@ChaosCollective: Weren’t you all the same side? Please explain what happened???
@ChaosCollective: Fuck those Brotherhood motherfuckers! Egypt will never accept Islamo-fascism.
@ChaosCollective: Stop your Mubarak propaganda. The Brotherhood came under attack, defended themselves.
@ChaosCollective: Where were the police through all this? Letting their new partners work in peace?
@ChaosCollective: Police withdrew, leaving civilians exposed to mob of thugs. Brotherhood members defended themselves.
@ChaosCollective: God save Egypt. Once the Brotherhood cements their grip on power we’ll never be able to shake them.
MARCH 26: ALAA ABD EL-FATTAH ARREST ORDERED FOR INSTIGATING VIOLENCE
Ali looks about ten years old, though his father says he’s thirteen. Mariam sits opposite him. Ali’s mother has put a plate of sweets out and she nearly reaches for one but stops herself. She feels guilty when she eats, feels guilty in her body for any moment of indulgence when so much is left undone.
“It’s okay. Take your time, Ali.”
Khalil checks again that the recorder is running.
“They made me watch. They threw me in the truck and there were so many people in there and they made us watch.”
“Who?”
“The government. The police. They made us all watch. Two men. They made them touch each other. They said if I didn’t watch they’d slit my throat. Then they took us to a prison. It was underground. Once a day they threw in a bucket of dirty beans for us to fight over.”
No time for artistry. Soon we will be up to three episodes a week.
APRIL 5: MASS ARREST AND TORTURE OF CHILDREN EXPOSED
The light cuts through the shutters, stretching itself long over the wooden floor, widening out as it lands on the far wall, a shadowed fanning across Mariam’s VISIT PALESTINE poster. He has a book open, a Hobsbawm, and a passage highlighted with a black star in the margin. He reads it again:
The main shape of the French and all subsequent bourgeois revolutionary politics were by now clearly visible. This dramatic dialectical dance was to dominate the future generations. Time and again we shall see moderate middle-class reformers mobilizing the masses against die-hard resistance or counterrevolution. We shall see the masses pushing beyond the moderates’ aims to their own social revolutions, and the moderates in turn splitting into a conservative group henceforth making common cause with the reactionaries, and a left-wing group determined to pursue the rest of the as-yet-unachieved moderate aims with the help of the masses, even at the risk of losing control over them. And so on through repetitions and variations of the pattern of resistance—mass mobilization—shift to the left—split-among-moderates-and-shift-to-the-right—until either the bulk of the middle class passed into the henceforth conservative camp or was defeated by social revolution.
Is it all so straightforward? Are we all doomed to the certainties of the historical materialist? Or is that a deflection of responsibility? When Mariam comes back to the bedroom, her coffee in her hands, he reads it to her.
“Well, that’s depressing,” she says.
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“Why not?”
“Maybe it’s a pattern to be broken.”
“But you can see the same happening here.”
“Maybe it’s different here. There are no Islamists in Hobsbawm’s universe. We’re not liberals versus conservatives here. We have the Brotherhood and the army: two extreme rights. And us.”
“Well, thank God for that, then,” she says.
