A Pure Heart

by Rajia Hassib

  His phone buzzed in his pocket. Rose had texted him back: Just got out of class. Meet me for lunch?

  Can’t do lunch. Meeting with a source.

  New story?

  Yes. Will tell you about it later.

  Ok. Thai for dinner?

  Sure. I’ll pick it up on the way home.

  He put the phone back in his pocket just as a girl on the blue team took a shot from beyond the three-point line. The ball curved up then fell straight through the hoop, and the entire blue team seemed to lift off simultaneously, jumping in joy. The girl, too, jumped, and the moment she landed, she turned and looked at the man Mark had been watching, who was still standing in the opposite corner. The man lifted his hands and clapped high above his head. Mark could not see the girl’s face, but he knew she must have smiled.

  * * *

  —

  “THAT SOUNDS LIKE an important issue to write about,” Rose said. They were sitting at their kitchen table, eating Pad Thai noodles out of plastic containers. Mark used chopsticks; Rose, as usual, tried to use them but quickly gave up and picked up a fork instead.

  “It’s a very important issue. I still can’t bring myself to care about it.”

  “Why not?”

  He looped a few noodles around his chopsticks, lifted them a couple of inches above the container, and held them there, examining them. “I just can’t focus.”

  “Maybe you’re still tired after the trip to Egypt. That was a lot to do in ten days.”

  “But I’ve been back for two weeks. I can’t stay tired forever.”

  “Then what is it?”

  He took a bite of his noodles. “I want to keep on writing about social issues. I just can’t get my head into politics.”

  “Politics affect social issues. That’s exactly what your Egypt pieces show.”

  “Yes. But I still feel like I can make more of a difference if I write something more personal. If I shine a light on something that can be changed, rather than report on an issue that happened already and that I’m just trying to expose.”

  “You expose something precisely because you want to bring about change.”

  “But it’s not the same kind of change. It doesn’t affect people personally, at least not right away. It’s not as intimate as . . .” He trailed off. Rose waited, watching him. “I just keep thinking of Saaber. I keep imagining that, perhaps, someone will read my profile of him and donate a new pigeon house or give him a job somewhere.” Rose smiled, and Mark laughed. “Silly, I know.”

  “Not silly. A tad too optimistic, perhaps, but not silly.”

  “You don’t think it can happen?”

  “It could. Anything can happen.” She did not lift her eyes from her noodles, stabbing them with the fork, turning it to wrap them around its prongs.

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I can’t be convinced of a prediction.” She let her fork drop. “I’m not hungry anymore.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I spoke to my parents and Gameela today. My mom and dad are furious that you came through as supportive of a Brotherhood sympathizer, even though that was just one of four profiles. They wanted you to focus solely on how the army saved the country from the Islamists.” Rose rolled her eyes.

  “Your parents have no right to—”

  “Trust me, I know. I’m just explaining my mood. And then Gameela sounded all negative, too. She was worried that the boy may get in trouble for talking to you.”

  Mark leaned back in his seat, crossing his arms. “Your sister started saying the exact thing to me after we got to Saaber’s home and right before I interviewed him. If she was so worried about him, then maybe she shouldn’t have led me to him.”

  “That’s exactly what I told her. And now she’s mad at me.”

  “She’s just being paranoid.”

  “The entire country is paranoid. You know that.”

  Mark nodded. He heard evidence of her claim firsthand while in Egypt: conspiracy theories running amok, the most prevalent of them claiming that any event that could destabilize the country (an attack on a church; a recurrence of protests) was, in fact, orchestrated by the West in an organized effort to bring down Egypt’s military and throw the country into the clutches of war, just like Iraq and Syria. All part of the West’s alleged war on Islam. George W. Bush’s “crusade” announcement remained fresh in people’s minds a decade and a half after its utterance.

  “Listen,” Rose said, leaning closer across the table. “You wrote an insightful, compassionate series of profiles. You should be proud of them for painting a more honest picture of Egypt than many Americans get to see. If something good comes out of them, then great. If not, don’t be disappointed. You know how Egypt is. It’s not that easy to change things there.”

  “It’s not easy to change things anywhere. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try, does it?”

  She got up, walked around the table, and gave him a hug. “Of course not.”

  He patted her arm. He understood her reluctance to be optimistic, especially considering what had happened in Egypt in recent years, after a revolution that promised positive change ended up opening the doors to chaos. Rose was still more Egyptian than American, and her attitude was tinged with Egypt’s millennia-long history of disappointments and bolstered by the Arab Spring’s legacy of cynicism. His attitude was different. Such negativity was almost un-American. Wasn’t working toward achieving positive change part of the fabric of his country? Wasn’t that part of the West’s promise and responsibility—to succeed and help others achieve similar success? Wasn’t that the main allure of his job? He wasn’t naive; he knew that the West’s interventions were not always well intentioned or successful (the Iraq War fiasco provided ample, painful proof), but that didn’t mean the underlying principle was necessarily false. The privileged were still morally obliged to help the less fortunate.

  “I still hope something good will come out of those profiles,” he addressed Rose’s back as she washed her hands at the sink.

