A Pure Heart

by Rajia Hassib

  In the pocket of her jeans, her phone buzzed, shocking her out of her reveries. She pulled it out, saw that the message was from Fouad.

  Coming back tomorrow.

  She smiled ear to ear.

  Have you seen this?

  She clicked on the link he sent her, waited as her phone loaded The New York Times’ page, Mark’s byline under the title. He had been gone for only ten days—she had not expected the article to be published already. Flipping the phone sideways and zooming in, she began to read.

  THE NEW YORK TIMES

  February 11, 2014

  EGYPT AFTER THE REVOLUTION: PROFILE 4

  PIGEONS

  By Mark Hatfield

  Cairo—Saaber wants to raise pigeons. Amid dozens of scattered dwellings stands a pigeon house his father built years earlier. Each morning, Saaber climbs the wooden ladder and refills the water bowls and grain dishes. “There is good money in pigeons,” he says. “Also, they are loyal. They know me. All of them.”

  He crouches in the center of the clearing surrounded by the wooden cages, which are lined up along the perimeter of a rectangular platform that stands on top of wooden scaffolding and juts higher than the two- and three-story buildings around it. The cages are painted sky blue and have sliding doors that, during the day, are left open, allowing the birds to roam free. Pigeons pick grain out of Saaber’s opened palm, and when one of them catches skin in its beak, he winces and draws his hand back. “Sometimes they bite,” he says, rubbing his palm on his thigh.

  From the pigeon house, the neighborhood is visible, sprawling and stretching until it is abruptly interrupted by a wall of new high-rises, marking the border of the upscale neighborhood of Zamalek. Here, in Ramela Boolak, buildings spawn free of any planning, infrastructure, or zoning regulations. This is one of Cairo’s multiple slums dubbed as Ashwaeyat—the Randoms—home to the city’s poorest residents. “We cannot afford apartments, so we build our own. But the government doesn’t like that,” Saaber says.

  Five years earlier, Saaber’s father was jailed after getting in a fight with a neighbor and striking him dead. He and the neighbor had fought over a piece of land that Saaber’s father had constructed a dwelling on, the same dwelling Saaber still occupies with his mother and four younger siblings. Saaber’s father, a diabetic, died while serving his prison sentence.

  When the revolution erupted in January 2011, Saaber and his older brother, Houda, glimpsed hope. “There were chants of ‘Bread, liberty, and social justice.’ For the first time in my life, I saw a possibility for change.”

  But change did not come, at least not in the form Saaber had hoped for. Now, three years after the revolution, the most prominent change affecting Saaber is the absence of Houda, who, together with Saaber, had been the main source of the family’s income since their father’s imprisonment and subsequent death.

  Houda was killed during a protest in 2013, two years after the revolution. Even now Saaber still has trouble speaking of his brother’s death. His eyes grow dark, wider than they already are under his thick, bushy eyebrows, and his gaze wanders. “I was there. I was standing right next to him, and I couldn’t do anything.”

  No one could prove who was responsible for Houda’s death. The police inquiry closed with no conclusion because the bullet could not be traced to a specific weapon. Saaber insists Houda was shot by a sniper working for the antiriot forces that were openly attacking protesters, but the judge argued that some of the protesters were armed, too, and that the bullet could have come from anywhere. Saaber points at the center of his own forehead, indicating where his brother was shot. He doesn’t believe such perfect aim could have been the result of a random shot accidentally fired by one of the protesters.

  Since then, Saaber has stopped participating in protests. Growing up hopping from one apprenticeship to the next, Saaber has settled in the same job for the last year, working for the local electrician. His job takes him into the apartment buildings of Cairo’s middle- and upper-class residents, and Saaber describes with awe an apartment they are working on now: gilded ceiling trims, multicolored solid wood parquet floors, and marble everywhere—countertops, vanities, even bathroom floors. He plans on one day having his own electrician’s shop, but knows that such a plan requires an initial investment that he may never be able to raise. A pigeon trade, on the other hand, can start cheaply and be quite lucrative. Even if it isn’t, at least it’s a reliable source of food. Nowadays, feeding his younger siblings is becoming more and more challenging. His mother earns some money sewing for neighborhood women, but the bulk of the responsibility falls on Saaber’s shoulders. At twenty-one, he is the family’s main provider.

