Spring

by Leila Rafei

  “Date cookies are always like that,” he said.

  “I don’t want a bunch of crumbs.”

  Crumbs. That sounded familiar. He remembered the blank quiz he’d grabbed, another lifetime ago, on his way to Khan El Khalili—the shopping list that stuttered, the deranged repetition of the word crumbs. She didn’t know he’d tried to bring her those crumbs, only to find them scattered like guts all over Ramses Street. Maybe that’s why she lashed out the way she did, embarrassing him in front of Abu Ali. He took the cookie back, wrapped it up, and tucked it into his pocket for later—perhaps when hunger superseded the quality of what he could give her.

  Without a word between them, they watched a young man hop atop a car with a guitar. He seemed to be some sort of Tahrir celebrity. As he sang to the crowd, the crowd sang back, knowing all the words as if they were Amr Diab or Umm Kalthoum songs and not lyrics scribbled in haste on the backs of protesters. Bread, freedom, social justice. Bread. Not crumbs. He watched joy emanate from faces painted with the flag, signs waving, cameras flashing, girls shrieking for the hunk with the guitar.

  Rose looked straight ahead at the singer. Something about her unnaturally steady gaze told Sami that she knew he was watching her, and her refusal to look back was just that—a refusal. Was she swooning inside, rapt by the singer with the corkscrew curls, just like all the others? After all, the man sang of bread—bread and not crumbs. He could provide her with what Sami could not. And as the girls of Tahrir squealed on, he could think only of how miserable he had made her. There were a million people shouting but all he could hear was the word crumbs. Crumbs and not bread.

  Sami needed to get out of there. He needed it so bad he didn’t think twice about returning to the Diesel. He was about to nudge Rose to go home when a white light swooped in and stuck to his face. He held his arm over his eyes but couldn’t see the source of the light. Was it a headlight? Was the mountain demon about to reappear? He imagined its serpentine shape taking form—this time not in the crags but in the crowd, shoulders and elbows and hands tessellating into claws outstretched. He took Rose’s hand to steady himself, but now they were both blinded, and they stumbled together.

  When at last the light shifted, he made out the silhouette of not a demon, but a man. He was pointing a camera straight at them, with a light beaming above the lens as if the flash were stuck. You jerk, thought Sami, but nothing came out. Sami swatted at the man but missed, and he saw the taut line between his lips curl upward. The bastard was smiling. This must be one of the regime goons he’d heard about in Tasseo—thugs paid to menace the square, like those who took Abu Ali’s son. Until now, Sami never believed they existed. He turned away from the lens, but the light clung like a tick, and it spun with him as the crowd blurred to a black curtain.

  Somehow, they emerged from the crush and broke into a run, pushing bodies out of the way that fell like dominoes to the edge of the square. Forgive me, he thought as they ran north on Mohamed Mahmoud. Forgive me, Rose. Forgive me, Abu Ali. Forgive me, Suad. They weaved through rubble until the streets darkened and tall buildings dwindled into shoddy apartments with blankets for curtains. It was quiet—too quiet, and in the breeze, he could have sworn he heard the name Ali. Was it his father, searching at all hours, in the very spot his son disappeared? Was it the goon, taunting them with the possibility of ending up like the boy—gone? Sami shuddered at the thought of that thug trailing them all day—from the bedroom to the pharmacy, Tasseo to Tahrir, and now, here.

  They had to go. Sami grabbed at Rose, catching only her sleeve, and dragged her into the alleys, where the labyrinthine darkness might give them some cover. God willing, there would be places to hide, doors to duck into, safety in the narrowness of walls closed tight around them. He pulled her through a passage between buildings, where runoff from pipes formed a stream down its length. Each time there was a splash, he winced, and under his breath he cursed the cats darting out of their way, complaining.

  At last it seemed they’d lost the camera man, but Sami still didn’t feel safe. He remained paranoid, scanning each nook and shadow for that light, the thin-lipped smile, the camera lens. But Sami didn’t need to see him to know the goon was still watching—he was sure of it. He could feel the warmth of that camera light boring a hole into his back.

