Otared

by Mohammad Rabie

  I slumped further still and leaned my head against the chair’s back. I hadn’t realized it until now, but I was drooling; I could feel its warmth against the cold skin of my chin.

  “I am here to make you and others understand what is taking place. I am here with you; one of you. I have seen my torment before me, so clear that I might reach out and touch it. Just imagine: I remember nothing but my torment. No images or sounds but those I saw and heard in my torment. This is what occupies my thoughts, and nothing else besides, yet I know that what is happening around me is terrifying, as befits a hell that is coming to an end. I smell it in the absolute despair of the people, just as I smelled it on you when you entered. You are in the depths of despair, and this is good. I have not smelled hope for so long now, you know.”

  My head lolled to one side. My body was heavy, like a dead man’s. Slowly, I began to lose consciousness.

  “I know that this knowledge brings you pain. You keep it in and are afraid to pass it on to others. But your knowledge is your own. You cannot pass it on, not even to Farida. What you know, many others like you know. They learned it the same way and all for different reasons, but no one ever speaks of it. Even I do not speak of it if I can help it. Be comforted therefore. Be at peace with what is happening.”

  I woke to Farida shaking me by the shoulder, and immediately everything Zahra had said to me came rushing back. But Farida was looking at me accusingly. She asked how I could go to sleep, and her not gone ten minutes; how I could nod off in my chair, a guest in a stranger’s house. And for a moment, all Zahra’s talk seemed like a dream. Farida was telling me off for forgetting my manners, my duties as a guest. Silently, I got to my feet, Zahra’s words in my thoughts, at peace with everything.

  At the end of the narrow street, I saw a dark-skinned man energetically addressing a woman selling vegetables. He was raising what remained of a right arm lopped off at the elbow, supporting it with his left hand and telling the woman she’d “done the girl wrong” by “consenting to the marriage.”

  Farida and I stood side by side, waiting for a taxi. The street was empty save for a few pedestrians and passing cars, and in the space between the two cars parked next to us, I spotted three cats. A little kitten, barely aware of what was taking place around her; a second, bigger cat, clearly agitated; and between the two of them, a third, its mouth agape and tremors running through its body every few seconds. It was dying.

  The kitten started licking itself, without a thought for the dying cat. The middle cat, meanwhile, licked furiously at the dying cat’s fur, at a speed quite out of keeping with death’s solemnity. I looked for signs of a wound or blood on the dying cat’s fur, but couldn’t see anything. Out of the corner of my eye, I kept a watch on Farida. I didn’t want her to see what I saw, but she was staring out in the direction of the approaching traffic, waiting for the taxi. As I turned back to the cats, the big one moved around the dying cat, stepped over its body, and resumed its licking; then, as the dying cat bucked violently upward, the big cat opened its mouth wide and closed it over the other’s head, then proceeded to take the head further and further into its mouth. The dying cat was shuddering, neck twisting as its head disappeared into the big cat’s maw, but then the big cat choked and coughed the head out. For a moment, the dying cat was still, then it started to tremble once again. A taxi pulled up in front of me, hiding them from view.

  I sat in the back seat, struggling to keep the big cat in sight as it tried to get the dying cat’s head back inside its mouth. This time, it managed to get the whole thing in; and though it looked like it was gagging, it didn’t let it go. The dying cat was in its final throes, the big cat rigid as a statue, and the kitten still licking itself.

  6

  THERE WAS THIS FEELING OF blankness. Maybe I’m exaggerating—it wasn’t a feeling—but I remember being in despair and then shrugging off that despair.

  I called everyone I knew, looking for a pistol. They all told me that getting hold of a gun was impossible right now. The police themselves were short of guns and ammunition. Anything and everything the Knights of Malta had left behind had been scooped up by the army. They hadn’t left a single bullet or gun for anyone else, and I was told that even officers from the Interior Ministry were carrying backstreet zip guns instead of automatics. Fine, so I’d find myself a zip gun.

