When he was a kid, he was a handful. He poked his neighbors during recitations at school, got into street fights, snitched grapes from the local vendor and did a bunch of other no-good ten-year old stuff.
His mother, a wise woman, put him under the wing of her friend, the dressmaker, and Ayman made a few piasters sweeping the floor, folding lengths of fabric, and running out for buttons, thus allowing him less time to irritate the neighborhood.
The pay was great, relative to the local level, and gave him status, so he stayed with the dressmaker, a first class craftsman, throughout his childhood. When his voice began to change, though, and his muscles thicken, he began to suspect that tailoring wasn’t exactly the kind of manly work a young bruiser like himself ought to be occupied with.
He tried auto repair, but the layers of grease and dirt he soon acquired made people across the alley stay away from him; besides his boss treated him like a donkey. Electronics, perhaps. Well, not really. Construction. No.
He went to vocational school, told them he wanted to be a pilot, but the main thing he got out of that education was a year off his obligatory three-year army service.
So he took a second look at dressmaking, a job which required cleanliness, paid reasonably well, was hiring and didn’t electrocute you, and decided it would be acceptable as long as he was an excellent.
It became a mission.
From his home neighborhood in Fayez, he searched the city for a master craftsman to take him beyond what he’d learned from the first. He traveled all the way to Maadi – several kilometers and as many social classes beyond his own – to find a man who had excellent techniques, but rather poor manners with his clients, whom he insulted for gaining weight and choosing poor fabrics. From him, Ayman learned not only what but what not to do.
Taking the best, he moved to the central dressmaking district in downtown Cairo, picking up lessons in pattern making and management as he went, while growing a list of customers.
Finally – and probably about the time he married at 28 - he set up shop in his home neighborhood where the streets are unpaved and pocked, the vacant lots strewn with rubble and ruminating sheep, and the number of sidewalk shisha shops outnumber the mom and pop groceries two to one.
At first, his wife, then his fiancée, was a troubled by his easy access to half-clothed women, but he finally convinced her it was the same as being a doctor. Now, he says, they have a wonderful marriage: he would do anything for her and she for him.
Marvelously, the ladies from the finer districts followed him to his outpost, putting aside the good chance that their appointment might be at 11 at night (so he can spend time with his three children during the day when they are up). Fearlessly they ferry their glossy fabrics down the shadowy alley and into his small green box of an atelier, where they leaf through fashion magazines to chose their styles or describe just the embellishment they’ve seen in a shop window and would like imitated. The radio station is tuned to readings from the Quran, except when the Ahly soccer team is broadcast.
Even the famous Madam ZeeZee who has a fashionable clothing boutique, compliments his shop, bringing evermore demanding styles for him to create---especially the evening gowns he loves to design.
Ayman has done well. He can and does give his wife whatever money she wants – although she may sometimes have to wait a week – and he’s recently bought a car.
There are downsides, of course. Clients who never say thank you and those who want clothes too ugly to have a life on the planet. Finding and keeping good help. Although he pays well, the sewing machine operators take off to more upscale establishment as soon as they can. But he has his younger brother, Mostafa; a loyal mainstay who searches through plastic bags of remnants, finds unique buttons, and presses the seams.
Today Ayman is a very happy man and quite a good dressmaker.
Posted October 2009
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