  The rest of the way home, they exchanged few words other than the odd wait up, come on, turn right, now left—words that stung worse than any insult. He knew what Rose was thinking—it’s over—but he didn’t address it or even make eye contact. He was too tired, and so was she. She’d slowed since the chase, stopping to take breaks under streetlights, catching her breath with a hand on her abdomen, feeling the air flow in and out with a pained look on her face. He would have asked but he didn’t want to acknowledge it. And she also said nothing.

  *****

  When they reached the Diesel, the fluorescent lights of the pharmacy were still on. Sami didn’t even look to see if Abu Ali was there. He kept his eyes ahead until they were inside, then up all seven floors to apartment 702. Rose darted through the door first, leaving her key dangling from the lock.

  Sami bolted the door shut and flicked on the lights, moving slowly, savoring every moment he didn’t have to look her in the face. Fortunately, Rose seemed to be in the bathroom, buying him a few more seconds alone. He took a cigarette to the balcony and felt the cold night grip his bones, the tingle of tear gas on his lips. By the time he was down to the filter, she still hadn’t come out of the bathroom.

  “Rose,” he called out, “is everything alright?”

  She didn’t answer, but he could hear her fidgeting, the lid of the toilet clanging. Still mad, wasn’t she? He stubbed out the cigarette and went to see what was the matter.

  In the hall he spotted a small red stain on the ground. It seemed to be blood. Was it Jamila’s? For some reason his mind leapt to her first, fearing her disappearance was the worst kind—like that of her husband. But he touched the blood with the tip of his finger to find it wet, too fresh to be hers. As he stood up, he noticed more droplets leading to the bathroom door. He knocked softly.

  “Everything OK?”

  No answer.

  He opened the door a crack, just enough to see Rose slumped over the toilet with bloodied underwear at her ankles. At first, he didn’t understand—a period was nothing to cry about. Her irises glowed like absinthe against the bloodshot whites, slick with tears, and when she looked up and into his eyes, black as the hole coming to swallow them all, he realized this was no period. It wasn’t about that date cookie or the goon with the camera, either. It was the baby.

  “It’s gone.”

  Sami didn’t know whether it was devastation or relief that struck him still, shocked in his spot on the tiled floor. He inched toward Rose and lifted her bloodied body into the bathtub. The faucet made an animalistic squeak as he twisted it open, and she cried out as if it hurt her ears. Please let there be water, please let there be water, he thought, and when water emerged, he exhaled with an elhamdulilah. The water came out strong and steaming rather than its usual cold trickle, with all the noise of the Aswan Dam. He was grateful, feeling less pressure to say something, say anything, when any word would drown in the sound.

  She bled into the tub as it filled with water. He thought of the Alexandrian sea in the winter as he reached into the bloody water to peel off her clothes. He threw them into a pile of dirty laundry, to be washed some day in the near future when he’d no longer be there. Strangely, there was no attraction in her nudity, even after all the blood washed away. Somehow, he’d moved on already. He’d made his decision and accepted it. Rehashing any feelings would set him back, and he couldn’t go back. This was the end. Now Rose was like a patient in his arms, a professional duty, and he rinsed the blood off her legs with clinical detachment.

  He wrapped her in a towel and moved her to the couch, where he propped her up like a doll reclining, legs outs
tretched. He asked if she was comfortable. Again she didn’t answer. Now what? He wished she would just go to sleep, but judging by her vacant, wide-eyed stare, sleep was far off, if not impossible.

  The only thing to do was drink. The liquor cabinet was packed full of all the drinks Rose had forgone lately, and inside he found a bottle of Spanish rioja that a friend had brought her in December, cork still sealed with wax. Odd she hadn’t drank from it—not even a sip. He wondered how long she’d been pregnant and if she knew then. Come to think of it, she hadn’t had anything to drink for New Year’s either. Back then, he’d thought she was trying to impress him, acting the part of a good Muslim woman—someone Suad might like, and someone Sami would not. He felt ashamed remembering how he’d thought less of her because of it. Now it made sense—Rose had never changed for him. Rose had always been Rose, the decision her own, just like the decision to keep the baby no matter how much it destroyed his life.

