From Charles Akl’s ‘Red Like Orange’

Charles Akl’s Red Like Orange was published yesterday in Sarah Enany’s translation, and yesterday, we had a conversation with Sarah on her translation. Today, an excerpt from the novel; elsewhere, you can also read from the very beginning.

The Accordion Solo

I have no idea why Hajja Sabah left the accordion in the apartment. She didn’t leave much; just the accordion and the couch. It was not one of my favorite instruments back then. I had no favorite instrument in any case: I was equally fond, more or less, of anything that produced a sound, that broke the silence.

Before singer-songwriter  Yousra Hawwari, who made great use of the accordion, it was nobody’s favorite instrument despite being widely used. Perhaps it earned a kind of universal dislike precisely because it was overused in Egyptian songs from the 1990s, songs from other Arab countries that imitated Egyptian songs, and Turkish songs that either plagiarized Egyptian ones or vice versa. Over and over, the special character of this instrument was violated in every solo in the middle bars of these songs, until the accordion solo became a hallmark of 1990s music.

However, the accordion was widespread before 1990s songs. For generations, it took the top spot among school instruments, associated with music lessons and patriotic songs from the national anthem all the way up to the most wonderful marches played live and amplified by the schoolyard radio with the aim of imbuing the students with the spirit of patriotism and national enthusiasm as they headed for their classrooms. These included “It’s Been A Long Time,” “My Weapon,” “Be Well, Egypt,” “I Shall Ransom You,” and other national ditties that seek only to convey a single message: “We’re strong SOB’s, but we’ve fallen on hard times!”

The accordion is unique among instruments in that it possesses a special aspect suited to music in schools: its keys are arranged in the same way as a piano’s, but, unlike pianos, accordions are cheap.

I would never have picked the accordion as my first choice of instrument. I started looking at it differently, trying to accept it. Hesitantly, I began to research Balkan folk music, the tunes of the Romani people of Eastern Europe, and Klezmer Jewish music, all of which feature the accordion in well-turned phrases and melodies acceptable to our Eastern listening sensibilities. I felt that the instrument’s presence was a coincidence that must be taken advantage of to the fullest, a random gift that demanded nothing in return, filling an unfurnished apartment in Manial with its physical presence while its melodies filled a hole in my psyche, which ached to escape the silence that kept me awake at night. I needed ample time to learn and practice, which was provided by the social vacuum in which I found myself after my small migration and the departure of my girlfriend.

And so I found myself taking out the unknown owner’s accordion from its velvet case. I cleaned off its shiny keys, polished its glittering exterior, and started to produce pleasing tones that broke the silence in the empty tiled apartment.

Two

At the same time, the Yes-Man took up residence not far from my home in Alexandria. We met only one time in Alexandria before we were reintroduced to each other in Cairo, although our circles of friends intersected in several places. The Yes-Man had studied architecture, and we had a mutual friend, a girl, who asked me to help him and some of his fellow students on their graduation project, which required a minimal proficiency in 3D modeling, which I was better at than him and his colleagues.

We met in a hurry, not seeking long-term friendships at that time. His project was easy, in any case, not requiring much technical skill. All that was required of me was to draw a 3D model of a sewage treatment plant, with mini-mal architectural details: all that was required was placing blocks or pyramidal structures to situate the buildings and show their relative size and how they were interrelated.

We lost touch for several years. Then the same mutual friend made contact once more, having learned that I was looking for a flat and a flatmate in Cairo and knowing that he was looking for the same thing. She brought us together: we met in front of the opera house with some caution, each of us wary of the other like in a job inter-view where each tries to feel out the orientation and inclinations of the other by means of secret codes and signals—a thing which we had never done when we had met years previously. Clean and tidy? Helpful? A drinker? Or would he make my life miserable? All these answers could only be found out by asking after each other’s favorite music, movies, and general taste. It was the most effective method of offering a ready-made sketch of someone’s character: for instance, one could hardly be a Nirvana fan and an Islamic fundamentalist at the same time.

