The City Always Wins Read online

  November 19, 2011

  8:47 p.m.

  “What’d you need?” Mariam asks as she slips under the rope separating the field hospital from the street. She’d spotted her mother from afar, her gray hair tied back tight, the headlamp, the rapid movements.

  “Betadine, cotton wool, gauze,” her mother says without looking up from her patient’s buckshot back.

  Mariam knows her way around the supplies and quickly places each item carefully next to her mother.

  “Dress it?” Mariam says.

  “Yes.”

  They work quickly together. Mariam loves watching her mother work. When she was young Mariam had a vision of herself as an emergency room doctor, quick and clear in command, calm under pressure, compassionate with her patients, an example to her colleagues and immaculate in scrubs.

  “You okay?” her mother asks.

  “Fine.”

  “And Khalil?”

  “Everyone’s fine.”

  “Good … You’ll be all right, son,” Nadia says to the teenage boy, gritting his teeth against the hot metal in his body. “There’s nothing serious, thank God. We’ll clean you up and you’ll be just fine.”

  “Thank you,” the boy mutters through clenched teeth.

  Mariam’s phone buzzes:

  Have the supplies, where should we meet?

  Ten minutes later she meets the old friend of her parents by the Borsa. He smiles as he sees her, opens the trunk of his car.

  “Pretty much everything on the list,” he says.

  “Great,” she says, counting the boxes quickly. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll be back with more tomorrow. Be careful.”

  They can’t get the car to the field clinic but she can’t carry all the boxes alone. Four teenage boys sit smoking in a street café. “Hey,” Mariam says. The boys look up at her. “Yeah, you guys,” she says. “Come help me carry this stuff to the revolution.”

  They jump to attention, grab two boxes each, and follow behind her, through the crowd to the field hospital.

  Her phone vibrates—

  Rosa: Any injured take them to Qasr al-Aini Hospital and call me. Some doctors there we can trust.

  Every thirty seconds a new motorcycle ambulance arrives carrying another young body riddled with bleeding buckshot.

  “Excuse me, miss,” a deep, formal voice says from above her.

  “Yes,” Mariam says, without looking up.

  “Would you please wear this?”

  She snaps her eyes up. Wear this? What the fuck does this asshole have the nerve to try? Wear this? If there’s a fucking cap or headscarf in his hand, I’m going to—

  He’s holding out a white helmet.

  “Please,” he says. “We bought helmets for the doctors. You have to stay safe. We need you.”

  November 20, 2011

  2:19 a.m.

  Rania commands the room, her hands full of papers and phones; she shouts out instructions over the television blaring in the corner: “Gas masks! Tell them to buy gas masks and food. Bananas, biscuits, cheese sandwiches. Nothing greasy. And gas masks! Everything goes to Omar Makram Mosque—that’s the distribution point now. And juice! Juice in small cartons. Got it? Keep people’s blood sugar up. How many cameras do we have down there? We need to be putting videos out already! We need a list of people with cameras, editors. We need videos out tonight!” She is the center of a web of information relaying out and across Downtown.

  The dining table at the center of the Chaos office is crowded with laptops busy with news, videos, photographs, tweets, and press alerts. Mariam’s friend Ashraf the Enormous is rigging up cable extensions while Hafez threads USB wires from a massive hard drive up to the waiting computers above. Rosa is fixing a bulletin board to the wall for new information: camerapeople, editors, medical runs, food buying, food distribution, media contacts. The Chaos office has become a cerebral cortex at the center of the information war.

  In the corner the television has state TV on loop.

  We can assure our fellow citizens that tear gas would only ever be used in circumstances of national security.

  “Have we sent out the shotgun video to the press list yet!?”

  “Make sure it goes to domestic and foreign.”

  “How many languages can we get it into?”

  And there is not an atom of truth to the malicious rumors of live ammunition.

  “Did Nancy ever buy that night-vision camera?”

  “Who’s putting together the list of hospitals we trust?”

  “Where are those instructions about how to make a catapult?”

