Utopia

by Ahmed Khaled Towfik

  We are one family … blah, blah. We’re not like the Others… blah, blah.

  Blah, blah, blah for the thousandth time.

  Check out Rasim pretending to look like he’s paying attention. He’s combining it with a look of shame and remorse. I challenge a single emotion to find its way to that dead, imperturbable face. Two dead eyes that remind you of the eyes of killers in that outside world when the camera lens zeroes in on them. A man kills his wife and her lover, then takes a seat at the coffee shop. A woman kills a child for the sake of an earring worth no more than 100 Egyptian pounds, then her picture appears in the tabloids. You’ll see she has those eyes.

  But he – Rasim – is also talking. The idiot is talking. ‘Really, I don’t know what came over me, to make me …’

  For the millionth time.

  The chief judge is talking in a resounding voice that he no doubt personally enjoys: ‘We don’t involve any outside party in our problems. Azzam bey will take it upon himself to pay the cost of …’ – blah, blah, blah – ‘Your son is my son, and vice versa …’ – blah, blah, blah.

  And Azzam bey solemnly undertakes to pay the cost of … as he plays with his gold prayer beads.

  Family court brings prominent people in Utopia together, because this community has carved out its own separate laws and courts. There is a young man in court who did something wrong or did something to make the adults angry with him. Here, what gets you into trouble is when you destroy or break into the personal property of someone else from Utopia. Rasim had had too much to drink and destroyed part of the Elite Mall that belongs to Mustafa bey. Maybe he stole something. No one needs to steal, but you need the excitement, the tension and the shame of stealing. Kleptomania is the cause of most crimes here; the rest take place in a moment of drunkenness, a moment of madness among friends who are no longer friends.

  These cases are settled in courts like this one. There is usually a mutual understanding on hand, and plenty of willingness to appease. No one wants disputes to leave Utopia.

  Excitement.

  Crime.

  Assault.

  Breaking the rules.

  Provocation.

  Violating taboos.

  Disorderly conduct.

  Misdemeanor.

  Destruction.

  Tension.

  Adrenaline.

  Change.

  Disobedience.

  Dissolution.

  Shock.

  Privilege.

  Astonishment.

  That’s the name of the game.

  For reasons like those, and on a night like this, Rasim lay down submissively and let three of his friends do what they wanted to him.

  For reasons like those, they’re always conjuring up spirits. Those aren’t spirits, you idiots! It’s your subconscious mind fooling you through something called the ‘ideomotor effect’. That’s why the glass on the Ouija board moves – because you want it to.

  For reasons like those, they fool around in cemeteries at night. Akmal talked about necrophilia, but I didn’t find the idea tempting, and I imagine you would agree with me.

  For reasons like those, no girl resists your advances here for more than three days. And when she gives in to you, you won’t believe how eager she is for it out of sheer boredom. But that doesn’t blow your mind.

  When you’ve crossed the farthest boundary of consciousness, you realise that consciousness expands to include within itself other boundaries, ruled by habit, boredom and monotony.

  For reasons like those, I want to try the greatest experience of them all.

  I wake up. I take a leak. Smoke a cigarette. Drink coffee. Shave. Fix the wound on my forehead to make it look terrible. Have sex with the African maid. Have breakfast. Pour some milk on the eggs and beat them with a fork. Throw the disgusting mixture in the trash. Yawn. Laugh. Spit. Wolf down some roasted meat. Stick my finger down my throat. Enter Larine’s bedroom to puke on the carpet. Laugh. Stick my finger in my ear. Grab a bottle of whiskey from the bar and take a swig. Dance. Stagger. Stand on the couch. Fall down on the carpet. Read the paper, which is nothing more than Utopia’s society pages. Every colony has its own newspaper but there are also public newspapers you can’t read because they have so much crap in them. I take out a tube of phlogistine and pour some drops on my skin. I get high. See the green flames. Laugh. Walk naked in the living room. Put on my clothes. With a charcoal pencil, I draw slogans on the wall, saying: Kill Whitey. I don’t know what that means, or who Whitey is, but that’s what they do in movies. I put on some orgasm music – the new rhythm that came out last year. Adults think it’s nothing but insane screaming, and they look back fondly on the refined sounds of heavy metal and death metal, which nobody listens to any more. I dance. Puke. Eat some more. In one hour, I’ve done everything, and there’s nothing left in life that interests me or that I want!

