The City Always Wins Read online

  Khalil stops moving. The end of the pistol trembles. Trembles for long seconds of confusion. And then the balaclava’s gone, running back into the crowd, bodies parting instantly before him and his swinging pistol.

  Khalil hobbles quickly back toward the iron gate. The ambulance is coming. It must be. Just keep that door closed a little longer. That’s all there is. Just a little longer. That’s all now. Just keep the door closed.

  JANUARY 26: BLOOD IN THE SQUARES ON REVOLUTION’S ANNIVERSARY

  Mariam is in the dark bathroom, her body bent over the sink, her hands slowly rubbing over each other in the warm water. Her arms are covered in scratch marks, her scalp is raw from fistfuls of hair ripped out. The tissue pressed to her leg flowers red. The blood spirals.

  There’s a gentle knock.

  “She’s in critical,” Rania says. “She’s cut, badly, inside. A blade.”

  Mariam keeps her hands in the water, moving one over the other in slow self-hypnosis. The water constant, unquestioning. A blade. A blade. Her mind can’t move past the word. She concentrates on the water running out of the rusted tap. What is this? What is happening? How can we go on from here?

  A phone rings and Rania steps away. We were not prepared. Not for this. The blood swirls slowly down the sink.

  JANUARY 26: 32 KILLED AND HUNDREDS WOUNDED IN FIERCE CLASHES IN PORT SAID

  In the morning they take stock. Hundreds have been arrested, dozens killed, Port Said and Suez are in open revolt, Brotherhood headquarters are being sacked across the country and in Tahrir … what do we even call what happened in Tahrir? The hands, the knives, at least two dozen attacks.

  Mariam is sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed, computer open. Khalil tries to sit up a little. His body is sore from the night and in the light he now sees the scratches ripping down her arm.

  A string of messages wait on his phone for him.

  OpAntiSH meeting today at midday. We need to be better prepared.

  Should we go to Port Said today? At least 26 dead there last night.

  Need more people in the intervention teams. Let’s write a call today.

  At least two hundred people arrested last night are still missing. We need to go out looking for them.

  JANUARY 27: EMERGENCY LAW, CURFEW DECLARED IN THREE CITIES

  Khalil and Hafez sit on the floor at the back of the Chaos office watching Morsi’s speech on Hafez’s laptop as the new volunteers arrive.

  To the men of the police, I thank them for their great efforts in defending citizens and state institutions.

  The new president nervously looks down at his notes.

  And I salute the men of the armed forces, for the immediate implementation of orders I gave them effecting their intervention to safeguard the security of this country and secure its buildings.

  He looks down, then remembers he is supposed to look authoritative and raises his finger in the air. He is building up an anger in himself. He shakes his finger at the country.

  I have said before that I am against any extraordinary measures, but if I have to I will do it. So here I am doing it. To prevent blood being spilled and to maintain security against the rabble-rousers and those who operate outside the law and to protect the citizens I have decided—after consulting the constitution—firstly: to declare a state of emergency in the governorates of Suez, Port Said, and Ismailiya for thirty days, as of midnight tonight. Second: there will be curfew in the governorates of Suez, Port Said, and Ismailiya from nine p.m.

  “Emergency law…”

  “We only just got rid of the emergency law.”

  “What is he doing?”

  “People are going to be furious.”

  “It’s as if he’s actually trying to tell people that he’s no different from Mubarak.”

  New arrest powers mean #Morsi gave army the powers to arrest him. As soon as MB card is burned and can’t advance their interests anymore they’ll arrest him.

  @Moftasa

  4:14 PM–28 Jan 2013

  Ashraf stands on a chair at the front of the room, puts his hand in the air.

  “All right, listen up! You’ve all volunteered to the intervention teams. Welcome. For those who don’t know: the intervention team’s job is to get into the crowd and get the women out of it as quickly as possible. I recognize some of you from the other night so you know how crazy it can be. The rest of you, listen up.”

