The City Always Wins Read online

  “So,” the father is saying, “are you gonna get married and give us some grandchildren?”

  Mariam puts her drink down. “We’ve talked about this before,” she says. “I’m not having children.” Who would bring a child into this world? Who would have a girl and send her out onto these streets of men?

  “Still with this nonsense?” her father growls. “Your mother said the same thing for two years. Would you have preferred it if we didn’t have you?”

  Nelly turns to Khalil. “What about you, Khalil, do you want children?”

  “I’m … not against the idea.”

  “Well, if neither of you can tell me how you’re ever going to earn any money it’s probably for the best. Those little mouths are expensive.”

  “Was that why you went private, Father?”

  “Everyone goes private, sweetie. You’d know that if you’d ever worked a real job in this country.”

  “Well,” Nelly cuts in quickly, “are you two not thinking about marriage?”

  “We don’t need to get married,” Mariam says.

  The father leans forward: “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Mariam replies coolly.

  The father turns to Khalil and fixes him with a raised eyebrow and a dread look: “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Mariam steps in, “I’m sure. We’ve had this conversation before.”

  “And it never gives me any answers.”

  “And it won’t today, either.”

  Mariam turns decisively to look at the garden. The lawn is a deep and tempting green leading to thick bushes of red flowers. She remembers the boy, his hands open, we have to bury it, a shallow grave, a single red flower to mark it.

  “Khalil, dear, tell me something.” Nelly is leaning forward, pouring herself another glass of water. “You have an American passport, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” Nelly shoots Mariam an unsubtle wink of faux female solidarity. “How useful.” But Mariam’s eyes are fixed on the garden.

  “So if you’re not having children, what are you going to do with yourselves?” the father says. “Do you have a plan for your lives? I respect you kids. I do. Maybe I don’t say it, but I do. But I don’t see a plan, not for your lives and not for your revolution. I was against Mubarak, sure. Everyone was. Then you go and drag the army through the mud and what have we got now? The Brothers. The Brothers! What are you doing about them?”

  “Don’t you watch the news?”

  “Sure, I see a hundred kids throwing rocks at nothing! What’s the point in that? They’re not gonna storm the palace like that.”

  “No, but it stops Morsi from being president as long as they’re out there. It’s a message, it’s saying he has to earn his authority.”

  “But why violence?” Nelly says. “Why not sit outside peacefully?”

  “We were! They attacked us!”

  “I just think the message is so much stronger when it’s peaceful.”

  “In the end it’s only violence that does anything,” Mariam says. “Without battling in Mohamed Mahmoud the army would never have set the date for the transfer of power.”

  “No,” the father says definitively. “Don’t think that. You were lucky. The day the army decides to open fire you won’t be able to stop them.”

  “We stopped them at Maspero.”

  “Maspero was a mistake. Believe me. If they get the order…”

  “I thought you said they would never get the order.”

  “God willing.”

  FEBRUARY 26: DEADLIEST BALLOON CRASH IN DECADES KILLS 19 IN EGYPT

  The days are folding into each other. The emerald glass cuts at her tired hands, blue and red, bleeding out slowly in the desert. The man crawls toward her. The riot is unchanging. The protests are unending. Knives flash in the yellow dark.

  She takes a bottle of water and sits alone on the grass in front of the Mogamma3, gently watering the earth around the single red flower. Bodies rot hidden in the morgue. Electrodes are clasped to young boys’ tongues. Blades are taken to genitals. The president thanks the police for their hard work.

  MARCH 3: PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS HEADED FOR EGYPT

  He stands in the shadow of the ancient mountain of rock and rubble and watches the sun fall behind its silhouette. The waves are still, the water is a silver patience. The sun is setting, slowly, and he’s standing in the Sinai shallows, the eastern wind breathing in off the sea bathes him in calm, the ripples racing away from his legs are stunning in their mathematical beauty but there, always, the voice from the scratching dark—she’s my sister, I swear she’s my sister—he is alone, his arms full of a body but he can’t see the face, the shallows are long and flat and unmoving as glass until the reef and the drop, and he is walking out through the stillness to the edge, to lay it down and watch it sink and mark the spot with tears and say that she has been properly buried.

  MARCH 5: EGYPT TO START RATIONING FUEL SUBSIDIES

  No time for artistry. Production is up to two podcasts a week. The Brotherhood spent the weekend torturing protesters in a mosque. The police are arresting and torturing children by the dozen. The economy is collapsing. The new constitution is medieval. Record, splice, upload. No time for artistry. And no need either. Everything Chaos puts out is downloaded in the tens of thousands.

  MARCH 9: POLICE ABUSE DEEPENING UNDER MORSI REGIME

  The door to his apartment is a patchwork of stickers of political initiatives and protest slogans—and proud in the center is Nefertiti in a gas mask, her eyes fierce and angry and full of power, his favorite of them all. Nefertiti, always alert, always angry, a constant reminder not to stay comfortable inside for too long.

  The apartment is dark. Mariam is not home. She will slip into bed next to him when he is asleep and he will wake up and find her at her computer. She can’t be sleeping more than four hours a night.