  If I had been any good with daggers or knives, I wouldn’t have hesitated. It was far easier to get hold of them than firearms and all the fuss that came with them: no ammo, no cleaning, no bullets jammed in the barrel, no fear of accidentally shooting off a round or the firing pin exploding. All I needed was a strong arm and a familiarity with the locations of the body’s vital organs.

  Farida was late home every night, not getting in before 2 a.m., always very tired and falling deep asleep in no time. Despite her approaches, I wouldn’t talk to her. I would even snap at her, quite out of character, if she tried to snuggle up. I couldn’t touch her when she was karboned. What would be the point of pleasure that she wouldn’t remember?

  And so I took to going out before she returned. Walking the streets by night and not coming home until I was sure she’d be asleep.

  A few days previously, I had passed a street sweeper. He was proceeding painfully slowly, sweeping nothing, just pushing his broom over the dust-free sidewalk. As though he were waiting for someone, or working merely to satisfy anyone who might be watching. I barked at him, but he didn’t move—and when I punched him in the back, he turned to me with a blank, expressionless face, then resumed his sweeping. I snatched the huge broom from him and threw it to one side, and he went over, picked it up, then returned to the same spot in front of me, sweeping the ground as though issuing a challenge.

  The wooden pole I was carrying was too kind to him. It would bounce right back each time I smacked it into his head. Metal was heavier and more rigid: so much more effective. I had to hit him a lot before his skull was fully flattened out. It was utterly draining: a hundred or more blows. What hurt my hands were the misses, when the pole smacked into the asphalt. It really hurt, and it occurred to me just then that three or four rounds—or just a single bullet to the head—were infinitely preferable to a hundred blows with a club. Faster.

  I thought of the rifle I had hidden by the Cairo Tower, but that wouldn’t do: its extra-long barrel was cumbersome, and I had no desire to go back to sniping. It wasn’t to be arbitrary like it had been before. Now, I had to choose whom I would send to heaven. But how? Was there some list or some instinctive understanding of those who deserved mercy? I mustn’t complicate things unnecessarily.

  I snatched a plastic bag from the hand of a woman in her fifties. I needed it. A big bag, full of tomatoes and cucumbers. I emptied the contents onto the ground. She screamed at first, a short yelp that died straight away. I covered her head with the bag in an effort to suffocate her. It was a particularly tricky maneuver, and though I was calm and was asking her to remain calm she wouldn’t settle, even when I told her that we were in hell and that I knew she knew this. She fell still for a second, then flared up again, gabbling words that mostly passed me by. She was asking me to give her an hour. What? An hour? I tell you you’re off to heaven, and you say wait an hour? I ignored her request and, lifting the bag off her head, found no alternative than to stick my fingers in her mouth and wrench out her lower jaw. Dislocating a jaw didn’t turn out to be too difficult. Wiggle it left and right a bit, a series of sharp downward jerks, then more wiggling, rougher than before, and the bone gives way completely and you’re left with only tendons, skin, and flesh, and ripping through those is easy. Her whole jaw came away as she fell forward. I tried disposing of the blood-slicked mandible, but its teeth were sunk deep into my palm.

  At last I heard from the Saint. I spoke to him with real affection. I was genuinely happy, and it struck me that for months now I hadn’t clapped eyes on anyone I knew except Farida. True, I didn’t know the Saint well, but even so we’d been through a lot together.
From a mutual acquaintance, an officer at the ministry, the Saint had heard I was looking for a gun. He said he’d be able to get hold of a brand new Beretta and two boxes of 9-mm ammunition, the best news I’d heard in a long time. Even when I’d been an officer myself, laying hands on a Beretta had been difficult. Oh, Saint, what a saint you are. Being who he was, he asked for two kilos of karbon in exchange for the gun and rounds. Really, Saint? You can’t get hold of karbon?

  We met at the intersection of Galaa and July 26th Streets. I was standing on the sidewalk, waiting, and he drove by in an old car. He handed me the bundle containing the automatic and the ammo, and I passed him the karbon. Not a word was said. He looked at me for second before we both burst out laughing. Then he got out and we embraced. Saint, where are the golden days of ignorance now?

