The City Always Wins Read online

  They came in the morning to attack. Since the new president’s constitutional amendments there have been protests every day around the presidential palace. So they came in the morning to remove them.

  “You fucking thug sons of bitches.” She hurls another rock. “Your pimp of a president is fucking elected! Elected!”

  The Brotherhood has made its move. With a parliamentary majority they played their hand to force through the country’s new constitution in betrayal of all their revolutionary promises and alliances. The new constitution that will shape the country’s future and define its laws and seek to forge its postrevolutionary identity. The new constitution that doesn’t protect any minorities, that subjugates women, that allows for torture, that invites privatization and protects the army.

  “You think that’s it!?” Mariam hurls another rock into the no-man’s-land of debris between them. “You think it’s that fucking easy?”

  Ranked against them, their backs to the presidential palace, are men, hundreds of men. Men with long beards and heavy jackets booming instruction, men with lighter beards and the anger of an impotent youth, men following orders, men with nowhere else to turn, men lost in their blueprint for divine salvation and those burning with the need to cleanse the land.

  Then gunfire and the crowd flinches. She can’t see the gun. People are running and Ashraf’s hand is on her shoulder. We need to go. Something hits her on the back of the head but she doesn’t fall. Ashraf is running, they’re both running. They don’t know which streets are safe. “Flatten your hair down,” she tells Ashraf as she tries to slow her breathing. “Try and push it to the side or something. Look less revolutionist.” She takes off her kufiyyeh and feels it is heavy with blood.

  “Which way’s the

  palace?”

  “I’m sure it’s this way.”

  “Which way did we

  come? I don’t

  recognize this street.”

  “When we chased

  those boys did we turn

  right or left?”

  From the shadows Mariam can see eight men, wooden sticks, two kitchen knives.

  “You guys know this

  is a Christian

  neighborhood.”

  “The sons of dogs

  clearly have money.”

  “Of course. They have

  everything.”

  “A curse on Sawiris and

  Hamdeen and

  El-Baradei the traitors.”

  “And on the Pope,

  the son of a dog.”

  She puts her hand on Ashraf’s shoulder. Hold still. Keep quiet. There are too many of them.

  “And you. What are we

  going to do with you?

  Who paid you? Huh?

  Who paid you?”

  The slap of a hand on flesh. She strains to see through the ironwork of the door.

  “Who paid you?

  Was it El-Baradei?

  Just tell us. We

  already know so

  just tell us.”

  A man, shirtless, bleeding. His ripped shirt is tied around his neck like a leash. His eyes have bruised shut. They came in the morning. They came on hired buses to drive away the protesters camped outside their new president’s palace.

  “You’re Christian,

  right? So who

  paid you? El-Baradei

  or the Pope?

  Who paid you?”

  “Boy, I’ll cut your

  lips off if you don’t

  start using them!”

  “Who paid you?

  Look, you’re on

  camera. How much

  did he give you?”

  “We’ll cut your

  throat, boy! How

  much did El-Baradei

  give you!?”

  Another slap lands hard on the back of his head. She feels Ashraf flinch next to her. Blood drips from the prisoner’s lips as he moves his head in dazed confusion. All he can say is “no, no, no.”

  “We know you have

  money. We saw what

  you all had in your tents

  this morning. Cheese!

  Three kinds of cheese!

  Nesto cheese, you

  perverts!”

  “A plague on your houses.”

  “The filthy sons of shoes,

  so much food, all living

  like kings on their

  American dollars.”

  “May they ask forgiveness.”

  “All paid for by the Americans.”

  “And the Israelis.”

  “If they have the Americans

  we have the Quran.”

  “Thank the Lord.”

  “Thank the Lord.”

  “We have the Quran and we have the president.”

  “Thank the Lord.”

  “We should to get back

  to the palace.”

  “Let’s take this filth to the palace.”

  “Are there a lot?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of prisoners?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  “Sheikh Yassin said

  check their hands.

