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  Inside Diwan, employees joked that the outcome of any situation was determined by which of us dealt with it. Hind, a woman of few words, was hard but fair. Crossing her was like being caught between a sword and a knife. A son of Ziad (one of the five founding partners) interned one summer at Diwan, stacking books and alphabetizing customer orders. He summarized our dynamic to his father: “Nadia makes a lot of noise, but Hind is the one who will quietly slit your throat.” Nihal’s subdued presence guaranteed she got her way, somehow ensuring that everyone left satisfied. And she celebrated others, like Shahira, who shared her compassion.

  As our stock increased, we enlisted teams of data-entry clerks to work consecutive shifts in our “warehouse,” the back room of our office in the Baehler mansions. The cramped room was filled with people at computer terminals, ripping through the contents of cardboard boxes, logging them into the system, then dividing the merchandise between Heliopolis and Zamalek. Mistakes ensued. During one of my mornings spent stacking and restocking books on the Heliopolis shop floor, I was infuriated to find that the books had been mislabeled and improperly fitted with security tags. I called Shahira, who, alongside her duties as Zamalek’s manager, also trained new hires. I expressed my dissatisfaction and announced that I would be docking three days’ pay from the data clerks. I immediately hung up, leaving little room for discussion. That afternoon, I passed by Zamalek to check on the shelves. Satisfied, I sat at one of the tables in the café, monitoring the flow of customers while working on my computer. Shahira approached me.

  “I don’t think you should financially penalize staff for small mistakes. It’s a poor management strategy. It creates a culture of fear, instead of loyalty and creativity.”

  “Coddling may work for you. I hit where it hurts.” I didn’t look up at her. She sat down across from me.

  “Tomorrow, none of the data-entry staff will be working their shifts.”

  “Why, did my discipline scare them away?” I asked, not meeting her eyes.

  “No. I planned a retreat.” I was incredulous. I knew that she read self-help books and that she believed in troubleshooting through team-building activities and role play, but surely this was beyond the pale. I also knew she was in cahoots with Nihal.

  “As you wish, but the docked pay stands. Now, kindly fuck off and go do something useful.”

  The following day, I stood in the street outside our office smoking a cigarette. Amir sauntered over to join me in the smokers’ enclave. He placed a cigarette between his lips; I offered him my lighter.

  “I’m guessing the day-trip wasn’t your idea.” He flashed a grin.

  “One of the things I appreciate about you, Amir, is your love of gossip.”

  “And you, Ustazah, are a flexible dictator. Telling them to show up in jeans and trainers with a bottle of water, and then taking them out on a day-trip so they can play and bond, isn’t your style. But you didn’t get in Shahira’s way. You let it happen.”

  “When I went into business, I never imagined I would have to mother so many babies.”

  “You aren’t their mother. It’s much worse: you are their nanny.”

  “And that’s why I choose to be the pharaoh, cracking the whip,” I joked as I flicked my cigarette against the pavement. “Shahira provides unconditional love and solves their problems.”

  “Her way works; your way works better. Men need to be treated like men, especially when their boss is a woman.”

  * * *

  Men and their female bosses—sigh! As recently as the mid-1950s, when tensions ran high between Britain and Egypt during the Suez crisis, Nasser, in one of his infamous televised speeches, urged the British to mind their manners. A BBC program that referred to him as a dog had provoked his anger. His response? He reminded the British of the days when graffiti adorning the walls of Cairo and Port Said insulted them and struck at the core of their empire. The graffiti, which incited British outrage at the time, simply stated, “Your king is a woman.” Sixty-five years later, this comment remains an effective taunt among Egyptian men. Sixty-five years later, the male imagination still cannot fathom a woman in charge.