  He set down a bottle of gin, making a heavy clunk, along with a half-empty carton of mango juice from weeks ago. He didn’t care. Old mangos wouldn’t matter, getting sick wouldn’t matter, drinking himself to death wouldn’t matter. None of that would ever matter now that the baby was gone, their relationship too, and worst of all they were out, sealed onto celluloid for all Tahrir to see. Sami gulped straight from the bottle as he imagined the goon’s film playing out in some police station, fat officers picking lint out of their ears as they watched their two faces, marked together for eternity in the middle of an insurrection they had not caused, but fell into the same way he’d fallen for Rose—by accident, going with his gut, following the vibes of the street which pushed them together just like throngs in the square.

  There was no hiding now that Abu Ali knew everything, and the goon, whoever he was, had found them in the square and shone a spotlight on their faces for everyone to see. And they all had seen—every last one of the million-plus people who stood in Tahrir for the so-called Day of Egypt’s Love. What love? Egypt had no love for Sami and Rose. She policed them in apartment stairwells and straw-hut camps in the Sinai desert, and tonight, in the middle of Tahrir Square. She chased them through streets strewn with ash, forced them into alleys where they would again end up cornered. Egypt might have love for football and molokhiya, for Umm Kulthoum and Naguib Mahfouz, for the desert and the sea—but it had no love for Sami and Rose. Not together. That was for sure.

  Sami put the bottle straight in his mouth, imagining it to be a gun. What would happen if he just . . . pulled the trigger? The gin sank like fire into his belly. He winced at its chemical bitterness but kept drinking until there was only an unreachable droplet left at the bottom. Finished, he let the bottle drop and roll off the table, crashing into pieces on the floor, making it glitter like the sea, like the sidewalk of Tasseo. As he stared, the floor pulled him in. He inched closer to the ground, growing heavier, mouth numb, brain barren, until finally he sank. Now the memory of the goon was funny, along with all his worries over a baby that had ceased to exist before it even existed. A shard pinched through his jeans, and he laughed harder.

  “Take me to bed,” said Rose. Her tone was so firm it snuffed out his laughter. Even in his stupor, he could tell she was angry, calculating the time it would take her to clean up his mess in the morning, when he’d be gone.

  He picked himself up off the floor and carried Rose to the bedroom. As he lay her down, he thought of spending one last night beside her, then leaving before dawn. He searched for the answer in her eyes—those eyes that had sparkled days ago, set alight in the sun, eyes that tonight were dull and lifeless, emerald turned to murky Nile water. There it was.

  16

  Jamila didn’t know why she was in a good mood. There was no news from Tora, nor St. Fatima’s, and nights spent in Kilo 4.5 were predictably long, wracked with nightmares about that phone call that blew everything for Sami and Rose. But for some reason, she awoke that Wednesday morning smiling, a slight giggle even, as if someone were tickling her. She could see through the cracks in the bricks that the sky was blood-orange—unusual for this time of day. For a second she panicked, thinking she’d slept until sunset and had missed her appointment at Fifi’s, along with another day’s wages (which were promised to come today, for the hundredth time). It was only when she heard the call to prayer, crisp against a quiet that could only belong to morning, that she realized she hadn’t.

  Just one more moment of sleep before facing stir-crazy Fifi. But as Jamila closed her eyes, a tapping sound pried them open again. She smothered herself in blankets to escape it. What was that? It seemed to come from the wall above her head, like a fingernail drumming concrete. As she sat up, the sound stopped. She stared at the still wall, bare but for the uneven plaster between bricks. This tapping was shy. This tapping was surely in her head. This tapping persisted. When it started again, she threw off the blanket in a huff, and as she stood up, she noticed that her hands were covered wrist to fingertip in wet henna.

  At first she was terrified. Had somebody come to her in the night, painted her hand while she slept? Had she painted it herself and forgotten? Was she losing her mind? She dabbed her finger against the ink, blotting out a swirl with a smudge. It seemed to be real. As real as the scent of sage in the air which, as she sniffed, reminded her of that day years ago in Khan El Khalili, when she met Yusuf in the alley by El Fishawy. She always wanted to relive that day until she drew her last breath. And here it was—the henna, the sage, and . . . him?

