by Anna Perera
Aaron feels a slight sense of guilt, because there are loads of things he wants: a computer, a TV, clothes, gym shoes. But when they leave and Michael reverses the car, the headlights sweeping from the pit to the scrubland again as they rumble back down the road, his guilt’s soon forgotten. Only the stupidity of so much unwanted stuff fills his mind.
Soon, opening out like the start of a movie, the twinkling lights of the city reappear and streets lined with modern bungalows and houses—many decorated with Muslim motifs—come into view. Eventually, they pull into parking bays by a large square lined with shops on the ground floor of old five-story buildings with big windows. To Aaron’s surprise, there’s rubbish and piles of rotting food on the street here too. The Corporation’s workers—men in green uniforms—toss leaking bags onto trucks tumbling with garbage but they ignore the stinking food. The place smells bad, though not as awful as Mokattam or the pit.
“Since they decided to kill the pigs the food waste in Cairo is out of control. The Zabbaleen won’t pick it up from the streets any more.” Michael shakes his head.
The square is busy with people buying vegetables, leather goods, and coffee. The streetlights make bright ribbons of the red, green, and pale-blue canopies over the shops and charcoal smoke drifts from a nut roaster on the pavement.
Michael switches off the engine and says, “The square was built for the Europeans who lived here.” The keys rattle as he explains. “My father spoke only French to my mother. She spoke only English to him. They spoke Egyptian to everyone else.”
Aaron raises his eyes in wonder at Michael as they get out of the car. He’s never heard of such a strange way of communicating.
“They’re both dead now.” There’s a sudden sadness in Michael’s voice as he leads the way to a door beside a shop selling garlic and onions, tomatoes and dried tamarinds, then up to a first-floor apartment. A tiny apartment with one bedroom, a kitchen-cum-sitting room, and a white-tiled bathroom.
The apartment is cluttered with things like knotted branches, feathers, and odd stones. There are drawings of the Holy Family on the walls and Aaron realizes that this is Michael’s home. Aaron’s in awe that he’s sharing it with him, and in return he would like to tell him about the face he saw on the glass doors of the Imperial Hotel—the picture of the Virgin Mary that made him feel special. But he can’t, because he might tell Father Peter. Aaron doesn’t want to be pushed to the front row of the church every saint’s day and special service for the rest of his life.
“You can stay here,” says Michael.
Chapter Twenty-one
Back to Normal
Over the next few days, Aaron becomes used to sleeping on the brown sofa, elbow falling to the wooden floor while he listens to the annoying sound of motorbikes revving up all night in the square. He becomes used to eating at a pull-out table, having a bath and being looked after. Bit by bit, he begins to enjoy living in a home without garbage, glass, used syringes and plastic tubes. The kind of home he’d only glimpsed through windows.
Slowly he gets to know Inga, Michael’s Danish wife, who’s also an artist. She’s different.
“This is nice,” she says, handing back the perfume bottle she found in Aaron’s pocket before throwing his jeans away and presenting him with new ones made from thick navy denim.
Michael’s different too. He still doesn’t say much, but Aaron’s come to the conclusion that when he looks distant and distracted, he’s actually watching and listening to everything around him. Every morning he asks if Aaron wants to come and help him carve the walls in Mokattam and when Aaron shakes his head Inga laughs.
“OK,” Michael says, smiling, and off he goes.
By the way he says OK, Aaron can tell Michael knew he wasn’t going to come.
“Good,” Inga says, her mouth full of food. “He can sit for me again while I paint his portrait.”
Sitting for Inga is deathly boring and her paintings are strange. She adds what she calls symbols to her pictures that look to Aaron like circles with squiggles and upside-down triangles, but at least it gives him time to think.
Aaron remembers Omar telling his assistant not to be afraid of change, of bad events, death, grief of any kind, because pain, like chaos, is a way of rearranging the elements so that life can start again in a different way. At the time he thought Omar was just being Omar. But now Aaron understands what he meant and his frustration falls away when he realizes that, if Jacob hadn’t taken the necklace from him, he wouldn’t have run away. Then Shareen wouldn’t have kissed him, Lijah wouldn’t have hit him, and Michael wouldn’t have found him and brought him home. But most revealing of all, he wouldn’t have seen how important the Zabbaleen are to the running of Cairo. His city.
