“I don’t like Saudi’s,” Botros told Samia. “If your husband is with a Saudi woman, he deserves to be with a Saudi woman.”
Samia laughed. Her daughter dug her face into her mother’s chest. Botros heard a wave of screams swell behind him. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Ramy and Engi jog back. They looked scared.
“We need to go,” Ramy said. “The Mubarak thugs are here.”
Botros looked behind him. He saw stones fly and heard them plink against the tanks that rolled between the two sides of feuding protesters. Botros saw a ball of fire fly through the air over the tanks and onto the anti-government protesters that had their backs against him. He watched many of them turn towards him and run away from the flying stones and Molotov cocktails and burning bags of garbage. One man was hit with a cocktail and fell to the ground.
“Have mercy on me Allah!” he screamed over and over until the frightened crowd caught up to him. Botros heard a sharp crack as the crowd ran onto his back. The man stopped screaming. The crowd motioned around the man as the flames grew, keeping their distance from the blaze. The fire on his back spread throughout his body and he lay still, facing the ground, being eaten by flames.
“We need to go,” Ramy yelled. Samia stood and ran with Aida in her arms, she’d just woken up and started to cry. Samia never waved goodbye.
“What about that man on fire?” Botros asked.
“Get up!” Ramy and Engi yelled, over and over.
“What about Mariam?” he asked. He heard the patter of hooves drum against asphalt. The sound grew louder as something approached. Ramy turned around.
A band of men on brown horses and one with a red towel wrapped around his head riding a camel stampeded towards them. All of them held long wooden sticks they used to whip the protesters as they passed, crying God is great! Ramy picked the boy up into his arms and ran in the direction of the crowd with Engi at his side. Botros watched the pro-Mubarak protesters ride down the streets behind them, they were fast approaching, and cried.
“What about Mariam,” he yelled, “We didn’t talk to the President yet.”
Engi and Ramy kept running. Ramy threw his brother over the barricades and off the streets before the riders could get to him. He helped Engi over, then jumped over himself. Botros watched a few men catch up to a rider in a green shirt from behind. They grabbed his shirt and threw him off his horse which trotted away without him. The protesters kicked him in his gut and punched him in his face and the back of his head until he bled.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he cried in a half-daze as they beat him, his head dangling against his torso. Some anti-Mubarak protesters tried to stop others from beating on the man, while others pushed them aside and swung at the back of his neck. The man bled from the side of his head as he was carried away, half dead.
This man worked for the President. That meant the President didn’t want to talk to Botros. He didn’t care about his sister or her tooth or anything. A strange feeling welled up within Botros’ gut. He didn’t know if he was disgusted or just sick, but he did want to see everything destroyed. Like the man hit by the Molotov cocktail, he wanted Tahrir to burn.
“Kill him!” he cried, punching against Ramy’s back as Ramy ran. “Kill him! Break his tooth!”
Ramy pushed through the crowds, Engi running in front of him and clearing the way. They arrived at their car twenty minutes later. Engi called the friend who’d driven her to Tahrir that morning to tell her she would go home with Ramy. Botros sat in the front beside his brother, Engi in the back.
“You took us to Tahrir for nothing!” Botros yelled at his brother. “How are we gonna get the money now? How is she gonna get better?”
“What do you know about money?” Ramy yelled back. “Are you gonna pay for her? Are ou gonna go out and work sixteen hours a day to make enough money to buy a few tomatoes and fish for the night?”
“Why aren’t you smoking in restaurants yet? What’s wrong with you? When I’m your age, I’ll own twelve Asians! Twelve!”
Ramy bit his lip. His face flushed hot red. His right eyebrow raised and held. “What’s a matter with me?” he punched his dashboard. “What’s a matter with me? You’re sitting here dreaming of owning a bunch of Chinese slaves and smoking in restaurants like some filthy Saudi while your sister’s at home with a tumour the size of your fist in her brain – dying – you understand that word? Dying? You still want to know what’s a matter with me? Do you want me to paint you a picture of a grave next to bunnies and pretty pretty flowers?”