  “This is one thing I miss about the Brotherhood. They used to fill my mother’s pantry—oil, rice, sugar. They even provided my father with his diabetes medication. Now they are gone and no one has filled that void.” The Muslim Brotherhood’s support was the main reason Saaber and Houda felt compelled to join the protests after the Brotherhood’s president, Mohammed Morsi, was forcibly removed from office one year after his election. “They are good people. Religious people. They helped us out for years. And they always said they stood for God and what He wants, so we had to support them.”

  Saaber grows a narrow, neatly trimmed beard, and no mustache. Under Egypt’s religious classification, that implies he is a supporter of the Salafis—not the Muslim Brotherhood—a different group of Islamists who adhere to the fundamentals of Islam but who are not as politically organized as the Muslim Brotherhood was. For Saaber, however, such distinctions seem trivial, and he claims he doesn’t know the difference between both ideologies. “Houda used to grow his beard like this, so I copied him. He was the one who knew all about politics. I merely followed him around.”

  Like many young men of his generation, Saaber is only superficially versed in Egypt’s modern political Islam. He claims he belongs to the Islamists, but when asked about details of their ideologies—the role of women in society, for example, or their attitude toward freedom of expression—he has only the broadest of answers. As far as he is concerned, any organization that says it is there to implement God’s will is better than any secular organization. Criticizing such an organization, or denying it support, is, to him, blasphemous. He believes in simple classifications: you are either with God or against him, and being with God is always better.

  Equally simple is Saaber’s dream of renovating his pigeon house. The scaffolding is strong, but the cages are built on a narrow platform that could easily be expanded to include at least fifty more. He is trying to educate himself in the business—pigeons are grown not just for food, but for collectors as well, who pay upward of three hundred pounds for the right pigeon. He points to a larger, freestanding pigeon house in the distance, one of several similar wooden structures dotting the neighborhood. That pigeon house, which is a good twenty feet higher than Saaber’s and at least twice as large, belongs to a friend of his father’s who, now that sunset is approaching, can be seen standing on top of the structure and waving a large flag to call his flock home. “One day, I will have a pigeon house just like his,” Saaber says. “Wait and see.”

  ◆ 11 ◆

  Saaber stared at his own face, glowing back at him through the computer screen. The article was in English, but the Egyptian newspaper that covered it had translated it, and Saaber read it multiple times over before clicking on the link again and visiting the original. The English version’s photo had better resolution than the one the Egyptian newspaper included, and when Saaber zoomed in, he could see his own eyes staring at him with admirable, intense resolve. He looked like a man with purpose.

  * * *

  —

  AM LOTFY OWNED A TV SET. He was a friend of Saaber’s father’s and lived on the adjacent street. When the TV anchor pulled up the Egyptian newspaper with the translated article and held it up for the camera to see, Am Lotfy sent h
is youngest son, Soliman, to fetch Saaber.

  Saaber ran all the way to Am Lotfy’s rooms. He stood in the entryway, watching the TV, a crowd of neighbors gathering around him. The anchor was discussing the story with a guest, arguing about how the West chooses to cover the revolution.

  “They focus only on the bad stuff. A boy like that, a kid—why feature him? The others, I may understand—the young revolutionary and the older woman and the lawyer. But why this boy? All they want is to highlight his dead brother, then start to talk about human rights issues, all to destabilize Egypt. Turn our country into another Syria or Iraq,” the anchor was shouting.

  Soliman stood next to Saaber, tugging on his sleeve. “You’re on TV!” he kept repeating. “You’re on TV.”