In the afternoons, Aaron wanders round the square, sidestepping cars and squeezing past shoppers to rescue the oranges that roll into the gutter from the greengrocer’s shop. Often he sits on the steps of the building, watching people go by and breathing in the smell of leather from the purses, belts, and sandals on the nearby stall while ignoring the stench of rotting food piling up on the pavements and doorways. All the time imagining and hoping that Rachel is missing him. He’d like to go to the hospital to see her, but it’s a long way from here—too far to walk, and he doesn’t have any money. Instead, Aaron stares out at the cars and people until he can’t stand the clouds of flies any longer.
Tonight, when the lights from the street cars stop flashing around the walls and the lamps go out, Aaron sighs deeper than he’s done all day. Glad to be alone. Glad to flop out and not have to talk to Inga or eat with her and Michael. Kind though they are, Aaron finds it hard to be himself when they’re around. Now he can drop the effort of listening and trying to be helpful, when really there’s nothing they want except for him to rest and get strong.
Resting is tiring for Aaron. He’s never felt this exhausted in his life. He takes the perfume bottle from the pocket of his new jeans and holds it to his nose. The faint whiff of rose mixed with lotus and jasmine reminds him of Rachel. Everything reminds him of her these days. The feel of the glass in his hand brings back the touch of her silky skin when she took his rough hands in hers to wipe away her tears. He didn’t know skin could feel that soft. It makes him wonder what it would be like to kiss her. It makes him wonder where feelings come from and whether Michael feels that way about Inga. After everything that’s happened, all Aaron cares about is Rachel.
Two motorbikes rev up in the square, bringing Aaron back to the small flat to remind him that this isn’t his home. Mokattam is peaceful at night, unlike the square, which comes alive at two in the morning. There’s no longer a reason to stay now that his cut lip and swollen eye have healed. It feels strangely dead—this bright, clean apartment where nothing happens. He thought he’d like it when he first came and he’s surprised by the feeling of suffocation that living with people you don’t know can bring.
There’s no air here. No one ever comes.
Now that he’s back to normal, he can’t help wondering how Michael and Inga don’t go crazy living here on their own without any outdoor space and family or neighbors to share their lives with. They have nice cups, a clean floor, and a fridge full of food, and most of the Zabbaleen don’t have these things. But Mokattam is heaving with the lives of thousands of people who are all in the same boat, and even though they’re struggling to survive, there are dramas, gossip, and challenges that make living in this little box feel as dull and lonely as a desert cave.
How many people would come to Inga’s funeral if she died? Aaron might be an orphan who’s not very popular at the moment, but the Mokattam church would be packed to the rafters if he died. And then it hits him that he has only to work hard, show respect to the elders, and help his neighbors, and they will forgive him. Not stealing and not bearing grudges are equally important in their close-knit community. He can show he’s sorry. That’s all he has to do.
Aaron thinks about all the people he’s known since the day he wa
s born. People he understands because they’re like him. He misses sitting on the low wall and gazing at the night sky, surrounded by a world he recognizes. He wants to know what happened to the necklace and what Jacob’s been up to this past week. As for Shareen, she’s dangerous and he’ll tell her to leave him alone. And then there’s Lijah. He’s probably married now. And Rachel. Rachel. Where is she?
At breakfast the following morning, Michael seems to know what he’s thinking and mentions a way out.
“Mokattam is a world of its own,” he says. “That’s difficult to give up.”
“I was thinking I might …” Aaron starts.
“Go home?” Michael gazes at the pull-out table with sharp little eyes. “You’ll know when the time’s right to leave.” With that, he gets up, fetches his knapsack from the bedroom floor, nods quickly, and goes.
