When in the apartment, we kids were left to our own devices, and, when not split into smaller clusters, we all usually gathered in مكتب بابا ع (grandfather E’s office)—a label I always found strange as my grandfather was never ever there with us and there was not a hint anywhere in the entire apartment of him ever having spent time there. The office was a room adjoining the living room, sharing a wall with it, and roughly equal to it in size, and was primarily our domain, except for a grand desk situated in the corner to the left of the entrance with two large ornate glass storage cabinets on either side of it, all three pieces looking as though they came out of the 1800s, and that I only ever knew my father to very infrequently use. If there weren’t any adults around, we expanded our activities into the living room as well.
Imagine the frenzied dynamic that a group of children, aged anywhere from 5 to 12 or so, spending hours together, day in and day out, could create. Between the make-believe stories we thought up and acted out, the board and card games we huddled over and played, and the ensuing fights and arguments we got into, there were hardly any moments of peace.
We were constantly being told to quiet down, to stop screaming, stop running and jumping around the apartment, lest we incur the wrath of ild——, our most unfortunate downstairs neighbour.
“Do you want ild—— coming up here?”,
“Stop running! ild——!”,
“You’re going to make ild—— so angry!”
Though I never laid eyes on them, even now, well into my adulthood, the anxiety of doing anything that could disturb ild—— and his wife sometimes revisits me. There were times enough when the doorbell’s ring would hush us into an immediate quiet, more effective than any chastisement, knowing, based on the ruckus we’d been just creating that it would surely be ild—— at the door complaining of the noise. On those lucky occasions when the ringing of the bell wasn’t heard or promptly answered by an adult family member, in a panic, we would quickly devise a plan of action to address the threat.
So as not to disturb the adults, and naturally, to avoid being reprimanded by them yet again, we would send one of our own to answer the door, and it only made sense that the task would fall on an older ‘responsible-looking’ cousin. While the rest of us, breathing shallow and fast from activity, with our hearts pounding in our ears, hid behind the door to one of the rooms connected to the entrance hall, our chosen cousin would calmly answer the door. Without really being able to make anything out, we’d hear the restrained but undoubtedly irate mumblings of our downstairs neighbour, followed by the apologetic assurances of admonishments and it-won’t-happen-agains from our cousin.
The door would close, and while feeling shamed, we would sigh in deep relief and consider ourselves fortunate to have escaped whatever horrible consequence that would have otherwise awaited us. In hushed voices we’d stress to each other, “Guys, we really must keep it down!” before returning to our playing. We would pick up where we left off in whispers that would very quickly swell in volume as we found ourselves again taken in by the excitement of our adventures, promptly forgetting the dread and remorse that was all encompassing only moments before.