  Do not believe unverified rumors. Do not rely on foreign-owned media for your information.

  “Will someone turn that shit off!” Hafez shouts from underneath the dining table. “Hey, Khalil! I have a great interview for you.” Hafez has his two cameras out on the table. “I talked to a doctor about the effects of the tear gas. Here.” He hands Khalil an SD card.

  Beware of troublemakers. Beware of infiltrators. Beware of those who would bring Egypt to her knees.

  November 20, 2011

  7:45 a.m.

  Khalil quickly cuts the gas testimony with street battle sounds and interviews—

  In all my years as an emergency physician I have never seen reactions like this. The government is using an experimental new gas. Possibly a nerve gas. People are dying of asphyxiation.

  Next is news in brief about the protests to come and the supplies needed for Tahrir. He finishes quickly, exports, and sets it to upload.

  Within minutes the hashtag #egywarcrimes is born; by midnight half the nonstate TV show hosts in the country are talking about it and grilling the military spokesmen; by morning a dozen foreign news websites are quoting the doctor; by the next evening emails have arrived from NGOs and activist organizations and academics asking if samples of the new gas can be smuggled out for testing, and by the day after a U.S. State Department spokesman denies any security assistance funds to the Egyptian government were ever used for the purchase of tear gas.

  November 21, 2011

  2:36 a.m.

  Her hands are cut from the rocks. The sky is filled with jagged fists of paving stone crashing around their heads. When the rock hits her she thinks that she’s been slapped and spins toward the men, but when the pain focuses on her cheekbone she understands and stumbles to the side of the road behind a tree. A burning tire illuminates enormous words flickering on the wall behind her: WE’LL GET THEM JUSTICE, OR WE’LL DIE LIKE THEM.

  Her phone buzzes:

  Mama: It’s time for you to call your father

  She has a flash of anger. This is not a time for phone calls. She is angry but she is cold and she wants to stay here near the danger. She wants to stay on the front line. It can’t just be poor boys who keep dying.

  She collects herself. People are depending on you. The field hospitals need supplies. The hospitals need medicine. Time to call your father.

  She drops the rock in her hand, walks away from the front line, the headlights of the motorcycle ambulances carving a path through the forest of human silhouettes, racing new injuries to the field hospitals.

  She turns into the McDonald’s alleyway and dials her father. They used to work together, her parents. Used to do real work, used to hold a whole hospital together between them. The best public cancer unit in Egypt, they said. He was, maybe still is, the best administrator in the country. But it went to his head—as it always does—and he left it, left them, for the blue glass and creamy marble of a private hospital out in the desert.

  “Hi,” she says. “It’s Mariam.”

  “I know my own daughter’s number,” her father says.

  “We need help. With supplies.”

  “For this chaos you’re causing?”

  “Us causing! Do you see guns in our hands?”

  “You’re being manipulated by the Brotherhood. They want to disgrace the army. You’re disgracing all of Egypt in front of the world!�
�

  “The Brotherhood has nothing to do with this. They’re with the army now.”

  “Doesn’t mean they’re not playing you. They’re using you to force the elections before anyone else is ready.”

  “Please. We can talk about this another time.”

  “Listen to me, Mariam. This is what they do. They always sell you out in the end. Ask your mother.”

  So where are you, Father? With your years of experience. Why are you not out here helping us outplay them?

  “If you were here you’d see there’s no way anyone’s controlling what’s going on out here. We’re winning. We just need supplies.”

  He’s silent for a long time.

  She lights a cigarette.

  “The usual stuff?” he says. “Same as in the Eighteen Days?”

  “Yes. But we need things for the gas.” She pulls a list from her pocket. “Naphcon, Prisoline, Prefrin, Ventolin inhalers, masks. And the Eighteen Days stuff, too. You have that list still?”

  “It won’t be hard to find. I hardly have any messages from my daughter.”

  She doesn’t say anything. This isn’t the time for family drama.

  November 21, 2011

  1:12 p.m.