The thing about Michael is that although he does these amazing frescoes and carvings, if Aaron asks him how he learned to do them or where the ideas come from, he just says, “You can access all knowledge if you’re willing to tune into it.”
Aaron’s not sure what he means. Sometimes he sees a resemblance between Michael and Omar. Both men baffle and fascinate him. They give him a strange confidence, leaving him with the feeling that he can recover from anything. Suddenly realizing this changes Aaron.
The next day, sitting on the hard brown sofa while Inga sketches him, Aaron says, “I have to go.”
“Well, I’ve finished. For now.” Inga drops her pencil. “I have to paint two dogs this afternoon to make money. What Michael gets from the church just covers rent, so, yes, go. Have good day! No? Do some fun.”
Do some fun? Her odd Egyptian phrases and accent make Aaron laugh. The formal greetings, inquiries after his health, smiles, and long good-byes that are part of life are things she’s never learned. Michael is a quiet Egyptian, while the mad, foreign Inga is loud. She flaps her hands and squeals even when pouring a glass of water.
Aaron accepts a few coins from her and, wearing a yellow T-shirt and new jeans, he leaves. The smell of sandalwood soap from his own skin surprises him as he reaches the street. But the sweet scent is soon overpowered by the familiar stench of rotting waste. A man swears at a pile of loose garbage that has been dumped beside the door of the building.
He nods briefly to Aaron. “Look at this filth. We pay for this rubbish to be collected!”
Aaron takes no notice as he heads out of the square, where three shopkeepers are collecting cigarette cartons, newspapers, and food remains that the men from the Corporation have left behind. Aaron calculates there’s enough trash here to fill five bags. The Zabbaleen would have done a much better job. Suddenly feeling proud of who he is and what he does, he straightens his back and holds his head high.
Ten minutes later Aaron jumps off a bus heading to the museum. When two girls giggle at the sight of him running toward a road that’s closed to traffic, Aaron stops to glance at them.
The local teenagers are obviously on a trip to the museum and he hears one of the bubbly girls saying, “He’s so fit!”
“Like a Greek god!”
“Egyptian, you mean.”
“Apollo? Was he Greek, then?”
“You’re thinking of Adonis …”
It takes a moment for Aaron to realize they’re discussing him. Their words make him wonder if Rachel might think he’s fit too. He catches sight of himself in a shop window and is startled to see he looks nothing like a Zabbaleen. There’s not a speck of dust on his skin, hair or clothes. In a weird transformation, his time at Michael’s has turned him from a filthy kid into a handsome man with shiny hair, bright skin, and only the faintest trace of a cut lip and black eye.
Gazing around him at passing shoppers filling their baskets with fruit and flowers, Aaron sees the road to the hospital and university is crowded with policemen. He slips down a side street to avoid the crush of people waiting to cross at the lights. It’s then that he realizes that something out of the ordinary is happening in the city. A new one-way system has been invented to force traffic away from the center and there are police everywhere directing cars in the wrong direction. But he knows Cairo like the back of his hand and slips down an alley where cheap restaurants and cafés pretend to sell real Egyptian food to backpacking tourists.
It takes an hour and a half to cover a distance that should have taken twenty minutes, so many roads are barred by men with sniffer dogs. When Aaron finally walks down the road leading to the hospital, he’s covered in sweat and is shocked to the core when a beggar at the gate holds out a hand for a coin.
The beggar bows eagerly, but Aaron knows for sure he’s richer than him by the gold tooth he reveals when he grins.
In a flurry of excitement at being mistaken for someone worth begging from, Aaron rushes past the man, into the hospital, and up in the elevator, as if he’s used to making this journey every day. For all he knows Rachel could be back home in Mokattam by now, but a burning feeling inside tells him she’s still here. Still here.
Aaron pinches himself to calm down from the speedy, breathless way he arrives at her slightly open door.
A sound of light coughing comes from inside the room. He pauses to listen and holds his breath in case she can hear him standing there—being stupid. Wiping his clammy hands on the side of his jeans, he feels as if he’s about to fall off a raft, crash on a rock, and drown.
Aaron gently touches the door, which remains firmly in its place. He tries again. Nothing happens. Then he spots a wooden wedge jammed firmly underneath the door, keeping it ajar to allow air to travel freely from the window to the dank corridor.
He can make a big entrance by kicking the wedge out of the way or pitching himself through the narrow space. Either way, he’ll surprise Rachel, which he doesn’t want to do. That leaves only one option. He raps his knuckles on the door.
“Rachel …”
The slight coughing noise stops. “It’s me, Aaron.”
There’s a rustling sound.
“I wanted to see you, Rachel.”
Formalities over, Aaron breathes deeply and, clutching the door, pushes sideways into the room, where his jaw drops. A pale, middle-aged Western woman is sitting on the bed in a blue gown. Beyond her, dead flies dot the dirty window and a hazy sky blots out the sun. The beautiful light from last time is gone and this cold, hard vision shows up the threadbare sheet on the bed and the gray, bumpy linoleum on the floor.
“Sorry. I was looking for … someone,” Aaron says.
The woman smiles, answering in fluent Arabic. “I know what you mean, love! That’s what we’re all doing, eh? Some find it easier than others, don’t they?”
Frustrated and sad, Aaron nods and backs out of the room, sneaking down the corridor to peer into every room he passes. Rooms that reveal several beds with desperately sick patients attached to blood bags, many of whom are being washed and fed by members of their families.
Where’s Rachel?
Confusion takes over when he reaches the lift and begins to wonder how Rachel got a room of her own here. Someone said a doctor from this hospital was visiting the health clinic in Mokattam when she was run over. In that case someone at the Mokattam clinic must know where she’s been taken. He must go home and find out.
The sticky heat and hazy sky add to Aaron’s despair as he reaches the hospital gates. A roar of dust from a passing truck points the way to the center of town. As he trundles down the busy road, his knee begins to ache at the thought of all that walking down the hot, shimmering, noisy road that stretches out forever in front of him.
He regrets not going to the perfume shop first, before heading to the hospital.
At the mercy of his own misery at not seeing Rachel, Aaron remembers another dream he had about his mother. A dream where she came to him on the night she died. In that dream, he saw her smiling, standing in the lane facing him, surrounded by a golden light. When he woke up in the morning he ran into the lane expecting to see her. He was shoc
ked when she wasn’t there. Only a child with a runny nose returned his gaze. Then he remembered his mother was dead and the joy of seeing her in the dream made it feel as if she’d died twice. He’d lost her again and the effect was a splintering of reality. A devastating howl in every cell of his body. Even now that feeling makes him recoil from himself.
The pain of her death runs away with him until he reaches the third road so far that’s barred from pedestrians and traffic with police and dogs.
“What’s going on?” someone asks.
“The American president, Barack Obama, is coming to the university to give a speech,” the police officer answers.
“Really? What time?” Beaming wildly, the onlooker can’t hide her excitement. “Is he coming this way? When? When?”
The police officer shrugs. Aaron doesn’t wait to hear the answer. What’s an American president’s speech got to do with him? His life isn’t going to change because of that. What’s the use in him coming to Cairo? What’s the use in speeches? The Egyptian president didn’t do anything for the Zabbaleen, so why should the American one be any different? Politicians make no sense to him.
Sometime later, when he reaches the entrance to the underpass beneath another barricaded road, Aaron touches the familiar bottle in his pocket. The smooth glass feels like a warm hand. Something real to hold on to. Because of the closed road, the peeling ochre-painted tunnel is swarming with people and neither side wants to give way, bumping into one another, mingling scents of sweat, tobacco, perfume, and the odd sharp smell of mint tea. Squeezing the glass bottle, Aaron elbows past a man carrying bread on his head. Then a large family.
Two police in navy garb, guns held high, force Aaron to slow down until he reaches the exit to the street and, without thinking, pushes through the crowd. As he steps into the blast of sunshine, gasoline fumes and rushing people, a young, dainty woman in a green galabeya brushes past him. It’s Shareen.