  The locusts did not come. Not to the city. And in their absence he had felt a perverse anticipation. He had wanted them to come. You wished a plague upon yourself. For what? A metaphor?

  MARCH 11: KILLING OF ANTI-BROTHERHOOD FACEBOOK ADMINS RAISES FEARS OF TARGETED ASSASSINATIONS

  Mariam stands in the wings of the Dream TV studio in Media City watching Ashira. She looks strong, almost godlike, the bright lights reflecting off her as she speaks:

  “This is what they bring us? This is the revolution they promised us? Tantawi the war criminal is honored and Mubarak’s police chiefs are free on the streets and not a single feloul minister arrested? And now this? Now they’re killing people on the streets. They’re arresting children by the hundred and assaulting women in the square. What is this? This is not what we were promised by the Muslim Brotherhood when they swore to continue the revolution.”

  Mariam loves watching Ashira in action. She is powerful without being aggressive, she is always exactly the right level of angry.

  “No, of course not.” The TV host grins. “And let’s not forget that they said they wouldn’t even field a presidential candidate.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And then they fielded two.”

  “Exactly. They’ve been lying from day one, and now they’ve ridden the revolution into power.”

  “Yes. We will take some phone calls now. I know that our Christian neighbors are very concerned and we’ll be hearing from them—after the break.”

  The Brotherhood does not have many friends in Media City, and they are making their displeasure known. Dozens of men are in angry encampment outside the gates, complete with toilets and a butcher and an open fire. A “medieval siege,” the media is calling it.

  “Welcome back,” says the host, beaming. “I want to pick up where we left off. Miss Mohsen, you were talking about the electoral promises of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

  “Well, let’s start with prosecutions. The police who killed our families must be prosecuted.”

  “There must be trials, certainly.”

  “There must be trials.
And when we put our evidence before the judges they will be jailed. We have two years’ worth of work. Evidence collected. Names. Some of the families, they know the names of the police officers who killed their children. They see them in their neighborhoods. Can you imagine—”

  Ashira pauses, something catches in her throat.

  Ashira waits. She is always waiting. She can’t stop herself from waiting. She never changed the locks. She knows, she knows, but what if—

  She used to call his phone. Every hour, on the first day. Praying, first, for the mobile network to come back up. Then every day. Then every two days …

  “—Can you imagine what that feels like?”

  “And does the prosecutor general know this?”

  “Of course. I’ve spoken to him myself. Look, the Muslim Brotherhood made electoral promises to the Egyptian people that they have not kept. When they were running the campaign for Mohamed Morsi they approached me.”

  “Directly?”

  “Yes, directly. They asked me to stand onstage with Morsi at rallies and say that I want him to be president. Because I’m one of the families of the martyrs.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I asked why I should do that. They said that Mohamed Morsi was the only way that we would get justice. That when he came to power he would carry out the will of the revolution, that he would make sure that there were investigations and trials. That he was better than Shafiq. They said—”

  One day it rang. Her heart nearly burst out of her chest. It rang and rang and a man answered, a voice she didn’t know. He said he’d bought the line, but there was a tremor in his voice. She called again. She called again and he knew why she was calling and he told her. A neighbor was selling sim cards he found in the garbage near his house. And where do you live? Near the Red Mountain, he said.

  The Red Mountain. A barracks within a fortress out into the desert. We all know its name, have heard it repeated on the lips of shivering children arrested and left fighting over buckets of rotten slop in its dungeons. Can you survive the Red Mountain for two years? Could Michael be shackled deep in its darkness? She talked to the children released, showed them photographs, photographs with and photographs without a beard, but nothing. You can’t knock on the door of the Red Mountain.

  Spilled blood dries and cracks unpaid for. A thirst is rising. Our killers roam free. Our need grows sharper. The months of talking are over, one word clings to her like sweat: al-qasas. It was bread, freedom, social justice when all this began. Words to die for. But the new word now: justice, vengeance, retribution. Call it a blood debt. Whatever it is. It must be paid.

  “How will we be in touch?”

  It was the last thing she asked him, her severed phone useless in her hand, the crowds brewing outside, his feet pushing into his shoes.

  “I’ll be home by sunset. Whatever happens.”

  She sat on the balcony and watched him walk away.

  In the not knowing all you’re left with is waiting. Waiting. For anything. For you to see Horreya. For you to see the little woman she’s turning into. Waiting and not waiting. Living and not living. I am forgetting what it felt like to close my arms around you, are you forgetting me? Are you in a place that lets you forget? Or is your world like ours, a gray mirror of longing?

  The talk show host is watching her, nervous in her silence.

  “What did they say?” he prompts.

  Ashira looks up again, clears her throat. “They said that they would honor what my husband, what Michael, died for.”

  MARCH 11: MILITARY COURT ACQUITS VIRGINITY-TEST DOCTOR

  The sunlight catches generations of dust floating aimlessly in the air.

  “How long’s it been closed?” Khalil asks.

  “Long time,” the doorman replies. “Ten years at least.”

  Does the dust drift through empty air forever, animated by the vibrations of the city alone? The sunlight eases through his body to cut its perfect lines into the darkness and the warmth on his back floods him with a memory, the inner sanctum at Abu Simbel, his mother’s voice in his ear. He can still feel the teenage awe: the grandeur, the theatricality, the perfect alignment with nature.

