~ Woman of Cairo, by Noel Barber ~
[This review would make better sense if the reader first read my review of Noel Barber’s Tanamera]
Despite being set in Cairo – where Tanamera was set in Singapore – both novels read remarkably similarly! Barber has lived and worked in both cities and countries, and yet, the novels’s plots and characters could almost be interchangeable, which is not meant so much as an indictment of his writing style or plotting, but more remarkably, a pointer to how those of the super elite British expatriate in colonies lead remarkably similar lives, whether in the Africa, or South East Asia, or wherever else.
That said, Barber seems rather attached to particular creations of his. The protagonist of Woman of Cairo, Mark Holt, could be Johnnie Dexter of Singapore all over again. Serena Pasha – half French, half Egyptian, daughter of an extremely high ranking palace official Egyptian Copt– is an Egyptian version of Julie Soong – the half Chinese, half white-American daughter of an extremely high ranking Chinese Singaporean tycoon. Again, the setting is that Mark/Johnnie live in massive, beautiful houses adjacent to and grow up as close neighbours and friends with Serena/Julie; and from the outset, there is a passionate love between the beautiful, privileged, lovely couple. Serena/Julie are remarkably interchangeable too – both being extremely sexually charged and yet single-man women, both being unable to marry the man they love at first, both being that exotic other Chinese/Egyptian but also Western simultaneously. Even the body types are the same – tall, slender, dressing typically with simple elegance. Mark, like Johnnie, is completely infatuated by his childhood love. In fact, Mark and Johnnie even make love to Serena and Julie in exactly the same way, and each novel contains one episode where the heroine is almost fully asleep when the hero takes her and tries his best to do so without actually waking her – and this apparently is the most exciting of sexual moves for the protagonists – which the author apparently relishes. Both novels also focus on finding viable love nests for the couple, needing to avoid anything sordid but also needing to avoid publicity. In both novels, their wealth and their endless supply of wealthy friends guarantee many possible boltholes and spaces of refuge, not just in Cairo/Singapore, but internationally. This is perhaps a fairly accurate reflection of the lifestyles typical of those at the sharp end of the top of the hierarchy; and a century after the novels’ settings, not much has changed. And once again, Barber demonstrates that he is fully aware of the hierarchy, even as he focuses the attention almost exclusively on the elite:
Life seemed so wonderful to all of us those happy days in Cairo. […] I wonder sometimes whether the splendour of Egypt blinded us to the real facts of life, in much the same way as the servile smile of an Arab anxious to sell a scarab to a British Tommy masks a hatred of the foreign oppressor. But then Cairo was a city of intrigue which cast a spell over all of us. Beautiful and brown, selfish yet tolerant, it beguiled us, and the soft breezes from the Nile lulled us into a sense of false security.
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Both Mark and Johnnie have fathers who deeply love the ‘natives’, have a tremendous sympathy with and understanding of the native languages and lives, and are thoroughly good eggs, besides being extremely high ranking with both governments. Both Mark and Johnnie have a brother each – who end up as thorns in their side. (Both Serena and Julie have one elder brother each, neither of whom are particularly effective.) Mark and Johnnie of course are completely fluent in the local languages, and deeply patriotic both to Britain and to their homes in Cairo/Singapore. Like Johnnie who played a key role in the war, Mark too is recruited as an officer – and a spy. This gives him/them remarkable access – useful strategic device – even during the war and when so much is off limited to the common man.
Although so like the plot of Tanamera, Woman of Cairo is far less well written – it fails to explain the local politics as well as Tanamera did; its narrative devices – like the accident Greg is involved in – is too blatantly just a device to move the plot along; its secondary characters are less well fleshed out; its local colour not as sensitively or knowledgeably rendered. It spends far too much of the long narrative trying to devise reasons for which Mark and Serena cannot wed, and far too little on giving a good portrayal of local Egyptian colour. All the Egyptian politics here basically depict King Farouk as a gluttonous, spoilt, demanding despot and dictator, and his henchmen as exploitative, cruel, barbaric, power-hungry but fairly inept characters – stage villains, in a sense. Orientalism at play here, without apology! The revolutionary opposition to the monarchy are sketched without much sympathy either, coming across as zealots and stock caricatures. The explanations which should embed the narrative into the local landscape are rather spurious and lacking – Tanamera did a far better job in actually conveying war-time Singapore, for example. Woman of Cairo comes across as a rewriting of the romance in Tanamera just transported to an Egyptian exotic space, and not quite as well worked through.
The novel is divided into 4 parts, set in different time periods, chronologically. The final part, 1952-52, is the weakest and worst – it is supposed to end the book on suspenseful court case where amazingly, Mark acts as Serena’s defense lawyer and there is apparently no conflict of interest and no breach of ethics, despite the fact he actually was witness to the crime she is charged with. So determined is Barber to see the romance through rose-tinted glasses that he expects the reader to be on his side when he writes a tale which fully exonerates Serena and lets her get away with cold blooded, premeditated murder, simply because she is the beautiful heroine who can therefore do no wrong – in our novel, but also in her setting and of her times.
All that said, it is still an entertaining enough read, the almost 600 pages passing swiftly, lightly, and for most part enjoyably for the reader. There is the same sense of safety, of familiarity within the exotic, that the protagonist will never actually be harmed, and that the romance will triumph after some little meanders, and that like Johnnie, Mark is a good egg, a top class man, ‘one of us’ born and bred with a silver spoon in the mouth, etc etc. Imperialistic fiction, but not in an unpleasant way. Still though, if you only have time to read one long Barber novel, Woman of Cairo may not be the best choice.
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