The City Always Wins Read online

  Khalil sees the cyber, the lone light in a dark alleyway, feels how carefully Abu Bassem treads, feels his arm and wonders if, for even a moment, he can fill in for his son. Bassem watches over us all. The martyr is a witness who speaks of the injustice he sees. He stands before the violence and falls before it. Rachel Corrie before her minotaur.

  “And now people ask us why we keep protesting. People who are happy and eating and getting married and acting like people didn’t die for them or that people are out protesting and being beaten for them. I say one thing to those people: Don’t ask us why. My son died for them and now I’ll die for them and everyone in Tahrir will die for them—so don’t say it’s time for calm, don’t say we shouldn’t protest, don’t tell us to stay home, don’t ask us why. Who are we dying for? For ourselves? Here we were alive and happy and everything. We’re dying to stop the killing and the corruption. We’re dying for respect. We’re dying for bread, freedom, and social justice. And we’re dying for you. Just don’t ask us why. Please. You can stay home. Tomorrow they’ll do to you what they’ve done to us. And more. Because enough people let them. Stay home, eat, relax, have a nice life, and see what happens to you tomorrow.”

  The martyr dies for his testimony and you, Abu Bassem, you are the shahed of your son the shaheed, the martyr’s witness, the one who will not be silenced, the one who sees and speaks the truth.

  A simple church organ pulling together a few unexceptional notes to gather the people’s attention. And then the voice rises—

  I’ve been in

  the storm

  so lo-ong

  Khalil hears the music in his head, replays the day he tried to ask his father. Palestine. What’s it like? It was a simple question, though they both knew the real one: Why is it not home? And the answer, the look, the deep pull on the cigarette, the pause. His father stood up from his armchair, buttoned his shabby waistcoat, smoothed it down, and went over to the record player. There’s not one answer, he’d said. Khalil could see the LP cover, a black-and-white-photograph: the Reverend Franklin. They listened to it in silence, the Reverend’s voice rising into his chorus and holding that deep note of long woe before crashing down in lamentations to the Lord. The voice, heavy as a mountain, filled the room with the loss of generations.

  I’ve been in

  the storm

  so lo-ong

  Khalil’s fingers hover over his keyboard, waiting for his music. He will watch the video again. A gust of wind, a turn of the head, blood black on the asphalt, the cold of the morgue. Today I am a brutalist and will build in logical, unquestionable blocks: news, interview, music, finish. Today I am a modernist and will slice between segments to reveal hidden truths through catalytic combinations. Today I am Gothic and the spectacle of music will tower over the logic of the interview and empiricism of news. Today I will find your music.

  I’ve been in

  the storm

  so lo-ong

  children

  The fluorescent emptiness of a dead son’s bedroom.

  His father, the snowy solitude and silent cell. Absence, an empty fluorescence.

  I’ve been in

  the storm

  so lo-ong

  Oo-o-o-oh

  Lord, give me little time

  to pray

  7

  November 17, 2011

  “You’ve got to help. Mariam, you’ve got to. He was painting the walls of Umm Ayman’s house and they took him and we don’t know where and his phone is off you’ve got to help they took him last night and we didn’t even realize until this morning and we don’t know where he is you’ve got to help, Mariam, I don’t know what to do.”

  “It’s okay, Tante, take a breath,” Mariam says. “It’ll be okay. Just tell me everything you know and we’ll find him. Where exactly was he arrested?”

  Within the hour Mariam is marching up to the steps to Qasr al-Nil police station, Rania and Malik, a lawyer, keeping close behind her. She doesn’t break stride as she steps up to a young officer sitting at the splintered desk in the entrance hall.

  “You’re holding someone illegally.”

  “What? Who are you?”

  “This man here is a lawyer with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.” She gestures at Malik but doesn’t give his name. “We’re looking for a young man by the name of Abdulrahman Ahmed. He was arrested illegally last night for decorating someone’s house.”

  “Decorating?”

  “Yes, decorating. We know that you have him and we demand that he be released immediately.”