Botros went quiet. He felt Engi’s stare from behind him, once gentle, now pitiful. He felt the midday sun beat down on his eyes. He blocked it with the backend of his hand above his brow. Rows of palm trees passed by him, one by one. For a moment, he sat back in that Chinese restaurant in Alexandria, staring at the Saudi and wanting to throw up.
“She’s dying?” he asked.
Ramy didn’t answer right away. Botros knew he was thinking. He always second guessed himself.
“No. I got angry. I made some things up to scare you. I’m sorry.”
Yes. He was angry. He turned into a monster for a moment and lied because he was angry. Ugly lies. What an ugly liar.
Mariam had a dead tooth. She, herself, was not dying. Impossible. She was nine years old, two years older than him. Botros didn’t ask any more questions. He kept quiet for the rest of the car ride, and watched the palm trees pass him by, one by one.
But in his mind, he remembered all the things Mariam said to him over the years. All the times she taunted him, called him fat, stole his hat. All the things she’d done and he could do nothing to stop her. His anger built upon itself as he piled up her sins against him. When he got home, he’d tell her. He’d finally have the chance to tell her.
They got to their apartment a few minutes after Ramy dropped off Engi. Botros marched straight to Mariam’s room while Ramy went to say hello to his mother who was cooking in the kitchen. He slammed the door open. Mariam sat with her back against three pillows piled on top of each other, facing upwards. Still pale, she’d lost a lot of weight on her body. Her cheeks stripped to the bone of fat. She looked the same that morning, but he never noticed her cheekbones before.
But her eyes, still wide. Still brown. But tired. So tired.
She saw him and smiled. Botros felt something empty him from the inside, like his big sister cut out his entrails with a knife. He no longer wanted to vomit and he couldn’t remember all the things he planned on saying to her. He softened as she readjusted his insides with her stare. She waved him towards her and he walked without thinking, in a half-trance. She turned her face towards the wall, cautiously fishing for something behind her pillow. She turned back around, and pulled out a plastic, green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles watch.
“I foun it,” she hushed, “behine my pillow. I was hiding it from you.” Botros stood there, he lowered his gaze to the ground. He was scared to look up and see her face again. She took his wrist and pulled him towards her and kissed him on his cheek.
He sat down on the side of the bed, dangling his feet above the bare concrete floor. He took his hat off, the one his cousins gave him, held it in his right hand. Watched his feet dangle above the concrete. He turned to Mariam who sat smiling, always smiling. Such tired eyes. He got on his knees on the bed and leaned his left side on the bed post. He reached for her face, held his thumb to her forehead with his left hand. Her face was hot. With his right hand, he took his hat, placed it on her head, and sat back on the bed.
“It fits your head better,” he said, and laid down next to her, trying to think of a story she’d want to hear.
All the memories that worked into his mind were painful to think about. Everything he once hated, he now missed.
“Remember that time you threw a clementine at my head?”
He felt her smile and nod and knew she wanted to hear it, although he didn’t want to say it because he knew how it ended.
FIRST CRUSA
DE
A skinned cow hock strung from a hook in front of a butcher shop dangled in front of Demiana. From the backseat of the old Peugeot, she watched the hock sway gently with the wind.
Zainab sat in front of Demiana. Demiana knew she hated the smell too. But Zainab’s father who sat behind the wheel didn’t seem to mind. All he’s probably ever known is cow hock Demiana thought. He drove them past a half dozen butcher shops every morning on the ten minute drive to their school.
The light turned green and Zainab’s father drove off. They stopped on the side of the street in front of the all girl’s school after a few blocks. Demiana stepped out from the car towards the front passenger’s side and opened the door for Zainab who sat adjusting her headscarf. Demiana waved goodbye to Zainab’s father. He nodded and patted his chest twice in recognition without turning to look at her, and drove off.
Demiana walked with Zainab, shoulder to shoulder, towards their school that sat under the floating sun. Sometimes Demiana felt like closing her eyes and walking towards the sun instead, if there was only a staircase that could extend upwards into the sky. She’d open her eyes once she climbed high enough, to see every crater and mound and crevice as she imagined it. To see the sun as a whole. She’d only ever known it from so far.
