The Devil Is a Black Dog

by Sandor Jaszberenyi

  “No. It just doesn’t matter if I die. Or you, for that matter. You don’t have a family you need to go home to, or even a wife anymore. You don’t have anything. Just your camera and your work. You’re already dead; you just haven’t realized it yet.”

  “I’m tired,” I said.

  “From the pill.”

  “From everything. Can I sleep here?”

  “Yes.”

  “I snore when I dream.”

  “I cry.”

  “No problem,” I said, and took her in my arms.

  I woke up from the ache in my side. Sahra was still asleep. She was tucked in up to the neck; you could see only her hair on the pillow. The clock read 8 AM. I climbed from the bed, collected my clothing from the floor, and started toward the bathroom. I stopped in front of the foyer mirror and had a look at my side: it was black, but in happier news, the wound on my head didn’t appear too bad and I didn’t feel faint. I most likely hadn’t gotten a concussion.

  I used Sahra’s shower gel as I washed. By the time I finished, she had woken and was standing undressed in the kitchen.

  “Want a coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  “How’s your side?”

  “It hurts.”

  “You should go to a doctor.”

  “Not a chance. There’s a revolution on.”

  She smiled and placed a mug of coffee in front of me, then turned. She stepped up to the fridge, took out the butter, and with her back still to me, began to spread some on a slice of bread. I stared, all the while thinking that this was a preposterously beautiful woman.

  “Look, you know we can meet like normal people do sometime,” I said. “For example, we could go to a restaurant. We could eat like normal people, and I could try to get you drunk enough to sleep with me.”

  “I’ll gladly sleep with you again. No need for fireworks.”

  “You’re not getting it. Can’t we go somewhere, anywhere, and do something like regular people?”

  “That’s daft. There’s no point. There is no point in romance.”

  “I’m still alive. You should give it a try.”

  She turned on the TV. The Al Jazeera newscaster’s British-accented voice filled the kitchen. It was streaming from the city center, showing violent fighting everywhere.

  “Let’s think about getting to work,” said Sahra. “Get your stuff together.”

  They had put the injured on prayer rugs. In the mosque’s haze, the demonstrators were placing lamps between the rows of bodies. The doctors circulated among them like angels in white coats. They bent down, checked pulses, examined wounds, and gave injections. But the real work took place in a space cordoned off by curtains: that’s where the serious cases were taken. Burn victims and those with shattered bones howled from pain, drowning out the sound of the Koran recitation coming from a speaker, whose voice at times rose loud enough to accompany the sound of the sick, giving the holy text an altogether more moving recitation. I photographed the wounded. I felt heavily medicated, but at least my side didn’t hurt.

  I didn’t see Sahra for the next three days. I tried to drive her from my thoughts and concentrate on work instead. After work I dutifully went home and uploaded my photos. By night I surfed the Web. I did a search for her there but found only a single photo. In the picture she was locked in an embrace with a man somewhere that looked like the Congo. Both were smiling at the camera. It dawned on me that that was what she was like before.

  It’s possible she is right, I thought.

  I was shooting a quick series while lying on the ground when my cell phone rang. It was Sanders.

  “I heard you were shot, man.”

  “You heard right.”

  “But you’re okay?”

  “Peachy.”

  “Listen, remember that freaky German chick?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well she’s been looking for you. I gave her your number. I hope that’s not a problem.”

  “No.”

  “Did you bang her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good work. We’ll drink to it later. I’ll be gone for a couple of days. So when I come back from Port Said.”

  “OK.”

  I put the phone away. I checked my photos, and then left the mosque.

  Back home, I was sitting on the roof, uploading photos to the Internet. The FTP server was bloody slow, so I passed the time playing music and smoking.

  At first I didn’t hear the sound of the phone over the speakers. It must have been ringing for minutes before I picked it up.

  “It’s Sahra,” came the voice over the line.

  “Yes?”

  “I just wanted to ask whether you have a 50 mm lens.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got one.”

  “Can I borrow it?”

  “Of course. Where should we meet?”

  “The restaurant at the Hilton.”

  “Right. What time?”

  “Nine. Just don’t be late; I want to eat too. I’ll come from work, as I need a few nighttime pictures.”

  “OK. Anything else?”

  “Yes. Take that ring off.”

  “Will do.”