  JANUARY 29: MORE THAN 50 KILLED AND 1,000 WOUNDED IN ANNIVERSARY VIOLENCE

  He pulls on three layers of T-shirts, pushes a ripped up piece of cardboard inside against his skin, and tucks them in. Better a kidney than your gut. He does his belt up as tight as it will go. He yanks at it, tries shoving his hand inside it. It’s tight. A man two days ago had his anus scratched out to bleeding. Khalil’s whole body clenches at the thought of a filthy fingernail probing. He takes his door key off the ring and pushes it down into his sock so it presses against the sole of his left foot, then takes his ID and fifty pounds and pushes them to the bottom of his right sock, ties his shoelaces as tight as he can. Nothing in pockets. Microphones? No. Not for this.

  The sun has not yet set.

  His phone vibrates with a message from Mariam.

  Be careful today.

  He takes a thick pen and starts to write Mariam’s phone number high on his upper left arm under the sleeve of the innermost shirt. Too much. Come on, this is too much. But, then again, no one will ever know. Unless the worst happens. He makes his bed and puts out a clean towel, checks he has soap, antiseptic, painkillers, and bandages in the bathroom. If we survive these nights, will we have anything left to hold on to?

  He stands on the balcony, lights a cigarette. The last rays of the sun soak the tops of Downtown’s buildings. The rooftops piled high with rubble, the army of obedient satellite dishes pointed up into nothingness, the eternally shuttered windows, the city crumbling around him.

  He joins his intervention team and takes position on the raised precipice opposite KFC, scanning the crowd for sharp movement, for panic, listening out for screams. They stand in their T-shirts—Anti-Harassment Force—ready to move, shout, fight when the call comes in. They watch the lookouts, climbed up high on lampposts, waiting for the signal, the point, the call to action. It will end in a single second. The silent blade, the grip you can’t break, the last breaths crushed in a puddle of mud.

  She turns on the phones in the Operations Room and places one of her lists on the table in front of her:

  –organize packages for square teams

  –check on safety packages

  –backpack, T-shirt, bandages, scarf, flip-flops, tampons, loose pants

  –confirm all safety houses

  –confirm each safety house has basics

  –antiseptic, bandages, clean towels, Wi-Fi passwords

  –basic fridge supplies

  –how many intervention teams?

  –talk to captains

  –check everyone has everyone else’s phone numbers

  –do we have enough T-shirts?

  –have they been cleaned?

  –Control Room

  –who’s in? who’s on shift rota?

  –supplies

  –pens, paper, water, chips, Coke

  –Valium

  It is not long before the first phone call:

  “Hello?”

  “Hello. Hello? We need help. They’re beating her. They’re beating her! We need help, please.”

  “Okay, where are you?”

  “We’re in Suez. In the march. The main one.”

  “But we only have people in Cairo. Do you have friends in Suez you can call?”

  “What do you mean? We need help! Please!”

  “I’m so sorry we—”

  “You need to find someone! They’re going to kill her! Oh God, I couldn’t stop them!”

  “Okay”—she has to think quickly—“hang up, send me a location pin. I’ll try to find someone.”

  “No, don’t hang
up! Oh God! You bastards! You bastards! Oh God.”

  She’s sobbing now into the phone. Mariam reaches for another phone, tries calling someone in Suez, starts typing out a message on another. There must be someone in Suez who can help. She keeps the phone close to her ear, to keep the woman close.

  “We’ll get you someone. We’ll work something out.”

  “Oh no. Oh no no. I couldn’t stop them.”

  “Are you in a safe place? Just stay with me.”

  “I couldn’t stop them…”

  FEBRUARY 1: MORE INNOCENT VERDICTS FOR POLICE KILLING OF PROTESTERS

  They sit on the bed in silence next to each other, Mariam’s computer open between them. A young woman is speaking very carefully.

  Luckily my friend was with me. She kept telling me it was going to be okay. She said into my ear that the most important thing is we hold on to each other, whatever happens. She kept telling me it’s going to be okay. That we’re going to get out of it. I held on to her as tight as I could while all those hands grabbed at my body.

  The talk show host waits, his face pressed in theatrical concern.

