Spring

by Leila Rafei

  Of course, he was all out of rolling papers, so he went looking for scraps to do the job instead. On the coffee table he found a stack of textbooks, the majority his. Advanced Petrochemicals. Introduction to Crude. Chromatography for Beginners. He hated the sight of them just like he hated his major, petrochemical engineering, which he chose after years of brainwash from a father who’d gone into the same trade. Baba believed there were three courses in life: doctor, engineer, or khara (shit). Sami was too squeamish and soft to be a doctor. He could never cut somebody open or look at a human body like the biological slab of matter it really was. And as for shit, well, he already felt like shit much of the time, so he didn’t need to be shit, too. Shit in the eyes of his father who, even far away in the desert, still judged his every move.

  The textbooks had better use as kindling, but something stopped him before he ripped out a page wholesale. The book didn’t even belong to him. As part of his scholarship, the university had loaned it to him just as they’d loaned him a dorm room, which he had pretty much abandoned to live instead with Rose. That was bad enough. If they ever found out he was tearing up textbooks too, they’d kick him out and ship him back to the sugar fields of Mahalla. A waste of a good scholarship.

  With a sigh, he set down the textbook and reached for a stack of papers that Jamila had swept neatly into the corner. Much of it was Rose’s classwork—drawings and half-filled worksheets from her third graders. He stopped on a blank math quiz, which she’d used to take notes on Sunday, January 23, when she evidently had run out of notebook paper. On the margins she’d penciled a silvery border. For a moment all Rose’s faults dripped away as Sami imagined her doodling in class, clicking her teeth against her tongue as she scribbled unintelligibly onto any paper in sight. He had to squint to read what she’d written, which was so small it seemed purposeful. It seemed to be a shopping list. Toilet paper. Kleenex. Q-tips. When he reached the edge of the page, he flipped to find the list continued on the back. Milk. Sugar. Tea. Bread, then breadcrumbs, with crumbs underlined with a deep lead gash. Underneath, crumbs and crumbs and crumbs again, in successively larger, stronger print, as if stuttering. By the end of the page, the letters were almost black, scraped so hard into the paper that the pencil had almost gone straight through.

  What had gotten into her?

  At first, he thought it was the hash. Maybe it was a good strain, one laced with chemicals seeping into his bloodstream from the palm of his hand. He ran his finger over the words, feeling the grooves in the paper to ensure its existence, that it wasn’t some ghost that would disappear when he turned to face the light. But it was there—paper. Like the touch of Giddo’s hand. It slipped out of his grip and he dove to catch it. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to use Rose’s notes for rolling paper.

  In the end he was left with one option—yesterday’s edition of Egypt Today. But a headline caught his eye before he got the chance to tear off a sheath and get on his way.

  president orders arrest of baker

  in burning of imbaba man

  January 28, 2011

  In response to the burning of Ahmed El Masry, 27, the president has ordered the arrest of baker Zeid Marzouk, 31, son of the infamous Islamist drug lord “Pinky” Marzouk, who was responsible for holding patrons of the Kit Kat kebab house hostage during the terrorist insurrection of 1992. Marzouk is accused of illegally marking up the price of government bread from ten piasters to an unaffordable fifteen in an effort to fund the undercover drug ring he inherited from his father. He is also charged with funneling arms from radicals in Gaza and dispensing them on the streets of Cairo. It is believed that Marzouk provided the weapons used in the recent murder of Madame Ingy Girgis, 82, of Garden City.

  At a press conference this morning in Qasr El Aini hospital, El Masry thanked the president for keeping the country safe from crooked bakers like Marzouk, who would like nothing more than to bleed the regime’s generosity in order to sow chaos and radicalism.

  If you or anyone you know has been victimized by a baker like Marzouk, please refrain from attempting to martyr yourself in the manner of El Masry, and instead, call the municipal police.

  Sami set down the paper, confused. He imagined the man in the body cast speaking to the press through that hole for his mouth. Thank you, Mr. President. The news was trash. Now it was clear why they usually stuck to football scores and hotel openings—any story verging on the political came off like a joke.