  “It’s possible. You never know.”

  He thought she didn’t sound sincere, but without seeing her face, he couldn’t be sure.

  ◆ 13 ◆

  When the police arrived, Saaber was up in the pigeon house again. He heard the commotion and looked down to see three orderlies at the door to his mother’s dwelling, on foot, their van parked at the end of the narrow alley. They were shouting at his mother, and his mother was shouting back, her curses directed at the police orderlies and the officer sitting in the van, who didn’t seem moved by her clearly expressed prayer that they all burn in hell; that they all be shut out of Allah’s mercy for eternity; that they get struck in what they hold dearest, in their children and wives and health; all while a small crowd gathered in front of the decrepit shack, idly chatting with the orderlies and throwing inquisitive glances at the lone police officer who waited in the van. Saaber watched from the pigeon house. He knew they were there for him.

  They would have found him eventually, of course, even if Am Ismail had not led them to him. Saaber looked down at the man, his finger pointed upward, and watched the faces of the crowd collectively turn toward him. He remained perfectly still.

  “Get down, boy,” one of the orderlies called to him.

  “What do you want?” A foolish question, Saaber knew.

  “I said get down!” the same orderly shouted.

  Saaber retreated, stepping back to the center of the pigeon house, surrounded by dozens of cages. He did not know what to do. His instinct was to flee, but he did not know where to go or what he was fleeing from. Stories of cramped, filthy cells packed with dozens of detainees flooded his head, stories of abuse, of torture. His father had died in jail. Saaber had never been arrested before.

  “Don’t make us come get you!” he heard someone shout from below.

>   Around him, pigeons were flocking in and out of their cages. Would they know to come back at dusk without him there? He told himself they must know. Walking around the cages, he started checking their doors, making sure none of the birds was trapped inside. He imagined birds dying of hunger, of thirst. Around he walked, opening cage doors, closing some by mistake then opening them again, always looking inside for a pigeon he’d missed. What else was he looking for? A sense of urgency came over him, a conviction that he was forgetting something important.

  “I told you not to make us come get you.”

  Saaber turned. The oldest of the orderlies, a fat, sweaty man, was standing at the edge of the platform, panting as he spoke. Saaber stepped back until he hit the row of cages behind him.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Not my job, boy. I just need to bring you in.”

  “What for?”

  “Not my job to know.” The orderly stepped closer, wiping sweat off his brow. Behind him, another one emerged, atop the wooden ladder.

  “Man, this is high,” he said, looking down as he hopped onto the platform.

  “Now you need to come with us, boy. The officer is waiting in the van. Making him wait is only going to make him angry.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Saaber repeated.

  The sweaty orderly grabbed Saaber by the arm. The sun shone straight behind the man, making it hard for Saaber to see his face. He winced, looked at the other, younger orderly, and saw him standing by a row of cages.

  “You think we can grab a couple of these for dinner?” the young orderly asked his colleague, snickering.

  “Stop messing around. Let’s get this over with,” the older man said, dragging Saaber behind him. “It’s too damn hot for February. My sweater is suffocating me.”

  The younger orderly reached into a cage and grabbed a pigeon, holding it up to look at it. “Would sure love to taste some stuffed pigeons,” he said.

  “Leave them alone,” Saaber yelled.

  The orderly turned to look at him.

  “Stop messing around,” the older orderly repeated. “Let’s go.” He walked up to the ladder, pulling Saaber toward it. “We have people waiting for you below, so don’t try anything foolish.”

  Saaber stepped toward the ladder, his eyes still on the younger orderly, who was staring straight at him. Slowly, without looking away, the orderly lifted his other hand to the pigeon, wrapped his palm around its head, and started a slow, exaggerated motion of twisting its neck.

  Saaber lunged at him, both hands outstretched, trying to grab the pigeon and set it free. Instead, he slammed straight into the orderly, who slammed into the cages behind him, which instantly gave under his weight. For a second, it seemed that the orderly was suspended in midair at an impossible angle, his feet on the platform, his arms in the air, a look of bewilderment on his face. He let go of the pigeon, which flew away with a flutter. Then he fell.

  * * *

  —

  THE OLDER ORDERLY testified that Saaber dove at the younger orderly, sending him flying off the pigeon house and onto the roof of the adjacent building.

  Am Lofty testified that he saw the man trip and fall on his own.

  Saaber’s mother testified that she saw the orderlies beat her son up as they tried to arrest him.

  And Am Ismail, whose son had died in a scuffle with Saaber’s father, testified that he clearly saw Saaber hold the man up and push him off the ledge, laughing out loud as he watched him fall.

  Am Ismail, it turned out, was also the one who called the police in on Saaber, claiming that he had been in constant contact with foreigners, that he had been visited by multiple journalists, and that he was openly criticizing the government and trying to destabilize the nation by spreading lies about how his brother died. Am Ismail produced the newspaper article as proof, Saaber’s face large and blurry in the online printout.

  “We were just going to question you, boy,” the police officer who took Saaber’s statement said. “Why did you have to resist arrest?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Saaber repeated.

