Spring

by Leila Rafei

  *****

  The loss fell over him once he unlocked his dorm room and collapsed into bed. It would be nice to sleep for the next month, or maybe forever, but who was he kidding—there wasn’t enough hash in the world to shut his eyes. Instead, he kept busy by unpacking. There was his toothbrush and his pajama pants and the hoodie that had hung in her closet. Even the cans of soda he kept stocked in her fridge. He’d taken it all—not out of stinginess but because it seemed kinder. Kinder for her and crueler for Sami. Now he had to live with all this junk that reeked of Ramses—like cedar floors, like gasoline wafting from the train station, like roasted peanuts, like tear gas from those first street battles for Tahrir.

  Sami ran his hand through his hair, dragging his nails along his scalp as hard as he could, and then his neck started itching and he scratched that too, and soon he had red gashes beneath his jaw, as if he’d been trying in some backward, impotent way to strangle himself. When he realized what he was doing and that it was crazy, he stopped and stared at himself in the mirror. His eye sockets were dark and cavernous, as if he hadn’t eaten or slept in days. His face hadn’t seen a razor since before the beach, and now hairs had sprouted along his jaw, giving him an older look. He could barely recognize himself. He could barely remember who he was just a few weeks ago.

  This new Sami would do what he was supposed to. This new Sami would answer his mother’s calls. This new Sami would pray. He reached for his prayer rug and unrolled it onto the floor. The rug looked brand new, with a plush black Kaaba in the center and cream-colored fringe so pristine it hadn’t yet lost its polyester sheen. Without thinking, he knelt eastward and touched his head to the rug. The thing was so unused that it still smelled vaguely chemical, like the factory in Mahalla that it came from—Cleopatra Textiles, Misr Weaving, something like that. For some reason he thought immediately of Ayat al-Kursi, and as he whispered the verse he felt the soft, untouched threads of the rug on his lips moving with the words. In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful. It was the same verse Suad had sworn by when she gave him the rug years ago, back when he was a kid who thought he was a man and had no idea, back when his troubles were laughably minute. Back when—if he could go back—he’d slap himself for being so stupid.

  From his spot on the floor, he drew a line out the window and across the river, realizing that he faced not only Mecca but Ras Shaitan, where just days ago he sat on the water, and even worse, he faced Ramses too, doing the very thing wanted to avoid—looking it straight in the eye. It was like looking at her. He pressed his forehead to the rug, but he couldn’t crush his thoughts. He wondered if she had risen yet and whether she was looking for him. Would she wake with a bad feeling, the way he had every day for the past few weeks, and turn in bed to see an empty spot beside her? Maybe she wouldn’t think anything of it and sleep in a bit longer, like she always did, until the sun’s brightness pried her eyes open, at which point she’d realize there was no sound of footsteps creaking on hallway floors and there was no smoke seeping out from the crack under the door. She’d get up and go to the bathroom, alone, and go to the kitchen alone, make coffee alone and sit on that balcony alone, looking out at a city interrupted by revolt, which had somehow swallowed up her only companions—first Jamila, and now Sami.

  He heard birds chirping outside, their tweets incessant like the drip of a leaking tap. He tried to block the sound but couldn’t. With all his strength he picked himself up off the floor and went to shut the window. He stood for a while with his hands on the sill, too lethargic to make a move just yet. The morning was unusually beautiful. The air was filled with the fragrance of jasmine blooms spilling over the walls lining the street. The sun was brighter than it had been in weeks, casting shadows under branches like the latticework windows of Khan El Khalili. It was a vicious beauty, violent in its disregard for all that had happened.

  Stories down, a guard snoozed with arms crossed inside a security post. Sami imagined that if he fell, his body would hit the post with a thud and wake him up. It seemed like an inconspicuous way to die, unlike setting yourself on fire. He thought of the man in room 251B and whether he still wore a body cast or had healed and gone home to Imbaba. Other than that Egypt Today article announcing the arrest of the baker, there hadn’t been a peep of news since that day he met the president. He’d been a hero then, all eyes on him, and any religious aversion to suicide faded to awe over this man who lit a match to his own skin to die slowly, one cell at a time, until only plaster could hold him together. There was nothing braver.

