Otared

by Mohammad Rabie

  I gave a lot of thought to what had happened and was convinced that they had known we wouldn’t resist. And, of course, that they’d be able to beat the Egyptian army outright. That accomplished, the rest was just a jaunt through a fertile land, green and populous.

  I refused to work. Something beyond all understanding was taking place around me. A serene madness afflicted Egyptians, allowing them to accept everything which had happened in recent months, and the same madness claimed the police. I’d do anything, I decided, but I’d never work for the occupier. Even as the majority of my former colleagues were going back to their posts, and stations, and salaries, dissenters such as myself were almost too few to mention. Maybe no more than a thousand officers. I was in about as bad a state as could be when a Maltese armored car was blown up on Ramses Street. An hour after the explosion, the Egyptian resistance announced that this was its first operation and would not be its last. I realized then that I was not alone.

  The pace picked up thereafter. The resistance carried out assassinations of occupation soldiers, blew up their armored cars and tanks, mortared their bases, and launched missiles at their jets. In the space of a week, more than one hundred Maltese officers and soldiers lay dead, and at the end of it I received a call from an old colleague asking to meet up. The request was friendly, and down the line his voice seemed devoid of enthusiasm or excitement. Sitting at the café surrounded by people, Major Karim Bahaa al-Din asked me to join the resistance. Just like that, simple as could be, and I wasted no time making my delight clear and accepting his offer. What Bahaa then said was truly gratifying: the resistance was made up of former police officers plus a very small number of former army men, who were not kept fully informed and were regarded as second-class members, entrusted only with suicide missions or high-risk operations. There was, in addition, an even smaller number of civilians, prompted by patriotic fervor to carry out foolish but nonetheless effective acts with the aim of ending the occupation. They spied or passed on information, that was all. They didn’t know the police officers, the names of the leaders, or the meeting places, and they weren’t armed, though any one of them who wanted to volunteer was handed a blade and let loose on the enemy. Set up like this, the Egyptian resistance was our paradise: a perfect instance of the Egyptian police service’s acumen, its members’ devotion to the service of their homeland, and their wary reluctance to bring outsiders into their circle, even if they were true patriots and loathed the occupation, as many regular citizens surely did. We all knew the reasons—the uncountably many reasons—why we alone should occupy the most important positions inside the resistance. For instance, civilians are essentially weak, they prefer their little families and trifling pleasures, and they aren’t trained to use weapons, to work in groups, or to take responsibility. Even when they are—like army officers, for example—they inevitably lack the ability to think clearly in a tight spot. Karim said that the army guys had developed this limitless, suicidal bravery, its source their shameful defeat and a desire to compensate for their grave sin against the nation. They were in a continual and incurable state of torment, he said, and they were prepared to kill themselves in the cause of wounding a single occupation soldier. That seemed right and proper, and I reflected that by the time the occupation was over—and I’d no idea when that would be—we would have got rid of all of them. In the end, who wants the army to run the country again?

  The resistance belonged to us, and to us alone: a huge organization run by the cream of the cops, whose first and only purpose was to expel the occupier. The fact is, I couldn’t have cared less about the army officers. They were finished the first day of the occupation, and they’d stay that way unless we said otherwise. What bothered me was the credulousness of the civilians in our ranks. From a colleague of mine, I learned that they were just throwing their lives away, and it was only when I saw that the overwhelming majority of Egyptians were living under occupation in perfect contentment that I felt sympathy for them—there are people who still care about this country, I told myself.

  Following this first encounter, another colleague asked to meet me. A brigadier general this time. I didn’t recognize him and I hadn’t ever heard his name, and I even had my doubts about whether he was an officer at all, but my fears vanished when I saw him walking over to where I sat in the restaurant in Heliopolis. He moved very slowly, as befits an officer whose mind is busy with thinking, not with throwing his body around. This was how a brigadier general walked, and this was how he sat, and no sooner was he sitting, in fact, than he told me his name and a little about the work he’d done with the Interior Ministry. Brigadier General Adel al-Shawarebi, a mid-ranking figure in the leadership of the resistance, who despite his poker face and dead eyes warmed up considerably after just five minutes of conversation, as though he’d been waiting to get comfortable with me just as I had been with him. We talked a lot about the state of the country and when I voiced my surprise at how long the occupation had lasted and the resistance’s almost total invisibility, he said that this was infinitely preferable to getting civilians involved: their abstention would only emphasize the role we played in military operations inside the cities. We were currently engaged in a guerrilla war, he said, and no one was better suited to that than us. I interrupted to tell him that my sole condition for signing up was that this structure be preserved unchanged: police officers at the center and army officers and civilians on the periphery and powerless. He laughed and said, “If only the civilians cared!” and that the leadership couldn’t involve them even if it really wanted to. The real problem was the army officers, which was why they were taking care to dispose of them through high-risk operations. This tactic would never change, and it seemed that the army officers themselves were well aware that this policy was being applied to them and to them alone, and that moreover they appeared to be perfectly satisfied with the arrangement. “In the end, we’re at war, and in any war there are casualties. Why shouldn’t those casualties come from the side that lost us the country in the first place?”

  His words put me at my ease. Then he told me that they wanted me as a sniper. I mustn’t take too long making my mind up and I would begin work in short order.

  I thought back to my time as a sniper with the Airport Police and Public Protection Authority. For ten years, I’d held that rifle, gazing out at the world through scopes for hours on end, and after a brief struggle had surrendered to the temptation to spy on people. And I’d shot four of them.

  “We know you never miss,” said Colonel Adel.

  And really, I never had. Even after leaving Public Protection and going to work for other branches of the service, such as homicide, I’d never missed. I’d practice out in the desert east of Cairo and from time to time go off to Sinai “to hunt gazelles.” I’d never aimed at the gazelles—I would zero in on the black rocks that covered the open ground. Hunting gazelles I regarded as beneath a man who’d hunted men; stones were more honorable by far. My companions on the first hunting expedition made fun of me, but they quickly realized I couldn’t be screwing up every time and that I must be deliberately leaving the gazelles be. Even in Sinai, I’d never fired wide.

  I remembered the long vigils: the stillness that comes while waiting for a viable target to appear, reporting in that a target was available, waiting the few moments for the green light to be given, the stillness of the instant that followed, and the bullet vanishing into the target. I’d always had my breathing under control. Never had to puff and pant to pull in more oxygen. My throat never dried up. Adrenalin never surged through my veins. Aiming and firing as easily as running a hand through my hair. Glorious memories, for sure.

  I agreed on the spot, and made it clear I was ready to go to work without any conditions or reservations. The only difficulty was that I didn’t own a weapon at present and the resistance would have to provide me with rifle and scope. He smiled and said that this was not a problem.

  In the six months that followed, I killed many peo
ple, many more than I’d killed as an officer of the Interior Ministry. Previously, the people I’d shot had been attempting to force their way into the places I protected, or trying to assassinate or assault the people I guarded. Simple, clean operations with no complications. As a key operative in these missions, I had known exactly what was what: waiting for my orders in accordance with standard procedure, firing the bullet that kept the person I was protecting safe. Working for the resistance, everything was different.

  The risk was far greater. I was exposed to enemy fire at all times, at risk of arrest and trial for murder, or for resisting the authorities, or for being in possession of an unlicensed firearm. Joining the resistance was patriotic, but it was against the law, and murder was a crime as it had always been. But it was necessary to get rid of the occupier.

  I took up positions on rooftops all over the city, until I came to know the features of each roof and flight of stairs by heart. I used many versions of my beloved Dragunovs, from advanced Romanian models to perfect Chinese-made imitations, and for several days I worked with one particularly beautiful Russian variant. In the six months before I climbed the tower, my darling Dragunov was my constant companion.

  For those six months, I killed officers and soldiers from the twin armies of occupation, and I killed those who collaborated with them: Egyptian policemen, former Egyptian army officers, government workers, and ministers.

