Pollen and Fragments: The Poetry and Beekeeping of A. Z. Abushâdy

Poetry dissolves foreign existences into itself.

— Novalis, Blütenstaub (Pollen)

I was in love with my grandfather’s books. They bore traces of use and the passage of time, and I thought this made them especially beautiful. Some of them were dog-eared with annotations in the margins, and others were old and crumbly with Arabic calligraphy on their covers. There were a few gilt-edged tomes that had badly foxed pages and tipped-in plates protected by a layer of tissue. Holding these books in my hands, I thought about who I was and where I came from.

I didn’t know much about my grandfather, and I relied on my mother and aunt for information. There was only so much they could tell me. I knew he was an influential figure in Egypt’s poetry scene of the 1930s and 1940s, and since I wanted to be an artist and a writer, I dwelled on the fact that we had a poet in the family. What else did he do? He was a doctor and a beekeeper. He founded poetry societies and beekeeping clubs. He published magazines. I came across a scrap of paper with his sketch of a flowchart for a beekeeper’s library that was never realized. He seemed to relish working on many fronts at once. I hoped I had inherited something — anything — from him.

My mother kept her collection of my grandfather’s books in her sewing room. I used to think that by examining them I might get a better sense of him, but his tastes were too catholic. He had an appetite for poetry and literature, but he also read books on botany, medicine, travel, and history. He inscribed his name — A. Z. Abushâdy — in all of his books in both English and Arabic, and I came to recognize the shape of his signature long before I learned to read the language. His handwriting was compact and uniform, even more so than my mother’s, and I wondered if this neatness was a reflection of their personalities or a family trait that had passed me over.

My mother’s family photo albums of Egypt sat on the same shelves as her father’s books. Some snapshots were faded and yellowed, while others were crisp and clear, as if they had been shot recently. I would pull out the albums one at a time, and sit on the floor and flip through them. Who were these people? How was I related to them? These were questions that my mother, the youngest of her siblings, couldn’t always answer. My aunt, who was the eldest, knew more, but she lived far away.

There were people in the snapshots that I did recognize, including my grandparents, aunt, uncle, and mother. I followed the three Abushâdy siblings as they grew from infants in Helwan and Port Said to urchins in Suez and Cairo, awkward teenagers in Alexandria, and elegant young people coming of age in New York City.

Earlier photos show my youthful grandfather-and grandmother-to-be sitting in a garden in the English countryside where they lived for nearly a decade, or posing against a backdrop in a professional photo studio. Some snapshots show them working in an apiary. It is said that they met on a London bus when he was a medical resident and she was heading to or from an art class. She was a chain-smoker and a bluestocking, the black sheep of a family of labor organizers, and one of twelve children. He was a doctor and a poet, the only son of a powerful Egyptian lawyer and a family of well-known artists and literary people. She was a few years older than he was. They indulged in a wry banter in their letters. I don’t think he approved of her smoking. She despised the fact that he never took a vacation. They argued about money.

My grandparents got married before leaving England for Cairo. They brought...