  And if the man in the body cast was a hero, then Sami was a coward—that’s what the world would think of him if he let go, right then, and let gravity do the trick. People were out there setting themselves on fire and here was this soft boy falling to death, like an accident. Reporters, if they even bothered to cover his death, would dig for details in his life that led to the fall—his grades, the amount of hashish in his bloodstream, his family history. It was only a matter of time until they’d find out about his girlfriend and the unborn baby she’d wanted to name Nadim. At best, they’d simply call it a mistake rather than suicide. Then Sami would forever be known as a bumbling idiot who fumbled his way to death. See, they’d say—that’s what happens to a fool like that. There would be none of the heroism of even stillborn martyrdom, like the man in room 251B. But maybe he was OK with that.

  With sleep far-off, jumping overruled, and too much cowardice for self-immolation, there was only one thing left to do. He shut the window, zipped up his hoodie, and descended upon the road to Tahrir.

  *****

  Night was falling by the time Sami reached the square, where he found a massive street party, the mood brightening in opposition to the sky. Above the crowd, three stripes of red, white, and black cloth snaked over the heads of protesters like a paper dragon. Cooler moms than his own handed out sweets from fanny packs as street children darted throughout, carrying bundles of sesame candy in their ratty pockets. Fireworks made pops in the air like celebratory gunshots, and yet the president still hadn’t budged.

  Overnight, the army had erected cinderblock walls across the main artery rods leading to Tahrir. If Rose was there, he’d ask her why and she’d know the answer. They’re containing the protest. They’re boxing you in. They’re rounding you all up like lambs for slaughter. He would have shaken his head, told her she was crazy and didn’t know what she was talking about, not ever letting on that for the first time, he wasn’t so sure.

  A wall caught his eye at the edge of the square. Enjoy the revolution, it read in pastel paint. It was written in English, as if it was meant for Rose and her people and not Sami and his. No wonder Rose knew it all. Everything was created for her. Even the revolution itself was becoming a spectacle for the whole world to see, broadcast by foreign camera crews across hemispheres, death and struggle turned into entertainment. Enjoy the revolution, as if the revolution were a holiday. The way Zane might greet honeymooners in the Sinai. Something fleeting, a treat to be savored. It seemed nonsensical until he remembered that first Friday of the revolution, the swelling tide of Ramses Street, the heavenly clang of crowbars on concrete. He had enjoyed it. Now that moment was over—a blissful blip in time like the year he spent with Rose, a last hurrah before returning to the good Mahalla boy he should’ve been all along. It was a shame the pain wasn’t so momentary. Maybe it would fade gradually, like the burn of tear gas weakened to mere stinging, then dissipating completely. Come to think of it, Sami hadn’t felt tear gas for days. Now there was only festivity in the square, and nobody seemed to be fighting back. Even the tanks dotting the perimeter seemed celebratory, draped in flowers—fucking flowers—and trailed by demonstrators queuing up to kiss the cheeks of confused-looking soldiers.

  A commotion drew his eyes overhead, where he spotted something dangling from a lamppost. He walked closer until he stopped with a jolt. Was that . . . a body? Yes, it was a body hanging from a rope. Perhaps he’d sp
oken too soon about all this celebration. He stared in horror at the cheering crowd. What had become of them all? He’d expected the revolution to devolve at some point but he didn’t think they’d be hanging people in the street just yet. In his mind he could hear Suad’s voice, see her shaking her head with a tsk tsk. See? See what happened to your revolution?

  It was only when Sami reached the noose that he realized it was a stuffed replica of the president. There was no mistaking him—the effigy wore a black suit like the one he wore to meet the self-immolator du jour in a hospital room at Qasr El Aini, live on TV. Despite everything Sami had seen until now, he was still in awe at all before him, at all that had happened in the eighteen days since National Police Day, when the only hint of what was to come was the revolutionary silence of Ramses Street. He imagined the failed martyr watching through the holes in his body cast as the man he’d shaken hands with in consolation was suspended in the air. Now the latter was the helpless one—at the mercy of the crowd, who goaded him to fall.