  If they’re dirty, cut

  them off because

  they’ve been throwing

  rocks and you

  can be sure they’re

  traitors and cut off

  their hand!”

  “Come on. I’m sure it’s this way.”

  “I don’t recognize this street.”

  “It’s this way.”

  “Come on, dog.”

  Another hard slap lands across the man’s face.

  “WE’RE WITH

  YOU, MORSI!!

  ANYONE WHO

  INSULTS YOU

  GOES HOME IN

  A BODY BAG!!”

  “MOR-SEEEEE! MOR-SEE!”

  “God’s the greatest!!”

  DECEMBER 5: SIX REPORTED DEAD IN PRESIDENTIAL PALACE CLASHES

  Khalil is leaning over the balcony, trying to make out the street fighting ahead, the sound of the occasional bullet drifting toward him. This is the nightmare scenario. He’s been thinking it all day and with each rock thrown at the Brotherhood militia the feeling grew in his stomach. This is it. This is our Africa, darling, terrible mess, isn’t it? moment. This is a shit show and this is an excuse for the army to roll back in, to take the reins again. And what comes next will make Iraq look like a playground. Because if this plays out with Morsi overthrown, then Egypt has no shortage of veteran jihadists and fiery ideologues and lifetime fighters who are all going to go home, tool up, and come out guns blazing. And then we’ll be sorry. Then there’ll be no one who can do anything except the army and the fucking police. The country will be begging them to take the streets again.

  “They’re holding people in the fucking palace!”

  He turns to see Mariam and Ashraf walking into Nancy’s apartment.

  “Yes, we know,” Hafez replies, turning his computer around to show Mariam a video, “they’re boasting about it.”

  A dining table full of laptops runs through the center of Nancy’s parents’ dining room. Hafez, Rania, and Rosa all uploading, editing, and writing. There are several other faces he doesn’t recognize.

  He steps inside to see Mariam and sees blood smeared across her forehead.

  “What happened? You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just a rock.”

  “Did you black out?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Good. Sit down.”

  He gets water and a towel and antiseptic spray and sets to work cleaning the wound.

  “The Brotherhood are torturing people in the palace,” she says.

  “I know.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We have to get them out.”

  “We can’t storm the palace. They’re too many.”

>   “We can get numbers. If we have ten thousand people outside the gates, they’ll have to let their prisoners go. Where the fuck is everyone?”

  “Let’s just fix your head first.”

  Once the wound is clean he sits down next to her.

  “This is bad,” he says.

  “We’ll get the numbers out tomorrow,” she says.

  “This is giving the army what they want.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s people calling for them to intervene.”

  “There are always people calling for the army to intervene,” she says.

  “And what if they do? If they try and get rid of him…”

  “They’re not going to. They’re working together. This is just a test. This is the Brotherhood showing they can control the street. The army couldn’t be happier right now. This shitty constitution gave them everything they want.”

  “But maybe we should be doing something different.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You want another election, do you? Now that we’ve seen how well your last one went.”

  “Right. It was my election.”

  “You voted, didn’t you?”

  “Whatever.”

  DECEMBER 6: MORSI: “FIFTH COLUMN AND MUBARAK LOYALISTS WORKING TO DESTABILIZE EGYPT”

  In the nights he sees her: her chest rising and falling, faster, shorter, rising, falling, feels the doctor’s hand gripping his tighter, squeezing his chest closed. He is straining for breath, he is lying on the ground and the world above him is spinning but she’s there, her hands on his chest, she is above him: an eternal darkness inside the gas mask. Her hands are on his chest. His father stands above them. Pump, he says. Pump. He flicks a ruler into the air, the conductor keeping time. One, two, three: pump. Her hands are on his chest. One, two, three: pump. She’s leaning now, down and into him, and he’s kissing the mask, kissing the glass darkness and his chest loosens into a breath and into a sudden waking sweat.