The school was a small beige chalet that stood on a bed of sanded rocks in front of a forest of palm trees that stretched towards the pale blue sky. An Egyptian flag hung from a pole in the middle of the courtyard, gently fluttering with the weak wind in front of the lone pillar on the northern end of the school. The two girls saw their classmates, some of them sitting on the uneven alabaster ledge, some standing in front of the dome-cut mirrors or the closed wooden doors of the portico. All of them were talking and laughing, all of them between the tenth and twelfth grade, in blue vest-white shirt-blue dress pant uniforms. Half of them in headscarves.
But Demiana was different. She was one of a handful of Nazarenes in her high school, and like a few others, wore a cross outside her school uniform. A few girls in her school looked at her like she was an alien, though they tried not to show it.
The cross used to belong to Sara, Demiana’s older sister. Demiana had seen it around Sara’s neck ever since she could remember. On the day of her engagement, Sara found Demiana studying in the room they shared for sixteen years, and sat next to her on the bed. She took the cross off from around her neck.
“You’re the oldest girl after I’m gone,” she said as she put the cross around Demiana. “It’s your turn now. ou need to learn to cook.”
Cook? Demiana thought. She boiled eggs and pounded dough for bread all the time. Sometimes she even fried meat for the family when her mother and older sister were busy. She knew how to cook. But she was terrified of this cross that now hung around her neck, an anchor that weighed her to something she belonged to but didn’t understand.
Demiana pinched the ends of her sleeves and rolled the fabric between her fingers. She stared at a spot on the floor behind Sara and bit at her bottom lip.
“You’re doing it again,” Sara said.
“Doing what?”
“Pinching your sleeves.”
“No I’m not.”
“You don’t need to be nervous. Growing old is good, you’ll learn a lot about the world,” Sara said and patted the cross against Demiana’s chest, “and about who you are.”
She already knew who she was. Demiana Makram Ibrahim Fanoos Abdel-Messih. She loved Soad Hosny movies and pretty much every song by Umm Kalthoum, except A Thousand and One Nights (it just dragged on). She was the youngest of two daughters and four brothers. All the rest were married, except Sara who was engaged. The cross didn’t make her into something. She already existed.
“Get ready for church,” Sara told her, throwing a white dress shirt at Demiana. “I’ll see you downstairs in five minutes.” Demiana snuck her cross beneath her dress shirt.
She went to church with her sister every week because she was expected to. She covered her head with a scarf and sat on the women’s side with Sara and watched an old bearded man with a funny black hat and a large metal crucific around his neck wave a golden censer around the altar, muttering prayers in Arabic and Coptic. Sara understood Coptic, but Demiana never bothered to learn. Many of Demiana’s church friends urged her to come to Coptic class. She went through so many excuses. She was just lazy. She sat through sermons, but she didn’t listen. Sometimes, she slept. But that day, she couldn’t sleep.
Church was no different than every other Friday afternoon service. She sat there, her new cross tucked behind the buttons of her dress shirt, and watched the old priest wave his censer and pray words she didn’t understand, though she was too nervous to be bored. She realized Sara was leaving. She needed to listen. Maybe the priest knew what was coming.
The sermon that night was on obedience in a time of Passover.
“They were slaves,” the priest spoke with a quiet intensity. “The pyramids you see in Giza were the work of their hands. They were strangers in a strange land, this Egypt.” The priest explained the years of slavery and oppression, the sting of the whips of the Egyptians who owned the land. He talked of God’s love and Moses’ mercy for his people. The signs, the wonders, and the plagues, that led up to the Passover, when the first born of every Egyptian was taken in the night.
“With the sign of the blood of lambs, the Hebrews were spared and saved. Even under the scornful eye of the Egyptians, that saw their doorposts and counted them for fools. Imagine what happened to the Hebrews that were too afraid of looking stupid in front of their masters?”
They would have died in Egypt Demiana thought.
