Day 159: The Last Pangs of Summer

Day 159: September 1, 2020
Global Cases: 25, 892, 051; Deaths: 860, 324
Egypt Cases: 99, 115; Deaths: 5, 440

Days till AUC’s Fall 2020 semester begins: 2

Tahia Abdel Nasser
Associate Professor and Chair, English and Comparative Literature

At 8am there is the prettiest tide pool on the beach. Prettier than a shell. The water is shallow and half-clear, the waves breaking over a wall. A bowl of water, hemmed in by rock.

Once, little natural pools popped up along the stretch of sand at the family summer home in Alexandria. Afterwards, in a few days or so, they disappeared like mirages. And once in South America my husband and I trekked to a natural pool in volcanic stone.

Naturally, I flock to the sea and remember my father. There are early birds, scattered on the beach, but we don’t flock together.

We bathe and toss our worries in the sea. Ply the water with short, healthy strokes to nurse an injury. Far away, an elderly man’s head bobs on the water, he wears goggles.

There are no tiny burrows or scurrying ghost crabs or shells on the shore.

Earlier, at 7am I walked our dog. In summer I walk him at 6:30am but the hour seems too early here. The sun was blinding and the heat fell like a net.

A large orange butterfly fluttered on flowers and a bird swooped up, the dog’s ears flapped, he sauntered, wagged his tail, breathed the sea breeze.

Our daughter is home from college. We swim, take walks, read, have family lunches and leisurely conversations.

Summer is our carapace. When we return, we have breakfast. There are fresh mangoes and a basket of freshly plucked figs from normal summers.

Summer is writing and reading. I squirrel notes from 9:30 to noon.

It has become a ritual. Ernest Hemingway would rise very early and write. This may very well be the only uninterrupted writing before the whir of meetings, emails, workshops This summer I prepare for online teaching. My husband and I have taken our work with us on holiday.

We were told the pandemic would end in the summer.

When I came here, people were a sight for sore eyes. I hadn’t seen so many people in one place in months, and regularly! The beach was brimming with parasols. Friends and family greeted us and we kept our distance, unnaturally, but we sat together.

That was a novelty. In March I didn’t know anyone who got sick. Now there are too many to count.

In the midafternoon I will return to the natural pool. It seems to have grown clearer and larger.

A kaleidoscope of sunlight in the shallow water. There are footprints that are half my palm in the sand. Two little girls play on the shore.

Our dog’s pawprints would have been a three-petalled flower in the sand. At low tide the water is the shallowest it will be.

For The Caravan‘s previous diary entries in Arabic and English go to our COVID-19 Special Coverage page.

At 4pm we are in a restaurant. We haven’t been to a restaurant in months. A masked waiter offers us dog-eared menus. We decline them, spray alcohol, don’t rest our hands on the table. But we don’t wear masks outdoors here and don’t worry when we order food.

Masks are few and far between it seems we are not in the midst of a pandemic at all.

At dusk, we walk beside the waves and make our way to footpaths dotted with pink and fuchsia frangipani trees.

I have never really thought about how beautiful the flora is here; it seems so tropical. In the evening, I labor at the writing I love most.

Summer has returned me to the family home that now seems so far away. It was simpler then: sun, sand, sea. My family has been together since March, but for how long? And I think of Derek Walcott’s poem: “days that outgrow, like daughters, my harbouring arms.”