  He goes into the bathroom and pulls off his T-shirt, then turns, strains to see over his shoulder, to see his back in the mirror. The wounds have long healed, leaving scratching scars across his skin. How close were we to the same death? The file waits for him on his computer: Doctor_02022012.mp4. He does not open it.

  DECEMBER 9: MORSI’S CHIEF OF STAFF ACCUSED OF TORTURING PRISONERS IN PRESIDENTIAL PALACE

  Rania has the head of the large table in the Chaos office for the general meeting. Dozens have responded to the call for new volunteers: filmmakers, journalists, translators, academics, photographers, and more. Every chair is taken, people sit on the wooden floors, lean against the walls, make coffees in the kitchen, smoke on the balcony.

  “It’s good to see so many people here,” Rania says. “It shows how serious this crisis is. If you’re here, you understand we can’t just laugh this off. We only need to look at the history of Mussolini to see how this can spiral. Militias sent in to clear the streets, journalists killed. This is how it begins. We can laugh at them as much as we like but this is how it begins. We need to be producing content like never before. We need to dominate the media war. We have three enemies now: the Brotherhood, the army, and the police. Yes, each have differing interests—but we know for absolutely certain that there’s one interest they all share completely and that’s ending the revolution.”

  Their latest podcast, Muslim Brotherhood Cadres Kidnap and Torture Protesters Inside the Presidential Palace, is downloaded two hundred thousand times in a week.

  DECEMBER 18: MARTYRS’ FAMILIES STILL WAITING FOR JUSTICE. MORSI SILENT.

  When the transistor finally arrives with a friend traveling from the States, Khalil and Hafez set to work on building a small analog transmitter. Capacitors, resistors, the transistor all carefully soldered into a circuit, attached to a battery and an inexpensive mp3 player preloaded with a one-hour program and set to loop. Late at night they attach it high up the trunk of a tree in front of a café in Bab al-Louq and walk away.

  On Khalil’s balcony Hafez trains a GoPro on the transmitter tree while Khalil scans the radio frequencies:

  … what has been called a campaign characterized by misinformation supporters of the president mobilized enough votes to pass a new constitution that could significantly alter the character of the country in years to come and oversee an erosion of basic rights and dignities.

  “There it is,” Hafez says.

  The mp3 is a program made especially for their experiment, the narrator an older man—an actor uncle of Hafez’s—speaking in the formal Arabic of the newscaster. There is no mention of Chaos, or even the revolution.

  They say illegal radio transmissions get an automatic fifteen years. They sit back and wait. Hafez opens a beer.

  “To bloody battles and bruised arms,” he says.

  Meanwhile, youth across the country continue to be detained in military prisons and prosecuted in military courts—a practice of the army now defended in the newly passed constitution.

  “Do you believe that stuff?” Hafez asks. “About the effect of the constitution?”

  “It shows us what they’re thinking. And it makes people angry.”

  “Not angry enough to vote it down.”

  After an hour the MP3 loops:

  Hello, this is Downtown Today with the latest news. Egyptians have taken to the polls this week in what has been labeled the most divisive referendum in the country’s long history.

  After fifteen hours and thirty-nine minutes, five commandos and a ranking officer arrive in a truck furnished with antennas and two satellite dishes. They find the transmitter without any problem. They ask questions of the people in the café but do not stay long.

  “Well,” Hafez says, “either we have to build a transmitter that can broadcast for at least a mile and still be both mobile and discreet—which might be beyond us—or it looks like we’ll be sticking to the internet for now.”

  JANUARY 6: MORE ISLAMISTS APPOINTED IN CABINET RESHUFFLE

  Just six months ago they were sitting in the Greek Club, counting the votes as they came in. The Greek was full, each table a collection of revolutionists and artists and journalists, a humming of excitement vibrating through the air around them.

  Tonight is the first time in the history of the oldest civilization on earth that tomorrow’s leader is being chosen by her people.

