Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes by Kamal Al-Solaylee

Alexandria, Egypt, in 1976. A mere year or two later, the thought of my sisters wearing bikinis was unacceptable.
    “The colour of this brown two-piece makes you look darker,” I’d tell my sister Raja’a as she went through the swimwear selection in a crowded shop near Talat Harb Street in downtown Cairo. She picked a lime-green bikini instead. “I love this one so much I want to wear it myself,” I blurted out to Ferial, clinching her choice of a black-and-white striped swimsuit. When we eventually got to the beach, Mohamed—in his summer suit and tie—and Safia would listen to the radio or talk to other Egyptian families nearby while all the children got into the water. None of us were swimmers as such, but the point was to leave Cairo for two weeks at the hottest time of the year.
    I believe that our last trip was in 1976. By the following year, Helmi’s embrace of Islam was getting stricter, and his constant berating of our sisters for their love of “risqué” clothes or excessive makeup was drowning out my father’s constant praise. His daughters were helween (beautiful), he’d tell them. When Mohamed was really feeling generous and Safia was within earshot, he’d add, “Just like your mother.” The old flirt may have lost his wealth but not his way with women. His women, at least. It must have been hard on him to realize that all the women he prided himself on catching back in Aden were probably into him for the money. In Cairo, while still comfortable, he was just a middle-aged man with eleven children.
    EVEN AS A CHILD I did not escape Helmi’s transformation. I looked up to him, but he’d ignore me until I joined him in prayer, which even at thirteen or so I didn’t feel like doing. I didn’t understand the point of being religious; I associated it with old people. During the holy month of Ramadan, I’d hear no end of it if I didn’t fast or if I spent the day playing instead of reading the Quran. “Leave him alone—he’s still a baby,” my mother told Helmi repeatedly. “He’s as big as a horse,” Helmi would answer back. I was already nostalgic for the days when we were an all-secular household. My immediately older brother, Khairy, was more amenable to this new form of religious observance, and soon enough he was telling me and my other brother, Wahbi, off for not praying or going to the mosque on Fridays with him and Helmi. Wahbi and I cared more about music and film and were in the habit of sneaking out to movie theatres on Fridays (our day off from school) to watch the latest Arabic or foreign releases. Going to a mosque seemed like a waste of a weekend. Who needed to spend his free day listening to an angry imam and watching scores of men nodding in agreement?

    My sisters Raja’a (right) and Ferial and I pose with our first-born niece, Rasha, in 1978. Note my afro—I was also wearing bell-bottomed jeans and high heels. I’d started listening to American disco music by then and liked the fashion that accompanied it.
    Similarly, my sisters did their best to ignore Helmi’s criticism (and later Khairy’s) and continue with their regular beauty and fashion routine. But there was only so much you could do before you started self-censoring—self doubting is more like it—and taking safer options. The skirts got longer, the makeup lighter. Dyeing their hair was for special occasions. A new reality set in.
    My sister Farida, Child Number Three in the family and the next in line to get married, had a glamorous career and looks to match. Statuesque, even-tempered, with a good secretarial training from the American University in Cairo’s School of Continuing Education, Farida found a job in 1974 as a secretary at the Liberian embassy in Cairo. Her salary of three hundred US dollars a month would have been considered very high in Cairo back in the 1970s, and probably by many Egyptians today. More importantly, the job opened up the world of the international diplomatic community to