  “Demand?”

  “Yes, demand. In ten minutes the media will be alerted that a young student who was kindly helping the mother of a martyr decorate her house is being illegally detained. In an hour a crowd of five hundred people will be on the street. If he’s not released by tomorrow morning five families of the martyrs will have a press conference—”

  “Okay, okay. Hang on.”

  The officer is stunned. He gets up and slips into the dark corridor behind him.

  Mariam thinks of Umm Ayman’s house, of the walls now illuminated with her son’s face, his name. Every week Mariam sits with the families of the martyred in Umm Ayman’s apartment, drinks tea with them, discusses their plans and their dreams for their fallen children’s memories. New networks of trust and consolation and revolution have formed. Statements from the martyrs’ families carry a political weight heavier than any other.

  “Please.” The young officer is back. “Please take a seat.”

  Malik paces before them, Rania composes tweets and emails and saves them in drafts, waiting for the signal to go public, Mariam calls Abu Bassem and asks him to prepare the families to make an appearance in the morning. The cells are underground, under her feet. She listens for noises, vibrations, covert communications. But the walls are thick. Ninety-nine police stations burned to the ground but Qasr al-Nil still stands.

  Her phone buzzes—

  Umm Ayman: Please update with news about Abdu. Shall we call the press conference now?

  Umm Ayman has grown so strong. My son, she says, my son died for this revolution and I will now give my last drop of blood for it.

  “Shall we call the press conference?”

  “Give them an hour,” Rania says.

  “Okay. Well, talk loudly on the phone as if you’ve got Yosri Fouda on the line.”

  Rania puts her phone on silent and joins Malik in his pacing. “Yosri?” She booms down the line, “Yosri, can you hear me? Yeah, we’re still at the station. They’re holding him. No, I don’t know if he’s tortured. People are asking? Say we don’t know. Yeah, Qasr al-Nil station. Decorating, that’s right.”

  Mariam has to step outside to keep herself from laughing. She lights a cigarette and in its first breath remembers anew that her old life has been entirely washed away. School friends, old colleagues, young dreams, ex-boyfriends—all have vanished from existence.

  “Yeah, all right, Yosri, you’ll tell everyone then? Yep. Great. Okay, see you in a bit.”

  It’s not long before a door swings open from the dark of the corridor and a young boy appears, grinning like he just scored a goal.

  UMM AYMAN

  She thinks, every morning, of the way he would prepare the cheese for breakfast. Ayman, her boy, her Ayman, and his moment of pride and presentation to the family every day. The soft whiteness scooped out of the packet and spread with a swirl in the shallow bowl, the herbs—zaatar usually, mint sometimes—then an almost flamboyant drop of olive oil and the look of quiet satisfaction creeping into the corners of his mouth as he whisked the bottle away. His contribution. The thing he could give to us each morning. She makes it his way, the herbs, the swirl, and places it down in front of what remains of her family. Gathered, now, every morning, in mourning and absence. She is thankful. She will be watchful. And when breakfast is over there is always a little left. She makes sure of it. She places it in the fridge. She does not think in reasons. It should just be
there. Heba, her youngest, always watching, takes it out first thing in the morning and washes it before her mother wakes up. And the day begins again. The relics of the dead. The cloth of the saints. The guidance of the stars. Do they hear you? Do you hear me? Again and again and forever. The rhythms and rituals that keep us alive, keep us strong in our faith and our work through this cruelty. She knows it’s pointless. That it’s ridiculous, even, to think about it, but she cannot shake the thought. That he was hungry. Why did we not eat together? Were we all so consumed with the news? Her boy died hungry. He went out like a man to stand up for his people and his church and his family and he marched, and marched hungry. Don’t worry. She can hear his voice perfectly. I’ll eat, I promise. Don’t worry, Mama. My boy. My darling boy. Would you have been able to run that inch faster? Stand that second longer? Breathe even one breath more?

  8

  November 19, 2011

  6:09 p.m.