  In Utopia, your mum is still your mum. You can’t get rid of her.

  Larine, coming back from the mall, carrying several bags containing what we need. Things that are eaten, drunk, smelled, rubbed under your armpits and painted on fingernails. I know that most of what she’s bought we don’t need. We could get rid of most of it. It’s because of boredom. It’s because of frustration. I don’t know much about her sex life, but I think Mourad hasn’t slept with her for ages. He must have bored her so terribly that even Libidafro no longer works with her. When no one has sex with you, you buy things you don’t need. When no one has sex with you, you secretly take drugs and drink heavily. When no one has sex with you, you meddle in other people’s business. She said something about the vomit on the carpet and asked the maid to clean it. She said phlogistine would kill me. She said I’m wasting my potential. She said … She said …

  Apropos of nothing, I told her, ‘I want to try hunting.’

  (She gasped.)

  ‘Is there anything you don’t have?’ she cried, her eyes growing wide in alarm. ‘You have enough money to buy all of Utopia—’

  ‘—and everything around it.’

  ‘You have enough girls to satisfy a virile sultan from the Arabian Nights—’

  ‘—and boys too.’

  ‘You have enough sources of entertainment to make a troop of crying orphans happy—’

  ‘—and their grandchildren too.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?!’

  ‘The problem is all of it. I have everything. Now it’s time for the one thing I haven’t tried and I haven’t yet got.’

  ‘If you ever bring this subject up again, I will tell your father!’ she said hysterically.

  Mourad wasn’t here. He was in Switzerland going over the numbers in his bank accounts. In any case, I highly approve of this activity, since it means he’s increasing the amount I spend on phlogistine. Sometimes I wish he wouldn’t waste his time, and just send us cash from abroad.

  ‘Mourad doesn’t get involved in my business,’ I said to provoke her. ‘He’s too smart for that.’

  ‘For the thousandth time,’ she scolded, waving her finger in my face, ‘as far as you’re concerned, his name is Papa – not Mourad. I let you call me by my name rather than Mama, so that we can remain friends, but there are limits that you must not cross. I won’t allow it.’

  But you instantly know that she isn’t serious.

  All these years, his name has been Mourad. She can’t change it in an instant just because she’s decided to play the role of the strict mother.

  Larine won’t allow it because she wants to pretend that she doesn’t allow it.

  Mourad won’t allow it because he ought not to allow it.

  So what?

  3

  When the graves are open and demons fly out

  When the skulls of children lie scattered about

  When angels’ wings are stained with gore

  When Cinderella becomes a whore

  When Beelzebub says the time has arrived

  Only then can I close my weary eyes

  And die />
  – Orgasm Songs

  The car carrying Rasim, Shadi and Riri races with mad speed. It races, then comes to a halt with a surprising slam on the brakes that makes it spin around on itself like a top.

  Mahi’s Ferrari races towards it. If they were to collide, Rasim’s car would split in two. But Mahi pulls the handbrake at the last moment, so that the Ferrari spins around itself with a squeal that all of Utopia can hear. Good girl, Mahi! Rasim revs his car engine and races, and is just about slam into one of the Others who works here, but the idiot jumps up on the kerb.

  For some reason I can’t understand, these people insist on living. Really, I’m not joking here or exaggerating. If I were one of the Others, I would have let the car’s tyres run over my innards.

  Mahi finishes her turn, and peels away to catch up with Rasim. In all probability, cars will be wrecked today. But the problem is that we don’t die. I don’t mean that we are immortal, but we’ve transcended illness and accidents. The Others get ill and go for hospital treatment, and their cars that still run on petrol flip them over into ditches or slam them into a tree. If only death were so easily available here! Then the excitement would be huge. I don’t know why, but accidents are rare among us, and even when they happen, they don’t kill anyone.