  “Do you know her?” Khalil asks.

  “I met her that night,” Mariam says.

  I was yelling stop, stop, you animal, stuff like that, like an idiot, as though that would make a difference. I was hitting and pushing but there were so many of them.

  She takes a breath. Mariam can see the map of thoughts running across her face. How much will she say?

  And these men—they were members of the Muslim Brotherhood?

  What?

  The men who attacked you.

  No. Well, I don’t know. There’s no way of knowing.

  But you were in Tahrir protesting against the Brotherhood.

  Yes.

  So it would make sense that these are Brotherhood men.

  It might.

  She snaps into a new attention.

  But we know the police have been raping people for years. And we know that in this society, in this world, rape is used as a weapon by men everywhere.

  Well, thank God you’re okay.

  Khalil keeps thinking of that American journalist last winter. “How come there aren’t more female candidates for the elections?” she’d asked. “Why is no one talking about this?” He keeps hearing his answer, vague words about how we must keep the revolutionary cause unified. We. Who is this we you speak for so easily? What were those easy words, appropriating, colonizing Mariam’s language, her life, her answer that carries years of frustration and harassment and oppression and tension and sacrifice? Mariam’s answer that you could never inhabit. Simply took it, claimed it, spoke it. Because it was easy. And, now, here we are.

  She’s not asleep. He can tell from her breathing. He looks at her and is repulsed by his base urges. His penis shrivels into itself—she’s my sister, I swear she’s my sister. I’m sorry, he wants to say. Sorry for everything, sorry for men, for all men, and the things they do, sorry for being one, for lying here thinking about the touch of your skin, for the weight of my body on yours, for every other woman I’ve ever looked at. It’s not Egypt, it’s not Egyptian men, it is simply: men. It is men who must be washed off the streets, men who start wars and fires and rape children and beat their partners, it is men who infect the air with testosterone and territory. Sure, Rania could club a baby seal to death, but it is men, always men, who are the problem. Remove men and maybe the world stands a chance. They say that scientists can create a baby from two eggs, so maybe that’s the end of us. It’s hard not to think it a good thing.

  FEBRUARY 3: FIRST BATCH OF NEW F-16S ARRIVE FROM OBAMA

  “Of course it’s organized!” Nancy snaps as she packs safety bags full of emergency supplies. “Do I need to lay it out for you? The Brotherhood has come to power. They do a terrible job and everyone hates them. Good so far? They hate people protesting against them so now they’re pushing a new strategy—one that only a secretive organization of Brothers could come up with—to end them.”

  “But they want to look stable,” Mariam says. She’s exhausted but she does her best to be polite with Nancy. “This shit makes them look totally out of control.”

  “For a month, maybe. And then they’ll be completely in control.”

  “They don’t take risks like that.”

  “So then the liberals are organizing these attacks?”

  “Why does someone have to be organizing them? We get harassed every minute out there. Maybe this is just patriarchy’s logical conclusion.”

  “There has to be some organization. It always starts with a big group forming a circle around a woman. That doesn’t happen spontaneously. These men know one another.”

  “So they’re just friends and this is their sick game. And every man who jumps in after—they don’t know one another and that’s the problem. And if someone is organizing this, then they understand that all you need is a spark to get a big fucking fire.”

  Nancy doesn’t reply. She picks up an empty backpack and puts the safety items in: plain T-shirt, loose trousers, hoodie, abaya, underwear, flip-flops, tampons, sanitary pads, tissues, water, Valium. She looks up at Mariam: “We need to catch one next time. Interrogate him.”

  “Nancy, we’re not vigilantes. We’re there to protect the women.”

  “Well, maybe that’s not enough. Maybe we need to send a signal.”

