At the second pile stood a group of women plucking feathers. There were vats of hot water with steam rising from them. You had to be careful in this section because of the risk of getting burned.
The third pile of bare chicken carcasses rose high. It grew higher with each moment. If people were chickens, then this place would be a mass grave.
‘Clean or de-bone?’ I asked the guy from Utopia, as I pulled out my knife.
He looked at me in confusion, his face contorted with disgust, so I explained, ‘Are you going to cut the stomach and pull out the innards, or are you going to strip the bones from the meat?’
‘I can’t do either.’
I looked around me to make sure no one would hear me. ‘No one lives here without working. Filthy work. Taboo work. Illegal work. It is what it is. The important thing is that you work. I won’t spend a single pound on you from now on.’
‘You’re talking about spending money on me as if we’re sleeping in a palace and bathing in rosewater and eating caviar,’ he said angrily. ‘How much do those sour beans and our sleeping in a chicken coop cost you?’
‘Quiet!’ I raised my finger to my lips in warning. ‘If they heard that spoiled tone of yours and the way you pronounce your letters, they’d skin you instead of the chickens. You’re giving yourself away all the time!’
He shook his head with the stubbornness of a mule, and then headed to the nearby pile where four people were working: the ‘de-boning’ pile. They placed entire chickens on a smooth stone and, with their knives, tore the meat from the bones. Then they tossed the meat on a neighbouring pile and the bones on another pile.
It was an assembly line that would have delighted Mr Henry Ford, whose genius in inventing automobile assembly lines in the last century was endlessly praised.
‘Here,’ I told him as I grabbed the first chicken and cut open its stomach. ‘When we’re done, we’ll go out the back door and we’ll get our wages. About one chicken for each of us. Where do you think we get meat? This party isn’t held every day. There are days when they have enough people, and we aren’t allowed to work at all.’
‘Dead chickens?’ he asked in disgust.
I let out an ugly snort and replied, ‘Do you people really care about animal slaughter according to Islamic law, you fraud?’
Then I told myself they probably do care. They are very particular about slaughtering chickens but they aren’t so particular about slaughtering us. They don’t invoke God’s name over us, and they don’t expertly cut the jugular vein.
He began working in misery, disgust, wretchedness, grumpiness, exasperation and resentment.
Nothing wrong with that! Some kinds of revenge don’t include murder, but in spite of that, they are deliciously pleasant.
He cut himself a thousand times, and the blood that covered his hand became a mix of chicken blood and his own. Let him experience it. Let him learn. Let him suffer.
There was a world-famous actor called Charlie Chaplin. I know him, but I’m not sure you do. That artist made his fame by showing his poor, downtrodden hero triumph over the rich and the police. He once said, ‘People like to see the rich get the worst of things. The reason is that nine-tenths of the people in the world are poor, and secretly resent the wealth of the other tenth.’
More than once, the guy slowed his pace, so I warned him, ‘They’re watching. If they see you loafing about, they would kick you out without a second glance, and you won’t get anything.’
So we kept working for around an hour. But I wasn’t prepared to spend the whole day here.
3
When it grew more crowded, and the faces multiplied, I could no longer see the guy from Utopia.
Maybe he was there beside me, but he was immersed in blood and sweat, so not a trace of him appeared.
Only at that point could I hurry to the back door to the square. Khalil was standing by it as usual. He looked at me in astonishment, saying, ‘Again? I can’t protect you for ever.’
‘But you do,’ I said, as I handed him the bloody knife, which you’re never allowed to take back to your house. ‘It’s only a half-hour.’
‘Flog.’
‘No problem. I’m good for it.’
So he cleared the way for me to pass. He knows I will come back the very same way, and he will let me come in and work some time before I get my full wages. He stands here to prevent this exact thing.
This time, I ran, so I reached my house within fifteen minutes. I only needed ten minutes and then I’d be back in another fifteen minutes.
Safiya was inside waiting for me.
I quickly washed the traces of chicken blood from my face and hands. I can stand dirt, but I can never stand blood.
The girl from Utopia had passed out, of course, because of the mix of cough medicine and Parkinol with opium that Safiya had given her to drink from the bottle. No one can withstand this abominable cocktail, unless he has already tried it at least five times before. She wasn’t a lifeless corpse, since I didn’t want to have sex with a dead body, but she was in a state of complete, submissive stupor.
Loyal Safiya had done as I ordered. She’d washed the girl’s dirty face and her filthy feet, which had begun to look like our women’s feet.
‘Thank you, Safiya,’ I told her. ‘And now, get out of here. I won’t take more than ten minutes.’
She ran her fingers over the girl’s soft hair and said, ‘Take your time. Her skin is smooth like children’s skin. You deserve to enjoy yourself, poor thing. You need clean hair and smooth skin. Enjoy yourself. Let her beauty wash away the filth of your soul.’
The strange thing is that she was touched on my account, with moist eyes, her behaviour akin to a mother’s affection. It seemed to me as if she wanted to wait to see what I would do, and to make certain that I was happy, but I absolutely would not allow anything like that. Safiya will remain unsullied. She knows but she doesn’t hear. She hears but she doesn’t see. She sees but she doesn’t touch.