The Yes-Man came from a different world than I did, although we came together on many points, which I found reassuring. His musical background was British and American rock, like my own; but he was more inclined to follow its progress to hard rock and metal. Although this was very much not to my taste—I hardly ever listen to metal—I generally feel comfortable around hard rock and metal fans. They tend to be avid music fans and detest pop, a hatred we all had in common even though a great many hard rock and metal fans in Egypt in that era were not aware of many alternatives.

The internet wasn’t hard to access back then, but it was still a resource to be carefully rationed. If you wanted to pirate an album, it took a full day or even two to fully download onto your computer, in which time you would have read all about it and its origins and all the critics’ opinions on it and become sure that it was worth two full days spent waiting.

Artists were more careful about experimenting. There were fewer resources. One usually relied on the results of one’s downloading, which only made up about 10 per-cent of one’s musical library. The remaining 90 percent were obtained by one’s friends and colleagues and what they had downloaded and tried out. I remember that my musical library back then was full of blues both old and new, not out of any searching on my part but because these had been the choices of the people I knew. And so, hard rock and metal were both likely to be found in our social circle before the Yes-Man and I specialized.

Metallica, Aerosmith, some oldies—the Beatles and Elvis Presley—yes, yes, the Yes-Man and I spoke the same language! There were some intersections between my music and his. Nirvana, Oasis, excellent! “Would you like to live in Manial? It’s an isolated island with reasonable rents; there are direct lines of transport to main hubs, and it’s not far. True, it doesn’t have a subway, and you have to walk a long distance or cross the Nile by boat to get to al-Malik al-Salih station; but hey, every-thing comes at a price.”

These lines were spoken by someone who had escaped a certain catastrophe he had caused during his tenure at Alexandria Waterworks and was urgently seeking settled lodgings in Cairo. As soon as he saw the Manial apart-ment, which was cheap and spacious although in need of a lot of repairs, he was quick to agree and undertook the required repairs and renovations and acquiesced to Hajja Sabah’s demands, in contrast to me, for I was still hesitant. Living with a housemate brings about a close relationship. I could have done without the pains of any close relationships; but I forced myself to forget this apprehension when I found the speaker of the above lines to be a cooperative and efficient guy. In the future, I would only remember these apprehensions and worries as a means of explaining our discord when we differed on some musical matter.

Thus it was that we came to walk the streets of Cairo together despite the fact that our relationship was superficial. In a moment’s respite from the incessant din of Cairo, we crossed from al-Malik al-Salih subway station to the heart of Manial in Abu Adham’s ferry and to our shared domicile. In this romantic moment, we avoided meeting each other’s eyes unnecessarily and concealed our comfort and enjoyment of each other’s company behind fearsome frowns so that our harmony would not be misconstrued as sexual.

Above image: Screenshot of the inimitable and aforementioned Youssra Hawwari.

Charles Akl is a writer and a journalist and has worked as a music producer and theater director. Red Like Orange won the Sawiris Cultural Award for Best Literary Work in the Young Writers category in 2023, and is his first novel to be translated into English. He is the author of a collection of essays, Food for the Copts, and of a graphic novel, Jellybird, which was a finalist in the 6th Mahmoud Kahil Award in 2021. He was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and he now lives in Bonn in Germany.

Sarah Enany is a literary translator and a professor in the English Department of Cairo University. She is a recipient of the Banipal Prize for Literary Translation for her translation of The Girl with Braided Hair (Hoopoe Fiction, 2020). She has translated several operas including the acclaimed sung versions of Les Miserables and Mozart’s The Magic Flute into Egyptian Arabic, and Sayed Higab’s libretto for the opera Miramar into English. She is also the translator of Witness to War and Peace: Egypt, the October War, and Beyond, The Book Smuggler, and the Jewish Muslim trilogy (all AUC Press).