Otared
Page 12
By dawn, I’d sobered up, though a faint, scarcely perceptible effect could still be felt. My companions were waiting for the next drone to show up with the day’s orders, but it never came. The twenty-four hours was now up and we were free to start shooting. We readied all the ammunition, climbed to the top floor, and turned our guns on East Cairo.
I shot at those standing and walking along the Corniche, the closest road to the tower. I pointed the gun in their general direction and fired. I didn’t aim at anyone in particular. I shot at the cars that drove by, killing a number of drivers, and the vehicles piled up in the road. But none of this stopped them. After sunset, thousands trekked down to the Corniche for a reprise of the previous day’s scenes, and to me it seemed as though they weren’t there to watch the West Bank smolder, but were waiting to be shot at.
I ordered everyone to cease firing. Then I instructed them to take aim at the furthest stretches of the Corniche and blaze away indiscriminately. We hit numerous buildings in Bulaq Abul-Ela, around Tahrir, and in Abdel-Munim Riyad Square, then started picking our targets, taking out anyone we caught passing through those distant areas and hitting the cars with many rounds. I didn’t know why I was doing it, but I was happy. Enjoying myself, even. The pleasure and contentment I’d felt the morning before returned. No drone arrived asking us to stop. None of the civilians or occupation soldiers turned to look at us. Many of them must have guessed that up there at the top of the tower were snipers murdering people, but they didn’t care and made no move to stop us. After three hours of shooting off half-inch rounds, our ammo ran out. The rifles were panting in our hands, but we were in raptures.
Gradually the crowds broke up. By midnight, the Corniche was free of vehicles and foot traffic, and East Cairo was sound asleep. Not the troubled sleep of a city traumatized by the many bodies that had fallen that day, but an indifferent slumber. The hundreds of corpses scattered before us were testimony to the lethargy and brutishness that afflicted the place. Even the corpses themselves were stupid and dull; no one who’d stared into their open eyes could sympathize with them. This was the first time Egyptian citizens had been indiscriminately targeted. Previously we’d hunted down those who collaborated with the occupier and senior government officials, and maybe killed one or two others unknowingly by accident, to zero-in the scope, or even for fun (how could a day go by without any shooting?), but today was revenge—and tomorrow would be, too, and all the days to come.
The smell of burning still hung in the air and, because we were as close as could be to the black cloud suspended over our heads, we covered our noses and mouths with strips of wetted cloth to block the airborne ash and dust. I was checking the day’s haul through my scope when a group of nine or ten individuals appeared, wearing rubber masks of characters unknown to me, though I did pick out a poor imitation of actor Samir Ghanim. The masks’ broad grins, arched eyebrows, and staring eyes suggested comic actors. One of the men bent down, reaching out his hand to that of the nearest corpse, looking for a ring or watch to remove, and then going for the clothes, rummaging for cash, which he took, and on to the neck and ears, for jewelry, which he stole, and then throwing everything he’d found into a plastic bag held in his left hand. All this happened quickly, hurriedly, though it didn’t appear that they were afraid of the police or anything like that, but rather that they were rushing to strip the greatest number of corpses in the shortest time possible.
A bigger group came in their wake, wearing black trash bags that completely covered their necks, and heads, and hair, their eyes visible through irregularly ripped holes. I saw the bags plaster to their faces as they breathed in and puff out as they exhaled. The group was looking through pockets and bags, taking papers, ID cards, phones, watches, cheap rings, bags, shoes, and belts—everything the first group had left behind. Having searched the dead with frantic haste, they left, leaving nothing behind but the corpses’ clothes.
Next came a small gaggle of teens. No more than five. Fifteen or sixteen years old, say, bare-chested and very scrawny. Their skin gleamed in the low light, either from sweat or something they’d smeared on themselves. I couldn’t tell. Many tiny scars could be made out on their bare chests, and stomachs, and arms. Their heads were wrapped in sheets of newspaper and the pages of magazines, with only a single hole for their eyes. One of my colleagues said that people called them ‘cockroaches.’ I remembered what they called us: hornets. This lot were more squalid still. They stripped the clothes from the dead, one corpse at a time, leaving nothing behind, and giving special attention to the female bodies: lifting arms, clutching at breasts, and pinching thighs. Two teamed up to raise the legs of a young woman and part her thighs, then they started peering at her crotch.