Safiya left, and I was alone with the girl from Utopia.
She’s helpless. Unconscious. She’s incapable of doing anything.
Victory!
This is the only victory I can achieve. Humiliating this girl isn’t humiliating a woman, but it is humiliating a class as a whole. Humiliating circumstances …
Through me, she will see what she’s never seen before. Aren’t the guys of Utopia just girls with facial hair? Aren’t we the studs that their women tremble for in fear and desire? Don’t their women wish, as they lie in the arms of their husbands or lovers, that one of us would ravish them? Aren’t we the nightmare of the men of Utopia, and their permanent source of anxiety? Isn’t virility wheat that ripens in the sun of daily suffering?
The guy from Utopia is splattered with blood in El-Moallem Taha Square amid the chickens, and his woman is here at my mercy.
I was trembling from the enormity of the idea. Azza receded. Awatif. Nagat. The dream of something beyond sex receded.
My revenge will be dreadful. My revenge will be worthy of being revenge.
It will be …
It will be …
What is happening to me?
Whenever I looked at her face, I only saw Safiya’s brown face. The spoiled girl from Utopia vanished, and I no longer saw anything but Safiya’s beautiful, yet distressed face.
My desire shrivelled up completely and my body became a block of ice.
So I began slapping her cheeks roughly as she moaned and didn’t open her eyes. I shook her violently by the shoulders. I pulled a lock of her hair here and there, but still nothing. That’s all I’ve got.
I can’t and I don’t want to.
What came over you? Is Utopia’s power over you so absolute? Has Utopia come to dominate your hormones, your adrenal gland, your pituitary, your penile corpus cavernosum, and your sympathetic apparatus? Has it sunk so far into you?
Is it the dominance of Utopia, or is it the power of a sweeping conscience that makes you see every
fragile, guileless girl as another Safiya?
You won’t know. You’ll never know.
You are only sure of one thing: let this girl sleep in peace, and go back to the slaughterhouse to continue tearing out chicken guts.
When I returned to El-Moallem Taha Square, I didn’t look for the guy from Utopia; he could go to hell.
I continued my exhausting work cleaning out chicken guts and, hours later, the first, second, third and fourth piles had disappeared, and nothing was left except some piles that were being taken to the markets.
As soon as you finish your pile, you head to the back door of the square, where Khalil is standing. He hands everyone who goes out his share of chicken. A jumble of severed parts that, I think, are enough to make a whole chicken.
I walked a few steps and found the guy standing and waiting for me, with his share in his hand.
He was soaked in blood and sweat. Some of the blood was his. He handed me what was in his hand as if to say, ‘Here’s what you wanted. So take it and shut up.’
‘Today, you’ll be eating by the sweat of your brow for the first time,’ I told him, trying to make it sound like a joke.
‘First, lay off the life lessons,’ he said, between clenched teeth. ‘I’ve heard enough of them. Second, I won’t taste this thing. It’s turned me off chicken for ever.’
So we went back in silence to my house.
He won’t know what happened, because the girl will be stoned, and she’ll think that anything she saw or felt was just confused dreams.
I don’t want him to know. It’s not because I’m afraid of him: I’m afraid that he’ll know that I was incapable of hurting him when it was in my power to.
I seem to be incapable of killing the two of them, too.
Napoleon once stood in front of the soldiers who came to arrest him and, baring his chest, said, ‘I am your emperor, so kill me!’ But the soldiers couldn’t do it. Respect for the emperor made them get down on their knees before him and weep.
But this young guy isn’t Napoleon. Hell, no! He’s merely a lecherous animal from Utopia who commands not an iota of awe. The problem is that a psychological barrier, an internalised servility has been created inside me. The problem is that I myself am convinced that he is better, more amazing, more complete, and perhaps more pious.
I am incapable of killing them.
The only question is whether it is because Utopia is stronger than me, or because I am stronger than me.
4
We are two peoples … two peoples … two peoples
Look where the first is, and where’s the other
Draw the line between them, brother
You sold the land with plough and axe – on her people’s backs
Before the eyes of the world, you undid her clothes
Stark naked she was, from head to toes
Front and back, knees to nose
You could smell her breath a mile away
We the people are sons of dogs
We belong to the Beautiful One
And his way is hard
With the kick of a boot and the whack of a cane
Then we die in the war, all in vain
– Abdel Rahman el-Abnoudi
El-Sirgani was the first one who approached me about the matter.
I don’t like el-Sirgani, since he’s the one who cost me my cornea. It’s true that life went on after that, because the next step would have been for one of us to have killed the other. And I wouldn’t have been able to kill him. So the next step would have been my own death. So that’s where things stopped.
It’s true. All that is true, but you can’t like the person who destroyed your cornea, no matter how much you try. He doesn’t like me either, because Azza preferred me.
El-Sirgani came to me as I was sitting outside the house, smoking hashish, squatting and thinking.
He stuck the machete he was carrying into the dry mud and sat down beside me.
‘Good morning, Gaber,’ he said as he nonchalantly took the joint from my hand.