  I had grown a serious beard since the turbulence broke out; I couldn’t be bothered to shave, and there was nobody to tell me it irritated them. I gazed at myself for a while in the mirror before turning on the warm water and soaping up my face. I noticed the ring on my finger as I shaved off the first swath of lather. I gave it a pull. Indeed, it was still stuck tight. I picked up the soap again and began rubbing my finger. I grabbed the ring and began to tug, but it wouldn’t come off. I had to go to the kitchen for a knife, and used that to get some soap between the skin and the gold—only after this did it slip from my finger, leaving a green stain in its place.

  The Ramses Hilton was the most expensive hotel in town, and I couldn’t really afford it. Still, I took a taxi from Dokki all the way to the 6th October Bridge. I tried to pay the driver extra money to take me all the way, but he was afraid of the demonstrators. I would have to walk, though in this neighborhood there was still no fighting. Both Tahrir Square and Mohamed Mahmoud Street were cordoned off.

  There weren’t any bellboys by the entrance due to the tear gas. Other than that, the hotel continued its business undisturbed. The guests here were primarily parachute journalists. They all occupied the rooms facing the square. With a good lens and use of the hotel’s stable Internet connection, they could read from cue cards and broadcast live without ever having to go down into the fray.

  From the tinted top-floor windows I could see the entire city on both sides of the Nile. Downtown was dark; from the twenty-fourth floor the burning barricades down on the street appeared like small dots of light, though the sound didn’t reach that high.

  The restaurant was totally empty. I took a table by the window and looked at my watch: it was nine o’clock; I was right on time. The waiter brought me a menu.

  “Dining alone tonight, sir?”

  “No, I am waiting for somebody.”

  “Very good. Shall I bring you a drink?”

  “A bottle of cabernet.”

  “Egyptian?”

  “Please.”

  Omar Khayyam was the only cabernet sauvignon in the country, and I knew I would pay a minimum of 200 Egyptian pounds for it at hotel prices. The waiter left. I reached into my jacket pocket, took out the lens Sahra had asked for, and placed it on the table. Out of boredom I scanned the Twitter feed on my cell and retweeted a government official’s statement on the news about the country’s economic affairs. The waiter came back with the wine, poured a little in my glass, and waited while I tasted it. I checked the time: Sahra was already twenty minutes late. I tipped back the wine and let him fill the glass. I continued to browse the news networks. The fighting around the country had intensified, at least according to Twitter. Young men had been bussed in and paid to attack the crowds with rocks and sticks.

  I spent another twenty minutes like this. The
waiter watched me from the bar. I refilled my glass, then looked up Sahra’s number and dialed. It didn’t ring. Instead a female voice informed me in Arabic that the phone was turned off, but they would send a text message alerting her that I had called. I tried several times more, but it didn’t ring once. I drank another glass of wine. The waiter approached.

  “Excuse me, sir, but theoretically the kitchen closes at ten. I can ask the chef to wait, however.”

  “No worries. I don’t think she’s coming.”

  “There is a revolution. It’s possible she couldn’t get into the city center.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Would you care to dine?”

  “No. Just the check please.”

  “As you wish.”

  I phoned one final time, again to no avail. I paid for the wine and rose from the table. I had to wait for the elevator; the fires were burning below, flaring up, then calming. Out on the street the wind was strong: my coat fluttered like a black flag as I crossed the bridge. On Twitter I read that the hired thugs were also attacking journalists; two Polish reporters and a German photographer had been killed. The next morning the Ministry of Health confirmed the story.

  * Translated from the German by Gabriel Charles Rosetti

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sándor Jászberényi (pronounced shahn-door yahs-beh-ray-nyee) is a writer and has worked as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East and Africa for leading Hungarian newspapers, and has contributed reporting to the New York Times and the Egypt Independent. He has covered the revolutions in Egypt and Libya, the Gaza War, the Darfur crisis, and the conflict with Islamic State—interviewing armed Islamic groups in the process—and has also reported on the war in Ukraine. His first collection of short stories, Az ördög egy fekete kutya (The Devil Is a Black Dog), was published in 2013 in Hungary (Kalligram) and forthcoming in Italian (Edizioni Anfora) and other languages. Jászberényi divides his time between Cairo, Egypt, and Budapest, Hungary. His stories and poems have been published in English in AGNI, the Brooklyn Rail, BodyLiterature.com, and Pilvax.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  M. Henderson Ellis is the author of Keeping Bedlam at Bay in the Prague Café and Petra K and the Blackhearts (both New Europe Books). A Chicago native and graduate of Bennington College, he lives in Budapest, Hungary, and edits fiction and nonfiction at wordpillediting.com.