APRIL 7: SECURITY SOURCE: FOREIGN INFILTRATORS AT ALL-TIME HIGH
The organ is low and strong and dangerous as Khalil puts his hood up and slips into the crowd. Above him banners and slogans march in time. His headphones are in, a church organ pulling at his tired muscles. Dark bodies move at his sides, touching, pushing slightly, unlooking. Fists punch at the night. Down, down with every president! The balconies above are empty. The choir begins its chant, Koyaanisqatsi. This is life now. Constant protest. We will not be cowed by the army or the Islamists or the police or global capital. Maybe we are the endless march. Bread, freedom, social justice. We are the opposition. Is this our role? Round and round the same streets again and again in permanent check against whoever is in power? Koyaanisqatsi. The organ climbs higher. You are in a church, a cathedral, walking down Talaat Harb Street to the altar. Prophecies. Maybe Hobsbawm is right. We’ve been doing the same thing for hundreds of years. Marching, fighting, chanting, dying, changing, winning, losing, marching, fighting, chanting, dying, marching, chanting, planning, failing, fighting, marching, marching, fighting, fighting. Koyaanisqatsi. Koyaanisqatsi. Bread, freedom, social justice. The march carries on. He looks up. The city doesn’t watch us anymore. Doesn’t cheer. Doesn’t jeer. And above? Beyond? Is anyone still watching? Does anyone care about this dogfight with the Brotherhood? The old lines of communication with Athens and America have dried up. And Syria, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen—we can only bleed so much. And Palestine. When will Egypt release me to you? How many times can we march through downtown? Down, down with every president! Truly. Yes, yes, remember it is us. We are the vanguard keeping the flame alive. Koyaanisqatsi. Sheikh Emad, Gika, Bassem, Mina, Michael, Ayman—we march behind you. Our banners of war. It’s for you that we can’t stop. You who have given everything and all we can do is fall in step behind you until you can rest. This time will be different. This time the future can still be made new. The organ plays on unrelenting. Koyaanisqatsi. On and on behind you. On and on behind you.
APRIL 8: PAPAL SEAT IN CAIRO UNDER ATTACK BY ISLAMIST MOB. FIRST TIME IN CHURCH’S HISTORY. MORSI SILENT.
Angry mobs roam the street. Her father calls. Please come and see me. So she’s sitting in his living room, waiting for him to appear. There are rooms for you girls. She remembers how he kept repeating it. As if that was all it took to make it all right. There are rooms for you girls. And then he was gone. She’s probably spent a total of two weeks in her room upstairs, each careful detail of Nelly’s—the tight undersheet, the scented soap, the color-coordinated towels—fermenting the annoyance in her.
“Mariam,” her father says, formal almost. “Thank you for coming.”
She stands up and he bends down to kiss her on each cheek.
“You’re well?”
“Fine, thank you.”
“Are you eating?”
“Yes.”
“Did you talk to your sister recently?”
“Not so recently,” she says. “But I’ll call her.”
“Do. She’s worried about you.”
“She’s in Germany. All there is to do there is worry.”
He pours himself a glass of water from the pitcher between them.
“Here,” he says, holding out an envelope for her to take.
She takes it, almost suspiciously, opens it. Inside is a plastic ID card. With her name on it and an old photo: Visiting Consultant, New Dawn Cancer Center.
She looks up at him, questioning.
“Your mother says you spend a lot of time at hospitals. And at the morgue. I thought this might help … keep you safe. If the police start asking questions, you’re registered in the system there.”
“But how—”
“Best not to ask.”
“Okay … well … thank you.”
She’s hugging him. It’s been such a long time.
“You’re doing good. For our country,” he says. “We’re proud of you. You’ll get rid of these bastards too, God willing.”
APRIL 16: MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD PUBLISHES BOOK OF MORSI’S ACHIEVEMENTS
Khalil glances over his shoulder, the slightest movement—but undeniable. He feels his back and its metal, moments of a frozen chaos suddenly superheating with a need for attention. A glance in the mirror is all he’ll give it. A glance is all it takes, all he needs to remember her, to feel her last warmth dissipating through his fingers, hear her last breaths whispering out of her body, see her—no, not he
r face. He can’t see her face, can’t see anything beyond the mask. He tries, alone, at night sometimes, to remember his footsteps faltering heavy with her body limp in his arms lurching forward through the gas to the doctors, each moment until the mask is pulled off. And then: nothing. She’s there, on your computer. Doctor_02022012.mp4. Will you ever listen to the recording? He sees the dark of her mask before him, sees a city burning in its reflection as the steel in his skin begins to burn. Our bond. Our metal mined from the same Minnesotan mountain, an ancient unity splintered and smelted into a million pellets for a hundred thousand shotgun cartridges to be ignited into our flesh to divide us, to forever bind us.
APRIL 17: MORSI LOSES CONTROL OF SINAI AS ROCKETS LAUNCHED AT ISRAEL
“Get rid of this for me. Hide it.” She’s pressing her phone into his hand. “Let’s do something fun today,” she says. “Something normal!”