  From time to time, you see a violent chase between young people in cars. Often a car or two flips over, which throws an out-of-the-ordinary excitement into life, but unfortunately, you can’t flip a car every hour of the day.

  Why don’t we kill ourselves? I don’t know. Suicide seems vulgar, rather common. All that foolishness reminds you of the Others. The lovelorn youth sets himself alight – the vulgarity of it! Kerosene, a flicker of light, a poor neighbourhood and some chickens. Chickens, of all things! All of it makes my stomach turn. The father who failed to feed his children, the girl who swallows a bottle of aspirin …

  We are bigger and superior to all that nonsense. Death should be elegant and theatrical.

  Your death and the deaths of the Others are alike. So let other people die. At least you can watch them as they die, instead of them seeing you.

  Meet Mike Rogers, head of security. An American man from Missouri, he’s good company. He has a thin, blond moustache, that distinctive crew cut, bulging muscles; the edge of his olive-green undershirt sticks out from his jacket. I enjoy talking with him in American slang, using that drawn-out country accent like a lazy cow mooing as it grazes in the meadow, and a lot of obscene insults that make him laugh.

  Mike was a Marine. He fought in Vietnam at the beginning of the century. No, sorry – he fought in Iraq. I confuse Vietnam and Iraq a lot, since they are two far-off, remote countries that Americans had rough experiences in. He once told me, as we were taking phlogistine, ‘Our mistake in Iraq was that we were there among the population more than we needed to be. We quickly corrected that mistake and withdrew from the cities to solidify our presence in locked, fortified bases around the oil wells.’

  ‘From what I’ve learned, you were defeated in Iraq.’

  He laughed heartily, then collected his breath. ‘You’re talking like the Europeans,’ he said. ‘We started the war to topple the tyrant, control the oil, and transform that wealthy country into fragments. OK – we did all that to the letter, so is there some other word for “victory”?’

  ‘Was oil that important?’

  ‘It was. How many wars we got into because of it! Then biroil suddenly appeared, right out of the blue. That American chemist who formulated it in 2010 got the Nobel prize. Only then was it possible for us to forget the Middle East and stick out our tongues at the oil sheikhs and tell them what we really thought of them. They can drink their oil if they want, but getting biroil has its price!’

  ‘Was that when you bought all the Egyptian antiquities?’

  ‘Yeah. The Egyptians didn’t have anything for sale except the past, and we bought it. We paid for it in the biroil that Utopia and communities like it monopolise. A fifty-year contract that provides you with all the biroil you need to live. How do you suppose those cars and planes of yours move? For the last ten years, all cars and planes have run on biroil. The age of cars and engines that run on gas is finished, or nearly finished. Gas has become as cheap as water, but the problem is that there are so few machines that use it!’

  This history lesson didn’t interest me at all. I’m not interested in how things were, or how we ended up where we are now. What interests me is what we are now and what we will be.

  We then discussed the most important service he could render me.

  I asked him if I could try hunting. I offered him my reasons, which could be summed up in three words: boredom, boredom and boredom.

  His manner changed and he placed the official glass barrier of formality between us. ‘Impossible,’ he said firmly. ‘Even if you attempted it, I would prevent you. Things are dangerous these days, and risking it isn’t safe.’

  ‘Ever since I was born, you’ve all been saying that things are dangerous these days,’ I said in annoyance. ‘Nothing happens. Those people outside the fences are nothing but sheep, believe me.’

  ‘If the angry sheep ganged up on a child, they’d tear him to pieces with their legs,’ he said, lighting up a cigarette.

  ‘Have you ever heard of angry sheep?’

  ‘They’ve lost the capacity for anger but, like sheep, they sometimes get agitated for no reason, and with no clear justification. We’re living in one of those moments.’

  Then he let out a puff of smoke. ‘Listen,’ he said finally, ‘I won’t allow you unless I receive a clear directive from Mr Mourad.’