  Egyptian men in their twenties and thirties who had worked with me for several years struggled under my forceful reign. My unruly curly mane made obvious the fact that I didn’t wear a veil, while also hinting at a wildness. My loud voice further defied expectations for female demureness. The staff respected me, but they had trouble reconciling my behavior with the model of respectable womanhood. Their respect was primarily economic. As one of Diwan’s founders, I paid their salaries. But it was also personal. I never told my staff that they worked for me. Instead, I reminded them that they worked with me—even though, as I’ve mentioned, I was kind of a bitch. I knew that a great deal was lost in translation between my male staff and me. We came from, and inhabited, two different Egypts. They were rural boys who had migrated to the city looking for work; I was a city girl, born and bred in Cairo. They were predominantly Muslim; my family was one of mixed faiths. They graduated from government schools; I enjoyed the benefits of a private education, paid for in foreign currency, and had two master’s degrees. My brazen confidence unsettled them.

  They were unsure of how to respond to orders from women, because the only women they knew were their mothers, who doted on them, or their wives, who obeyed them. In Nihal, they found a gentle mother figure whom they were eager to please. She took an interest in their problems and tried to help their sisters, brothers, and cousins find employment at Diwan or in businesses run by friends. Diwan became a family affair. Most staff members had a blood relative somewhere in the company. Samir’s cousin worked as a security guard in Heliopolis; and Abbas, Hind’s driver, had four cousins scattered among the two stores, the company office, and the warehouse. Well before becoming Hind’s driver, Abbas had worked as Nihal’s cook. She still raves about his pasta béchamel. Nihal’s cousin Nehaya, an eccentric, iron-willed, German-speaking tour guide, became our multimedia and stationery buyer. Nehaya and Shahira were old friends. As with most families, secrets never stayed that way, and gossip worked as currency. When staff were sick and needed more than government medical care, Nihal leaned on friends and acquaintances to make referrals for private doctors. When circumstances were dire, she would suggest that we managing partners split the cost. When Diwan was still small enough, we would close the shop one evening per year (we were open all other evenings) and take the entire staff out for iftar, the meal traditionally shared with family and friends during Ramadan in which the fast was broken. We never charged it as a company expense, because we saw it as our duty, and our staff as an extension of our family.

  Though they loved Nihal, the men were confused by Hind. Her silence proved unsettling, especially when combined with her perceptive eagle eyes and the tales that began to emerge of how swiftly she dealt with those who defied her. Her severity was accentuated by Amir, her assistant, who exuded humor and delight. When work took her outside of the Baehler office, he accompanied her. Amir was there to lubricate interactions and execute decisions made on store visits, where she inspected the Arabic section, tested customer-service staff on the manuals she had prepared about new Arabic releases, and met with publishers to discuss the exposure their books got and negotiate discounts and credit terms. Despite her reserve, Hind’s humility and politeness were endearing: she stood up to shake hands with customers and staff. She always introduced herself as Hind, eschewing any title, which, in a classist society, completely defied convention.

  I’m not entirely sure how the male staff saw me—it’s hardest to see oneself. I expect they noticed my aggression and humor. I didn’t care. I did hope that my hard work, the only honest currency I knew, would make up for all my shortcomings. When new shipments of books arrived for stacking, I carried the heavy boxes alongside other staff, against the grain of workplace hierarchy and gender roles. When maintenance staff didn’t clean the toilets properly, I grabbed the brush and did the job myself as a lesso
n in standards. I knew a male boss wouldn’t have carried out the demonstration, especially with a task as demeaning and domestic as toilet cleaning. Even when I was pregnant, I kept up with manual labor despite the extra weight. I was a sight to behold: a thirty-two-year-old, outspoken, formidable, box-heaving bookseller. And they gaped! I was too young to resemble their mothers, and too old, by Egyptian standards, to be pregnant.

  The tension between my male staff and me finally came to a head one chilly Sunday morning in January of 2006. I was walking down 26th of July Street to the office, wearing dark-blue maternity jeans that chafed against my protruding belly button. They were the only pair that still fit me. A black sleeveless bodysuit kept my spilling flesh together. On top of that, I draped an oversized black knitted cardigan with a huge collar, hoping to offset my own bulk.

  I clutched the strap of my computer bag for balance and strength. With each step I took, I said to myself: I will go to work, no matter how uncomfortable, how vulnerable, I might feel. I’d already been pregnant once before, with Zein, but I hadn’t felt as overwhelmed, depleted, or imbalanced then. And I worried people noticed the difference.

  Right outside the shop, a young man approached me, smiling, a Thriller-era Michael Jackson T-shirt hanging from his scrawny torso. Judging from his age and stonewashed jeans, he might have been a teenage school dropout, maybe apprenticing with a mechanic or a plumber. Delicate beads of sweat gathered on his forehead. He came closer, close enough for me to smell his odor mixed with lemony cologne. He said something, and I pulled my earphones out to hear. He probably had a question about Diwan. Without slowing his walk, he casually repeated, “You got fucked well, you naughty girl.” Blood rushed to my ears. My vision faded to pulsing red blotches. All I could feel was heat. I mustered as much force as my crippling rage would permit and yelled, “Yes, I got fucked. I spread my legs just like your mother did, and she gave birth to a little bitch of a cocksucking slimy wad of discharge masquerading as a man.” Profanity gushed out of me like air from an untied balloon. The young man took off in a sprint. I tried to run after him, but my swollen body slowed me down; I became angrier at my anger for stealing my breath, angrier at my body for immobilizing me.

  Two of the shop’s morning maintenance crew witnessed the scene from the foyer, which they were cleaning. I pointed at the man disappearing down the street, but he was already gone. They rushed to me. With one hand, I clasped the chrome handle of the open door, trying to prop up my crumpled body; with the other, I tried to hoist my computer bag onto my shaking shoulder. I looked away from the street and into the bookstore, following the shock wave of my outburst. The morning-shift staff looked at me as if I were a stranger who resembled someone they had once known. Clad in Diwan uniforms, one stood with a pile of books in hand on a wobbly ladder, while another held the ladder in place for him. Everyone was suspended in time, speechless. The cashier with gift vouchers in his hand turned away to stare into his till drawer. The security guard, who normally stood by the metal detectors to make sure thieves stole from us in only modest amounts, made the first move.

  He pushed a chair toward me, its legs screeching across the floor, and gestured for me to sit. Legs apart, arms slumped behind me, I tilted my head back, taking in air with ragged gasps. I steadied myself by looking over the spines that lined the surrounding bookshelves: each one seemed to symbolize a choice I’d made. Soon, I began to panic again, as I realized the repercussions my words had already had: I watched my enigmatic, bookish persona recede, replaced by a foul-mouthed wreck. I had poisoned my professional image of eloquence and literature with my gutter vocabulary, a language my staff had never imagined I spoke. (This might surprise you, since I swore all the fucking time to Hind and Nihal, but I mostly kept the habit from my staff for the sake of decorum.) I couldn’t undo this. My only option was to pretend the confrontation had never happened. Addressing it directly would, I was sure, be construed as weakness, or worse, regret. I wanted to talk to Hind, but I knew she would tell me to pick my battles and conserve my energy. I decided to talk myself through it first: this story would make the rounds to the evening staff, and to the main office, each person embellishing it with fabricated details before passing it on. It would probably circulate to neighboring shops: the Bank of Alexandria on the corner, Thomas Pizza next door. Somewhere along the way, it would inevitably be replaced by fresh drama—embezzlement or some sort of side racket parallel to the business. Egyptians love excitement, and nothing is as exciting as the petty transgressions and private lives of others. So, I set it aside, a little pleased that Samir would be devastated to hear of this episode secondhand.

  That afternoon, I met an old friend in Diwan’s café.

  “You said what?” she squealed with laughter, her hazel eyes tearing up. She tried to breathe deeply, looking at my bulging stomach pushing against the edge of the table. Another fit of giggles followed as she imagined the scene.

  “Would you calm down? You’re embarrassing me in my office,” I said, conscious of the disapproving stares coming from surrounding tables.

  “That ship sailed this morning!” she laughed. Eventually, her giddiness subsided, and she sighed. “Thank you.”

  “For what? The comic relief?”