I was really very tired by now, hardly strong enough to keep watching through the scope, but then one of them gave a violent jerk and I saw what he was up to.
He’d discovered that the girl was still alive. She lay there, sluggishly, limply moving her arm. She was signaling: requesting aid or asking for death. The cockroach stripped her of her clothes, shoved his trousers down, then flogged his cock erect and pushed it into her, clutching her upraised thighs. He was fucking her at a quite incredible pace, like some kind of purpose-built machine plugged into the mains, and the rest of the cockroaches gathered around. They were smoking through the sheets of newspaper they’d taken for masks, poking the cigarettes through the mouth-holes and puffing out smoke while they watched the machine at work. One of them stepped forward, felt the woman’s head, and neck, and arm, then signaled to the machine that she was done, she’d died. His gestures were unmistakable, and the cockroach suddenly fell still, his cock still in the corpse, and let her legs subside, unopposed, on either side of him. Then it was mere seconds before he was back to pumping, and thrusting, and gripping the thighs, and then he was done, and the rest of the cockroaches could take their turn.
The corpses were spread out along the length of the Corniche, thicker in some areas and thinning out to none in others. I began combing the street through the scope to see what was going on, on the lookout for more thieves. More people started showing up, searching the bodies. They weren’t masked or dressed alike in any way. They moved slowly between the dead. Looking for their relatives, of course. They just looked at the faces—wouldn’t touch the naked bodies or rifle through what clothing remained. Just looked at the faces, weeping. One large group walked together. They carried pictures in their hands and held them up to the faces of the dead. One woman walked along screaming in anguish, not looking at any of the dead faces, just wailing on and on, inconsolably, and when the others had all departed she remained, screaming intermittently until dawn. There was a man, carrying a small girl on his arm. Five or six, she looked. He was stooping over every corpse, turning the head to show her its face. He would point at the face and talk to her, and she would shake her head, then coil her little arm about his neck and bury her face in his shoulder. At each body he stopped, not leaving a single one without first pointing at its face and addressing the girl in his arms. But she always said no, moving her head very slightly, almost imperceptibly, at which the man would move on to another body and stoop.
9
THE FRESH AIR OUTSIDE WOKE me up. The smell of the insects had been acrid and unfamiliar, and I wasn’t sure if I disliked it or not, but I was sure that I’d never take karbon again. Did people realize they were smoking ants and scarabs, cockroaches and beetles?
As we came away from Manshiyat Nasr, I told the Saint I was going to Sharif Street. He said he’d accompany me if I’d no objection. And I didn’t, so long as he didn’t come with me into the room. Truth be told, I wanted him there to be my guide should I fail to find Farida. Two long years of isolation, cut off from all communication, were time enough for homes and hearts to change. The Saint would help me, for sure. Maybe he knew an officer there, or one of the brothel owners, or a pimp, but I was sure he’d find her. Burhan clung to my shoulder as usual. Feeling somehow threatened,
perhaps: compared to his friends in the barrel, Burhan was enormous, and he’d have been a prize find for any karbon dealer.
We had to get a taxi. We flagged one down near Manshiyat Nasr and the Saint told the driver, “Downtown. . . .” The atmosphere inside the brand new cab seemed sterile: the cold breeze from the air-conditioning vents had no smell. I’d forgotten about air-conditioning. Up in the tower, you breathed nothing but pure polluted air.
The Saint, seated by the driver, turned to me. “The whole country’s smoking karbon these days.” Talking about karbon without a thought for the driver surprised me quite a bit. Not that it really mattered, but conversations about drugs always used to be a private affair.
