The City Always Wins Read online

  If we talk about the scene of Hamada Saber. If they showed you the other half of the story, you’d get the whole story. We turned a thug into a national hero. If you saw the first half you’d see him taking off his clothes so that he’s ready when the cameras start filming.

  The crowd is growing angrier, louder.

  Oh Lord, we will show them rage!

  Mariam dials the number of the man she knows with a hearse. She sends boys out to buy cotton for the shroud. Rania is sitting with the new martyr’s mother. Mariam’s phone feels heavy, rotten in her pocket. She taps on the wire-mesh window of reception.

  “You’d better call an adult and tell them that there’ll be a riot here if we don’t have the autopsy report in half an hour.”

  FEBRUARY 5: THOUSANDS MARCH IN MARTYRS’ FUNERALS

  They sit together on the balcony. Her hand is in his and he hasn’t stopped stroking it for as long as she can remember. The starless city beyond their balcony is many things to many people. A city of women and another of men stalking in dark parallel. A city of refugees living invisibly between restaurants, rooftops, and relief agencies. A city of hotel bars and street carts where the same plate of beans can cost a pound or a day’s wages. A centralized city being slowly sucked out of itself, hollowed out by the satellite suburbs surrounding it. A city of thousands of years past piled high upon each moment of the living present. An underground city of police cells and hidden dungeons and transport trucks keeping its victims in secret circulation between its high-walled and watchtowered prisons.

  Her hand is still in his and that’s good, because if she just focuses on that, then everything else can fade out for a minute and she can just accept it and not question it or fight over it, it can just be, we can just breathe and not think about the dark underworld running beneath us and not think about January 25 and not think about the hospital, the phone calls, the morgue, and not think about what would happen if we stopped or what’s coming or what we should have done different we can’t stop there’s no time, no time to think about ourselves or our mistakes or the morgue there’s only today and there’s only the work, there’s only the lives and the crush that’s all there is that’s all that matters so we don’t need to talk because with talking our hands will shake so, right now, his hand is enough, his thumb pressing down and circling back a little whirlpool of silent tenderness holding us frozen for a fragile moment.

  FEBRUARY 8: POLICE BARRACKS STILL SITES OF TORTURE AFTER REVOLUTION

  A huge message has been pinned to the bulletin board in the office.

  TO BE FAIR, THE MAN IS ACTUALLY THE ONE WHO STRIPPED HIMSELF NAKED.

  He can hear Rania from the kitchen. “How did this happen?” she’s saying. “How did we get these idiots? We had the fucking numbers. Seven million people voted for the revolution. If Aboul Fotouh and Hamdeen could have put their fucking egos aside for five fucking minutes things would have all been different.” There are three people listening to her whom he doesn’t recognize. She pours herself a coffee. “Anyway, fuck it. We’ll take the Brotherhood apart and then finish dismantling the army. Anyone who gets in the way of the revolution’s momentum will be destroyed.”

  FEBRUARY 10: FIRST COURT ORDER IN HISTORY TO SHUT DOWN YOUTUBE

  In these pewter mornings you can hardly tell the difference between the death gray of the river and the smoke choking out of the tear-gas canisters sinking into its depths. A burned-out police truck lies smoldering in Tahrir. A crowd of teenagers throw rocks at the policemen. A dull cycle of violence has taken hold. The gas drifts from the street out over the water. Mariam, Khalil, and Hafez stand toward the back, watching, a gas mask in Mariam’s hands.

  We are fighting a slave army, she thinks: conscripts kidnapped from the countryside and forced to do battle in the capital. If they weren’t here they’d be sweating in assembly lines in military factories or operating industrial deep fryers for the army’s potato chips. But here they hurl rocks at children until they are locked back into their own prison trucks and driven back out to their supermax barracks in the desert. The officers don’t get hurt, they don’t even break a sweat.

  Hafez has his camera around his neck but he is not taking any photos. It’s all the same, he thinks: the same images are just repeating themselves. I’m just the middle man. I’m not dying, I’m not fighting, I’m not even asking these kids’ permission. I take in their bravery—sometimes their death—and I’m the one who chooses how it’s packaged and captioned and who sees it. Two photographs pay my bills for two months. We are all war profiteers.

