Cairo during the War by Artemis Cooper

During the period this book describes, the world was a very different place from the one we inhabit now -- indeed, even from the era in which the work was published, in 1989. "The British occupation was not popular," the author says, and  Cairo, technically a neutral city, seesawed between support and resentment of the colonial power. Today it is jaw-dropping to witness the racism, sexism, and classism that prevailed as a matter of course.

The human antics of an immense and varied cast of Cairenes and foreigners alike are most absorbing. We learn how the GHQ desk jockeys claim membership in ironically named imaginary units like Groppi's Light Horse, and we hear how Lawrence Durrell had to work to persuade the parents of his second wife -- the model for Justine in The Alexandria Quartet -- to marry him.

We are present at a famous New Year's party hosted by Princess Shevekiar, and learn that King Ahmed Fuad of Egypt was one of her four ex-husbands. We also glimpse the drunken revelries hosted at "Tara" by SAS operative David Stirling. At one of these, his eccentric roommate, a Polish aristocrat, gets into an argument with neighbours after her pet mongoose bites their cat.

We learn of The Gezira Sporting Club with its polo and racing, and many other kinds of clubs. We learn how British Egyptian official and art collector Sir Robert Greg, nicknamed Pompy for his alleged pomposity, approached the Howard Carter estate and persuaded them to return King Tut's treasures to the Egyptian Museum. Cooper also relates the sad story of King Farouk's fabulously expensive gift of chocolates, a kind of low-key political bribe which he orders from Groppi's and which is sent to the UK via Khartoum, Lisbon and Ireland, only to remain unopened on arrival in London.

Indeed, we witness the more fortunate occupants of Cairo eating and drinking sumptuously, while remaining somewhat lackadaisical about following blackout regulations. On the other hand, we learn of bread riots, sugar and paraffin shortages, and how falling cotton prices cause immense hardship to poorer Egyptians.

We learn of the Flap, a temporary period when officials, considering the fall of Cairo to the Axis powers imminent, send their wives and children to South Africa for safety, then frantically burn papers in the British Embassy lest the enemy capture them. We are told tales of spies and of drunken soldiers in the streets, including Australians with a reputation (deserved or not, we do not know) for throwing prostitutes out the window of the brothel when they finish with them.

In this meticulously researched work we also watch Cairo pass through different phases. The chaos of war plays out against internal political upheavals, affording readers a close view of the events that shook the city. We see how the attitudes and actions of King Farouk, routine British political interference, and a series of ineffective Egyptian governments caused resentment, strengthening national aspirations. 

The Epilogue offers a glimpse of the rampaging "Black Saturday riot," when many of the buildings described earlier in the book were burned down in a single afternoon. A military coup followed on July 23, 1952, and the newly appointed Prime Minister was soon asked to deliver an ultimatum to King Farouk. According to the will of the people, he must abdicate in favour of his infant son Fuad, and his family should leave the country. It was a peaceful departure; as Farouk's yacht sailed out of Alexandria, the General in charge bid him a polite farewell in the form of a 21-gun salute. 

Encouraged by Hugo Vickers to embark on this vast project of history combined with mini-biographies, author Artemis Cooper FRSL has done a brilliant job of giving readers a powerful sense of having witnessed the history of Cairo during WWII. 

Simon Fraser on a Pedestal

Pedestals from the past: Simon Fraser

Will this statue be the next one pushed in the drink?

Instead, in this present moment, let us stop and think.
Let's refrain from blaming the dead for deeds we cannot reverse.
The past cannot be altered, as Rumi says,

"The moving hand writes, and having writ, moves on..."

The future cannot be improved by blame or erasure.

Instead of throwing rage upon dead symbols, let us observe and remember our human past -- witness, forgive, and move on.

We have only this moment, this breath.
In the gift of our time on this planet, let us not indulge in rage or harsh judgment.
Let us begin by forgiving and loving ourselves,
Then devote each precious moment to spending our love wherever we can.

Never Before, Never Again

Never before, never again

Spring evening by the sea

The same as other days

Yet not the same

This bird, these clouds, this tree

Never before, never again.

Waves continuously lap the shore

Soporific, rhythmic, eternal,

Yet never precisely the same as before.

The sky, the clouds, the light

Each moment of this unique dusk

Approaching night.

Dear busy mind,

Filled up with thoughts of times ahead,

Of times behind.

Stand still now, in this perfect moment,

Be tranquil, make this moment mine.

Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process by John McPhee

During his tenure as a staff writer for Time and the New Yorker, John McPhee has also produced 33 books. The writing courses he's taught at Princeton have been both generator and source of plangent observations about how to tackle the problems all writers share. This collection of essays highlights frustrations, insights and techniques.

For writer's block, there's the Dear Mother technique, in which you share your feelings of ineptitude and despair in a letter to Mom, insisting that "you are not cut out for this type of work." After whining and whimpering, you mention that "the bear has a fifty-five-inch waist and a neck more than thirty inches around, but could run nose-to-nose with Secretariat." You go on like that "as long as you can." And then you go back and delete the salutation, the whining, the whimpering, "and just keep the bear."