The Saint went on: “You don’t remember what happened yesterday, am I right? That’s one of its effects, my friend, and that’s what people like about it. To put it simply, you turn into two people: you’re completely sunk in darkness—no imagination there, no hallucinations, colors, or memories; you forget everything, you won’t even remember your name—and on the other hand, your body and mind engage perfectly with the world around you. You were walking with me and we were talking. You were a perfect gentleman: talking politely, complimenting me, getting embarrassed when I swore. You don’t remember it now, of course, and that’s another of karbon’s effects: anything that happens after you’ve taken it won’t fix in your memory; it won’t stay put in that mysterious part of your brain, because it’s never stored there in the first place. All you recall is being lost in the darkness for a minute or two, though you’re gone for at least three hours. Karbon makes people cleave closer to reality. It uncouples imagination from reality. Karbon users never make mistakes at work, never get bored, never drift off into daydreams and lose sight of the job. Their words and responses are carefully weighed against the questions they’re asked: they flatter when they have to and rarely go on the attack. If hash is banned in the workplace, then karbon’s a positive requirement—these days, it’s the only reason to be good at your job.”
I no longer cared about the driver listening in. What the Saint was telling me was bona fide magic. If I were king of Egypt, I’d legalize the stuff.
“The only thing is that it blocks inventiveness, creativity,” he said. “But who ever complained of a lack of creativity?”
“Does that mean you’re two people now?” I asked him. “I don’t quite get the way it works.”
“The Saint who’s talking to you now is the practical, appealing version: the uninventive, optimistic, cheerful, hardworking me. The other version, in the darkness, is squatting motionless, perfectly suppressed: no voice, no impact on my actions.”
“And because your memory won’t be storing anything that’s happening now—this conversation, I mean, getting into the taxi, the route we take, maybe events for many hours to come—because of that, you won’t remember any of it when the karbon wears off? You’ll just come out of what you call ‘the darkness’ into the real world, and that will be it?”
“Exactly,” replied the Saint. “That might not sound like fun, but what’s fun in this life anyway? Everyone’s trying to get out, even if it means going somewhere dark where they’re not aware of anything. It’s still better than what we’ve got.”
I glanced at the taxi driver, waiting for him to intervene. The conversation had opened up and he was surely going to have to have his say soon.
“It also makes those around the karboner much more open. Anything you say and I hear now I won’t remember later. Whatever I’m aware of now will be wiped out when I come back from the darkness. By the way, you went into the darkness, right? What did you call it?”
“I didn’t think of it as darkness,” I said. “I thought it was blackness at first, then I saw that it was nothingness itself.”
He laughed: “Nothingness itself! First time I’ve heard that expression. You found yourself in nothingness.”
“That’s right, nothing around me: no light, no objects, no smell, no sensation, no thoughts even. That’s nothingness. No other word for it. Aren’t you in nothingness right now?”
The Saint shut up briefly and shifted in his seat, looking out through the windshield. Then he said: “Maybe it is nothingness, but I’ve no idea where I am right now. I’ve no idea what’s going on where I actually am. But I remember where I was the previous times, and it’s nothingness. No other way to describe it.”
“What about you, driver?” I said, trying to draw the man into the conversation. “You tried karbon?”
The Saint turned to me again. “If the guy hasn’t interrupted us up till now, then that definitely means he’s on karbon. That’s the only explanation for such a courteous, unassuming manner.” Then he turned to the driver: “Isn’t that right, friend?” The driver nodded and I saw the ghost of a smile.
I wasn’t going to take any karbon now, though—I wasn’t going to be under the influence when I met Farida. Why forget? Didn’t I say that I’d never use it again? Then I had a thought: “Saint?” I said, “Is someone who smokes karbon ‘karbonized?’”
“Not quite,” he replied. “We say ‘karboned.’ Like, ‘I’m karboning’ or ‘we’re karboned’ or ‘did you karbon today?’ Then you can say, ‘he’s a real karboner, he karbons every week,’ or ‘that office worker’s a full-on karbonator, he karbons every day,’ and so on.”