  “I know,” Saaber said.

  Behind him, he could hear the murmurs.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Saaber is on TV. A famous newspaper in America interviewed him.”

  Saaber pretended not to hear them. The anchor put the newspaper down, and Saaber was a tad disappointed. For a moment, he had hoped that the man would raise money for him to construct a larger pigeon house. This anchor was famous for stunts like that. Standing there, seeing his own face on TV, Saaber had even imagined the anchor inviting him in as a guest on his show, telling him of the money he raised, featuring his finished, new pigeon house. But the man had been interested only in Houda’s story. Still, Saaber had been featured on TV. Soliman still held on to Saaber’s sleeve, even after the anchor switched to another story.

  “You’re getting famous, wala ya Saaber!” Am Lotfy said, accenting his words with a loud, guttural laugh.

  Saaber chuckled. Behind him, he could hear his name resonate again and again, as if someone had whispered it in an echo chamber.

  * * *

  —

  THE NEIGHBORS PEEKED OUT of their windows when he walked by. Neighborhood kids trailed him, chanting “Saaber was in the newspapers. Saaber was in the newspapers.” The grocer, who had had multiple disagreements with Saaber’s father and therefore never liked Saaber, looked at him when he walked by and nodded.

  Saaber’s mother watched all this and clicked her tongue.

  At work, Master Zahi, the electrician Saaber apprenticed for, disapproved. “Why mess with journalists, boy? And Americans, too? Who do you think you are? Nothing good will come out of this.” Master Zahi was the closest person to a father Saaber had since his own father passed away. His disapproval almost made Saaber regret giving the interview. But the other apprentices made room for him to join them when they sat down for tea. One of them even started offering Saaber cigarettes. Saaber sat with them and accepted the cigarettes, even though he did not smoke. Master Zahi will come around, he told himself.

  * * *

  —

  SAABER’S MOTHER FRETTED about his newfound fame.

  “Why did you talk to this journalist to start with?” she asked him, standing in front of the tabletop stove shoved in the alcove between the front room and the bedroom. She emptied a bag of pasta into a pot of boiling water, stirred it with a metal spoon. In the bedroom, two of Saaber’s younger siblings sat on the bed, fighting over a scrap of cloth. The other two had run out of the dwelling a few minutes earlier and could be heard playing outside.

  “Why not? Why shouldn’t I tell my story, if the American finds it interesting? Why shouldn’t I tell them about Houda?”

  His mother tossed the metal spoon to the side. It landed with a clang. He knew she still could not bear to hear his brother’s name, but he thought she might approve of the article more if she viewed it as vindication for his brother’s death, not only an article focusing on Saaber and his dreams.

  “What good will it do, to talk about your brother? Will it bring him back?” she yelled at Saaber. “Is it not enough that I lost one son? You had to go put yourself in harm’s way, too? You need to stay low if you want to survive, Saaber. You bring yourself up in the light like that, you take risks. No one likes a loudmouth.”

  The two kids in the bedroom screamed simultaneously, and Samah, the older girl, started to cry. Saaber’s mother turned to the bedroom and yelled at them to stop. They didn’t. “What am I supposed to do if you end up in trouble?” his mother turned to face him again. “How will I feed those hungry mouths?” She pointed at his siblings.

  Saaber looked at the two girls, their continuous screams deafening. His father died before the youngest of his siblings turned two, and now Saaber was expected to feed all the mouths his parents brought into this world. He wanted to ask his mother how come she was more worried about losing the income he provided than she was about losing him, but when he turned to look at her, he did not feel like speaking anymore. He walked out of the room.

  * * *

  —

  SAABER CLIMBED THE PIGEON house’s scaffolding without looking down. Once he reached the top, he slowly walked onto the platform surrounded by the birdcages, their doors now open for the day.

