became my favorite Hunny Bunny; the new umbrella!
But
it broke in one windy day at Lancaster; it was exactly when I was past
the bus stop; it turned inside out and while pulling the umbrella up
towards the sky, its junctures were torn leaving one of its steel
metal bare without a cloth; I inadvertently tried to pull the cloth to
cover it but it obviously needed to be stitched. In the next day, my old
umbrella- that my father gave me- broke too; I threw it in the bin at
university and for seconds afterwards I thought if my father would be
cross if he saw me throwing his umbrella. I obviously needed a new one.
In
New Look, I looked anxiously at the umbrellas on the stall: brown with
some yellow dots. I was willing to pay eight pounds (with some thinking
really :)) but the red colour of my umbrella kept flagging in my mind: it
is red, clear red like the Egyptian cotton t-shirt I bought from
downtown Cairo and like the coral pendent I had from Khan El Khalili
when my mother was with me. ‘I will think about it’, I told my friend.
In
the morning, I put my accessories in my bag and remembered to put red
thread and a needle; I was in John Lennon’s airport four hours ahead;
and what good circumstances like these to fix my great fantastic red
project?! I put the thread in the needle’s eye, asking myself if I have
ever seen a human stitching something in an airport. The café and the
policewoman were the last thing I saw before my eyes would be blocked by
waves of red color; if I know how the stitches are done in the old
junctures, I can fix the torn ones… In the swimming pool in Cairo, going
from line to line, I moved through one light hazy blue colour,
everything was smooth till I got to that plucked ceramic towards the
middle, a dark spot, a deep whole, a whirling centre of a hurricane, I
took my head out; the policewoman was looking at me.
When
I reached Portugal, it crossed my mind that fixing the umbrella was a
sign that things would be fine. It was 9.30 in the evening; the bus
would come after an hour and half and when I would get to Braga, it
would be almost twelve. This is ‘45 Dr. Michael Owen’, the taxi driver
said as he parked the car; he gestured that he would wait for me till I
got there; I passed the small gate, talked to someone over the phone,
and went back to the main entrance, ‘all is fine, thank you’ I waved to
him.
A
Portuguese man showed me around the house. The lights of the stairs
turned out automatically like those towards the gate at the the house
of my brother in New Cairo. The two-level bed reminded me of the room in
a camp I went to in Sinai. In bed, I stared at the chair. I moved my
hand slowly to switch off the lamp as if I am having difficulty reaching
it: ‘earth is really small and boring, and they keep saying oh I have
been to this country or that country when it is really a matter of tiny
small cities’. That was my confession- to a secret audience- at night,
but in the morning, things seemed to change…