  Khalil and Hafez stand a few streets over from the battle, a quick break for a coffee and a cigarette. Umm Ayman is on the television in the corner, she is speaking in the camera. The qahwa falls silent as her words fill the alleyway:

  Record the blood of the martyr. They shot him with bullets and ran him over. Go, Tantawi, and see. See. He says they’re not shooting anyone. Go. See. See what is being done to the young of Egypt. What’s being done to the youth. Those thrown in garbage piles. Our youth were shot and thrown in the garbage. But every one of them in Tahrir there is Ayman. Every one of them in Tahrir is Ayman. And Ayman’s blood will not be lost as long as they are in Tahrir. As long as they hold their ground. I will say Ayman’s blood is lost when they leave. If they kneel before them and leave, then my son Ayman’s blood is gone. As long as they remain firm, my son is alive. My son’s blood will not go willingly. Every one of them is Ayman. Each and every one of them is Ayman. Every girl among them is Ayman. Every boy is Ayman. They’ve all become Ayman. All those in Tahrir are now Ayman. And they will avenge his death. They’ll not leave until the whole state is torn down and built back up again. They’ll not leave until every policeman and soldier who fired on their own people are tried and jailed. I swear they will get him justice. And God will not let this pass.

  November 21, 2011

  7:49 p.m.

  A young man lies semiconscious on the ground, leg elevated, trousers sodden with blood. Mariam’s mother is before him, tying the wound tight.

  “Femoral artery,” Nadia says as Mariam kneels next to her.

  “I can take it,” Mariam says.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Mama—you have a lot of patients. I’ve got this.”

  Nadia pauses, and Mariam takes over the tourniquet. Femoral means he’s lost a lot of blood.

  “Just try and be calm,” Nadia says softly to the boy. “You’re brave, son. You’re really brave. This is one of my best nurses.” She strokes his forehead and turns quietly to the next case. Mariam pulls the improvised lever out of the bandage, ties it. The tourniquet can stop the bleeding but without an ambulance he’ll lose the leg.

  The boy looks up at Mariam as she finishes the knot. “You’ll be fine,” Mariam says. “The ambulance is coming.”

  “Where will it take me?” he says.

  “To the hospital.”

  “But the hospitals are Mubarak’s.”

  “Not all of them.”

  A motorcycle’s tires screech to a halt. Hey! someone shouts. We need help here! Two doctors carry in a new casualty, wheels burn, the bike speeds back to the front.

  “Come with me to the hospital,” the boy says.

  “I can’t.”

  “It’s a good hospital? It’s with the revolution?”

  “Yes. We need to stop the bleeding. They have better equipment.”

  “You’ll visit me? To check they’ve done it right?”

  She looks at his face for the first time and is struck by how pretty he is, his high cheekbones and delicate nose.

  “I’ll try and find you in the morning.”

  “Thank you.”

  November 21, 2011

  11:49 p.m.

  “It’s a fucking generational war.” Malik shouts over the echoing reverb of shotguns and the clattering rain of a thousand rocks. “It’s all-out fucking war and if we don’t do something we’re gonna be down on our fucking knees until we’re fucking dead! ’Cos they’re not gonna let go of shit until they’re all dead! Here! Have some fucking elections, you wankers. There you go. Shut up now, aye? We’ve got no choice but to rip it from them, the old. It’s not about right or left anymore—they’re all the same. It’s about young versus old. They’d send us all off to war to die if they could, the bastards. Everyone under forty, off you go. Take your debt and your stupid student loans and your useless fucking university degrees and fuck off! It’s a war, man. Young against old. Whole fucking world over.”

  Malik: another diaspora returnee. Back from Glasgow to build the new country. A lawyer, working on a police reform initiative. In a less intelligent person Malik’s voice and volume would be intensely annoying. Khalil keeps his eye on the mouth of Mohamed Mahmoud Street, for sirens, panic, for Mariam’s kufiyyeh.

  His phone beeps with a Facebook message—

  I’ve been following your posts. Am so impressed with the bravery and courage you’re all showing. Promise me you’ll stay safe.