  “You almost killed an orderly while he was performing his duties. You’re lucky the man only ended up with a broken hip. You could have been facing a murder charge.”

  “He almost killed one of my pigeons.”

  The police officer chuckled. “Seriously? That’s your defense?”

  Saaber blinked. The police officer sighed, shook his head, and leaned back in his chair, fingers laced behind his head, looking out the barred window. Saaber looked out, too. Outside, a flock of birds could be seen in the distance, too far for him to determine if they were pigeons.

  Part Three

  ◆ 14 ◆

  Whenever Rose visits West Virginia, she marvels at the state’s untamed connection to nature, a quality so different from Cairo or New York that she feels she is visiting an ancient, independent country. In the rental car during the nine-hour drive to Charleston, she and Mark rarely speak. He plays music—country, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw—an indulgence he never reveals in front of their New York friends. Hillbilly music, he tells Rose, laughing, and she smiles, feeling a minor pang of pride at being privy to seeing the West Virginia Mark as well as the New York one—the two mutually exclusive in front of everyone else. “It’s called a multiple personality disorder,” she had once commented on the many versions of him that exist. “It’s called a well-rounded personality,” Mark had retorted. “Very few people are comfortable in as many skins as I am.”

  In the car, Rose reclines the passenger seat and alternates between sleeping and pretending to sleep. Her visit to Egypt was so short that she should not have felt jet-lagged when she returned to the U.S., and yet, for the previous two weeks, her sleep schedule has been a total mess. She wakes up in the middle of the night and tosses and turns for hours, insomniac and exhausted, and during the day, she craves sleep with an insatiable appetite. Never in her life has she obsessed about sleep as much as she has in the month since her sister died. Often, she wakes up from dreamless nights feeling like she just climbed out of a pitch-black abyss and hungry to jump straight back in. When she opens her eyes, sweaty and anxious, her mind struggling to escape a recent nightmare, she longs to go back to sleep, imagining that only a deep slumber can erase the memory of bad dreams. Sleep, it seems, is her only sanctuary.

  Whenever she wakes up from napping during the car ride, Rose stays still and listens to the music. When she first arrived in the U.S., she had been surprised to learn that country music was considered an inferior art, as far as their New York friends were concerned. She had grown up listening to Olivia Newton-John (a remnant of her mother’s infatuation with Grease) and had not known that she was classified as a country singer. This, to her, had been American music. Now she knows the term “American” refers to so many different, often contradictory things, that it is naive to use it and expect the listener to imagine any one, concrete attribute.

  In the background, a man croons about how short life is, how he would have been a better person and shown more love if he had realized that in his youth.

  “Not very subtle, country music, is it?” Rose asks.

  “I didn’t realize you were awake.” Mark scrolls through his phone and changes the song.

  “You don’t have to change it. I like it.”

  “Wait. I’ve got a good one for you.”

  Now he plays a song about a man who, in response to his preacher’s advice to pray more often, prays that his ex-lover meets with a colorful array of calamities. Rose laughs softly with every new curse disguised as a prayer.

  “Never subtle, no. But that’s part of the charm,” Mark says, smiling.

  Rose turns in her seat and faces him. “How come you don’t listen to country music in New York?”

  Mark shrugs. “I don’t know. Doesn’t seem to suit the pla
ce.”

  “I listen to Egyptian music there all the time.”

  “That’s different.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  They have been driving for close to four hours and still she does not see the familiar West Virginia mountains, their crests forming a wavy horizon.

  “Where are we?”

  “We just entered Maryland. About halfway there.”

  “You know the distance from New York to Charleston is about the same as the distance from Cairo to Aswan? I looked it up.”

  “So I’m basically driving all the way across Egypt today?”

  “More or less.”

  “I hope my mom appreciates that.”

  “I’m sure she will.”

  To celebrate Mark’s parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, Mark’s older sister, Emily, has planned a surprise visit by all three kids, each one driving from his or her current city of residence: Emily from Columbus; April from Pittsburgh; and Mark and Rose from New York. Emily has been planning the weekend with the care and attention usually reserved to weddings: sending her siblings save-the-date texts months in advance, ordering a cake from their favorite Charleston bakery, setting up a catered meal to be delivered to her parents’ home the evening following their arrival. In a series of texts to the group chat she created to keep her siblings updated, she has suggested that they all bring “something appropriate” to wear to that dinner, even though it was to be held at home and no one was going to attend it except them. I want them to feel special on their special day, she said of her parents. Rose doubted her mother-in-law would feel the need to have a black-tie event, but just in case, she had brought her only semiformal dress, which was now hanging in a garment bag off the handle of the backseat window behind Mark. Rose glances at it. The bag, a translucent white, reveals the bodice of the peach-colored dress—sleeveless, with a delicate trail of fabric flowers in cream and peach decorating one shoulder strap and weaving its way down the bodice to the empire waist. She hopes the dress is appropriate—a happy medium between casual and dressy. Still, she is uncomfortable picturing herself wearing this to a dinner at home. The prospect makes her feel as if she were suddenly transported to a British manor populated with maids in black dresses and white aprons and a stern-chinned butler oozing superiority.