  With each shotgun cartridge unloaded Khalil sees the doctor, feels her hand gripping his, feels his chest snatching for her last breaths. He is not recording the sound today, he has hours of battle ambient already. And her recording still waits for him. Doctor_02022012.mp4. With each report he feels her spilling out of his arms.

  They stand in silence. A cloud of tear gas wafts across the road. Mariam turns to Hafez: “Are you still working on the screenplay?”

  “It’s turned into a nightmare.”

  “Why?”

  Hafez thinks for a moment before answering. Another volley of rocks is launched toward the police. “It’s impossible to do the Eighteen Days without being clichéd. It’s ruined already by its overtelling.”

  FEBRUARY 11: MORSI’S DRAFT NGO BILL “MORE REPRESSIVE” THAN MUBARAK-ERA LAW

  She brings up cartons of juice without phoning ahead, places them down in front of Alia’s parents, pulls the door quietly behind her. Alia is losing weight, her face is gaunt, yellowing in this shuttered ward. Mariam smiles softly at the parents.

  “How is she today?”

  “No change, dear.” Alia’s mother is young. Much younger than the father. They are formal with each other.

  “God willing, she’ll wake up soon,” Mariam says.

  “The doctors don’t know anything.” The father’s voice is low and deep. “They don’t know why she won’t wake up.”

  “And we’re going to have to start thinking about the expense soon.”

  “Don’t worry about money,” Mariam says. “I’ll find you the money.”

  “God keep you, my dear.”

  With each day that passes their hearts are hardening. Alia, another friend I never knew. Trapped by the crush of men, clawed by twenty pairs of hands, raped with the blade of a dirty knife. Mariam takes Alia’s hand and strokes it.

  What can make you wake up after two weeks asleep? She strokes Alia’s hand. We will get past this. We will get where we need to go. We’ve avoided looking it in the eye for too long. All this time working within a broken system, plastering a festering corpse from the inside. The people demand the fall of the regime. So we’ll swap Mubarak for Tantawi for Morsi for Sharon for Obama for whoever, swapping them in one after another as we write long books and argue into the night about “the people” and what we think they want. We’ll do it the few more times left to us before the world finally falls to the fever that will rid it forever of our bacterial civilization. Or we do the one thing we haven’t tried yet, the one thing that might just change everything. The time is now, the people are ready: the only revolution left is a women’s revolution. Tomorrow we say “enough.” Every woman will stop working, managing, maintaining the world and we watch it crack at the seams. It’s the only thing we haven’t tried. We can all feel its potential, a static undercurrent crackling through the city, can see it in each other’s eyes through the perilous streets, can feel our bones growing harder as the compromise drains from our bodies. The time is now: the conditions are perfect. It will be Egypt: the revolution flows through the country but its wave has yet to crest. From Mubarak to the army to the Brotherhood it subsumes one after another until there is nothing left but the final injustice of the patriarch. The time is now, the people are here, the flame has been lit: virginity tests, blue bra, mass assaults—we are the target, we are the oppressed, we are the front line, and while everyone else has shattered their political axes into
impotent fragments, what more cohesive force is there than simply: women. Women suffering the same indignities from Alexandria to El-Arish to Alaska to Adelaide. The time is now and the people are here. We will not take this anymore. Your Arab Spring will be nothing compared to what’s coming.

  We will have justice for you, Alia. Just wake up and you’ll see.

  She should get back to the Corniche. Has there been any change? How many more children will the police have shot today? With the new walls dividing the city she is now closer to the morgue than to the battle—maybe she should go straight there.

  “Do you need anything tonight?” she asks.

  “Thank you, dear, get some rest,” the mother replies.

  “You don’t have to come every day,” the father says; then adds, softer, “we can see how busy you are.”

  “I know,” Mariam replies. “But I like to.”

  She turns and makes her way down the dark corridor of the crumbling hospital, returns a missed call from Rania.

  “Rania, what’s up?”

  “That twelve-year-old boy who’s missing, remember?”

  “Of course.”

  “We might have a lead. They’ve apparently got dozens of children locked up in the Red Mountain.”