  Mariam opens her backpack and quickly moves through the apartment: phone charger, water, two packs of cigarettes, two lighters, small notepad, antiseptic spray, pen, painkillers, toothbrush, spare underwear, socks, T-shirt, ID. Money, phone, keys in pockets.

  She pulls out her phone and writes a tweet:

  Everybody: go to Tahrir now. Tell everyone. The police attacked the “injured of the revolution” protest. Huge numbers are out.

  “Ready?” Khalil asks.

  “Yes,” she replies. “Let’s go.”

  In four seconds she can pull the kufiyyeh up around her face, tie it around the back of her head, can become a boy. She practices once, in the bedroom mirror. He watches her hands, so deft in the knot.

  He pulls her close to him and they stop for a moment before stepping out into it. It’s finally happening again. The streets are full. She kisses him, moves herself against him; the clamor of the riot rises up from the streets below.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” she says. “Or brave.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about.”

  She pushes against him for a last moment and he is in their first night together and the echo of bullets ricocheting through the air and the blood rushing as his hands pulled her body against him—but the front door’s open, it’s time to go.

  There are no cars on the street. The elegant boulevards of Downtown are all but deserted. What few people there are hurry toward Tahrir. In the square a police truck is on fire. Khalil and Mariam hurry through the crowd, toward the reverb of shotguns down Mohamed Mahmoud Street. Throughout the square the same words ring out, again and again:

  Down, down with military rule!

  Mariam cannot help but smile to herself.

  Down, down with military rule!

  It’s finally happening again.

  Burning tires light the long and narrow dark of Mohamed Mahmoud Street. Silhouettes slip between the flames. The police form a dark line of men ahead. At the front, the conscripts. Behind them the officers wait darkly, their trucks and shotguns ready. Behind them both lies the Ministry of the Interior, still standing despite all those who gave their lives in January trying to take it. Motorcycle ambulances race the injured away from the front line. She squeezes Khalil’s hand and is gone. He pulls his phone out and sets it to record through the binaural microphones in his headphones. He stands to one side for a moment, watching the shape and rhythm of the battle.

  A hundred people make up the front line at any one time, informal ranks of stone throwers and shit talkers hurling everything they have at the cops. Behind them a middle section stretches down the street, the immediate backup, people taking a break from the rocks or gearing up the nerve for those final few steps into the firing line, people pushing up for a better view, the fire starters and gas catchers hurling the smoking canisters back where they came from. Behind them, where Mohamed Mahmoud Street flows out into Tahrir, are the spectators, the chanters, the drummers, doctors, quarriers, and hawkers.

  A rock crashes into the tree above Khalil and cracks into his head, another grazes his shoulder and another bounces off the tarmac onto his shins, and he picks one up and hurls it back at the police. He can’t see where it lands. He pulls his hood up and slips into the crowd, into a unitary anonymity, and with each rock he slings out into the no-man’s-land he feels a growing potency as more and more bodies press up to the front. Each shot rings like a ripple through the crowd, each person who falls hurried quickly away to the doctors, each rock in the air an invisible fate, an invigorating fatalism.

  A siren sounds and a panic of blue light flashes through the darkness. A shotgun sounds. Two APCs charge forward, showering buckshot, and a gas canister lands at his feet and the poison takes hold in seconds and cramps at his stomach and burns his eyes and he runs in the stampede back to Tahrir, holding his breath until he’s doubled over, dry-retching, waiting for his stomach to unclench itself. Through the salty mucus filling his eyes he sees a boy in a hood, feels him rubbing his back, and it’s only when the breaths come again that he sees it’s Mariam.

  “You okay?” she says.

  “I’m good.”

  She takes her bag off her back and pulls out half an onion, holds it under his nose.

  “Does that work?” he asks.

  “Try it.”

  He breathes it in.

  “Isn’t this an old Palestinian trick?” she asks.

  “Is it?”

  In the crowd behind her at least three people are splashing Pepsi into their eyes, desperate to soothe the burning.

  “I was doing the Pepsi thing before,” Khalil says. “This is better.”