  Barter was best these days, he said. The country was in a state of permanent decline, but there was no inflation and “that whore was valueless.” And when I asked him who this whore was, he answered, “The pound,” and I laughed.

  But the meeting wasn’t going to end that simply. The Saint hadn’t asked me why I wanted the gun, and our bargain was extremely unfair on him: a kilo of karbon was worth much less than a new Beretta.

  Sitting in his car, testing out the automatic and loading rounds into its magazine, I asked, “So when’s the big day, Saint?”

  I had no idea that I was going to ask a question like that. I’d never dreamed that I’d have the courage to declare my knowledge to anyone else. The Saint, fiddling with the bag of karbon, froze for a couple of seconds, then closed the bag, reached out, and felt under the seat. “You’ll be getting another pistol in two days,” he said, “and next time it will be a gift from me. I’m rationing the bullets, so don’t go shooting them off at random. Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I must be going.”

  I got out, having filled two clips with bullets. The Beretta was at my waist, tucked between trousers and underpants: my preferred carry. It suggested massive indifference. The Saint started the engine and, leaning over the passenger seat, craned his head until he could see me: “No man knows when the Day shall come.”

  The Beretta was a really lovely piece, American-made, not Italian as the Saint had told me. He was already long gone when, still standing on the same spot on the sidewalk, I depressed the safety catch and loosed my bullets into the passersby. They screamed a bit. Some wept. Others stampeded. But the rest just plodded glumly along as, all around them, people dropped, thrashing and keening. I didn’t kill many, since I wasn’t aiming for heads and chests. I swapped a full clip for the empty one, and this time I took aim, but in my haste I missed a lot. Then I pulled myself together and started pointing the gun at people’s eyes. Close range.

  I was wandering along in no particular direction, not bothering to conceal the pistol but brandishing it in their faces, and whenever I saw someone I wanted to kill, I would block their way—menacing them until they stopped—then raise the Beretta and shoot straight into their eye. No room for error that way. The bullet can’t deviate like it does when it strikes the outside of the skull, but instead it penetrates the eyeball and the delicate bone behind it, then on through the brain and the back of the skull. The exit wound is, of course, bigger, and the brain scatters out, and after all that the chances of the victim still being alive are nil. But the certainty came at a price. I had to stand upright, face to face with the target. Had to make him fear me and hold still for that single second.

  Before I reached the apartment, I’d emptied both boxes; one hundred rounds, and I’d killed less than forty. Not my usual efficiency. I’d have to be more careful from here on. I was walking down al-Azhar Street, and I knew I had to kill those around me, but I was letting them go on their way unopposed. Then, about a hundred meters before my building, my resistance crumbled. I beat two people to death with the Beretta: smashed a hole in the skull of the first with the barrel, and gouged out the eye of the second the same way. I worried that the gun might break from the repeated impacts, but I needed to kill them.

  I got home. Farida was sleeping, and the most terrible thought urged itself on me: to kill her now, right now, no dragging my feet. But the thought seemed truly evil, not fit for one sent to deliver folk to heaven. I wasn’t sending them to heaven because I wanted to, but because their time had come.

  But I didn’t sleep. That I’d run out of bullets bothered me, and I called up the Saint again, asking him for any amount of ammo he could lay his hands on. I heard him laugh loudly as he asked whether I’d really shot off all one hundred or just lost some. I mustn’t worry about lack of ammo, he told me. I mustn’t worry about anything at all. But he asked me to wait just two days: he’d meet me, and bring another gun and a large quantity of rounds. Better than a Beretta this time: a Glock in prime condition.

  The Saint’s words rang in my ears. He didn’t know when the Day was coming, but this attitude of his suggested that it was already upon us, had been for quite some time. What if it had come thousands of years ago? Our whole history a fantasy: all these prophets and messengers, all the wars, and states, and cultures, all these ideas, and all these words, all these beings and creatures—born in hell.