  The people demand the fall of the regime, thought Sami as he watched a boy burst forth from the crowd. The people cheered as he leapt onto the lamppost and wriggled to the top. When he reached the effigy, he took off his beanie and bowed, then pulled a knife from his pocket and started cutting at the rope. It wasn’t easy—not quite the single, dramatic hack he’d probably wanted—but the crowd wasn’t put off. In fact, their cheers grew even louder as he sawed away, severing one thread at a time until at last, the dummy fell. The crowds seized upon it like shark chum, shreds of twine and burlap flying, and in minutes there was nothing left but a crumpled black suit on the asphalt.

  Gripping the lamppost between his legs, the boy bowed again before falling backward into outstretched arms below. There was a brief tussle and then he reappeared, rope in hand, and marched toward the wall with the crowd trailing. He tied the rope around a single cinderblock and pulled it taut.

  Sami did what seemed necessary and took out the Meikorlens. As he shot photos from afar, he wondered whether this scrappy, nameless boy had always been a people’s hero or whether it was something brought on by revolution. There was a jaunt to his step, a spring in his knobby-kneed stride that seemed fresh, unpracticed. Sami could tell from the boy’s wiry limbs and shriveled, sunbaked skin that he was a worker, perhaps ironically a bricklayer, and here he was leading this corner of Tahrir like a general on the front lines. His battalion was made up of an assortment of different characters—Sami counted youth in hoodies, old men in galabias, street kids and those of the diaspora, marked by the volume of their muddled Arabic. Mismatched, they assembled along the length of the rope and waited impatiently until finally, it was time to pull.

  When the cinderblock wouldn’t budge, the boy leapt over the wall and pushed from the opposite direction. Together, they all pushed and pulled until the block came loose, inch by inch, before finally, it tipped over and crashed to pieces on the ground. By the time Sami decided he should probably join, it was too late. The other blocks fell before he could even make it to the rope, and within minutes he was swallowed by trilling and clapping hands.

  *****

  First came the car horns. They bleated a celebratory tune similar to that of weddings—beep, beep, beep-beep-beep. Sami bopped along, searching for a sheath of white gown as a million hands clapped in time to the beat. There was shouting, loud above the horns, and a great roar spread through the square like the deafening crush of a tidal wave. His fingers trembled around the Meikorlens as he looked up to the sky, beyond the waving flags and signs, and saw fireworks exploding in the distance. This was some wedding, he thought, until two words cut him off—

  “He left!”

  “He left, he left, the president left!”

  A man beside him held up his phone for the crowd. MisrTV was playing from its tiny screen. Sami stood on tiptoes to catch a glimpse as people swayed and bounced around him. He saw fatigues first, a drab green like tanks. “The general,” shouted the man with the phone, translating the broadcast for those who couldn’t see. Sami had never seen him before but apparently he was the leader of the army, SCAF—the same SCAF that had hounded his phone like his mother for the past few weeks, piling text after text in his inbox saying things like “PROTECT EGYPT” and “BEWARE OF CRIMINALS.” The same SCAF that had posted tanks on every corner, more each day, full of sons who were eldest and not only. The same SCAF that had declared its neutrality in the uprising, saving them all from a bloodbath in Tahrir Square. If it wasn’t for SCAF they would all be dead, the square cleared, and the president would still be in place. But the president was gone, said the general on TV, and God was in the crowd, swirling on the ecstatic tongues around him.

  “God bless him.”

  “God be with him.”

  “God is great.”

  “Shhhh, let us hear!”

  The general, however, didn’t meet the crowd’s enthusiasm. His face was drawn and serious, eyelids sagging from age and exhaustion as he read from a script in his hands. In the name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful. His tone grew more somber as he continued his speech, and for the life of him Sami couldn’t figure out why, because Tahrir was so joyous it seemed they’d just won the African Cup—no, the World Cup—no, even more than that. The president was gone.

  Much of the speech was drowned out by cheering, but Sami strained to make out whatever details he could. The president had said he would leave in September, when the time came for elections—but those plans had changed. He was stepping down now, ceding power to the army to lead in the interim period. The army? Sami tried not to dwell on the details. This moment was too big for any hiccups. Like the bombing of Tasseo and the split second that demon had appeared on the mountain before him—moments designed for him alone, too neat in their absurdity to belong to anybody else. He stood in a sea of millions and yet felt like the only person in all of Tahrir. It was sort of like the moment he met Rose, when the whole world dimmed around her and it seemed nobody else had ever existed.