  Diane x

  Khalil feels his back straighten with a virile pride; the whole world is watching. All your ex-girlfriends are watching.

  Essential listening from @ChaosCairo. Huge pressure mounting on Egyptian Army and now toxic gas.

  “You know what it’s like?” Malik is as unrelenting as the battle behind him. “The world they’ve so carefully fucking constructed? It’s like one of those humane fucking mousetraps. Here: have a little glimpse of some fucking cheddar in there and you’ll walk yourself right in because (a) why wouldn’t you? (b) you’re hungry, and (c) you’re a fucking mouse and then schloop, oh sorry, oh excuse me, the door seems to have closed behind you and now here you are humanely fucking fucked and left to enjoy the little crumb of cheddar they bought you with for the rest of your useless life.”

  Hafez watches the crowd. Khalil flicks through his phone.

  Incredible mismanagement from EgyArmy. Demand they cede power to civilian rule now!

  The One silently listens to Malik’s rant. The One is an old-school European immigrant-drifter, has lived in the same Downtown apartment for decades, was married briefly to an Egyptian woman; a traveler from the times when you went somewhere and didn’t turn around and leave on the next budget flight out. Khalil can never remember if he’s Bulgarian or Hungarian and he can’t ask him again. No one even remembers why he’s called the One anymore.

  Khalil sees Mariam walking over to them, pulling the kufiyyeh off from around her neck. She looks exhausted but invigorated.

  “You okay?” Khalil asks.

  “Yes,” Mariam says. “Hungry.”

  “What’s happening with the new council?” Hafez asks.

  “What council?” Malik butts in.

  “A revolutionary council,” Mariam says.

  “For the army to cede transitional power to,” Hafez takes over.

  “Who’s in it?” Malik says.

  “Martyrs’ family members. Lawyers. Religious figures. Academics. Legal experts. It’s not a bad list,” Hafez says.

  “You think the army might go for it?”

  “If they see this shit’s not going to end without a major concession, then maybe. Every minute of this makes them look weaker.”

  Khalil’s phone vibrates—

  Strength and solidarity from Athens to my Chaos Comrades! You are an i
nspiration to the world!

  Malik leans forward. “They say they have planes ready at the airport for SCAF to escape.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, what are we doing here then? We need to get back in there.”

  November 22, 2011

  3:34 a.m.

  Khalil stands back from the front line. His shoulder aches from days of throwing rocks, but he is wide awake.

  Hello mate. Jim from Huffpost. Thnx for interview tonight. Wondering if you know anyone in the Brotherhood I could talk to?

  Under the yellow streetlights he sees Ashraf, Mariam’s friend from childhood who laughs loud enough to silence a room and has hands big enough to crush your skull and whose footsteps make glasses of water tremble and who is not, Mariam insists, a rival or a threat or interested or an ex or anything—but he has become her personal bodyguard.

  “Khalil,” Ashraf says with a smile and an open paw.

  “Hi,” Khalil says, and grips Ashraf’s hand with a manly but uncompetitive firmness. He’s not worried about Ashraf. He’s glad, in fact, that he watches out for Mariam.

  “I’ll see you at home,” Mariam says. “We have to go to the morgue.”

  November 22, 2011

  4:28 a.m.

  He’s there, as Mariam knew he would be. The color drained from his body, the tourniquet soaked in dry, blackened blood. And there’s the phone number, written in careful marker up his left forearm.

  “Hello,” a harried voice answers. A baby is crying in the background.

  “Hello, miss,” Mariam says, unsure how to carry on. “My name is Mariam.”

  The boy doesn’t move and she doesn’t know his name. The boy doesn’t move. Of course he doesn’t move. He’s never going to move again. Did you tie the tourniquet tight enough? Should you have left your mother to her work? Did you cost him a crucial second? Did you take the reins before you were ready? His hand doesn’t move. His hand will never move again. Could one second, one breath more blood have made the difference?

  “Yes?”

  “This is your phone number?” Mariam stalls.