Demiana sat there for a moment and wondered what it meant to be in a house covered by blood. It seemed scary, knowing that the thing that saved the outsiders was the thing that showed they were outsiders. Demiana thought she should be scared, but she wasn’t. For the first time since her sister put the cross around her, she was comfortable. Maybe even at peace. She reached for the thick string that carried the cross, grasped it in her palm for a moment, and pulled it out from underneath her dress shirt. Sara turned to her and smiled.
“Mom and dad are gonna be very proud,” she whispered, and patted her little sister’s head.
~~~
The clear glass cross was cut at an angle that reflected the sun’s light in shades of purple and blue and yellow and green and red, depending on where a watcher stood. The glass lined the sides of a thin white cross laid in its core.
One of the girls in front of the door caught the flash of the cross from a few metres away and spotted Demiana and Zainab walking towards the portico. She waved them towards her.
Her name was Laila – she wore a white headscarf to school every day, although Demiana knew that was just something she did for her father. She was skinny and very pale for an Egyptian, though her eyes and brows were the darkest brown. Unlike Zainab, who had dark olive skin and light brown eyes.
“Hi girls,” Laila yelled.
Zainab and Demiana waved and walked faster towards her. The three met in front of the wooden doors.
“You look lost today Zainab,” Laila laughed.
“I didn’t get enough sleep.”
“I can tell. Your eyes are swollen. You should wash them out with honey.”
“Honey’s expensive. My dad would beat me with his shoe if I used it on anything other than tea or bread.”
“You can use some of my honey,” Demiana said.
“Thanks,” Zainab said, “but I don’t see how rubbing honey into my face is gonna get rid of my bags anyway.”
“Well it works,” Laila said. “I know. I had the same problem before.”
“Come to my house tonight and we’ll try it out,” Demiana said. “You should come too Laila.”
“I can’t. I need to go home right after school. My mother made me promise I’d cook with her tonight.”
“You’re gonna slaughter your own chicken?” Zainab asked. Demiana and Zainab la
ughed.
“No!” Laila said. “My dad slaughters. I pluck. Besides, I don’t see how either of you could laugh. You’re both just as poor as me.”
“Yeah, but I won’t touch a dead chicken except to cook it,” Zainab said, cringing. “I leave the cutting and plucking to my brothers.”
“Shut up,” Laila said. “You-”
The bell rung before she could finish. The three girls made their way in front of the door and stood in the middle of the forming line. Demiana heard the loudspeaker above her set off a shrill squeal. The national anthem played, followed by a short poem recorded off the radio by a young Alexandrian introduced as Yacoub. The girls heard the thumps and thuds of the microphone as the principal placed it in front of a cassette player and pressed play. The cassette was of Yacoub’s voice reading his own poem.
In quiet hours our Proud Nation sat
And watched the foreigner step on our lands
And with their nails and sharpened fangs
Clawed into our soil and sucked the sap from our trees.
The boy’s crackling, prepubescent voice reached a heightened screech at the end of each line. Demiana’s mind wandered as the boy continued his rant against Western colonialism. She’d heard it too many times before.
“I think they’re getting a little too serious,” Zainab whispered to Laila.
The two girls tried to hold back their laugher. Demiana saw a flash of beige cut through the air and smack into the back of Zainab’s bare neck. Lurching above Zainab, Ms. Safiya bent down to her level and stared into her wide eyes.
“Never, ever, ever talk during announcements,” the woman said with an unflinching stare.
Zainab straightened her back and held her hand to her heart, “I’m sorry teacher. I won’t do it again.”
Ms. Safiya raised her head and walked to the front of the line. The recorder clacked at the end of the cassette. The microphone boomed again and the principal spoke.
“God keep Egypt in the hands of the righteous,” the principal said.
A short, fat woman with a subtle hunch pushed the front doors open. Ms. Safiya took her class in first. Demiana and the rest of Ms. Safiya’s grade eleven homeroom history class followed their teacher down the narrow white hallways in single file and absolute silence. Ms. Safiya opened the door and counted the girls as they walked in, one by one. Demiana made sure not to look at her as she entered, although she was tempted to wish her a good morning like her sister told her to.
A face like the moon Page 6