  She whispered his name into the dark. Yusuf.

  And she swore on the graves of her mother and father and each and every one of her siblings that he spoke back.

  Jamila.

  She lay on the floor with eyes wide open. The tapping had stopped, and she could feel the warmth of his body, the weight of his hand. Jamila. That voice was unmistakable. Calm, soft as a muezzin’s hum. The lolling last syllable that he always drew out, laaa, as if to savor each moment her name touched his tongue. She buried her face in her arm, cringing. That laaa could kill her. That laaa was a knife slashed across her throat. A boulder dropped onto her stomach. A shovel scooping out every last one of her entrails. A seed on the floor, fruit of flowers turned to horror. It taunted her, laaa, dangling his scrap-like memory before her, out of reach. She wanted more than a scrap. More than a memory. More than a ghost. That’s what he was, wasn’t he?

  She coughed, the truth settling like particles of dust in the air.

  Yusuf was gone, his body no more, and she could do nothing about it. She could spend her life searching, crawling on hands and knees rubbed raw against the ground, trail blood drop by drop until there was none left—and still, find nothing. She could call Tora each hour until her last, stand in the queue wrapped around its perimeter forever and never get an answer. One day, by some miracle, she might find his corpse, dig it out of some mismatched grave. And he would still be dead.

  But Yusuf existed, nevertheless. Right there in that moment. In the cement hellhole of Kilo 4.5. With her head against the bare floor, feet curled up to the wall. Bricks all around, the stench of garbage never too far. And yet, his ghost was still there, breathing beside her. All she could do was surrender. She closed her eyes and saw the corpse she never found float away on a piece of driftwood on the Nile. And she gave it one last push.

  *****

  When she woke the henna was no longer there, nor was the sage or the warmth of Yusuf. She traced the top of her hand from wrist to finger and felt nothing but the scales of her dry skin, not even the faded imprint of petals and swirls. As she exhaled she remembered that Yusuf was dead, and that all she could do was whisper good morning to the memory in her head.

  God is great, called a distant muezzin. She rose and walked to the window at the end of the corridor, which wasn’t so much a window but a gap where bricks had been knocked out between the beams to let in light. Bending through, she peered out to trace the sound to its source, but couldn’t—
beyond the slums, a thousand minarets speckled the horizon, from Shobra to Fustat and all the way to Ain Shams, and one by one their muezzins joined in the chorus. It was the first time she realized Cairo was beautiful. Despite its brick slums, its festering garbage. The catcalls and leering, the rats blowing kisses. Air made of smog and exhaust. Rooftops crowded with shacks and satellite dishes. Hands on her ass, hands in her pocket. It was all true, all Cairo—but so were those minarets and the citrine sky. So were her walks in Zamalek, the shady streets where roots jutted out of the asphalt. Her flatmates in 4.5—those who’d defended her from the sunflower man and those who’d given her shelter when she ran from him. And all the case workers at St. Fatima’s, from Dolores to the pimply-faced teenager who after all, had tried.

  As a flock of pigeons whipped past, Jamila ducked beneath the window, startled. A neighbor must have released them from some unseen rooftop. She crept back up to the light and watched them fly in circles, up to the tallest roofs and then dipping low. When they came close she could feel the wind stirred by the beat of their wings, feathers fluttering out like petals over the rubble.

  God is great, repeated the muezzin as the birds flew farther out, circling wider.

  When the pigeons’ orbit began to shrink, she leaned over the bricks to find their owner calling them back. Like a dancer, the man waved a red sash in the air and in an instant, the birds changed directions midair. As they made their way home, the circles shrank slowly to the width of a satellite dish until finally, there were no pigeons. And as the muezzin finished morning prayer, she said, “God is great.”

  *****

  Before leaving for Zamalek, Jamila slipped the testimony out of her St. Fatima’s file to make sure nothing was missing. It was so thick it felt like a book in her hands. To think, a book about her life (or at least, all the bad parts). A pile of papers that could change everything and which she never went anywhere without. At night, she slept on top of it. By day, it accompanied her to appointments from this end of the city to the other, and every boarded up, looted Nilofone in between. It wasn’t exactly safe, but then again, neither was anyplace else.