MISS MAISIE PUBLICATIONS First published 2010 Text Š Ellen Mary Wilton 2010 This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers. Author photographs by Graham R. Johnson Photography Cover design, text design and typesetting by David Andor / Wave Source Design www.wavesource.com.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author: Wilton, Mary Ellen, 1947Title: Daughters of Allah / Mary Ellen Wilton. ISBN: 9780646528335 (pbk.) Subjects: Wilton, Mary Ellen, 1947Boarding schools--Egypt--Biography. Australian students--Egypt--Biography. Dewey Number: 371.020962
All people stand equal, like the teeth of a comb. —
THE
P ROPHET M UHAMMAD
Prologue This story happened a long time ago, just before Kennedy was shot and when it was still possible to board an airplane without security checks and when the world and I were ignorant of the desert culture and the people who live by the religion of Islam. I lost my ignorance before the world did. In that little space of time after the discovery of oil began to dissolve the old feudal ways of the desert and before the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism, circumstances brought me into the world of harem-raised girls who were being educated in an Egyptian boarding school. The experience I am about to relate is unique to that time — it could not have happened either before or after that short time in history. It is hard now to remember everything I felt and saw as my fifteen-year-old self. My memory and perception of the reality of that time has altered as I have matured. I still recall what happened, still remember the feelings, yet it is like viewing land through water. I have tried to convey what I felt as I made the transition from the safe world of a Canberra day convent to a Muslim boarding school in Alexandria, Egypt. The narrative is interspersed with my experiences,
2
DA U G H T E R S O F A L L A H
knowledge and reflections as an adult. I could not have had these insights as a fifteen year old, but I believe they enhance the story and add an historical dimension that it would otherwise lack. However, the events I recount must be considered from the point of view that was prevalent in the sixties and how uninformed we were then of the Islamic culture. Was I privileged for the experience? The reader may answer that question as he or she reads. I certainly did not think I was as I stood under the fierce blue Alexandrian sky on that first day in September and looked up at the high, mud-coloured walls of the school building with its great steel-studded door and tall square tower. A giant of a man stood on the steps in front of the door. He was a study in black and white — white robe, turban and teeth contrasting with shiny midnight skin. The three scars cut horizontally into each of his cheeks marked him as a man from a tribe in the Sudan. It was a long, long way from the nuns and my safe school in Australia as I ventured forth like a sacrificial lamb into the world behind those walls.
One Men in dresses were everywhere. My father and I stepped into a tiled entrance hall the size of a small house. The giant Nubian in his white robe saluted respectfully. An Egyptian wearing a grey robe with a grandfather shirt neckline sat in a cubicle, a board laden with keys hanging behind him. Another man wearing a red fez and a wide crimson sash around the waist of his long kaftan, bowed and asked how he might help. “I thought this was supposed to be an English school,� I muttered to my father, scowling in spite of the many whitetoothed smiles around me. The British had built the school so that their daughters could have a traditional English education, but since King Farouk had been deposed and the British were forced to depart Egypt after a seventy-two year occupation, the school had been nationalised under President Nasser. I followed my father into the office of the headmistress, Mrs Khalafallah. She was English, but she had married an Egyptian. Accordingly, the new nationalistic government approved of her. She ran the place and she was the reason my father chose this school for me in Alexandria rather than a school in Cairo where he was based with the Australian Embassy.
6
DA U G H T E R S O F A L L A H
As I sat drinking tea out of an English rose tea cup and listened to the iron-haired lady talk to my father in her perfectly modulated English accent, I could have been lulled into thinking that school in Egypt might not be so different from school in Australia. But the presence of the white-robed servant deferentially pouring tea, his face like polished ebony, and the other robed fellows outside, was fair warning that this school would indeed be different to the convent school I was used to. “Mary is a serious student,” my father told Mrs Khalafallah. My first name is Ellen after my mother’s sister who died on the day I was born. My mother, to appease her grief, named me for my Aunt Ellen instead of the Mary she had intended but then proceeded to call me Mary. My father had got into the habit as well. He was still explaining things to the headmistress. “When I was posted by the Australian Government to Cairo, we thought of leaving her in Australia to continue her studies with the nuns, but my wife felt the distance was too great. And aside from that, Ancient History, particularly that of Egypt, is her favourite subject.” He smiled at me. “She would like to be an archaeologist.” “Yes, Australia is far away,” was Mrs Khalafallah’s only comment. She did not even pretend to entertain my archaeology dreams. They were lost now, in this place, even if I was in the heart of ancient Alexandria. “We have no other Australian girls, but I’m sure she’ll fit in nicely here.” Mrs Khalafallah showed me her teeth. Behind her glasses the blue eyes were not friendly. She was scary and distant. My first impression of her never changed. “The girls in the boarding school are from all over the Arab world, but predominantly from Saudi Arabia. They are all Muslim. I, too, am Muslim now, as are most of the day pupils, who are mainly Egyptian girls from well-to-do families in Alexandria.”