  I killed the minister of culture as he left an art exhibition in Garden City. I was set up in the building where the exhibition was being held and I watched him emerge, bid goodbye to the artists, and get into his car. I let the car move off down the street, then fired three shots, the first passing through his head, and the second and third penetrating the back seat and lodging in his body. I hit the minister of the environment with a shot to the head from a standing stance. The rifle was resting on a parked car in the street outside his residence. I fired the bullet, dropped the rifle, and calmly walked out of the street. No one gave me a second glance. The resistance was at its strongest back then, and no one dared look me in the face. I killed civilians, those who had regular dealings with the occupation soldiers: heads of companies and institutions that provided them with food and equipment. They had the wherewithal to provide protection for themselves and their families, and assassinating them had become all but impossible without a sniper’s rifle. I killed lots of them. I killed an officer after he had taken a first and last sip of coffee, and I killed the waiter who set the cup before him. The waiter remained frozen in place for several seconds after the bullet struck the officer; he must have known the next one was for him. I accidentally killed a civilian when I shot an officer and a round passed through his chest and hit the man in the thigh. I saw his thigh bleeding heavily, and I saw him crawling in an effort to escape, and I knew he would die from loss of blood. I killed the Egyptian wife of the commander of the Cairo Military Zone. I killed her as she stood there at a public gathering to receive guests’ good wishes for her honeymoon and a happy marriage. I shot her in the head from a building at a distance of less than twenty meters, and at first no one realized what had happened, so I went on firing and killed five people I didn’t know, then shot at random into the crowd. I killed a total of twenty individuals that day. I killed the former Egyptian chief of staff, the man who’d been responsible for the Egyptian army, the very army that had been wiped from the face of the earth in accordance with a precisely executed plan. Planes, tanks, armored cars, troop carriers, trucks—anything with an engine was destroyed on the first day while this fellow sat at his desk trying to get through to the Americans and failing. Pissing his military pants, no doubt, as reports came through of the army’s rapid collapse, and no one picking up. It had been 1967 all over again. A grim day. I was going to shoot him in the head as he walked his granddaughter to school but I shot out his liver instead, leaving his granddaughter bent over him, trying to stanch the bleeding with her hand. I fired on anyone who approached to try to assist them and I fired on the first ambulance to reach the scene a full hour later. The man was dead by then and his granddaughter had stopped crying and was now staring at his bloody body, the sticky softness of the gore beneath her fingernails lubricating the palm with which she rubbed his dead hand. For the duration of that hour, I was at risk of being discovered, killed even, at the very least of being arrested, but the former chief of staff deserved the torment of blood loss, of the heat leaving his limbs, and the sight of the fear in his granddaughter’s eyes, of the final spasm. I was tormenting the man and I was happy.

  These were months of sprinting, climbing stairs, leaping away over rooftops, and of weighing up situations. Should I leave the rifle or carry it with me as I make my escape? Will the pedestrians notice me? Will an occupation soldier shoot at me? Do I really have to kill this one, or is it pointless? Is killing this one a punishment or a message?

  In my power to kill people there was a measure of the divine.

  3

  I WAS APPROACHED BY A young man smelling of soap—he seemed to me to have just had a bath and shaved—and gripping a long-barreled shotgun of local manufacture in his two clean hands. His nails were carefully clipped and filed. I looked like a beggar by comparison: I reeked of sweat, my clothes were filthy, and my hands were smeared with the soil I’d dug up not long before.

  For those like me with no papers, the inside of the bridge was the only way to move between Cairo’s two halves, despite the risks. You could lose your money and your possessions. You could lose your life. But crossing over the bridge was impossible. For me, the checkpoints were traps. And the toll down here wasn’t high: just a single pack of cigarettes. Cheap to them and cheap to me. I was going to cross as a regular citizen. They had no idea I was with the resistance, and I couldn’t tell if they were with the resistance or just thugs protecting their source of income. I was carrying nothing of any value and the journey was a very short one, just a kilometer or so through the bridge.

  Calmly, the young man said:

  “Price of entry is one unopened packet of cigarettes. No weapons here. If you’re carrying a weapon, chuck it down that hole, now. No talking to the pedestrians and no looking at their faces. If you’re carrying a mask, then put it on; otherwise cover your face with a scarf or a sheet of newspaper. If you don’t have those, then here’s a paper bag you can put over your head. This is for your own protection. Don’t reveal your name or identity to any of the pedestrians or vendors, asleep or awake. The inner bridge isn’t just a passage like it used to be—it’s a place where lots of things are bought and sold. I won’t forbid you to buy anything from the vendors, but all purchases are made at your own risk. Don’t come to me complaining that you’ve been robbed or cheated. Now, on your way.”