  A fluorescent light cricks into life and the sunlight is vanquished.

  “The children don’t want anything,” Tariq says. “Just want to sell the place and be done.”

  Ancient furniture buried in the dust, mirrors whose glint is long extinguished, bookcases heavy with volumes in Arabic and English, and in the corner, an old record player and shelves upon shelves of LPs.

  “When did he die?” Khalil asks.

  “Last week.”

  “The children don’t want anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’ll take the records.”

  “Okay … but you won’t forget me?”

  “How could I forget you, Tariq?” Khalil says, and feels in his pocket for a note.

  Hafez is sitting in his regular chair, reading the newspaper, while Khalil sorts through the records, reading out some of the names: “Johnny Cash, Dalida in Arabic and in French—”

  “Do your Johnny Cash impression,” Hafez interrupts.

  “Why do the impression when we have the real thing?”

  “Come on. Do it.”

  “Maybe later. For now we’ve got some Neil Diamond, the Doors, looks like all of Fairuz, Abdel Halim, Umm Kulthum, Ennio Morricone, Charles Aznavour, Dionne Warwick, Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy. And loads I’ve never heard of: Dora Bandaly … Hoda Haddad … Joseph Sakr … Jacqueline.”

  Hundreds of records. A lifetime of music. This is what you’ve always needed. No more digital distractions, no more parental excuses—now you can sit down, record to record, and listen to all of Umm Kulthum and you’ll finally get it, you’ll understand the Lady. Wait till you tell the old man. As he flicks through the remaining records he almost expects to see the Reverend Franklin among them.

  He pulls out a Fairuz album, slips off the sleeve. “Whoa,” he says, and holds it up so Hafez can see.

  COLUMBIA RECORDS, 24 SOLIMAN BASHA, RADIO CINEMA ALLEYWAY, TELEPHONE: 43784.

  “Shit,” Khalil says. “Imagine having a Columbia Records in Cairo.”

  “You’ll be lucky if you have a single record store in New York in a couple more years,” Hafez says without looking up from his paper.

  A Columbia Records in Cairo. We walk past the ruined Radio Cinema alleyway every day. When people talk about the Cairo of the past he can never truly believe the picture they paint. Cairo University was all miniskirts and Vespas and cycling down clean, wide streets in black-and-white movies. Cinema Odeon was for Russian films and Qasr al-Nil for French, the Italianate buildings of Downtown were a brilliant white and there was a ballet or an opera once a week that they claim was world-class.

  A church bell sounds and Ennio Morricone’s piano ripples into the room—“The Ecstasy of Gold.”

  Khalil sits down, opens a beer. “Your photo is everywhere,” he says.

  “Yeah,” Hafez mumbles, without looking up.

  “You’re not happy?”

  “Happy I photographed a child dying?”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “No. I know. I don’t know. We’ve done it to ourselves. Each scene has to be more shocking than the last. Then they care for fifteen minutes until the next horror horrifies them. And how many horrors until people have to just switch off?”

  Hafez stubs out his cigarette.

  “Do you think they’re assassinating people?”

  “The Facebook admins? They’ve killed three?”

  “And at least six more beaten or stabbed.”

  “Maybe they are. I mean, why not?” Hafez takes another gulp of his drink. “We’re in the great game now.”

  Each of them is alone in the music, the vast cemetery, the dance of death spiraling into it, and as it crescendos Hafez raises his glass a little: “To bloody battles and bruised arms. To glory. Glory in a good death.
”

  There is a silence.

  When did the music stop playing?

  “There are no good deaths,” Khalil says. “Only deaths.”

  “There have to be good deaths. Or what’s the point in anything?”

  The silence hangs between them.

  Hafez looks up from his drink. “Wouldn’t you have been happy to die in the Eighteen Days?”

  Khalil is quiet for a moment—“Happy is a strong word.”

  MARCH 20: RATIONING ANNOUNCED, BREAD PROTESTS BEGIN

  He’s woken by his doorbell. Mariam isn’t there.

  “Good morning,” the neighbor from upstairs says. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

  “It’s all right,” Khalil says, though he doesn’t invite him inside.

  “I just … it’s the news and, well … where’s our country going?” the little man says, wringing his hands. “What are you all going to do about the Brotherhood?”

  “You’ve seen the protests?”

  “But they have a stranglehold on the country. And they have America and Qatar. This is what the revolution was for? To deliver Egypt to the Brotherhood?”

  MARCH 25: MORSI BURIES HUMAN RIGHTS INVESTIGATION INTO ARMY KILLINGS

  New investigation from Chaos Collective: Muslim Brotherhood kidnaps and tortures people in Moqattam Mosque.

  @ChaosCollective: Great job! We’ll see these Brotherhood bastards in prison for what they did!

  @ChaosCollective: How can men of God behave like this in a mosque?

  @ChaosCollective: You don’t mention who started it. Brotherhood HQ came under attack. They merely defended themselves.

  @ChaosCollective: Heartbreaking to see what’s happening to Egypt.