“Sure. What do you want to do?”
“Let’s go to the cinema. Let’s walk to Galaxy and watch every film that’s on.”
“I’ve been waiting two years for this day.”
“Great. Get dressed.”
Their route is determined by the army’s new walls cross-hatching the city, a cement hamster-run on a city scale to keep the constant protests away from the government’s buildings. First, though, they turn down Mohamed Mahmoud Street and a silence envelops them as memories return of the long nights on patrol, the knives, the red flares burning through the howling crowd. They walk quickly past the long murals, through the dark memories, aiming for the open expanse of Tahrir. But then there is the red flower.
“Can we sit for a minute?” she says. The flower lives still, looks healthy. She sits carefully down next to it and pulls a bottle of water out of her bag. They sit in silence, the flower, the young boy’s final offering to the living between them. He can feel her falling into a place into which he cannot follow.
APRIL 19: POLARIZATION GROWS OVER MORSI’S PRESIDENCY
Battalions of Hamas operatives are currently active
in the country disguised as police officers. Morsi has
made a deal to sell Hamas Sinai in exchange!
We’ve seen maps. There are maps!
Paid agents of chaos are at work day
and night to discredit the government
and undermine democracy.
The plan has been in the works for decades. Sinai will
be sold!
Egypt will be divided!
Egypt is a prize! The whole world wants to see Egypt on
its knees!
Christians are burning
the Brotherhood
headquarters and come
disguised as Salafis, or
as the Black Bloc or
even as the police.
A new crusade against Islam is afoot, being
waged by a secular alliance of the Coptic
media and El-Baradei and the Americans.
Obama the secret Muslim is part of the Brotherhood’s
conspiracy and is defending the Morsi government.
Obama the warmonger
is in Israel’s pocket and
is working full strength
to bring down the
Morsi government.
The Coptic Church is busing
armed fighters to lay siege to the
presidential palace.
The Brotherhood isn’t even Egyptian, they think they’re
above the nation, their loyalty is not to Egypt.
It’s an occupation. Yes, they’re
occupying Egypt.
Egypt!
They will sell the Suez Canal, they
would sell the pyramids if they
could. They’ve leased out Karnak
to the Gulf.
The forces of chaos and the Mubarak regime
and the British and the Iranians are lobbying
together to undermine democracy and agitate
against an elected president.
MAY 4: MUBARAK CRONIES BUYING THEIR WAY OUT OF JAIL
“Smurfberries! Oh my God, oh my God. Shut up and listen all of you. Whew…” Rania can hardly contain her laughter. “Dr. Smurf prescribes cakes, pies, ahaha, ahahaha, cakes, pies, and smurfberries as part of a healthy diet! Oh my God! Ahahahahah!! Hashtag smurfvillage!!!”
“Why are you talking about the Smurf village?”
Rania’s heaving with laughter, she can’t speak. She hands Khalil her phone.
Dr. Smurf prescribes cakes, pies, and smurfberries as part of a healthy diet. #Smurfvillage
@KandilHesham
“This is their prime minister?! Who are these people?” Rania’s still laughing. “Can someone put them in a time machine and give them five years to get ready to be in government? It’s all just too embarrassing! My God. We don’t even need to write articles or make videos anymore, we just need to make one long list. Who has a pen? A pen for the whiteboard! Come on, people, what kind of office is this? Okay. Number one: They make the Harlem Shake illegal.”
“That’s how you start?” Malik asks. “Not with their fucking militias? Not police reform?”
“Oh, you and your police reform,” Rania says, waving him away. “The police can’t be reformed, the wretched cunts have to all be killed.”
“But the Brotherhood didn’t even look at the report,” Malik insists. “Didn’t even do us the fucking courtesy of pretending to look at it!”
“Fine. Number two: They ignored your report. And the report about the army killings in the Eighteen Days. And the report about torture at Ettehadeyya. Then you have burning down churches and torturing children and destroying the economy and ramming through their backward constitution and honoring Tantawi and reinstating the emergency law and taking the IMF loan and—we’re gonna need a bigger board.”
She sees Nancy isn’t even smiling, let alone laughing. “What’s the matter with you?”