“Do the office workers really karbon every day?”
“Everyone karbons every day, friend. The whole country’s karboned. You’re never going to stop that or even reduce it. Do you want to know when it is that people come off the karbon? It’s when they go to Sharif Street, when they smoke hash, or drink, or sleep with their wives or lovers. When they hold executions in the public squares. On execution day, you’ll see what you’ve never seen before.”
“I’ve seen it,” I said.
“As regards our conversation this morning, people these days believe that what happens to criminals before they’re executed absolves them of one third of their sins, the executions themselves remove another third, and the final third is canceled by what follows. What comes after death isn’t a torment for the dead, of course, but for us: a charitable endowment in the form of suffering for others.”
I had only ever witnessed the one execution, in Tahrir Square. I’d heard of people being sentenced to die in Ataba, Ramses, Abbasiya, and Roxy, but I never saw anything or knew what had happened. “What comes after execution?” I asked him: “I’ve only seen one of them.”
“Of course, you were up in the tower. Which one did you see?”
“The first one, when they impaled five guys on stakes.”
“It was different then. People were terrified. They weren’t used to watching executions and didn’t know how to deal with it. Maybe we’ll get to see one or two in the days ahead. In any case, they announce the time and place the sentence will be carried out a few hours in advance. Who knows?” he went on, “maybe some of us will be carrying out executions soon.”
True. We’d be carrying out a mass execution soon enough. Then we’d see how people dealt with it.
The car entered Sharif Street. The driver hadn’t opened his mouth once. Stretching his arms, the Saint said, “I didn’t ask for Sharif Street right away. People going there are usually after the brothels, and the cab drivers take roundabout routes to push up the fare. Because they’re already ashamed of what they’re there for, the passengers never like to argue and the drivers take advantage. This one’s karboned, though; I knew it almost the instant we got in. That’s why he won’t cheat us and why I told him where we were heading when we were halfway here: as you can see, he took us the shortest route possible.”
The Saint rummaged in his inside jacket pocket and produced a small leather bag. He opened it and extracted the contents, saying, “You see why everyone has to be karboned?”
The Saint had taken out a mask made of fabric. He unfastened the straps at the back. A soft mask, light to the touch, like silk. He put it on and tightened the straps arou
nd his head with both hands. It was the face of Anwar al-Sadat—the broad smile, great big gleaming white teeth, and dark skin.
“If you’ve got a mask, you should put it on now,” he said. I took my mask from my bag and put it on, quickly as was my habit, and as I did the Saint cried, “What’s that? That’s the Buddha, right? That’s the loveliest, most beautifully made mask I’ve seen in my life! More lovely than that mask of Maryam Fakhr al-Din even!”
I adored Maryam Fakhr al-Din’s face. There was nothing ugly or even the slightest bit average about it in my view, and after she’d grown old I would look at her creased face and smile regardless: I knew those wrinkles and folds were the price to pay for her former beauty. “Who wears the Maryam Fakhr al-Din mask?” I asked the Saint. “Someone famous? Do you know her?”
I heard a chuckle from beneath his mask. “No, no, it’s a notorious sissy who works in a brothel called the House of Martyrs at the end of this street.”
I lifted my gaze and saw the brightly lit street, a treat for the eyes. Everyone, without exception, was masked.
The Saint went on: “What’s lovely about it is that the mask isn’t colored like mine, but black and white, just how the young Maryam Fakhr al-Din looked in the old movies. We’re passing Studio Masr, where male clients wear Shukry Sarhan masks and the women are Leila Murad.”
None of us spoke. I was trying to drive the old movies out of my head, but the storm of images was distracting me from the thing I’d come here for. I surrendered to the endless stream of footage and stars. We were passing by a building with Studio Masr written on its window, and I spied garishly lit portraits of famous actresses and singers facing out into the street. Then I noticed that their features were somehow wrong and realized that these weren’t pictures of actresses and singers, but of masked whores instead. The likenesses scrolled by: Amina Rizk, Fairuz, Zeinat Sedki. . . .