  There were dozens of them, flying in groups in and out of the house, pecking at the seeds scattered on the floor around their cages and at the saucers of water Saaber judiciously filled for them every morning. Saaber fell to his knees, scooped up some seeds off the floor, and held his hand out for the pigeons, who immediately accepted his offering. He felt their sharp claws dig into his arm, his shoulders, even his legs as soon as he made himself comfortable, extending them straight in front. The pigeons’ beaks picked at his palm, occasionally pinching him. He grimaced but tried to remain still to avoid startling them. When the food in his right hand diminished, he scooped up more with his left and scattered it across his open palm to renew the offering.

  When he was much younger, Saaber believed he could communicate with the pigeons. He used to imagine he’d lock eyes with one and it would pause, look at him thoroughly, not just in passing as everyone else did, and then it would understand him. It would become his companion, hopping up to his shoulder and never leaving his side, perhaps even following him once he walked back home, building its nest on top of his parents’ dwelling, waiting up on the parapet for the first sight of him, and then, once it spotted him walking out of the door to go to the carpentry shop where he had worked as a child or to run an errand for his mother, the pigeon would follow him around, flying from building to building, drawing an aerial map that mirrored his steps. He had not thought of this childhood fantasy for years, but now it didn’t seem so foolish. Saaber looked around, trying to find the right pigeon. On his right stood a single bird, its feathers tipped with metallic blue and green, its neck puffed with soft down. He extended his hand to it, stared, waiting for it to look his way. For a moment, he thought it was going to. But then the bird, hopping toward him, flapped its wings once and lifted just high enough to land on his palm, its claws digging into the mound below his thumb, its beak already pecking too hard at the food, catching skin and muscle, hurting him. Saaber jumped, flicking the bird away and, once he was upright, kicking at the rest of the birds gathered around him for good measure.

  He examined his palm, squeezed out a drop of blood, then wiped it on his pants. He was getting too hot, standing in the afternoon sun, so he stepped around the cages and onto the shady part of the platform that ran around the wooden birdhouses, its narrow edge traced with a low parapet. Standing up there, he could see all the way to the horizon, an endless city of high-rises surrounding his neighborhood. Closer, two- and three-story buildings stood crowded together, most of them unfinished, columns jutting up their roofs, their outer shells content with exposing their structure of red brick. Here and there someone was apparently better off than the rest and had shown his wealth by finishing up his apartment per his taste, the uniformity of the red brick occasionally interrupted by baby-blue balconies, walls painted in green and white diamonds, or yellow plaster that coated a single third-story apartment but not the rest of the building. Behind him, the ta
ll twin buildings flanking the Fairmont Hotel cast their shadow on Saaber, and he turned to examine the windows stretching up to the sky, wondering how it would feel to look down from one of them onto his pigeon house.

  Once, after an argument with his mother (over money, again), his father had dragged Saaber by the arm and pulled him up the ladders to this same spot. Perched up on top of the entire neighborhood, his father had pointed far away to the tall buildings on the other side of the Nile.

  “Look at these people, living like kings in their million-pound apartments. Do we have a chance of ever getting even a bit of what they have?” Silent, Saaber looked at his father. “No. We don’t. Ever. This is a country where the poor are gnawed at, their bones sucked dry of all meat and juices before they are tossed to the dogs. Yakloona lahm we yermoona adm. They eat our meat and throw the bones away.”

  Saaber had narrowed his eyes, peering into the barely visible balconies, imagining piles of bones under each of these buildings, herds of dogs circling them in anticipation of more.

  “Your mother thinks that if I could just work hard enough we’d be able to live like those people do.” Saaber’s father snickered. “Women are such idiots, boy. Remember that. You know what she never understands? That it doesn’t matter how hard I work. Those people,” he pointed again at the buildings, “they don’t like to share. They know that our work only helps them increase their money. They don’t work like we do, from morning till night. They give orders. All they know is how to tell poor people like us what to do. Well, you know what? I’m not playing that game.”