  There certainly was no mention of the demonstrations rumored to begin at noon that day. Apparently the events in Tunisia had fired up a bunch of Egyptian youth who wanted a revolution of their own. Sami thought immediately of Ayah, who was far more political than himself. She’d die to take part somehow, if only to post news clips from her phone. He understood the instinct but never had the urge to get involved himself. What was the point? No protest ever amounted to much. The only one he’d ever seen was about a year or so ago, when mobs stormed the street incensed by the outcome of a football game, 1-0, Egypt knocked out of the World Cup by its African rival, Algeria. It ended just as fast as it began, when trucks and tanks rolled in to hush the whole city to a pall. Whatever was due to happen at noon today couldn’t be any worse than that. This was no football game.

  With a huff, he tore the article down the middle and got on his way.

  *****

  In Khan El Khalili, Sami braced himself for a morning spent shoving his way through ambling crowds, tripping over stray cats and oriental gadgets, dodging overeager shopkeepers perched on stools waiting to reel in customers. What he found, though, wasn’t quite the case. Almost all of the bazaar was boarded up, unrecognizable without the usual adornment of scarves and lanterns casting flecks of light up and down the alleys. He would have thought it was the hash again if it weren’t for an elderly couple blocking his path. They wore the usual tourist gear—safari vests and cameras around their necks—and held a map outstretched between them, looking as confused as he was to find the bazaar’s state a reality. A reality he needed to reconcile with a long list of tasks to accomplish before noon prayer. He needed to find a gift quickly. He bounded up and down the alleys until at last he found one open store, a hole in the wall full of antiques. The place dripped Rose.

  Inside, a bald man sat behind a desk fixing a watch with a tiny screw. He looked up from his handiwork as Sami walked in, eyebrow raised in suspicion.

  Sami didn’t give him much thought, distracted by piles of centuries-old junk all around him, dumped haphazardly like the contents of a treasure chest. There were mounds and mounds of leather, brassware, and unpolished metal, all covered with dust and yet still luxuriant; pins bearing portraits of dead dictators and the insignias of long-defunct empires; clocks and pots and coffee jugs strewn about; glasses and gadgets that left him goggle-eyed. Yet somehow—as if each dim, dusty bulb in the shop hit every brass cranny just enough to shine a spotlight in his path—a nondescript little camera caught his eye. He reached for it and wiped off the dust, uncovering its logo. Meikorlens. Made in Japan. A retro model from the 1950s, square and classic. It was much older than the cameras looped around those elderly tourists’ necks, though it befit them. It befit Sami too.

  “200 pounds,” said the shopkeeper.

  Sami turned to find the man still at work with the watch, not even looking. He stayed silent, feigning uncertainty even though he’d already decided to buy it. He liked that the camera came from Japan—somewhere as far away as possible, where he and all his mistakes were unknown, unpronounceable. It seemed a suitable receptacle for whatever pictures he’d take nowadays—pictures of Rose, of Ramses, of their upcoming trip to the beach. He was so captivated that he forgot to play the haggling game and said, in a quick breath, he’d take it.

  The shopkeeper flipped open his cash box, pleasantly surprised. Deal.

  “Wait. I need something else. A gift for . . . a friend,” said Sami, obscuring the gender of this fri
end with a deft misuse of grammar. That the gift was for his girlfriend wasn’t any of the man’s business, but since when did that matter?

  The shopkeeper seemed to see through it. He took a bracelet out of the jewelry case and set it in Sami’s palm. It was heavy, composed of silver coins that jangled like the ankles of belly dancers. Honestly, Rose would love an old bracelet like that, an impractically oriental trinket left behind by some Victorian tourist, like herself in a past life. But he wasn’t about to prove the shopkeeper right.

  “It’s for my brother.”

  “Well, what does your brother like,” said the shopkeeper, returning the bracelet to the case.

  Sami said the first thing that came to mind. “He likes to write, I guess.” It was true—Rose was always scribbling notes on scraps of paper, in bed and cafés and taxi cabs. Notes like crumbs.