  As night fell the numbers started coming in. He remembers Rania standing up with her phone in her hand, reading out the latest: “The Spare Tire is at thirty percent. Aboul Fotouh at twenty-three percent. Sabbahi is sitting pretty on eighteen percent. Shafiq is on seventeen percent and Amr Moussa is bringing up the rear with a measly eleven percent.”

  Results roll in from Ismailiya, Beheira, Marsa Matrouh, Suez for Morsi. Hamdeen scores wins in Alexandria, Port Said, and Damanhour. The night turned to focus on Hamdeen. Hamdeen can win Cairo. It will be Morsi versus Hamdeen. That’s a fight we can win. Everyone will rally behind Hamdeen in the run-off.

  And then Gharbeyya’s results arrived, and Daqahleyya’s, and Shafiq’s numbers started to crawl up, and then Munoufeyya, Mubarak’s hometown, lands with 55 percent of the vote going to Shafiq. Hamdeen falls behind but Morsi’s numbers are relentless, and Shafiq keeps rising and then it was the worst-case scenario. Morsi versus Shafiq. The Brotherhood versus the military. The same story that’s been played out for fifty years. There was supposed to be something different. Something different was supposed to happen.

  JANUARY 25: REVOLUTION ANNIVERSARY SPARKS MASS PROTESTS AGAINST MORSI REGIME

  We were not ready for this.

  Mariam is standing at the railings looking down at the sea of people beneath. Rania sits on a chair behind her, her head in her hands, not looking, not able to stop listening to the crowd below. Mariam’s arm is raised, her hand pointing down into the yellow darkness.

  “It’s happening again. There.”

  Tahrir is full; thousands upon thousands of
people fill the square to its concrete horizons, but there, in the middle, a shoal of people all twisting around a central point.

  “It’s happening again.”

  Khalil’s running down the dark stairs, running down and out into the square, running toward the crush swirling around Mariam’s shaking fingertip, hundreds of people all pushing and straining and shouting and reaching and Khalil forces his way past them, squeezing deeper into the crush; inch by inch he shoves past heaving shoulders and reaching arms until he sees a half-stripped body twisting in a sea of hands scratching and grabbing until it seems the woman will rip in half. Make way! Make way! Get off me! Here, this way! Bring her this way! A legion of voices screech words of help while more hands reach through the riot of bodies to grab at whatever flesh they can. She’s my sister, a boy screams, my sister, I swear she’s my sister. One man is bellowing and shoving at everyone around him—“Get away! Shame on you! Get back!”—and Khalil falls in next to him, heaving his body against the crush as a hand grabs at him and pulls at his waist and slaps hard at his face and slips into his pockets and another pulls choking at his shirt and an elbow lands in his side and a knife flashes in the streetlight. “Get away from the square!” someone shouts. “We need to get her away!” Inch by inch they push to get away, dragging the trailing crush, the young woman unconscious between them all, she’s my sister, I swear she’s my sister. There is a doorway. “Inside! Get her inside!” Push. Push. The crowd slowly grinds forward and the door hauls closed. “No one comes in! No one!” Khalil turns to face the crush, links arms with the men next to him as the crowd pushes and pulls at them but they keep their arms bound tight together against the shoving and shouting and the what are you doing, who the fuck are you, make way she’s my sister, my sister, I swear she’s my sister that calls out like a looping nightmare birdsong from the crowd. The boy, no older than fifteen, won’t stop pushing and burrowing until Khalil knees him in the gut and he spins off back into the crowd. An arm flails and metal slices air and the line breaks as people scatter from a dirty switchblade and the flame arcing through the darkness and something clubs him on the back of his head and he falls and his shin crunches and his groin twists and something snaps and a sewage grate has given out and his leg is down in it and he’s trying to haul himself out and now everyone is running because there’s a man in a black balaclava—and he’s pointing a gun at Khalil.