  I placed the cigarettes in his hand. I took the mask from my bag, put it on my face, and fastened it to my head with the leather strap. Now I was ready to cross.

  The darkness pressed in on every side. Nothing could be seen ahead. To my rear was the youth and the fading scent of his soap, his comrades clustered around him, watching me. With their clubs and short swords, they looked like real guards. What little pale light came from the hole fell across the lower halves of their bodies. I took a few paces forward and distant sounds reached me from the depths of the tunnel. There were scattered gleams of colored light, the rattle of blades and chains.

  The first thing I saw was a woman. She looked to be about sixty years old, her features obscured by a piece of cloth wrapped around her face, like a turban covering her entire head. She wore nothing else, and the sagging flesh of her breasts and shoulders gave away her age. Her appearance was overwhelming. The sudden nakedness and the covered face threw me completely off balance. I’d never before seen a naked woman in a public place. Without thinking, I lifted my hand to my own face, checking that the mask was fixed in place. I felt properly secure now. She was stroking her thigh with her palm, and then she squeezed her right tit and in a hoarse, unruffled voice asked: “Five for five
?”

  I walked on, expecting the worst.

  I wouldn’t have guessed that the bridge had been built with a tunnel like this inside it: two walls, a floor, and a ceiling, all cement. Vast cables and pipes stretched the length of the tunnel along the ground, clearly visible to the passerby through gaps in the long wooden planks that covered them and that had almost certainly been placed there by those using the tunnel to protect against the risk of electric shock should the cables fray, and in order that the pipes wouldn’t spring leaks or break if trodden on. There were a number of shacks on both sides of the passageway, a meter across and two meters high, and over the entrance to each one hung a blackout curtain, blocking what little illumination was given off by the lights that dangled from the tunnel’s ceiling. Some of the curtains were lowered, and some were raised to show what lay inside. Curiosity got the better of me. I hadn’t laid hands on a woman for a long time, and the warmth of the place and the ever-present sense of danger urged me to stop. Outside what I judged to be the most orderly of the shacks, I halted. There were no pedestrians nearby, and a thin girl sat on a raised chair outside the curtain. In the wan light, her legs looked soft and smooth. Her face was small with regular features, and embellished with the dark red of her lipstick. She wore a light robe whose open neck displayed her throat and cleavage. “Five for five,” she said, and though I didn’t understand what she meant, I nodded to seal the deal and followed her inside, and she lowered the curtain behind us.

  There were pictures of naked women stuck up on the walls. I was standing, looking around, and trying to avoid the girl’s eyes. Working rapidly, she undid my belt, tugged down my trousers, took my cock in her mouth, and sucked it until it stiffened. Then she sat me on the mattress and rode me. When I tried removing her robe, she checked my hand, gripped the hem herself, and in a single movement pulled it off to leave herself completely naked before me. She clutched her breasts as she bounced wordlessly around on my cock, and I stared hard at her chest and shoulders, in awe of a sinuous grace I’d not sampled for so long. I squeezed her breasts and she bounced faster, trying to escape my grip, but I wouldn’t let go, and lifting my gaze I saw her face clearly for the first time. Her right eye looked wrong, staring off to one side and not moving like the other. She picked up speed and moaned. It was all an act, but because she moved so rapidly, the surface of her dead eye dropped out onto the mattress, revealing a truly damaged orb beneath, and then I realized that it must have been some sort of artificial covering. Stunned, I released her breasts, and she lowered her good eye, then closed it, and now it became clear that the eyelid of her damaged eye was missing or not working; a single gray eye stared out at me, its surface marked by faint crooked lines: a blind eye, unseeing but open wide, its upper lid torn and lashless. She moved closer to hide her face from me and ran her fingers through my hair, and as usual I couldn’t sense that I was nearly there, and at that very instant I came.