  “The police barracks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  In over a decade I have not seen as many cases of male activists fully raped in police custody as in the past few weeks.

  @HossamBahgat

  9:23 PM–16 Feb 2013

  FEBRUARY 17: CLASHES CONTINUE ALONG CORNICHE

  How many days have we been out here? Khalil stands alone on the bridge watching the children running to catch the skidding gas canisters and throw them into the river. A boy laughs as he launches a hissing gas canister back at the waiting police. It’s a game. Maybe it’s a game for all of us, passing the time until it’s all over. Kids running away from their parents. Death nothing more than sport for the police.

  Words are sprayed on the river walls:

  IF YOU DON’T LET US DREAM, WE WON’T LET YOU SLEEP.

  You need discipline to win a war. You need chaos to win an insurgency. So which are we?

  Young boys are pulled away one after another, asphyxiated, the gas clinging to their feet as their friends drag them away. Once, not long ago, a night of tear gas would bring out crowds in the thousands, the streets would be filled with disenfranchised youth, old leftists, new anarchists, photojournalists, foreign correspondents, doctors, police narcs, street kids, and riot tourists. But there is no glamour to these long, painful afternoons. No one to watch the withering spectacle.

  A motorcycle screams toward them with a new injury. He sees a face savaged by buckshot, a trail of blood. Then the bike is gone and a young boy is on his knees, scooping something up from the asphalt.

  “We have to bury it,” he says, holding up the brains and flecks of skull.

  FEBRUARY 18: MORSI COURTS EXILED MUBARAK TYCOONS FOR FUNDS

  Hafez is sitting alone in the dark of the office. Everyone else went home hours ago. Messages from Nancy sit unanswered on his phone. He didn’t know if he’d got the shot. He didn’t think about it at the time. Run, point, shoot. A war photographer works on instinct. He ran, he pointed, he shot. But he couldn’t bring himself to check if he’d got it. The motorcycle tore away, the young boys ran after their friend, the poor do the dying.

  Alone, in front of his computer, he can look at it. And it’s there. The frame is alive with the panic of death, the burning tires, the flailing arm, the last goodbye. There is a holiness in the tableau of sacrifice. A sanctity that he has violated. He works gently on the colors and contrast, but with each tinting a cancer of doubt grows in him. How many waves of outrage must we spark to reignite the revolution? How many last breaths will we auction off to the breathless internet? If a revolution’s fuel is death, then what will be its end?

  FEBRUARY 23: EGYPT ORDERS $2.5M WORTH OF TEAR GAS FROM USA

  In the nights Khalil meets her. The doctor. In his dreams she is holding his hand, her legs lie over his while they watch television. He dreams of her touch, gentle and loving, stroking his hand. They are in a house of warmth and soft furniture and they are in love and his hand is on her knee. Their happiness at having found each other glows, fills the room: they do not need to speak. She holds his hand. His heart is electric with love, the metal pellets in his back burn with happiness. She gets up, pulling him with her. He follows and sees she has something strapped to her head and when she turns it is not her face he sees but the black of the gas mask, the long darkness within it. I still love you, he says, I still love you. The mask moves toward him, moves in for the kiss, the darkness swirling now into a cosmos of bullet holes and breathing and bleeding. I still love you. I’m here. I still love you. I’m here with you. And then flick, something lands on his chest and a red flower begins to bloom and he wakes with a start and a burning back and a grief cut with a silent guilt that racks him until the dawn.

  FEBRUARY 24: POUND IN FREE FALL AGAINST THE DOLLAR

  Nelly’s voice erupts out of the opening door: “Mariam, darling! How are you? And yes, you must be Khalil, oh how nice to finally meet you! We’ve put this off for far far far too long! Mariam, I can’t tell you how awful you’ve been keeping him hidden away to yourself. So handsome. Isn’t he, Honey Bear?”

  Honey Bear, looming large behind her in the doorway, grumbles in assent. His arms are huge, hairy, and crossed over his chest. His wrist is weighed down by an enormous silver watch.

  Nelly releases Khalil from her squeeze and beams a big smile at him. He wonders if his clothes smell of tear gas.

  “There just hasn’t been a good time,” Mariam says.

  “In a year?”

