Otared

by Mohammad Rabie

  I walked around the balcony to the other side overlooking West Cairo, the lion-hearted sector the occupier had never managed to enter. Well, fine: that he had never tried to enter. . . . But even so, Giza was well guarded and the occupier couldn’t get in. This half of the city we utterly ignored. We never bothered watching what went on there. Never bothered sniping anyone who walked its streets. Of course, it was just as forbidden to appear on the western side of the tower as it was on the eastern. Who could say? There might be spies in the free city as well.

  A red dot of light appeared on the balcony wall, careering wildly in all directions. The source of the beam was very far away and being blown about in the breeze, but it was getting closer and would be here in a minute or less. It always took a few bullets before my own hands steadied. I remembered that the first laser dot I’d seen through my scope had also wobbled about violently; after days of training I’d come to hold my rifle as if cradling a baby, and the dot had sat more steadily on the target. Now, perhaps, it was no longer a way to gauge the accuracy of my aim, as is usually the case, but instead served as a signal to the target, letting him know that he was about to be struck by my round. The laser beam, fired out parallel to the gun barrel and coming to rest exactly on the point of impact—I no longer required it, but I went on using it as a final warning.

  Slowly but surely, the red dot on the wall steadied. I stared at the horizon, searching for its source, but it was still far off and all I saw was the faintly trembling track of the approaching beam. A minute later, what I’d been looking for floated down and settled on the balcony floor in front of me.

  A new drone, this. I hadn’t seen one of these before. I opened the message compartment and extracted the small envelope that had been carefully placed inside. Whoever sent me these messages was a true visionary: dispatching little paper missives inside a flying machine with a mind of its own. This drone had five tiny rotors, was lighter and smaller than the four-rotor model which had delivered all our previous messages, and was further equipped with a miniature laser, the message compartment, and a camera affixed to the undercarriage beneath a tiny glass dome that allowed it to swivel in all directions. In addition to all that, there was a thin tube protruding to the right of the camera. I could tell straight away that it was part of a weapon, and looking a little closer saw that it was connected to a magazine containing four 9-mm rounds. Now we had a drone with a gun that could shoot, a camera that could record, and a compartment for messages. A multipurpose tool: kill, deliver, spy.

  I set the drone on the ground, and a few seconds later the rotors started to emit a low whine, like a harmless child’s toy. It swayed back and forth across the floor for a bit, then flew through the balcony’s railings and away from the tower. After a few months in the tower, these machines had become our silent companions.

  I opened the envelope to find five small sheets of paper with our names on them, one name per sheet. I unfolded mine. It said I would be moving in an hour’s time, the last man to quit the tower. I must make sure that everyone received their orders and that they evacuated the tower, then I was to head to East Cairo and be at the intersection of Ramses and July 26th Streets at exactly 10 a.m. There I would meet a member of the resistance who was to act as my guide.

  I returned to the fifteenth floor, handed out the letters, and bade them farewell, asking them to leave immediately.

  Now I was the only person left in the place. In a few minutes’ time, it would be completely empty.

  I picked up my rifle case and descended to the ground floor, carrying a bag containing a few clothes, my mask, cigarette packs, and some money—just a few pound coins. I remembered their cold, hard, metallic feel. Nothing else. No weapons, no ID card, nothing.

  Selecting a spot next to the biggest tree outside the tower, I dug a little rectangular hole into which I laid the gun. The case would keep it free of damp and dirt for a long time. Then I backfilled the remaining space with soil. The tower was my safe place. One day I was sure to return, and when I did my gun had to be ready to go.

  There weren’t many routes between Zamalek and East Cairo, only the bridges that linked the two halves of the city: Qasr al-Nil, October 6th, and May 15th. As long as the battleships remained mid-Nile, preventing river traffic between the two banks, these bridges were the only crossing points. Of course, there were checkpoints at each one. Daily, I’d see those intending to cross from east to west and vice versa standing in long queues waiting to be allowed to go over. Through my scope, the checkpoint on the October 6th Bridge looked laughable. The officers and policemen had narrowed the road slightly using barriers, allowing no more than two cars through at a time, while a limited number of pedestrians could pass through a metal detector. The whole operation was a farce. I’d see the officer in charge sitting sprawled out next to the police car, the people around him all staring ahead, beyond the checkpoints, hoping to reach East or West Cairo on time. People here still took their jobs seriously. Even me—I was careful about my job: I’d obeyed orders and I had listened to everyone’s complaints, faithfully forwarding them to the leadership in hope of an improvement in circumstances, for an end to the occupation.

  I walked along, unburdened but for my lightweight bag and the few clothes it contained, treading lightly, my feet barely touching the ground. For a moment, I felt relief. I might even have smiled, and I tried to remember the last time I’d felt so secure, but it was so very long ago, so obscured by time I could scarcely recall it. I walked northward, parallel to the Nile, toward the October 6th Bridge.