The racehorse Secretariat brings us to a topic covered in the essay called Frames of Reference. Do your readers understand what you are referring to? This thorny question involves locale, culture, history, demographics. And it's changing all the time. Although students of Brookline high school in Massachusetts recognized Woody Allen, Muhammad Ali, and Winston Churchill, only a quarter of them had heard of Waterloo Bridge, Norman Rockwell or Truman Capote. Only one was aware of Laurence Olivier, and none had heard of Calabria, Churchill Downs, Bob Woodward or Samuel Johnson. Makes you feel old.

Also in the title essay, McPhee posits a "four-to-one ratio in in writing time," and explains the "psychological differences from phase to phase." Once the dreaded first draft has been laid down,  problems with the writing "become less threatening, more interesting." But first you must "blurt out, heave out, babble out something--anything as a first draft." No matter how incompetent you feel -- and "To feel such doubt is a part of the picture, important and inescapable." The box technique for editing is fascinating; I intend to try it when I reach that pinnacle of achievement, Draft 4 -- that is, if I ever finish blurting out the first draft of the novel I'm working on now.

The same essay contains some fascinating and arcane stories about how editing is done at The New Yorker. That includes tales of the first copy editor, Eleanor Gould, whose sage editorial advice was memorialized by inventing the verb to Gould. The copy editors who have come after her have "lived in her shadow" and "lengthened it."

Other tidbits offered involve the usage of further (degree) versus farther (distance), the silent 's' apostrophe, and demonyms -- Haligonian, Liverpudlian and Minneapolitan are on his A list. "The Chicago Manual of Style is a "quixotic attempt at one-style-fits-all for every house in America--newspapers, magazines, book publishers, blogishers." John McPhee's book is not merely a learning experience, it's a delightful read.

A Match Made for Murder by Iona Whishaw

In the latest Lane Winslow novel, Iona Whishaw elegantly carries off a feat rarely attempted by mystery writers: she marries her sleuth to the aptly named Inspector Darling.

As the genre demands, the honeymooners' Arizona idyll is fraught with danger. Even as tension mounts, a signature moment of light humour evokes a smile. When his captive asks a hired thug why he's driving her out into the desert, his sharp reply inspires her rueful reflection that she's "in the thrall of a sarcastic kidnapper."

Lane and Frederick Darling are surrounded by marital discord. A visit with Frederick's old colleague the Chief of Police reveals cracks in his marriage. Then at the inn where the Darlings are staying, Lane witnesses a fatal shooting, motivated, we eventually learn, by greed and jealousy.

While the Inspector honeymoons, in King's Cove, Sergeant Ames fumbles his current romance. In the course of investigating a strange murder, he stumbles on some delicate emotional territory that sours his relationship with Tina. Themes of emotionally bankrupt marriage and male violence against women arise again, and evidence turned up in the investigation challenges Ames to face certain uncomfortable realities.

Set in the late 1940s, this novel portrays the immediate post-war period, a time when women enjoyed far less freedom than they do today. Breaking the silence around sexual politics in The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir summarized with brutal clarity. "Man-the-sovereign will protect woman-the-liege." But in exchange for material protection and personal responsibility, she must "forego her liberty and become a thing." Male dominance feeds on female powerlessness.

In sharp contrast to this sad stereotype, the unflappable ex-spy Lane Winslow and her husband demonstrate the health of their newly forged union. In one scene, we see this through an honest discussion of their failings and imperfections. He opens up to her about his mortification at having been '"taken in by a slick, arrogant man.'" She responds by reminding him that in her youth she "wasted years on a man just like that," adding that he should not reproach himself since '"being dazzled and fooled can happen to anybody."'

Unlike many other war veterans, this couple are consciously aware of their demons of memory, and they work at coming to terms. When Lane relates a recurring war nightmare and shares her feelings of guilt about the events that inspired it, she discovers that opening to Frederick's perspective helps her achieve a kind of peace that diminishes the power of the traumatic memory.

In the post-war era, veterans frequently indulged unmanageable rage and guilt by violently lashing out. Women were brutalized, dark-skinned people victimized, and civil power structures echoed pyramid-style military hierarchies with their demand for unquestioning obedience.

For the male antagonists in this story, the ravages of suppressed emotion feed into fits of rage and violence, racist attitudes, and the unhealthy will to power at the expense of other people's rights and freedoms. Tacitly tolerated, the crime of rape saddles women with years of secret shame and self-recrimination.

As her fans have come to expect, Iona Whishaw tells a cracking good story while offering the reader many other satisfactions. Set seventy years in the past, this novel raises issues that remain sadly current as daily news media report on similar social ills.

Fortunately, good stories sustain the soul. Reading about Lane and Frederick gives me hope, and I am heartened by the thought that "the long moral arc swings toward the good." Let us hope that the rise of COVID 19 accelerates the increasingly critical human understanding that we are all one.