  The man walked to a shelf packed with old books and magazines, comics and newspapers from days when people actually read. He slipped out a leather-bound journal, “from the era of King Farouk,” and opened it to prove that it was wholly unused. As Sami watched the blank, yellowed pages flit between the man’s wrinkled hands, he imagined them filled with Rose’s notes, the scribbles and the crumbs. Yes, this was the one. Useful, unisex. Again, he didn’t even bother bargaining. There was no time anyway.

  *****

  After leaving the bazaar, Sami stopped by a grocery store and picked up some items from Rose’s shopping list—milk and sugar and toilet paper, even breadcrumbs, as if to insist there was nothing strange about it, nor the harsh stutter with which it was written. Crumbs and crumbs and crumbs. Maybe she was baking a cake again, like that one disastrous attempt she’d made months ago, which left the house stinking of burnt metal for a week. He supposed he would find out later. He put the Meikorlens and journal in his backpack and walked to Salah Salem Street, where he stood on the curb with his arm in the air, trying to find a taxi to take him back downtown. It was more difficult than he thought. Every now and then a cab would totter past, roll down its window hesitantly, and then scoff at his proposed destination. Ramses? No way. As if he’d asked to be driven off a cliff.

  The bags grew heavy and the streets more desolate as Sami waited. He thought of calling Rose to tell her he’d be late, but he’d forgotten to buy phone credit and the only kiosk in sight was closed, like Hashem’s. Was everybody praying? His only company was a beggar woman sitting on the curb, selling fish from a bucket at her feet.

  “Very good fish,” she said as their eyes met. “Nile fish.”

  Sami grew uncomfortably conscious of his two full grocery bags, as if he were flaunting them in her face. Food for him and not for her. Trinkets bought elsewhere. He set down the bags to make them less conspicuous, but she’d already seen them. Even as she beckoned him, there was a certain scorn in her glare, as if she knew all about Sami and how he’d forgotten his grandfather’s death like an item on a grocery list. Tissues, maybe. Something insignificant like breadcrumbs. Only he didn’t forget those.

  Despite the disciplinary look to her face, Sami couldn’t help but feel bad for the beggar woman. He wondered if she had any kids whose lives she was currently ruining. She looked about Suad’s age, mid-forties, with wide hips under her galabia and thus, many kids and many ruined lives. He smiled to himself, looking like a fool with his hand in the air, flagging taxis that would never come. It felt good to commiserate with the imagined children of this woman who sat in the street with a bucket of fish. He rejoiced in his insignificance. He was one of many young men in Cairo, a place with no shortage of young men, a place where young men were so numerous they melded into one coagulated mass of denim and hair gel and skinny limbs. They were the shabab, a singular, collective force. He was only one measly molecule among all the indistinguishable youth who, on normal days, would gather around microbuses to go to sweat or study or loiter downtown. And for a moment all his problems seemed utterly moronic. He reminded himself, God does not burden a soul beyond that it can bear.

  And with that, Sami crossed the street toward the beggar woman. He expected this to surprise her, but she looked undaunted, as if she’d known all along that he’d make his way over sooner or later. Mothers always know, as Suad would say.

  “Only one guinea, one guinea, my boy. I’m telling you, there isn’t a better deal in town.”

  He held his nose and peered into the bucket, where a single gray catfish bobbed in murky water. Of course, he wanted nothing to do with that fish, but he felt he had no choice. He opened his wallet and dug around for a guinea. There was his government ID; an assortment of creased business cards from odd doctors and engineers he’d encountered from Mahalla to Cairo; a folded post-it scrawled with I love you in Rose’s perfect, studied Arabic hand. But there was nothing in the money fold but a fifty-pound note. Not the petty coin he was after. He could have run back to the antique shop to get change, but as he looked down at the woman’s sleepy, worn eyes, which reminded him of his mother’s, the thought of breaking the bill felt impolite, as if it might elicit a slap. So he reached for the fifty and handed it to her. The woman’s eyes widened in caution as she made out the numbers, as if it were a trick.

  “Take it.”

  She pointed to the sad, limp fish at her feet. It seemed like she wanted to give him the fish—whether by some motherly urge or an aversion to being made a charity case.

