loved him regardless. He was a man who had traversed life’s short journey in leaps and bounds, occupied more space than had been allocated for him, and caused quite a clamour within the realm of his existence.
He had assumed several names: Ahmed Mansi Yousif, Mansi Yousif Bastawrous and Michael Joseph; and had played several different roles: porter, nurse, teacher, actor, translator, writer, university lecturer, and clown. He was born to a faith different to the one he embraced along the way until his death, leaving behind Christian sons as well as a Muslim widow and sons. When I first met him, he was penniless. When he died, he left behind an estate of 200 acres of the best land in southern England, that included a huge and luxurious mansion with a swimming pool, stables and a fleet of cars: Rolls Royce, Cadillac, Mercedes, Jaguar, and other makes. He also left behind a 200-acre ranch in Virginia, USA, as well as a restaurant and a travel agency.
When I heard the news of his death, I called his home in Tatchbury, on the outskirts of Southampton. A young voice answered, in an American accent. It was his eldest son, Simon, who told me his father had been in perfect health until a few weeks before when he developed a fatal liver tumour. I had been in the Sudan at the time. It occurred to me to ask about the funeral. He said a funeral had not yet been arranged, ten days after his death. They had been waiting for some formalities to be finalised before going ahead with the cremation. “But your father is Muslim,” I told him, “and cremation is forbidden in Islam.”
“We don’t know about his conversion,” he said. “What we do know is that our father was Christian and he used to tell us: ‘Cremate my body when I die’.”
“Look,” I said, “your father was indeed a Muslim. There is no doubt about it – and I was witness to his conversion. It’s a serious act to cremate the body of a Muslim. And remember, he left behind a Muslim widow and Muslim son, who is now your brother. Saying your father was not Muslim is equivalent to saying his marriage to that woman was illegal.”
I called up his wife in Riyadh, who appealed to the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs for help. And thanks to the latter’s intervention, the matter was finally settled, and Mansi, as we used to call him, was given an Islamic burial ceremony a month or so after his death. However, Al-Ahram newspaper reported that his relatives in Egypt held a mass at a Coptic church. In my grief, I could not help but laugh. That’s truly what Mansi was, I said to myself, a living mystery in both his life and his death. He had always perplexed those around him when he was alive – and now, as a dead man, he was no less perplexing. To him, life was a big joke – an endless laugh, or as he put it, ‘a series of crafty games’.
He was born into a Coptic family in the town of Mallawi, deep in Upper Egypt, where he grew up. Having spent most of his time with Muslim boys of his age, he was closer to Muslims than to Copts. Although the eldest son in the family, he was a young boy when his mother died. His father remarried and had other children. They were poor but proud. And it was with great difficulty that he made his way to university. He studied English at the University of Alexandria and I can think of only a few among my Arab acquaintances who were as proficient as he was in English. Yet, it was futile to put across to anyone that this chatty dilettante could excel in anything. I, for one, spent years trying to convince people that he was a truly gifted person.
His love for the English language naturally led him to England, where he landed in 1952, after a series of adventures and ploys. He got himself admitted to the University of Liverpool. Being penniless, he had to work to support himself, taking part-time jobs as a porter, a dishwasher and a nurse. Then he moved to London. In all his moves, as he later told us, he made approaches to philanthropic societies and churches, pulling as many strings as he could.
I met him in 1953, when I had just joined the BBC Arabic service. We would give him some script-writing or translation jobs, sometimes minor roles in our drama programmes to help him support himself through his studies. He had always had a strong passion for acting. Even after he became rich, he kept coming to us seeking to take part in our drama activities and would insist on being paid. And I used to tell him: “You’re a good actor in life, but a lousy one on stage”.
Before we became close friends, he once visited me at home – he lived in Fulham, not too far from my home in South Kensington. He presented me with a pair of socks of poor quality.
“What is this?” I asked.
“A present.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“Your birthday.”
“What birthday? Today’s not my birthday. Are you trying to bribe me?”
“Sort of,” he said, laughing.
“You are hopeless. Even when you decide to bribe me, you choose something that’s worth only two shillings?”
He showed no sign of being embarrassed, though. That was one of his unique attributes: he never felt shy, deterred, or embarrassed.
Letting out a childish laugh deep from his heart, he said: “Well, I thought I should give it a try. Who knows?”
After that we became close friends. Of all our mutual friends, I was to become like a godfather to him, although we were about the same age. That was perhaps because the others – Abdel Moneim El Rifaie, Akram Salih, Abdel Hai Abdallah, Nadeem Sawalha and more – all treated him curtly and didn’t take him seriously. Deep down, though, they all truly loved him.
2
Were Mansi an inch or two shorter, he would have been regarded as a pygmy. With age he became flabby, having a large pot belly and protruding bottom, which made him look more like a ball cut into two halves: upper and lower. He paid great attention to his appearance: he would wear silk shirts and fine suits that he bought at very low prices. At first he used to buy his suits from a tailor near Holborn, who bought the fabrics at wholesale prices from Dormeuil, the well-known shop in Piccadilly. One day, the tailor was too busy to go to Dormeuil, so Mansi offered to go in his place. Taking advantage of that opportunity, he registered his name as a tailor with Dormeuil and acquired a membership card that allowed him from then on to buy fabrics at wholesale prices. But, I have to admit, he was so generous with us that he would allow us to go with him to Dormeuil’s and buy what we needed at his discounted rate.
Using his extraordinary skills, he discovered a smart tailor in the poorer East End of London, who charged a quarter of the rates of central London tailors. From that moment, this tailor became his permanent choice. Even after migrating to the United States, where he made a fortune, he continued to come back to London specifically to buy new suits and shirts. He would still buy the fabric from Dormeuil and deliver it to his favourite tailor in the East End. He would have dozens of suits and shirts made during a single visit, and he must have left behind a great number that unfortunately no one else could make use of, as I am sure there was not another person in the whole world who could fit into Mansi’s suits.
Nonetheless, he never lacked the company of girls, who would fall in love with him. Some were remarkably beautiful, and tall. When he swaggered along beside one of them, he would look like a doum tree dwarfed by a palm tree. He had a radiant, almost round face and wide saucy eyes that he would fix on the speaker without blinking. Knowing that of him, we would tease him into breaking his constant gaze and he would succumb helplessly, bursting into a childish fit of laughter.
He was also witty and had an excellent command of the English language. He was bold enough to storm into any group of people, taking liberties with them as if he were a longtime acquaintance, giving the impression that the person he was talking to – however high-ranking they might be – was inferior to him. I took him to my convocation day where, for the first time, he met an Arab ambassador and his wife, both from a ruling family. I had to leave him briefly in their company and when I came back, I was stunned to see him standing between them and patting them on their shoulders, saying between persistent chuckles: “Ah, do keep talking. What cute accents you have!”
I drew him away. “Are you crazy?” I said. “Don’t you know who they are?”
“And who on earth are they?” Even when I explained, he just said: