Home life
Universal aunties
' Alice Thomas Ellis
While I was in Egypt I was offered a dish with the words 'If you're Welsh you're going to enjoy this.' This' was a glutinous green soup and it was indeed delicious, but I would have found it perfectly agreeable if I'd been Abyssinian, and I cannot imagine where the mysterious Welsh connection comes in. That was not the only time these words were spoken to me. On several occasions I was offered some arcane delica- cy with the assurance that my Welshness would cause me to find it palatable. I didn't like to disappoint the kindly cooks so I never denied the assumption, but I did puzzle over it. Did those tribes who were streaming all over the place and getting themselves lost at various moments in history, at some point cross tracks some- where between Gizeh and Pen-y-Bont Fawr?
While I didn't actually understand any Arabic I could pronounce it very well because it has sounds remarkably similar to the Welsh '11' and 'eh' — two sorts of cough you produce from between the back of your throat and the back of your teeth. My Welsh comprehension isn't too good either, but I can make the right noises and I wonder whether the scholars haven't somehow failed us in not making the connection between these two interesting and vital peoples. Once started I couldn't stop thinking along these lines.
Religion? Well, at a push, Islam isn't all that dissimilar to low-church Protestant- ism, and I met several people who visited the mosques with the frequency with which the Welsh used to go to chapel. Dress? We can't claim much present similarity here, but our local Welsh saint — one Melangell — certainly wore the same sort of head- dress still seen in Egypt. (Yes, I know everyone did in the middle ages. Shut up. You're spoiling my theory.) Tempera- ment? Hmmm. Both are to some extent an odd mixture of insularity and inquisitive- ness, but so are lots of other people. Both have a strong sense of family — of ex- tended family — and here I think we have real evidence of a link.
The Egyptians and the Welsh have more aunties than anyone else in the world. Wales is crammed with aunties, and so are Cairo and Alexandria and Port Said. I met dozens of aunties in these places and sipped tea and Coca-Cola with them. Some of them are also mothers, but this is somehow of less significance than their auntie-hood. Perhaps because one can have only a limited number of children oneself, whereas if one has enough brothers and sisters there is almost no limit to the amount of people who may call one 'Aunt'. Once established as an aunt, actual consanguinity ceases to matter and people who are entirely unrelated to you will refer to you by this title followed by your Christian name. (I should myself find this absolutely maddening, which leads me to suspect the validity of my own Welsh origins. They can't go very far back.) My own aunts — all nine of them — have died, so perhaps this is why I find other people's aunts so reassuring.
Two entirely strange Alexandrian ones were sitting on a cafe balcony, gazing out over the sea where the third son was disporting himself while I sat nearby in the shade reading Flaubert (in English: my French is lousy too) when suddenly they began to exhibit signs of anxiety. They turned to me with expressions of alarm and concern clearly occasioned by the apparent disappearance of the lad. My heart stop- ped. The third son — I thought to myself — has just gone down for the third time and the aunties don't know how to tell me. I went whiter than white and started to shake — although I must admit I have a tendency to panic if anyone is five minutes late home. The aunties took my hands and made sounds of consolation and reassur- ance, whereupon the son emerged from the foam greatly exasperated by the fuss and protesting that he had been in no danger at all. The aunties and I, however, knew better. We continued to jabber at each other, this time in relief and gratitude and rage at men in general for the worry they cause us. We each knew perfectly well what the others meant, and as I left one of them followed and kissed me on both cheeks. And whether or not our races are related I shall love that auntie until the day I die.
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