He let out a thick cloud of smoke, contemplated the ash that clung to it in the shape of a long cigarette-butt, and said, as if he were a man who was concerned with grave matters, ‘This girl who lives in your house. I’m not talking about Safiya, of course. Safiya has our utmost respect.’
‘What about the girl?’
I said it with disgust, although I knew what he would say, to the letter.
‘She belongs to you?’ he asked as he gave me back the joint, taking care not to let the ash fall.
‘And what if she doesn’t?’
‘Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.’
‘Speak clearly, Sirgani.’
The subject was important, so using the shorthand language we’d been using for the past ten years was out of the question. It’s the language of those who have seen everything and who are no longer amazed by anything. Now was the time for explanation and elaboration.
‘That girl can make you a lot of money instead of being a burden on you,’ he told me quietly. ‘Goods like her are scarce, and the available stock is of poor quality. You’ve seen Somaya’s face – as ugly as the devil’s. But that girl of yours can make money for us both.’
‘You took Azza,’ I said irritably. ‘Isn’t she enough for you?’
‘It’s a tough profession. A filthy profession that completely wears out a woman’s looks and body. You need to get new blood.’
I smiled inwardly. If I wanted revenge, then what revenge would be nastier than that? A girl from Utopia finds herself in the middle of this, among these men. But I don’t want that. Call it a victory over myself or a victory of Utopia over me. I only know that I will protect the two of them as long as I’m alive, and as long as they are among us.
‘She doesn’t like that line of work,’ I said as I handed him the joint.
‘Up to you.’
Then he thought a little bit, and added the threat that I knew was inevitable, ‘Between you and me, we don’t know who those two really are. You said something and threw us some flog so we could fight over it like dogs. Somaya tells a different story. Those two have an air of wealth about them. You can cut my arm off if they’ve lived through a single day of hunger before they got here. Where did they get all that flog? You know as well as I do that those two are from Utopia. Don’t tell me they were working there – they’re from the people who own homes there. In the days when there were dogs, I had a dog that guarded me. He would eat my food and sleep under my roof, but let me assure you that he didn’t look like me for a moment! He lived as a dog and died as a dog. The real idiot is the one who mistakes the dog for his owner. Those two aren’t dogs – they own dogs. So why did they come here? We can imagine why!’
‘Get to the point!’ I said without looking at him.
‘I will get to the point. You work with Abd el-Zahir. If he knew that two people from Utopia were living under your roof, what would he do? And what about Bayoumi and his men? They’ll all dance for joy, and the whole neighbourhood will come to get what they’ve got coming to them. Believe me, my friend, no one wants any harm to come to you, and no one would allow a hair on Safiya’s head to be touched. Safiya is as dear to me as – as Somaya, the daughter of my dear, departed brother.’
‘Yes,’ I replied in angry derision. ‘You watch over Somaya and protect her really well. We all know that.’
He looked at me and didn’t speak, then turned away without giving me back the joint.
I wasn’t worried about Bayoumi. I was worried about Abd el-Zahir.
Bayoumi and his gang were the enemy and they always represented a danger, while Abd el-Zahir and his gang were the source of my protection and prestige. If they turned against me, then I’d be done for.
Abd el-Zahir was there in the subway tunnels, discussing the biroil plan for the millionth time. For years, he hadn’t stopped discussing this idea, while I’d tell him he was crazy.
‘These people may mock everything, bu
t there’s no joking around with biroil. That’s what makes the plan so excellent and puts us in a really strong position.’
‘The drugs have addled your brain, you son of a bitch,’ I told him sarcastically. ‘You think you’re fighting the English in one of those old black-and-white movies. Cut the crap and think about how we can find a new dog.’
Abd el-Zahir was a thug, but he was a good guy, if hot-blooded. He wasn’t just a hyena provoked by the smell of blood like Bayoumi. So I preferred to be with him from the start.
Some of the gang were sitting on top of a subway carriage playing barghouta and others were sitting in a corner of the station sniffing glue. It was midday, but the subway tunnels were a permanent, eternal night. Maybe that was why they gave us a feeling of intimacy.
It was comforting to know that all these guys were with you. They could rush to your aid if you were in danger. That was why I knew that Safiya would marry one of them. There was no other way for her to live.
It would be terrifying beyond description if they turned against you.
Abd el-Zahir scrutinised my face with his wide, honey-brown eyes that made him appear mad. He told me, ‘Lately there’s been a lot of talk about you, my friend.’
I raised my head nervously and looked at his face flickering in the torchlight. ‘What talk?’
‘First, you ran off from our last fight with Bayoumi,’ he said firmly.
‘You know I’m a weakling, and I can’t get the better of them. You were losing, and I could have stayed, but you’d be mourning me now as a fallen hero. Would you prefer that? At least I’m here and alive, and getting grief from you. Don’t forget that Suleiman died and you couldn’t defend him.’
It wasn’t the first time I’d run away and it wouldn’t be the last, so why was he so concerned?
‘And those two in your house?’ he resumed. ‘There’s a lot of talk about them. They say that they’re from Utopia and that you insist on denying it. What are you up to?’
Utopia Page 9
