Etruscan Evenings, the sequel to Cairo Diary, follows the life of Justine Jenner after she is expelled from Egypt in the wake of discovering the controversial diary of the Virgin Mary. In Italy, the anthropologist confronts 
Cairo Diary: An Egyptian Fable is a tale of two women 2000 years apart: the Virgin Mary, living with her family in Old Cairo; and Dr. Justine Jenner, an anthropologist. During a violent earthquake, Justine becomes trapped in the crypt under St. Sergius Church, the cave that served as the Egyptian home to the Holy Family. When the shaking stops, the diary of the Virgin Mary lies at her feet. When Linda visited this ancient crypt, she was inspired to write Cairo Diary: An Egyptian Fable, her first historical novel.
« Scenes for Cairo Diary, III | Why I Write. »
Cairo Diary III
Hi,
Last night concluded this year’s terrific Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference. Best ever. In a couple of days, I will enter a post Why I Write, adapting some ideas from the conference and the words of Alaskan Nancy Lord. One of the highlights: the gifts of Ellen Sussman. Watch for her work and classes.
Today, I’m making the third post on Cairo Diary. Here, Justine arrives in Cairo.
Chapter 4
What will you do with your one
wild and precious life?
-Mary Oliver
April 10, 2006 CE
The runway approach into Cairo International met the plane with jolting intimacy. Reaching for her briefcase and purse, Dr. Justine Jenner slipped into her now-snug shoes and stood up precariously, worming her way into a lightweight blue suit jacket. She was excited as well as apprehensive about what lay ahead. The community schools project would give her insight into today’s Egyptian girls, a chance to research the life of the Virgin Mary, as well as understand her own confusing roots. How am I to understand myself as a modern Egyptian woman? she wondered. Am I an heir of Isis, Mary, or today’s Islamic women cloaked in a hijab? These were the questions on her mind.
Extensive new construction cluttered the landscape below the plane and protruded into the thick ribbon of leather sky. Was there an airport in the world that wasn’t under construction? Justine waited patiently for passengers crowding into the aisles. The familiar chime signaled that everyone was free to go. “Free to go.” What an unfamiliar, though exhilarating, notion.
She had never really felt “free to go.” Raised by an Egyptian mother and a Berkeley professor father, she was often caught in the cultural crosscurrents of two stalwart individuals, both with immutable ideas about raising their headstrong daughter.
Justine’s mother, Lucrezia, had deliberately sought to marry an American, assuming she’d have a more emancipated marriage than she could have had with an Egyptian. She was wrong. Morgan Jenner, with his roots in the American Midwest, was more than moderately protective of his exotic Egyptian wife and young daughter. Each disappointing the other, her parents divorced shortly before Justine moved to Chicago for graduate school. Chicago was not the liberating solution she hoped. The endless demands of graduate work felt like a form of voluntary servitude. But here Justine was, for the first time, free of her father’s control…free of school…assuming her first professional position…free to go.
Linda
Leave a Reply