  At first he shook his head. In the end he accepted with a listless, “alright.”

  The woman took the bill, folded it, and slipped it under her sandal. She pulled the fish out of the bucket and slapped it against her arm to dry it, spraying Sami with lukewarm droplets. He didn’t budge, eyes stuck to the ground where the money he thought would dazzle her now sat wedged between her foot and the asphalt. Her feet were tiny but hung over the edge of her plastic flip-flops, which were covered in pink Minnie Mouse print. He would have thought he was looking at a child’s feet if it wasn’t for her one overgrown toenail, which curved downward like a witch’s claw.

  “Where are you going, my boy?”

  His eyes jolted up to find her bearing an off-putting smile, teeth caked in brown grime like grout between tiles. Now she was getting too friendly. This was why he should have minded his own business and got on his way.

  “Ramses.”

  “You better get there before the protests.”

  “Protests?”

  There was something different about hearing the word aloud, as if it were now real. The emptiness of the street was no longer a novelty—it gave him a chill. He needed to get back to Rose. He asked the woman if she had a phone he could borrow, which felt dumb but he was all out of options.

  “Bah,” she laughed, tossing a cheap phone out from beneath her skirt. “It won’t do you any good. They cut the phones. All the phones. Yours and mine. They cut off the whole city.”

  “They?”

  “You know who.”

  She wrapped the fish in newspaper, tied it up with twine, and gave it to Sami. It hit him, with the stinking fish in hand, that no amount of credit or phones or service would let him reach Rose or Suad or Ayah—not any of the women in his life, nor the twenty-four-hour pharmacy, nor even the police. He felt precariously weightless, like a balloon set loose in a violent wind. The beggar woman could be the last person he spoke to today, or tomorrow, or however long this phone business lasted. It gave him an odd reluctance to leave her—this woman with the bucket and the rotten smile—but he had no choice.

  Sami started toward Ramses by foot, giving up on catching a taxi, on picking up his textbooks, on chasing down this router problem which he assumed had something to do with the phones. How could it be? His mind spun in such confusion that he found himself all the way at the 6 October bridge with the foul fish still in his hand. He’d forgotten to toss it as planned. He was about to chuck it onto the curb when he saw the Al Fath mosque at the end of the street, with its one massive minaret
looming like Suad’s glare. Haram. What a waste, she would say. He decided to leave the fish outside the mosque instead, where the needy could find it alongside government tomatoes and bread.

  Behind the mosque Sami could see the sign to the Diesel building, and the seventh-floor window hiding Rose, who was no doubt ambling around with coffee, half-awake. Home seemed within reach. Not only home, but Rose—but all remaining connectivity in this disconnected city. He tightened his grip on the plastic bags, which were stretched to their last fiber, and the stinking fish that would soon be delivered as charity—only to be stopped with the blunt punch of a whistle.

  “No crossing! The street is closed for prayer!”

  A police officer blocked him from walking any further, whistle in mouth, arms outstretched to mimic the barricade that stretched across the street behind him. Despite his bluster he was only a boy, no older than twenty. Narrow as a stalk of sugarcane from shoulder to shoulder. There was a glint of fear in his puppy-like eyes, as though Sami were the one with the gun on his hip. Sami stepped back, took a breath, and explained calmly that he was only trying to get home.

  “I live over there, boy—I mean, sir.”

  The officer blew his whistle again, this time letting out an arid, listless squeak. “Step away from the line! I said, step away from the line! Not even the president himself could pass,” he lied, “so please, step away from the line!”

  Sami stifled the urge to puff up his chest at the boy, shut him up along with that stupid whistle. Behind him sat a police truck with a dozen other officers packed like beans inside. Though their guns were most likely empty—loaded at worst with rubber bullets—Sami backed away in hesitation, as if he might summon those bullets just by just thinking of them. Better to be safe. Besides, it was Friday prayer. Fighting wasn’t a good look, even for a screw-up like him, and it wouldn’t get him any closer to the Diesel. He figured he would wait it out. Prayer wouldn’t last long, and then he’d make his way home.