  Maybe the real world had been completely different from the one we lived in now. Had we lived on another planet, on other worlds? Had we been humans there, or were these bodies of ours, too, a cryptic torment?

  7

  A KNIFE, I DISCOVERED, WOULD stay cold for minutes, a little longer than it took an ice cube to melt. I’d taken to putting several knives in the fridge and taking them out to hold the blade against my palm until the chill stung me, then moving the knife to temple and cheek, to brow and neck, then around my body: chest, and arm, and armpit, and thigh. And I’d hold it beneath my balls, to feel the cold almost gone, the blade so close to slicing the sensitive flesh. After doing this a few times, I deliberately cut my foot. No blood came out, nor did I see any blood when I made the wound deeper. The flesh showed dark blue.

  I left the knife and the wound, and sent a text to Farida—Is human flesh blue? I thought it was pink or red—then set the phone aside to take another look at the wound. A few seconds later, I got her reply: Of course it’s blue, and dark as well. Who told you it was red? Farida wasn’t busy, it seemed.

  Are you free? I wrote. Do have any clients today?

  Two sweet ones. One of them comes before he touches me.

  Such variety in hell! There are still beginners!

  The johns aren’t what they used to be . . . , I wrote.

  I might be back late today. I’m staying up with the girls.

  Girls? You filthy little bitch!

  Hahahaha! That’s no way for an upstanding officer to talk!

  I hadn’t thought of myself as an officer for a while. All the years on the job had become meaningless, and the months up the tower, too, had slid from my memory. Everything I’d done had no importance now—was as though it never had been at all—and I tried to recall the last time I’d given a thought to public affairs, but couldn’t. The people had elected a whole load of military men and police officers to the first parliament, then more to the next, and now they were thinking of forming a third parliament for no other reason than to bring in yet more officers. There must be a whole lot of people fighting over the shitheap outside, each grasping his golden spoon and jostling for a glob.

  I had soon tired of my work—just two years and all the zeal was gone; my faith in the resistance had ended the day I came down from the tower. As for what I was doing now, it was what I was here for. I didn’t want to sleep a wink in the days that lay ahead. I wanted never-ending ammunition and guns without limit. My primary mission: to deliver people by killing them. I’d done it as a cop, and I’d done it in the resistance, and now I was doing it full of zeal.

  Some of us would be leaving for heaven, and others would not leave at all, but would merely return to hell.

  But who would deliver me?

  Had I been a slaver in the world of men
? A brothel keeper? A judge? A killer? A mercenary? A terrorist?

  The only ones I crowed over were those who blew themselves up in the hope of heaven. They had outbragged everyone, claiming to be striving for a better life and a fairer world. But the others . . . ?

  The Saint knew a lot. I’d be meeting him again in two days’ time and I must ask him about everything.

  Farida was carrying the Glock when she went to work these days. She’d learned quickly and the gun had become a comfort to her. Truth be told, it reassured me, too. I’d only taught her to shoot in the air so that she wouldn’t kill anyone. The sound of a gunshot was enough to keep people away. But I told her that if she saw one of those shirtless guys, she should shoot at him without hesitating. That lot would be killed and return to hell once more, for certain. Farida didn’t have the strength to fight them off, and protecting her—even if we were in hell—mattered more to me than their lives. But I wouldn’t kill them any more. They were either custodians here or, like me, were sending people to heaven. I had realized that they were too important to be killed.

  A few days earlier, just before dawn, I’d been in Bab al-Luq, walking without purpose. I hadn’t wanted to kill anyone that day, but I had the Beretta with me. A few people had left early for work. I saw them, with their combed hair and clean, pressed clothes; and others, too, dragging their feet on their way back home, staring at the ground with exhausted faces, or sitting at a café at the end of a night out, finishing their last drinks, or sprinting wearily to catch the last bus. The streets branched beneath my feet until I came to Abdeen, and from there I tried to find that side street where I’d had my first and last meeting with the leadership of the resistance. But I couldn’t find it.