  Plants were everywhere here. The whole island was a garden run wild. How it had all spread and flourished unwatered and untended I had no idea. Trees and plants unpruned, flowers aplenty, boughs and stems beginning to break through the paving stones and asphalt, and all of it somehow unspoiled by the wrecked, burnt-out, and abandoned cars on every side. They were just details that made the scene complete. These cars of ours had been a wonder fashioned from steel and now were gone for good, their place taken by the plants, a glory that had lived on through bombardment, fire, and destruction, that had defied oblivion and stubbornly sprung back up. Many birds had built their nests here, as though our former presence had denied them life and stability. Our existence as peaceful urban citizens, our life on this earth, had ultimately been an impediment to that of the plants and birds, while the artillery was their friend: they lived in harmony with the falling shells, the bullets of the warring sides.

  At last, I came to the on-ramp of the October 6th Bridge. I walked on a little way to where the bridge curved up over the Nile, and here I spotted a round breach in the body of the bridge itself, the entrance to the tunnel that spanned the river beneath the crossing cars. I climbed the wooden ladder resting directly beneath the hole and, before passing into the darkness, looked out at the island behind me, so perfectly calm and peaceful. At that moment, I might have been the last human on it and maybe, too, the last person ever to step through that hole into the belly of the bridge.

  I moved into total darkness and sensed people standing there, silent, waiting for me to say something. Then one of them switched on a torch. A half-light came faintly from the hole at my back and picked out the shapes of four or five figures.

  2

  I STILL REMEMBER THE FIRST day. Two-and-a-half years ago it was: 3 March 2023, to be exact.

  I was on leave, walking down Sharif Street in Downtown in search of a café to sit at. The street was crowded as usual. It was nearly 2 p.m.—Downtown rush hour.

  Without warning, the National Bank collapsed and a huge mass of dust and debris rose up, concealing and choking everything around it. We’d subsequently learn that the bank had come down of its own accord and not from a rocket or artillery round.

  Over the course of the next three hours, large numbers of warplanes would pass through the skies overhead, bombing selected targets: the Central Bank, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Doctors’ Syndicate, the telephone exchang
e in Muqattam, the satellite dishes in Maadi, the Opera House in Zamalek, and army-owned buildings, factories, and warehouses the length and breadth of the republic—all of which we’d find out later. Communications were knocked out, and in the blink of an eye we were back at the beginning of the twentieth century. No internet, no mobiles, no landlines, and no television. Nothing but radio. Voice of the Arabs continued to broadcast its regular programming schedule, with soothing music taking the place of its hourly news bulletins.

  After three hours of pinpoint bombardment, we heard the following report from the BBC:

  The armed forces of the Republic of the Knights of Malta have inflicted severe defeats on the Egyptian armed forces, and the Arab Republic of Egypt is now under the control of the Fourth and Fifth Armies of the Knights of Malta. The Egyptian constitution is henceforth suspended and the constitution of the Republic of the Knights of Malta is promulgated in its place. Parliament, the Shura Council, the Military Council, the Egyptian Council of Motherhood and Childhood, the Egyptian Council of Civil Rights, the Egyptian Human Rights Council, and the Egyptian Council for Technical Support for Preventative Measures have all been dissolved, the Egyptian Constitutional Court abolished, proceedings at all Egyptian courts suspended, and the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate absorbed into the Fourth Army of the Knights of Malta. The president of Egypt has stepped down, the current prime minister removed from his post, and the government disbanded. Finally, operations by all branches of the Egyptian armed forces have been halted.

  At 9 p.m. that evening, we’d hear the name of Egypt’s new military ruler, Field Marshal Paul-Pierre Genevieve, and learn of his first decree: appointing Dr. Khalifa Sidqi prime minister and directing him to form the new government. The morning of the next day, 4 March 2023, all the papers would run more or less identical headlines, the most significant of which would be al-Ahram’s front-page lead: Dr. Sidqi tasked with forming new government amid reports of the abolition of Information Ministry.

  In the week that followed, while the new prime minister set about selecting his ministers (so that the government can confront the dangers and difficulties that lie ahead for Egypt), some four hundred and fifty thousand soldiers and officers from the Knights of Malta’s twin armies entered Egypt, sailing up the two northern branches of the Nile to the towns of Damietta and Rashid, spreading out across the entire Delta region, and moving to occupy Suez and Port Said from the Suez Canal. Armored divisions established themselves in Damietta and Rashid, then in Mansura, Damanhur, Tanta, al-Mahalla al-Kubra, Ismailiya, Zaqaziq, Menuf, and finally Cairo. Just the Delta, though: not a single Maltese trooper moved south of the capital. The south was utterly ignored.

  Occupation patrols started up in these cities and towns, their mission to maintain order following the disappearance of the police and the army’s defeat. It was said to be the most successful military operation in history, with the Egyptian army’s equipment and bases completely destroyed within a week of the Maltese forces’ deployment. Most soldiers and officers, without leadership, weapons, or communications equipment, went home, all hope of mounting a resistance gone. At week’s end, with Maltese units deployed throughout the Delta and in Cairo itself, the prime minister announced that:

  Egypt abides by all international treaties and shall continue to subsidize comestibles and fuel, pay the salaries of government employees—including employees from the Ministry of Defense—and, in light of recent international developments, looks forward to a successful future with which it shall dazzle the world.

  During this time, Egyptians offered their occupier no resistance, and when communications networks were brought back after a week offline, news spread that twenty civilians had been killed during the Maltese deployment—a very small number when weighed against other wars—while there was nothing at all about military losses, nor about the former government or president. Photographs and reports on the subject of the Knights of Malta’s two armies and Field Marshal Paul-Pierre Genevieve were everywhere. Very quickly, life returned to normal.

  As proof of the Maltese Knights’ naval power, the swiftness and maneuverability of their boats and launches, and to underline their control of Nile traffic, five light battle cruisers moored in the river between the island of Zamalek and Cairo’s east bank. The boats were dwarfed by the massive buildings looming over the Corniche, but everyone knew what these dwarves were capable of.

  I was living in Doqqi back then and working at the Qasr al-Nil police station in Garden City on the other side of the river—the east—and, like all the other policemen in East Cairo, I stopped going to work. West Cairo and its sprawling hinterland didn’t seem to be of the slightest concern to

  the Knights.

  For all that time, the word ‘occupation’ was never once glimpsed in the papers. It was never heard.

  Very strange, that. I mean the journalists’ ready acceptance of the occupier and the fact that they put up no resistance. Everyone acted like the whole affair was forgotten and went on with their daily lives—cooperating with the Knights of Malta’s traffic patrols in the occupied cities and waiting obediently in queues for long minutes while their licenses were checked and ID documents perused—and then, two months in, the military ruler declared the Egyptian courts open for business once more. The news was met with great acclamation and was widely regarded as Maltese recognition of the splendor of the ever-splendid judiciary. The prosecutor’s office treated the Knights as it had once done the Egyptian police, as the authority that maintains order and brings cases to court, and as keepers of the peace, and the judiciary treated them in the same way. The Knights of Malta, it appeared, were considerably more competent than we were and, truth be told, the Interior Ministry’s performance had reached its lowest ebb some time before. People had stopped making complaints and had come to accept the thefts and kidnappings with equanimity—after a while, there was nothing left to steal or anyone worth snatching. Maybe that was why the Knights of Malta’s task proved so very easy.

  Nine months of calm, and then Colonel Mohamed Ahmed Abdallah was appointed minister of the interior. Colonel Abdallah had formerly been deputy minister in charge of prisons. In his acceptance speech, having first taken the oath before Field Marshal Paul-Pierre Genevieve, he invited all former employees of the ministry to return to work, asking that they conduct themselves irreproachably and set the interests of the citizens above all others. A most moving speech.

  At once, a media campaign got underway, demanding that the men of the Interior Ministry return to their posts in order to serve the homeland and its citizens. The press, yet to use the word ‘occupation,’ came out in support of the minister. Much was penned about the ‘majesty of the state,’ fallen into decline since the police had gone on strike, about our responsibility toward the country in which we lived, about lifting the burden from the shoulders of the Maltese armies, who were sacrificing much to safeguard security within Egypt’s borders when their real job was to secure them against foreign aggressors. There were calls for the next Police Day—25 January 2024—to be the date they went back to work, and the campaign was dubbed ‘The Police Return on Their Feast Day,’ but it never spread beyond the confines of the papers and television. There was no sign of support for their return on the streets—not the slightest interest in what was happening.

  Sure enough, on 25 January 2024, Maltese troops handed control of police stations and security directorates, as well as the ministry building itself, back into the hands of the Interior Ministry.

  I was at a crossroads, with two clear choices: return to work under the occupier or refuse to countenance the idea, as I had done all along. Up until then I’d been receiving my salary as usual, and of course giving up the job for good would have entailed a major dent in my finances, for in the normal course of events a police officer has no income save his salary and I myself truly had no other.

  Things were still pretty much stable. Of course, Cairo was full of the checkpoints set up by the Knights.
Their soldiers spoke Arabic like Tunisians, and English in many different dialects, and they and the inhabitants got by one way or another. As I saw it, we had sunk as low as it gets, content with a bunch of mercenaries as our occupiers and with no hope of getting rid of them. Just shy of half a million men from various countries, all of them now citizens of the Republic of the Knights of Malta, and we, all pride set aside, were welcoming them as guests into our country.

  This republic had no territory to its name. What history it possessed went back to the remnants of that crusading order which had taken control of Malta and then been expelled, leaving it in limbo until it adopted Rome as its headquarters. A state without citizens, just twenty thousand affiliates and four hundred thousand members. . . . And then, just prior to March 2023, the whole lot, members and affiliates alike, became citizens of the Republic of the Knights of Malta: the bureaucrats, officers, and soldiers of many nations now a mighty and many-branched fighting force.

  Their leadership determined that Egypt was a land where they could all settle down, and so they set out, sailing from points all over the globe to battleships and aircraft carriers moored off the Egyptian coast. It could be that the nations of the world had encouraged them to do so, to bring an end to the hollow bluster and stupidity with which Egypt had long conducted its international relations. The republic was a state without a political or administrative system, just two vast, highly trained armies drawn from a range of ethnicities and nationalities. Land pirates, to use a choicer term, and landless, so patriotism never featured in their thoughts: they’d chosen to leave their countries behind them and settle here.