  I knew that Mr Mourad wouldn’t agree to it. He doesn’t want to take chances with his sole heir.

  So I sat around that night with the rest of the gang as we took phlogistine.

  The faint smell of lemon filled the place.

  We sat on the ground. Someone passed around the thin glass pipe. In it was a small dropper that you fill. Then you squeeze three or four drops on your forearm.

  Hand it to the person next to you. Then wait.

  Wait until you see the dancing green flame …

  Let it drip out all the perfumes of existence. Let it drip out the fragrance of ferns in the swamps where dinosaurs walked millions of years ago. Let it drip out the scent of Cleopatra’s sweat and Julius Caesar’s blood. Let it drip out the incense the dervishes burned in the nights of Fatimid Cairo. Let it drip out the flames that consumed Cairo, or so they told us, and let it drip out the fragrance of all the belles of Paris dancing the can-can. Let it drip out all the musk of sperm whales and the breaths of Asian tigers slinking through the jungle darkness. Let it drip out the jungles themselves. Let it drip out the fragrances of pansy, narcissus, lilac and iris. Let it drip out all these scents together, then … then what? I forget …

  Now you are no longer here. Now you are the master of space and time and existence itself. Now all that you have ever dreamed of is right here with you. You can imbibe ideas in cups, and pour the liquor into the antechambers of your mind. You can swallow fragrances and see them. You can smell light. Everything you feared has departed to the place of no return. Genius ideas occur to you but you forget them when you examine them closely. Brilliant witticisms evaporate before they leave your mouth. But you decide that your friends heard them. So you laugh. So they laugh. A little later comes the numbness and your eyes glaze over. This is the moment. It’s the tunnel you won’t come out of for hours.

  I signalled to Germinal to come over to me. She was a little pale after the scrape-and-suction surgery she’d had last week – for the third time – to get rid of my latest child. She was completely in the moment, so she must have been deep in the middle of the green flames now.

  ‘I decided to experience it,’ I told her. ‘I want to bring back a souvenir.’

  She swallowed anxiously, although it didn’t seem as if she were really alarmed.

  ‘We’ve tasted all the amusements here,’ I added. ‘The s
ame thing happened to Nero and Caligula. There’s no longer anything like the methods the two of them had to add some excitement to life.’

  ‘But that’s dangerous,’ she whispered. ‘You know that. The people there hate us with a passion. If they saw us among them, they’d—’

  ‘That’s what I want. Danger. Death.’

  Her face began to glow with euphoria at hearing that word. Danger. Excitement. Words that are no longer in our lexicon.

  Hunting people isn’t that strange. I’ve read a lot about the subject. Did you know that hunting tribes of Bushmen was a sanctioned sporting activity in South Africa in the last century? In the year 1870, the last Bushmen from the Cape died out from all the hunting.

  Although hunting is illegal in Utopia, the grown-ups overlook it as long as we don’t do it openly. It’s Utopia’s all-purpose motto: Do what you want, as long as you don’t infringe on the property of the rest of Utopia’s residents. Most importantly, do what you want but keep it a secret – we don’t want the burden of having to appear to take a firm hand or show any empathy with anyone.

  But we, the young people, have come to consider hunting a kind of test of manhood. Rasim did it. One night, he sneaked into one of those scary districts where the Others live. I think twenty years ago it was called Bab el-Shaareya or something like that. He kidnapped one of those worthless Others and brought him back to Utopia. He and his friends spent some fun days chasing this abductee in their cars. Then they killed him and Rasim kept his amputated hand, after having it embalmed. Every one of my friends has taken part in this sport at one time or another: the sport of hunting the Others, and bringing back a valuable souvenir to show to people like me.

  ‘Tonight we’ll set off outside to bring one of them back,’ I told Germinal. ‘You’ll come with me.’

  She loves it when I order her about. It makes her feel defeated and titillates her masochistic streak.

  When no one gives you an order in your whole life, when everyone pampers you, when your most trifling dreams are realised, then you desire the person who forces something on you. We used to play that game a lot: we would order the girls around, and each girl would have to do what she was told, whatever it was.