  FEBRUARY 4: AHMADINEJAD TO MEET WITH MORSI, SIGNALING REALIGNMENT

  Mariam is walking the narrow road to the morgue, the trees above it struggle in the shadows of the Zeinhom halls of justice. A burned-out car sits filled with years of garbage, haggard cats pawing through it. They found one of the disappeared today. Mohamed El-Guindy. Mariam lowers her head as she makes her way past the women in black sitting in the coroner’s courtyard. A dozen young men in hoodies stand in furious silence. Mohamed El-Guindy, another smiling face I never knew, another death in burning pain. She taps on the thick wire across the reception’s cracked glass. The assistant begins to wave her away then looks up, recognizes her. For a moment he is unsure what to do, then gets up with a nervous sigh. The heavy metal door unbolts.

  Khalil places the thick headphones over his ears, clicks through his download folder, and opens the video titled “Hamada Saber.” The whole country has seen the video already, the poor man’s name is on everyone’s lips—but he feels sure he has to use it somehow for this week’s podcast. He clicks play.

  His name was Mohamed El-Guindy. He’s been missing for days. He’s laid out cold on the chromium table, as Mariam knew he would be. Rania has her arms around a woman’s shoulders, his mother’s. Mohamed’s eyes are closed, his hair dry. Mariam gives the slightest nod and Rania leads the mother out of the room. The door closes and Mariam lifts the sheet covering him to check for a coroner’s incisions but there are none. She walks to the small room at the end of the corridor. “Tell your boss to get down here,” she says to the pallid receptionist. “Because those boys outside are not going home until they have an autopsy.”

  Hamada Saber’s shirt is off, he is on the ground, he is rolling from side to side on the asphalt. Through the sulfuric purple hue his body stands out, alone amid the black riot gear, alone and naked and they are watching him writhe on the tarmac between them. He is old, he has no hair. He looks up, pleading with them as another kick lands on his back and his trousers are ripped off down to his ankles and Khalil feels the tarmac ripping at his naked body, clicks pause as the men in black drag him toward the waiting police truck.

  “Did the coroner come?” Nadia, Mariam’s mother, asks, as she pulls the door closed behind her.

  “No,” Mariam says.

  “They must be working out their story. I’ll do an exam myself. Can you lock the door?”

  Nadia looks down at his face, purpled and swollen. She runs her hand through his hair. “He’s young,” she says, to herself.

  There is no usable sound to Hamada Saber’s video. A purely visual violence. There is a growing
demand for videos from Chaos. People want to see the sources of their outrage. Khalil has always felt that there’s something more cerebral and less exploitative about sound, a conversation rather than an authoritative statement of fact. But maybe the time for conversation is over. The kicks keep landing on Hamada Saber’s body. The color of skin is startlingly clear through the pixels.

  “He was tortured,” Nadia says. “Badly. Clear signs of strangulation. And here: burn marks. Electrodes on his tongue. Photograph this.”

  “They’re saying he died in a car accident.”

  “And photograph here as well. We can release these to the media if they keep denying it. Forceps.”

  Mariam passes them to her. She knows her mother’s tools. Nadia works two shifts a week at a private hospital. The only way to pay the bills. And every Friday she runs a free clinic from their little apartment in Manial. Mariam used to go out in the morning and stay out of her way until the evening. She’d go kill time at the cinema or sit and work in the university library until one day she came home and found her mother with her head in her hands, crying. “What’s the matter?” she’d asked, as she came around the desk to hug her. But Nadia insisted it was nothing.

  The next weekend Mariam didn’t go out. Their little living room filled with people from after prayer time, her mother greeted them, invited them into her office, all smiles. The last patient left around ten at night and Nadia went to her desk. She wrote a note on a piece of paper and stared at it, sat stone still for twenty, thirty seconds. Then quickly opened a drawer, dropped it in, and got up from the desk.

  Mariam put her book down and got up from the sofa, walked around to the desk. She opened the drawer and inside were dozens, hundreds of slips of paper: notes and phone numbers and receipts and prescriptions. Months and months of overwhelming admin. Mariam pulled out the chair and got to work. Within three weeks she was running the follow-ups, the referrals, the phoned-in questions, the lost prescriptions, and the accounts.

  “Photograph this, too.”

  An interview with El-Beltagy, one of the Brotherhood big shots, has Twitter alight. Khalil clicks on a link. El-Beltagy has a sincere expression on his face: