Otared

by Mohammad Rabie

  I killed the most moronic one. I shot him as he shouted out his wares, wildly bellowing, “I’m robbing myself!” by way of explaining his low prices. I fired as he started to utter the word ‘robbing’—“Robbeeeee . . . !”—and, suddenly full of eagerness, I made to shoot the vendors alongside him, but I was out of bullets. I quickly replaced the empty magazine with a full one.

  I killed a woman picking up clothes and turning them over. From her expression, it didn’t look like she had the slightest intention of buying. I shot her hand as it flipped the clothes, and she screamed and grabbed at an item of clothing with her other hand, so I shot that, too, and she snapped out of her madness and went careering between the tables, trying to get away. I shot her in the head.

  9 p.m. The rifle had jammed four times and I was getting tired of trying to unstick it, so I went downstairs, retrieved the second gun, and went on shooting. There was more than enough ammo—still two full boxes by the dome. I wasn’t bothered about counting up the remaining rounds. It was clear that I’d get bored of the whole thing before they ran out.

  I killed a man walking along the overpass. I shot him in the leg, and he fell down and started crawling toward the edge, then tried to get his body over the metal barrier. He wanted to drop down, but I saved him the bother by shooting him in the head. I killed the man who pulled his car over—to try and save him, I assumed. For some reason, I hesitated briefly before opening fire, and watched as he pulled a knife out from beneath the seat of his car and began to butcher the dead man. I didn’t understand why he would slit a dead man’s throat—could the man have been alive, despite the bullet to his head?—and I didn’t care, and I fired three rounds into the knifeman. I’m the one who kills people here. And I killed the man whose car collided with the stationary car and toppled off the overpass, hitting the ground with a massive crash. He staggered out of the wreck and I aimed at him, and I was laughing, laughing so hard that I shook. I tried keeping it in, but it exploded out of me, so that the rifle nearly fell from my hands, and then it struck me that the man might try to flee and that I had to kill him, and that his name was Amin, and I pulled myself together, and pointed the rifle at Amin, and fired two rounds into his chest. And I killed a southerner called Gowhar, dressed in a broad-sleeved robe. I shot him in the neck with a single bullet, and he took to his heels, bleeding, and I let him go because I knew he’d die in a few minutes and that nobody would be able to help him. And I killed Ali Khalil, an old man. Why he was walking about down here, I couldn’t tell. I shot him in the head and he dropped, still breathing, and I shot him again in the chest because I knew that he was to die shot twice. And I shot Kamal Hussein, forty-two years old. I aimed at his head and fired two rounds, one after the other, and he died before he hit the ground. And I looked for Samira al-Dahshuri. She’d be walking beneath the overpass, I knew, and I swept the area through my scope, and when I saw her I fired without hesitation into her liver. It had been cirrhotic for years, and maybe she felt the bullet ripping through it and killing her. Maybe that is why she hunched over and peered at the spot as she died.

  And I killed Ziyad Mohamed Bakir with a single bullet. I killed Shehab Hassan Abdo Abdel-Magid with a shot to the head. I killed Karim Medhat Wahba with a shot to the right side of his chest. I killed Mamdouh Sayyid Mansour with a round that went into his stomach and exited through his back. I killed Mustafa Zeinhom Rabie Mohamed with a shot to the chest. I killed Mohamed Khaled Mahmoud Qutb with a bullet in his left eye. I killed Ahmed Ihab Mohamed Abbas Fuad with a shot to the temple. I killed Ahmed Hussein Ahmed Hussein with a shot to the head. I killed Ahmed Sharif Mohamed Mohiedin Dahi with a shot to the chest. I killed Islam Essam Mohamed Fathi Mohamed Sharif with a shot to the head. I killed Amira Ahmed Mohamed Ismail with a shot to the chest. I killed Rami Gamal Shafiq Ahmed with a shot to the chest. I killed Ramadan Sidqi Aboul Ela with a shot to his stomach. I killed Rumani Matta Adli with a shot to the right side of his chest. I killed Sameh Mohamed Gamal with two shots: chest and head. I killed Mahmoud Merghani Mohamed Ahmed with a shot to the head. I killed Nancy Rifaat al-Sayyid Hassan with a round in her right eye. I killed Mustafa Fathi Mansour Darwish with a bullet to the face. I killed Mohamed Ibrahim Mohamed Khalil with a bullet to the heart. I killed Mumin Eid Hassanein Abdel-Muati with a shot to the head. I killed Heba Hussein Mohamed Amin with a shot to the head. I killed Abanoub Awadallah Naeem Khalil Girgis with a shot to the head. I killed Ashraf Mousa Higab Mousa with a shot to the temple. I killed Girgis Lamai Mousa with a bullet through the neck. Nothing easier than shooting necks. I killed Mustafa Kamal Ibrahim Amer with two rounds, in his chest and his belly. I killed Emad Abdel-Zaher Mohamed with a round that passed through his right eye and exited through the right side of his head. I killed Mahmoud Ramadan Nazir Abdel-Hamid with a bullet to the stomach. I killed Ibrahim Rida Abdel-Hamid with a shot to the head. I killed Khaled Mohamed al-Sayyid Mohamed al-Wakil with a shot to the chest. I killed Mohamed Othman Abdel-Ghani Mohamed with a shot to the stomach. I killed Ayman Anwar Abdel-Aziz Abdel-Gawad with a shot to the chest and another to the belly. I killed Youssef Fayez Armanious Ibrahim with a bullet that penetrated his back and lodged in his chest. I killed Safwat Mohamed Mohamed Said with a shot to the right side of his chest. I killed Mahmoud Shehata Mohamed Shehata with a shot to the stomach. I killed Sayyid Farag Masoud with a bullet to the neck. I killed Mahmoud Ibrahim Mohamed Khafaga with a shot to the head. I killed Imam Kamal Mohamed Abdallah with a shot to the head. I killed Mabrouk Ahmed Abdel-Fattah Bahr with a shot to the left half of his stomach. I killed Sharif Yehya Atris Suleiman with a round to his left eye.

  I killed Mohamed Ali Mohamed Sami with a shot to his temple. He stood in the street among the corpses and looked up at me as though he knew exactly where I was. Standing there, motionless. He raised his right hand, pointed his forefinger at me, then placed it against his temple and held the pose. After all those killings, it was quite possible that someone might discover my hiding place and run away or take shelter behind a wall, but Mohamed did not flee. He did not move. He stood there, waiting for the bullet. He knew that I’d answer his request, that I’d shoot him wherever I chose.

  I glanced at the clock on my phone and saw that it was 10 p.m., and I heard the sound of Burhan growing louder, beating the air with his wings, the buzzing more intense than I’d ever heard it. I put down the rifle and turned around, searching for him. He was hovering off to my right and flying about as though panicked, swooping up to my face, then stopping before he got there. Me in the center of the sphere and him circling around me, then swooping in and away with an uncharacteristic lack of grace. The cramped space inside the sphere was stifling him. He went over to the inner wall and hovered next to it for a moment, then surged forward and bumped me lightly in the face. I heard the clink as he collided with the metal mask and heard myself asking apprehensively, “What’s the matter?” Back he went, then surged forward to strike me a second, more forceful, blow. I nearly toppled over and asked, “What is it, Burhan?” though I knew he wouldn’t answer, and he flew out of one of the small windows as though running away. I took off the mask, so worked up I was gasping, breathed deep to draw in more oxygen, and regained my seat at the sphere’s center while I calmed down. Then I heard Burhan approaching at high speed and held my breath. He came in through the window like a bullet and smashed into my temple, and I fell from the chair, crashing to the bottom of the sphere, then dropping out of the hole to collide with the top of the dome’s unyielding curve.

  I tried to cling onto consciousness. This was no time to be passing out. I put up a fight and started thinking about the mission, and the occupation, and the coming revolution, and how I despaired of any change—and then I felt a complete conviction, a true belief, that not a single soul would rise up. I knew that the revolution would not happen. And though I considered everything I had done to be pointless, I was taking my revenge on them all.

  Burhan floated out of the sphere at a more customary slow pace and came up t
o me. He landed on my chest and fell still. For a few seconds, I fell unconscious.

  I was lying between the legs of the four statues, the metal sphere over my head. My beloved Dragunov, which had not fallen with me, hung from the chair by its leather strap, swaying gently. I remembered Farida, alone at home, and I realized that I had killed many people. I was fine: a few mild aches in my back and neck, and a slight dizziness from my head striking the dome. I was thinking of getting moving, getting back in the sphere so that I could carry on shooting, when Burhan walked leisurely up my chest toward my face. If only you had a face then I would know your intentions. In the gloom below, I heard people’s cries rise up, mournful and wracked with grief because I had stopped firing. I heard them chant, “Where have you gone? Come back and shoot!”

  Then the darkness covered me.

  AD 2011

  1

  INSAL HURRIED OUT OF THE house on his usual route to the school, though not at the usual hour. It was 7 p.m. when he left, having received a call from the school’s security guard. The man’s anxiety and his fretful tone had moved Insal.

  The guard said that Insal had to come to school right away. There was a problem he was unable to deal with—a young girl left at school until this late hour—and no one answering when he tried to call: the principal not picking up, the other teachers all protesting that they were too far away and there was nothing they could do, the girl’s father not responding on any of the numbers listed under his name, and the guard unable go home. That the guard had chosen him was, thought Insal, an indication of the man’s desperation—when he said he had tried calling others and failed, Insal believed him. His wife, Leila, hadn’t objected. Go, she told him, go and see what’s going on down there, and if she hadn’t said this so sincerely he would never have gone.

  Insal returned home carrying an utterly drained and fast-asleep four-year-old girl. He explained to his wife how there was nothing for it but to take her in, just for the night. Confronted by the girl, Leila hesitated. She felt sympathetic, a sympathy doubtless rendered more acute by the child growing inside her. As mothers do, she had visions of a future: in these, her fetus was now a boy of four, who had for some reason lost both his parents and been adopted by a kind-hearted family. So in the end Leila welcomed the girl with an open heart.

  There was a lot of gas in the air that day. People wept. They were frightened, but it was the gas that made them weep. Their tears flowed, their noses ran, and some of them choked. The cops on the ground were teaching the protestors and troublemakers a lesson while the overwhelming majority sat back in their comfortable living rooms, surrendering to great waves of laughter as they watched events on the television, belching idly and indulging in that great pastime: mockery. Who do they think they are, taking on the regime?

  By day’s end, everyone who’d taken to the streets had been swept off them. The police deluged them with gas and they took to their heels, and in some neighborhoods the cops charged after them. Many were detained and the rest ran home. Most assumed it was over that night, but no: vengeance had blossomed at last.

  No one realized that what had happened and what would happen thereafter was preordained, that the hell they lived in was perfectly normal, was in fact a hell that recurred elsewhere and often, and that all these things were a punishment.

  The next day, the world’s illusion was at its most intense. Everyone was taken in. A few thought that deliverance was at hand, but it was a false deliverance, a salvation from stupid things of their own devising. The majority surrendered to the illusion.

  Zahra awoke very ill indeed, so sick that Insal called a doctor to the house, terrified of losing this stranger’s child. The doctor reassured him and said that all she needed was two days’ rest and strong medicine.

  Insal stayed away from school that day, while the principal kept himself abreast of the girl’s condition via telephone. He informed Insal that he was trying to get in contact with her family, but was having no luck. At sunset, he phoned to tell him what, after much effort, he had managed to learn.

  Zahra’s mother was dead and no trace could be found of her father. It seemed that he was either handicapped or unwell. There was no one at her father’s house. The man had vanished, and when the principal asked his neighbors to take the girl in, to his despair they all refused. The principal was searching for other relatives of Zahra’s, he told Insal, and if no relatives could be found then he would arrange to have her sent to a refuge in a few days’ time.

  The next day passed without any improvement in Zahra’s condition, but when she woke on the Friday morning she started asking for her father.

  That Friday, Cairo caught fire.