  “Well, come in then.” The father’s hand is thrust out. “What would you like to drink?”

  “Whatever you’re having, thanks,” Khalil says.

  “I’m having whiskey.”

  “That’s just fine.”

  “You speak Arabic,” the father says.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good. Mariam said you’re American?”

  “I was just born there.”

  Nelly ushers them inside and they take their places on the large couches overlooking the garden. When was the last time you saw grass? He wants to get up and touch it, to take his shoes off and feel the soft blades on his feet. It’s been a long time.

  “You’ve lost weight, darling! You must make sure you eat! I know you’re out running around all the time but you have to eat! Khalil, is she eating? You have to make sure she eats!”

  She’s right, Khalil thinks. Mariam is getting thinner. In the rare moments they have at home together she never eats more than a piece of toast. She fell ill a few days ago but refuses to rest.

  “So…” The father leans forward. “Khalil, can you please explain precisely what it is you and my daughter do together.”

  “Um. Of course,” Khalil says, stalling. “What exactly do you—”

  “Well, I know none of you believe in earning money. I’m not talking about that. But this activism business. When I ask her what she does she says she’s an activist—”

  “I never say I’m an activist,” Mariam says.

  “Well, your mother does.”

  “And,” Nelly offers, sunnily, “they always say it on the Face.”

  “It’s just Face, Nelly,” Mariam says, curt, “for Facebook.”

  “We earn what we need,” Khalil says. “We don’t have many expenses.”

  When no one picks up the conversation Khalil half clears his throat. “I heard a little about your desalination project.”

  “Yes?”

  “It sounds very interesting.”

  “Yes.” The father rouses himself. “Desalination is the key. Get the salt out of it and we’ve got enough water here to plant the whole desert. Enough water to produce as many fruits and vegetables as your fine country.”

  What do
es it take to become a fucking Egyptian? Do I have to staple my passport to my forehead? Get Nasser tattooed on my left arm and Amr Diab on my right?

  “Yes,” Khalil says, “the produce in Palestine is excellent.”

  “Palestine?” The father is taken aback. “Ah yes, Mariam mentioned something about that. Not many Egyptians called Khalil, I suppose. Do you go? I’m sure my daughter is desperate to throw herself in an Israeli prison.”

  “Not enough. As soon as things calm down here I will.”

  “The Israelis want our water, of course. See all this business funding the Ethiopians’ wretched dam?”

  “Yes. Morsi’s handled it badly.”

  “You’re damn right he has! The fool’s risking war!”

  The father takes a slug of his drink and sits back in his chair.

  Khalil can see Mariam’s hand is shaking a little. She doesn’t sleep enough. She spends each day between the Corniche and the field clinic and pharmacies and hospitals and donors and the morgue. She feels him watching her. Last night she was feverish.

  Don’t come too close, she’d told him, don’t waste your time. Don’t pity me. It’s so hot in here. Medicine is pointless. But when the first drop of cool water landed on her forehead her skin sighed in relief and she relaxed and waited for him to press the wet towel against her burning forehead again but then she was alone and the room was dark and they were driving through a valley, dark mountains on either side. Her father was driving. Her little cousins next to her. The car wound down, deeper and deeper into the valley. The boy shouted: “Guess again! Guess again! What am I?” and his little sister shouted words back at him. They’d been playing the game for hours, on a loop. Guess again. Guess again. The car dropped deeper into the valley. Her father didn’t speak, didn’t play the radio. The mountains crept higher, darker, sharper. A light shone against them, a horn sounded, a car swerved and screamed and everything stopped. She looked out the back window and there it was, for the thousandth time, the coach down on its side across the road like a beached whale, a field of emerald glass between them, glinting blue in the hot sun, and in the middle of the highway a movement, a man dragging himself along the tarmac through the cutting glass toward her. She opened the car door, like she does every time. There are never any words to say. She stood there, the sun fierce on her head. More are coming. Falling out of the bus. Dozens of people crawling toward her. Mariam! her father shouts. Get back in the car! “But—” The man was close. Close enough to look at her. Mariam! In the car! Close enough to watch her turn, to watch the car pull away. “But—,” she said, for the thousandth time. Mariam, her father shouted. You can’t change anything.