7
Going to boarding school for the first time was bad enough, I thought, without having to share it with a bunch of Muslims. I knew nothing about Muslims. “How old are you, Mary?” Mrs Khalafallah asked. Now she was calling me Mary. “Fifteen,” I replied demurely, as fresh from the convent as hot bread from an oven. “Because of your advanced English, you will be in a class of girls who are a little older. That means you will be placed in the senior section of the boarding school. The girls there are sixteen and seventeen.” I nodded, but she had already turned back to my father. She leant across her desk and whispered confidentially, “Since The Revolution, the school has had problems. Our future is in jeopardy. Foreign language schools like this are barely tolerated in the new educational system. As long as we teach and work equally in Arabic and English, we survive.” “Arabic?” I asked in horror. I sure would learn a lot in Arabic, I thought sarcastically. I couldn’t speak a word and I had no intention of even trying to come to grips with all those squiggles that started from the back of the book and the wrong side of the page. But Mrs K had her own laments. “Alex has changed since the old days. So many internationals have left. French, Greek, Italian, English — once so cosmopolitan. Alas!” “How shall I learn in Arabic?” I was a serious student so I was not afraid to speak up. “I’ll never be able to catch up when I go home.” “We will organise for her to have private study when the other girls have their Arabic lessons,” Mrs Khalafallah assured my father, dismissing my fears. “School resumes tomorrow after the two month summer break. For the uniform we have our own dressmakers working at the school. Mary can be measured and she may choose which colour she likes. We give
8
DA U G H T E R S O F A L L A H
the girls a choice of pink, green or yellow for our summer uniform.” The nuns would never have approved of such an untidy colour arrangement, I thought. I longed for my old school. Yet as it would turn out, not once would I write to my school friends back in Australia. A knock on the door interrupted the conversation and a woman with a face that had seen far too much sun entered the room. “This is our Miss Eskande,” the headmistress announced. “She’s the house mistress. She looks after the boarders and she is also the sports mistress.” Miss Eskande’s pale hair was wispy, her nose pointed and her front teeth were prominent and slightly crossed. She had an ugly way of holding her face forward on her neck. She shook hands mannishly. I wasn’t a bit surprised the British had left her behind. The contrast between her and Mrs Khalafallah was marked although they both looked like English women — just different types. The headmistress wore a neat blouse buttoned to the neck, cuffed sleeves, tucked into a soft grey skirt. The house mistress, on the other hand, wore a crumpled skirt and a shirt with no shape or colour whatsoever. “Mr Taylor is from Australia and wishes his daughter to continue her education with us while he is posted to Cairo,” explained Mrs Khalafallah. “She’ll fit in, she’ll fit in,” Miss Eskande declared so positively that for a moment, even though I did not like either of these two English women, I believed I would fit in. There could not possibly be a community of Arabs waiting for me outside. While my father and the headmistress finalised the arrangements, by which I mean my father handed over a large cheque, Miss Eskande took me aside. “We British have to stick together.” She thrust her nose at
9
me. “These girls don’t have our same sense of fair play and honesty. Mrs Khalafallah and I do our best, but it’s hard. I expect you to set a high standard and report any misbehaviour to me.” Now I was even more worried about what they might do to me. I nodded, my eyes riveted on her left ear which stuck out through her thin hair. “Send for Nurse,” Mrs K clapped her hands. “Come on, Mary.” Outside my father motioned to our driver, who was gabbling away in Arabic with the giant, to bring my single suitcase. A rat of apprehension gnawed away at my stomach. I trailed him through the school entrance. All these Arabic fellows looked like cut-throats to me. I wasn’t fooled by all those big smiling teeth. “Don’t leave me with all these Arabs,” I whispered desperately to my father. He bent and kissed me. “I can’t take you any further. Mum will phone in a couple of days to see how you are going.” And with that he was gone. I was on my own. Although not quite on my own, a squat, middle-aged woman, quite light-skinned, had materialised at my side. She was dressed in a white skirt and jacket with a nurse’s cap on the back of her head. This was obviously ‘Nurse’. She beckoned and I followed. Not even a prisoner entering jail could feel more trapped, no Robinson Crusoe more alone, than I did at that moment. An Arab wearing a pair of pyjamas and a skull cap followed on behind me carrying my suitcase on his shoulder. We moved beyond the entrance hall into an arch-lined colonnade that formed one side of a central grassed courtyard. The hexagonal columns were covered in tiny tiles the colour of lapis lazuli. In the middle, a fountain splashed irritatingly and the red, white and black striped flag of the United Arab
10
DA U G H T E R S O F A L L A H
Republic hung on a flag pole. The courtyard was completely enclosed by grey buildings that rose to three stories on each side. What was hidden behind the rows of windows with their carved wood screens?* The sun was blinding — it glittered on the surface of the fountain pool and the lapis blue mosaics. Nurse led me up two flights of green speckled concrete steps. Through the open doors I could see rooms, each with two beds. Halfway along the corridor Nurse stopped. The pyjama man swung the suitcase off his shoulder, deposited it in the nearest room and scuttled away. Nurse said a few words in Arabic and French and indicated with smiles and nods that I should go into the room. Then, abruptly, she left. I was totally alone in an unknown place where I did not have a single friend. Forcing myself to enter the strange room, I ventured over to the window and peered through the fretwork of the wood screen. I could see the school playing fields, which consisted of two ovals, one after the other, making the grounds look very large, particularly in such a crowded city. There were also four clay tennis courts surrounded by tropical gardens and I could see gardeners in baggy Turkish trousers working amongst the lush flowers. The wooden screen jutted out boxlike from the window so I craned my neck to look sideways and noticed the flash of blue from a swimming pool. In the far distance a dust haze hung heavy over the city. The faint sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer came from a mosque. At least it was faint, I thought. In Cairo that call was cranked out at full volume through crackly microphones, creating a cacophony of sound that drove me crazy. In what I gathered was to be my room, there were three * These intricately carved wooden window screens are known as mashrabiya. They are only found on upper floor windows and allow the women of the harem to observe the life of the street without being seen. They also shade the room from the hot sun while allowing the cooling breezes to pass through. The word mashrabiya means ‘place of drinking’ as the water pots where always placed near the screens to keep cool.
11
beds all topped, crown-like, with a metal ring holding folded white nets. Bugs. That’d be right. The furniture was square, wooden and plain, in contrast to the grandiose architecture of the building I had seen so far, and painted grass green. I sat on one of the wooden chairs in the room with a great pain in my chest, my face taut with stress. I was afraid, afraid of the unknown, alien people with whom I would have to share this room. Fear gripped my throat. There would be no going back to the safety of home at the end of the day. I had been taken from Australia, my family and my sheltered world of nuns, rosary beads and childhood friends to live in this all-Arab, all-Muslim boarding school in Egypt. Would I ever return to the life I had known? A headline came to me: ‘Diplomat’s Daughter Enters Muslim School Never to be Seen Again’. But the real nightmare was yet to begin. I sat and waited.
Ellen Mary Wilton, and Maisie Photography by Graham R. Johnson Photography
About the Author Daughters of Allah is the long-awaited first book of author and public speaker, Ellen Mary Wilton. Based on her own experiences as a young Australian school girl who suddenly finds herself attending a Muslim girls' boarding school in Alexandria, Egypt, Ellen’s audiences have for years requested this book to be written, having been moved by her unique and thought-provoking story. Ellen has a Bachelor of Education in Adult Education. She became interested in public speaking when she joined Toastmasters twenty years ago, and she now runs her own public speaking courses for adults and young adults. Ellen is also an experienced tour guide and historian who owns and operates Sydney Guided Walks (www.sydneyguidedwalks.com.au), conducting guided walks around many of Sydney’s historic areas. A keen bowler, Ellen's next book will be set in the fascinating world of lawn bowls. Ellen lives in Sydney with her husband and their various pets. Her two children have grown and now have families of their own. Ellen believes that she is still influenced by her experiences with the Islamic culture as a young girl.