  As Insal and Leila had been expecting, Zahra filled their home with the sound of weeping. In vain did Insal try to explain to her what had happened—every time he was about to start he stopped: how to explain to her what he didn’t know himself?—and so instead he began consoling her every and any way he could. And he started to lie. He claimed that her father was away and questioned her about her other relatives.

  He asked her about grandmothers and grandfathers, about aunts and uncles, but she denied knowing any of them, and when her crying became truly unbearable, Leila brought the interrogation to an end and picked Zahra up, murmuring to her and accusing Insal of getting her worked up.

  Leila sensed Zahra’s alarm. The fear of a four-year-old can’t be imagined; it’s a fear that can only be seen and felt, transmitted through a trembling body to adults, where it grows and metamorphoses into a sense of inadequacy and powerlessness. Zahra was in a state of constant and steadily gathering fear that peaked, then climbed higher still: fear on fear. She had no idea what was happening outside, and neither did Insal or Leila. No one knew of the wounded out in the street—and, of course, the dead knew nothing. Yet despite the almost total ignorance from which everyone was suffering, ignorant Zahra’s terror mirrored that of the few who knew the truth.

  After hours of crying, and calming, and attempts at feeding, Zahra slept, and husband and wife stayed up, transfixed before the television, anxiously catching up with the latest developments.

  Many souls had been claimed that day, and many had been injured by birdshot that stung the skin and lodged beneath it, that could be fatal when fired directly into the face, that wrecked eyeballs whenever it struck them. Everyone thus wounded would think himself a hero. Those who’d been injured and hadn’t died would regard the pellets as a splendid badge of honor, retained beneath their hides, and would see no further than that. A few months later, their wounds would be a mark of shame.

  Hope roamed through the crowds in the streets, reaping them, chewing them up, and spitting them back out in a state of joy. They glimpsed only the fringes of their torment and thought it glory.

  Three grim days the little family spent without Zahra’s father making an appearance, and the principal concluded that he had been injured, or gone missing, or died. Just one of thousands. Things were more complicated now, and Insal and Leila had a discussion, finally agreeing that they would take Zahra in until a member of her family came to light.

  The pair of them spent the three days in front of the television, watching the footage, listening to much talk about the numbers of dead and wounded, seeing the battle unfold between the two sides. As he flicked between channels, Insal thought about the girl’s missing father. The man might be injured and in hospital, lying in a coma, or actually dead, his undiscovered corpse sprawled out somewhere—behind a trashcan, on the roof of a tall building, down a manhole, in a pile of garbage. Maybe someone had taken him to hospital, and he’d died there, and right now he was lying in a morgue. Maybe he’d died on the way to hospital and the ambulance had taken him to the big morgue at Zeinhom. And now he gave a shiver of fear. He’d have to go to all these places and search for him, search for a body or a corpse. He reached out his hand to Leila’s belly, and drew strength from her.

  2

  IN THE MORNING, INSAL AWOKE and sat up
in bed, trying to dispel the last vestiges of sleep. Casting a glance at Leila and Zahra, he saw that they were more or less as they had been the night before—Leila holding Zahra in her arms, and the girl’s arm stretched out around Leila’s body to hold her close—but Zahra was now upside down, her feet by Leila’s face and her head at her belly.

  Insal got up, laid out a clean set of clothes, and took a shower. He hadn’t washed yesterday, had slept without eating supper. He stood beneath the jet of water as though ridding himself of something, or readying himself for something, for a plague that would strike him down. Today he was going to Qasr al-Aini hospital to look for Zahra’s father among the injured and dead. This morning, Insal thought, he had better fortify himself. He would walk through the crowds, would take a stroll through his peaceful neighborhood, would stand on the street corners and observe the few trees and palms. He would avoid the towering heaps of refuse. He wanted beauty before he gazed on ugliness. He wanted to look on the living before he saw the dead, the hale before the maimed. His anxiety got the better of him and he hurried out of the shower, dressed, and went down into the street.

  People were staying at home in a state of constant fear. Only a few courageous souls ventured out, on important business they couldn’t let slide, to the squares where the protests were being held or to the market, while an even smaller minority walked the streets untroubled by what was happening all around them—knowing everything, but not caring.