  “For calling him out. Do you know how many times I’ve been harassed, and then told by well-meaning friends and family that responding would be unladylike? Women need to talk back.”

  “Still, I need to stop this story from spreading. I don’t want my mother to find out, or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “Tante Faiza would be proud. She wouldn’t say so, but she would be.” She hesitated. “Once she gets over the shock.”

  I felt outed, my secret, dirty lexicon forced into the open. But my friend was right: the self-exposure brought an unexpected relief. That Sunday morning proved to be a turning point both in the way I regarded myself and in the way others regarded me. As the story of my vulgar retort made the rounds at Diwan and beyond, I was met with a new degree of respect. Still, the admiration was complicated. Only when I took on behaviors associated with masculinity, like swearing, did my male staff see me as one of them, and thus deserving of their respect. Had I somehow bought in to their patriarchal norms? I crossed one line, only to find myself hemmed in by another.

  I did feel relieved to let go of the urge to apologize for swearing, or for being myself. Slowly, coarse language became a source of power. Each curse was a minor rebellion against my family, my class, and the pressures of gender. As decorum loosened its grip, I felt myself becoming myself, resisting the expectations of my staff, and even of my father, a frequent swearer, who’d warned against visibility. I thought of Amir’s response to my employee discipline. I had learned a Machiavellian lesson about managing men in this society: inspiring fear was more important than inspiring admiration. With time, I learned to deploy this power strategically, in doses. Curse words were like an arsenal of nuclear weapons: when everyone knows you have them, you don’t need to use them.

  * * *

  It was around this time that others—publications, customers, and acquaintances—bestowed a new label upon me, one familiar from the shelves of the business section: entrepreneur. Like all other labels, I bristled against this one. I wanted to know how other women navigated leadership and professional power, so once again, I read. Before the twentieth century, women initiated small business ventures to supplement their income or to replace the income a spouse would have contributed. Because their primary responsibilities were to their children and their homes, most of their economic pursuits had domestic associations: dressmaking, hair care and beauty products, housework, and midwifery. I learned about Sarah Breedlove, America’s first female self-made millionaire. An African American entrepreneur, Sarah Breedlove created and marketed her own line of cosmetics and hair care products for Black women called Madam C. J. Walker (she’d changed her name when she married her third husband, Charles Joseph Walker). She died in 1919, leaving a legacy of activism
and social work, as well as a fortune of six hundred thousand dollars, roughly the modern equivalent of nine million dollars.

  She was an anomaly, a woman who miraculously transcended her womanhood. I imagined her on one end of the spectrum of female labor. On the other end stood the female workers of modern Egypt—mothers, daughters, abandoned wives, and widows who were constrained by their positions to varying degrees. One of these was Sabah, the woman who used to clean my apartment. I never knew her last name. She’d worked for an American couple I knew, and when they left Cairo, they suggested I hire her. I accepted, but she hesitated. She didn’t like working for Egyptians because in her experience they didn’t treat maids well. When they told her Number One was American, she changed her mind.

  Sabah was a spindly, flat-chested woman whose agility I envied. She had a sallow, sesame complexion. I only noticed her missing teeth when she smiled, which was not often. Sabah’s cigarettes were her most treasured companions. She would sit on one of the kitchen stools, one heel nestled against one buttock, and take drags of her cigarette, speaking to it or to herself (it was always unclear which). Sabah led a dual life. Every day, she arrived at our apartment in a long-sleeved shirt and floor-length skirt with her head and neck covered by a colorful scarf bunched together under her chin. Once inside, she changed into a torn, oversized T-shirt and loose trousers with a low-hanging crotch and folded-up cuffs. She tied her hair up like Rosie the Riveter. When I offered to buy her a uniform, she refused. I explained that the staff of Diwan wore uniforms, too, and that I expected all workers to look presentable; work in any form should be done with pride. But she wouldn’t budge. I assumed that Sabah told her neighbors she was a nurse, maybe because the occupation of house cleaner was low in the social hierarchy.