  A man with a large cardboard box on his head weaves through the crowd: “Gas masks! Ten pounds! Get your gas masks!”

  “You’re good?” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve got to find my mother,” Mariam says, then squeezes his hand and is gone.

  Khalil lights a cigarette. The gas has cleared and the crowd is flowing back down Mohamed Mahmoud Street for another round. His chest swells with a warrior pride.

  Down, down with military rule!

  A woman with a bottle of Pepsi held high looks for patients.

  Khalil takes his phone out of his pocket, checks on the recording.

  “Beautiful sight, no?” comes a voice from behind him. He turns to see Hafez. Even in the middle of a riot, Hafez is well dressed, a casual but decent jacket over a rugged dark shirt. He stands with an old Hasselblad camera slung over one shoulder and a standard digital around his neck.

  “It’s good.”

  “Only took the army nine months.”

  The flames from the police truck lick high up into the air.

  “You been here long?” Hafez asks.

  “Couple hours.”

  Hafez is watching the crowd pulse back and forth, studying its movements, alert, always, for the image.

  A man’s body is carried among eight people. Field hospital, they shout. Where’s the field hospital? and two boys start running with them.

  “You see how it started?” Khalil asks.

  “I heard they came and the filth beat up the injured-of-the-revolution’s protest camp.”

  “That’s a dumb move.”

  “Or a provocation.”

  Every time he looks at Hafez he remembers January 28. Thrown together and inseparable since then. The day of days. The day we won. The day the police fled. The crucible in which new bonds, a new chemistry, was catalyzed. Khalil sees it still, always, a frozen moment in the sun, the sky a brilliant blue, the glinting metal falling like a mechanical animal homing in on them, the crowd parting and running and covering their eyes as it comes for them until from out of the sea of hesitation steps Hafez and it’s trapped under his foot, the hissing gas canister pouring its malice out into the world and then it’s up and in the air again and the crowd is back all around him and roaring in defiance as the last of the poison trails down toward its grave in the Nile and there’s Hafez with a wild pride in his eyes and a red welt of seared flesh across
his hand and the crowd surging back toward the bridge.

  “They’re hot!” he said in surprise, almost laughing, shaking his burned hand against the wind. We didn’t even know they were hot. January 28. Just a bunch of kids out on the street.

  A man breaks out of the crowd. He has three tear gas canisters in his hand. “Photograph these!” he shouts at Hafez. “Photograph these, sir! It says Made in America, right? Nothing’s changed! Photograph these! Fuck Tantawi and fuck the army!”

  Hafez takes a shot, says thank you, and the man moves on.

  A doctor in a white coat is picking her way through the crowd, a black gas mask raised over her face. An old man sits on the ground with his head in his hands. “Are you okay, sir?” she asks. He nods, puts his hand up to her, and she helps him stand and steady himself and head back to the battle.

  “Fucking Tantawi,” Hafez says, shaking his head. “What do they think they’re doing?”

  “They don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “No? They come beat up a bunch of invalids live on TV by accident?”

  “That was the cops.”

  “You think the police do anything without an okay from the top?” Hafez says

  “Police and the army aren’t necessarily friends.”

  “Right now, they’re friends,” Hafez says.

  “They were humiliated,” Khalil says. “Maybe they want revenge and Tantawi can’t control them.”

  “There’s an election in five days,” Hafez says. The police truck blazes in front of them. Three news cameras record the hungry flames. “It’s no accident. They left that behind for us to burn.”

  “But the army wants the elections,” Khalil says. “They don’t want this.”

  “Nor do the Brotherhood,” Hafez says. “That’s why they’re not out here.”

  A roar of triumph echoes out from the front line. Hundreds of people are streaming into the street and Khalil follows, excited about getting back into the fight, about getting home and listening to his new recordings, about stripping the gas-sodden clothes off and falling, alive, into bed with Mariam, about posting the next podcast to Facebook and watching the downloads spike, about the stories they’ll tell for years to come.