  May God help us all.

  And the gloom of those final words was forgotten in the euphoria that erupted from the center of Tahrir to its outer rim, from the banks of the Nile and up highways named for revolutions past. 6 October, 26 July, 15 May. In the future there would be a road named 25 January. Sami was sure of it. One day he would drive down it and remember.

  Wide eyed, he watched a man collapse in shock as strangers rushed toward him. They lay hands on his chest and checked his pulse and breathed air into his lungs, all through tears of joy. This was no emergency. Who wouldn’t want to die right there, martyred on the ground that had become sacred in the last eighteen days? Sami envied him. All this time he’d thought of dying to escape—now he wanted death so he could live on. His portrait would be framed and hung above his mother’s door, a hero to take the place of the president who’d fallen in the worst kind of way—disgraced, shamed by nameless masses to give up thirty years of rule. Leave. All of Sami’s mistakes would be trampled under the feet of crowds too joyous to care for details. Details like Rose. Was that what she would become?

  He wondered where in the city she was and whether she was somewhere in that same square, and he stood on tiptoes to scan the crowd for her face. He saw everybody—the Jamilas and the Zanes and the Abu Alis, the doormen from this side of the Nile and the other, and all the taxi drivers who’d ever dispatched their political views for the price of a few guinea. But there was no Rose, whose warm breath he’d felt on the back of his shoulder just hours before. Now there was no breath.

  He exhaled long and hard, as if willing that breath into existence. She used to sigh like that. It was the only thing Rose had in common with his mother—dramatic sighs. Sighs that said something. Sighs that meant you were in trouble. He did it again just to feel the warm air before him, conjuring that same breath he needed so badly to escape, and for a second he felt like running back to Ramses. Then he remembered it wa
s impossible. Like yearning for the dead.

  Just then—as the cheering blurred to white noise, the lights faded to black, and the whoosh and the warmth were just right, right before him—a dark mass came at him from the corner of his eye. It hit him with the force of a mad bull. No, this time it wasn’t the memories, but an actual punch. He realized it was a regime goon as he hit the ground, a split second followed by a flash of white and then, black.

  *****

  Tahrir turned into the Alexandrian corniche. It was spearfishing season, and the water ran red along the shoreline. He was explaining the wintertime migration of deep-sea fish to Rose but she wasn’t paying any attention. When he asked what was on her mind, she turned and spat words like bullets. I. Am. Pregnant. He had to ask her to repeat herself two or three times over. How do you know? I took a test. Why didn’t you tell me? I’m telling you now. What are we going to do? I don’t know. They sat without speaking for a good hour, watching the frothing sea as Umm Kalthoum crackled from the radio. I only just started to love my life.

  Sami could name a few fateful moments—the passport Ayah found in his backpack, the pregnancy tests from Abu Ali’s pharmacy, the pregnancy to begin with—but that was when it really ended. He knew it then too. It was written in the angry waves as they rushed the corniche, threatening to sweep them away, and in his secret wish that they would. Like Tahrir, he would have liked to die by the sea. Cold saltwater to wash his wounds. Waves to carry him far away. How fitting to die in Alexandria like the revolution’s first martyr, Khaled Said.

  But Khaled had died in the springtime—during those perfect clear-skied days Sami remembered from childhood trips to the coast, with his mother and father in each hand. It was that long ago. The whole landscape was neon, bright sand and electric water, and all the windows of the city were open, clothes hanging on wires to dry. Candy-colored dinghies lay beached in rows, belly-up, and children’s heads, slick with seawater, bobbed in the calm tide. He couldn’t wait to get in the water, to clutch his father’s left arm, Ayah on the other, and swim out to where the big fish swam until Suad called them back for lunch. As a kid he’d dreamed of being the age he was now, at the crest between youth and adulthood. He’d drive fast through the desert, perhaps marry a girl like the curly-haired beauty his mother used to be in those old Polaroids she’d hidden away.