“This isn’t a joke, you know,” she says sternly. “We won’t be laughing when we’re all in jail.”
MAY 7: MORSI RESHUFFLES EGYPT’S CABINET. THREE MORE POSTS TO THE BROTHERHOOD.
One word is on everyone’s lips: Tamarrod. Rebel.
Nancy has a sheaf of petition papers pressed to her chest. She has pinned one up and is arranging a stack next to the office door. She moves hurriedly. “We should all be out working the streets, I’m going to go down to Talaat Harb, who’s coming with me, where’s Hafez? Hafez! Let’s go get signatories downstairs!”
Tamarrod is a petition, a movement, a moment—a vote of no confidence in the government, a demand for early elections. The sign-up sheets have proliferated around the city as concerned citizens distribute and collect signatures.
Within an hour Nancy is back upstairs. “I have to print more.” She beams. “Everybody wants to sign! I need at least five hundred. Rania, is the printer working?”
“Huh?” Rania looks up from her computer. “Yes, I think so.”
“Okay, great. At least five hundred. Everyone’s signing. Everyone hates him!”
Nancy, invigorated with optimistic possibility, hurries back downstairs.
JUNE 19: POLICE PREPARE FOR VIOLENT PROTESTS ON JUNE 30
There is a screaming made harsher by the hissing microphone. The video is grainy, brown. There is a mob, men, sticks, rising and falling, lifting and smashing down on bodies. There are hands held up to try to shield their faces. There is a snap of red in the middle, distinct from everything else, brighter, more terrible. The sticks keep falling. Hundreds of them. Falling. Again and again. No mercy. No doubt. The sticks keep falling. Is this now Egypt? The people demand the fall of the regime.
JUNE 24: SHIA MEN LYNCHED IN GIZA. MORSI SILENT.
She is talking again. Her lips move in the night. He lies next to her, watching as her face slips in strained and silent conversation, a name on her lips. “Toussi,” she says. “We’re going to be late, Toussi.” Khalil pulls her close to him, puts his arm over her. “Toussi,” she say
s, “don’t keep me waiting.”
Morsi is ten days away from his first anniversary as president and the broadcasters are feverish with news of the new petitioners’ rebellion. June 30 will see the protest to end all protests. No one knows what’s coming. How many people will take to the streets against the Brotherhood? How many will be for him? What will happen when the two crowds meet?
He dresses without waking her.
Walking to the office, he can feel the anticipation in snatches of conversation and shuttered shops.
Nancy is already in the office.
“Khalil, good. Hi. I think we need to have a meeting. I’ve been getting a lot of messages about Chaos and how come we haven’t announced that we’re part of Tamarrod.”
“But we’re not part of Tamarrod.”
“Aren’t you going to protest on June thirtieth? Isn’t everybody?”
“That doesn’t make us part of Tamarrod. We’ve never officially taken those positions. We didn’t for the elections.”
“I just think we should endorse it officially. For the momentum.”
“The momentum’s doing just fine without us.”
“But you are going down on the thirtieth?”
JUNE 24: COURT ORDERS RELEASE OF ALAA & GAMAL MUBARAK
“Ah. Come in,” the landlord’s lawyer says. “Take a seat. Will we be renewing today?”
“Yes. Another year.”
“Certainly.”
The lawyer pulls out a file, leafs through the papers. Then, without looking up, asks: “Will you be protesting on the thirtieth?”
“I’m undecided.”
“Undecided? I wouldn’t have picked you for Brotherhood.”
“I’m not Brotherhood.”
“I see,” he says, though Khalil is sure he doesn’t.
“And you?” Khalil asks. “You’ll be marching then?”
“Me? Heavens no. I’m taking my family out of the city. Who knows what will happen. The Brotherhood is ruthless.”
Khalil doesn’t say anything.
“They’re a threat to our entire society, you know,” the lawyer continues. “Did you know half of them aren’t even Egyptian?”
Khalil doesn’t say anything. The lawyer returns to the papers, tutting to himself, “And then such a horrible business with those Shia.”
The City Always Wins Page 13
