Market or a porter in the Port of London.”
“You should have gone a step further,” I said, “and helped the man convert to Islam. You could have earned bountiful rewards.”
Laughing at my comment, he said: “I surely would have done that if I myself had not been an infidel at the time. But, mind you, in America I have helped dozens convert to Islam.”
“Sobhan Allah! Praise God!” I exclaimed. “What an irony! An infidel turned preacher!”
That remark sent him into a fit of giggles. Paradoxes of life always thrilled him and refreshed his soul in the same way water injected life into the stems of plants: “Just imagine: someone like me marrying a lady from the Ashraf3, while Muslims and sons of Muslims like you, get married to English ladies, or Swiss, and I don’t know what!”
When we were in Sydney he was also visited by an Egyptian lady along with her Australian husband. He said he had known her and her family during his time as a student at Alexandria University. It had been thirty years since he had last seen her so they spent the evening reminiscing about their days in Alexandria. The lady was very happy, laughing as Mansi kept asking after every member of her family: what happened to X, and where had Y ended up now. “This is the Michael I have often spoken about,” she said to her smiling husband. “He adored me and wanted to marry me. Right, Michael?”
I said to Mansi in Arabic: “You’re back to Michael now? Didn’t you convert to Islam and change your name to Ahmed?”
Another fit of his seemingly endless laughter syndrome followed. Being in Sydney was great fun and he was at his best; it mattered little, thirty years back, whether his name was Michael or Ahmed.
Nothing could have deterred him from inviting to lunch or dinner all the old friends he came across in Sydney – at my expense, though. He would sign the bill, charging it to my room number. That gave him a source of overwhelming joy, and he kept relating the story numerous times, each time with unfaltering excitement and the same lively heartfelt laugh. To him, there was nothing more amusing than proving how smart he was and how dumb I was.
No wonder then, that Mansi became a well-known figure in the whole of South West London, and beyond. He was famous in West Kensington, Earl’s Court, South Kensington, Chelsea, Sloane Square, Belgravia, and Mayfair. He knew vegetable sellers, butchers, owners of restaurants, pubs and coffee shops, doctors and nurses in hospitals, police officers, shop workers, grocers, actors and actresses, MPs, university lecturers, clerics – people from all walks of life. They were by no means casual acquaintances. They were all true friends, exchanging visits at their homes. Mansi had tremendous energy, a Napoleonic energy as he called it. He had a car that was known as a bubble car because it looked like a soap bubble. True to its name, it made a brief appearance on the roads at the time before vanishing altogether.
Mansi used to ride around on a bike when he first came to London but after getting married and moving to Sydney Street, he bought that strange bubble car. I would occasionally go for a drive with him and you would see us in Piccadilly in the heaviest of traffic, wedged between two of London’s red double-decker buses. The sight of that ugly car with its glass rooftop and the two of us squashed inside would stir the mockery and ridicule of passengers from front and behind. Piccadilly Circus would turn into a real circus: people shouting, car horns honking, and the two of us trapped in that bubble – and Mansi wrapped in his fits of laughter!
3 Descendants of Prophet Mohammed.
4
Our apartment at Thurloe Place, opposite the Victoria and Albert Museum, opened onto an alleyway that led to the luxurious house where Margot Fonteyn, the great ballet dancer, lived with her husband, the Ambassador of Panama. It was a spacious apartment, which I shared with Salah Ahmed Mohammed Salih, and on his departure to Sudan with Mohammed Ibrahim al-Shoush. The landlord, Mr Bomberg, a brother of the renowned painter David Bomberg, visited us occasionally – late in the evening with his wife – and we would spend hours talking art, poetry, literature, theatre, politics and a host of other topics that appealed to people in the prime of youth, carefree, and eager to make the most out of life.
Unfortunately, I did not buy that apartment, although Mr Bomberg had generously offered it to me at a very low price in appreciation of our lovely evening chats. That was one of many wrong decisions I made and precious opportunities I failed to take advantage of.
Now, as my remaining life is getting shorter and the shade of the past is growing longer, I look back only to see those mistakes as high as mountains on the skyline. Mansi laughed at me: “You will always remain the dunce you are. How could you miss such an opportunity?”
Perhaps he was right, who else other than a dunce like me would pay the bills of a millionaire like Mansi, as I did during our stay in Sydney?
I would see Margot Fonteyn being driven back and forth in her Rolls Royce and we would exchange greetings from a distance. It took me two years – and a trip to Damascus – to get closer and talk to her face to face. As for Mansi, no sooner had he found out she lived next door than he introduced himself to her and her husband; in no time, they became friends, exchanging visits. He also made the acquaintance of the renowned Australian actor Peter Finch and the famous British actor Peter O’Toole, who both lived near him in Chelsea, then a favourite place for artists, writers and actors.
When house rents soared in the 1970s, many of the residents there moved further out to east and north London, while others headed even further away, deep into the country. It was not difficult for Mansi to penetrate that attractive community, which by its nature was open, less intolerant to outsiders than other English communities. But even if this had not been the case, would that have deterred Mansi? No way. Anyhow, he was now perfectly armed. Besides his audacious character and strong command of the English language, he was now living in a famous street, in a select district, blessed with noble in-laws and a wife who was a famous pianist. Strangely enough, Mary did not seem to be terribly interested in the arts community and she did not have the typical artists’ aura. Rather, she looked more like an ordinary housewife, always seen sweeping, washing or cooking. Mansi, in contrast, always occupied centre stage, talking ceaselessly about virtually anything: painting, poetry, theatre, music – you name it.
Through these strong connections, he found minor roles in films. The way he described a part would give anyone the impression he was playing the leading role. Yet on watching the film, we would see him in very marginal bit parts – a taxi driver in Cairo or a waiter in a Beirut café – lasting no more than a minute or two. Had he had the slightest acting talent, these connections could certainly have taken him to stardom. He was definitely a talented actor on life’s stage, but in art, it was a different story. Once placed in front of a microphone or camera, he would become ridiculously shy or over-react.
Gamal al-Kinani, the late head of drama at the BBC, used to favour Mansi with a role in every play he directed, and enjoyed teasing him. Everyone savoured hurling abuse at him. Al-Kinani would yell: “You son of a … How come you keep jumping and dancing around and once the red light is on, you die away? Damn you! Why can’t you apply some of this mischief of yours to work?”
But Mansi could not; for real life is one thing and art is a different matter. Mischief can work in real life but never in art. In real life, he was a born artist, as if supported by invisible forces. He took risks, overcame barriers and transcended the set boundaries, like a gifted poet. If he had resigned himself to the role life had set for him, he might have achieved much more. I have no doubt that, had he wished, he could have become a business tycoon. But Mansi wanted to live and write and act – and above all, laugh. That was his greatest passion: turning his life events into a subject for laughter. His happiest moment was surely when he sat at the centre with people around him listening attentively to his stories. That was his real theatre. It would be best if there were someone like me who had been witness to those events in order to refresh his memory and keep his excitement high.
“Tell them, Tayeb, when we went to