Demiana took her place in the front of the class closest to the door. On the other side, the faint honey-sweet smell of sweet potato sold by street vendors lingered through the open windows. Demiana rested her legs against the steel framework of her desk, which felt cool through her dress pants. A framed picture of President Sadat hung above the front desk, as it did in every other Egyptian classroom.
Demiana hated that picture. The president’s eyes always fell on her. Everywhere she sat, she could feel the heat of the Believing President’s stare. Her beliefs were different from his beliefs. He knew from the cross around her neck. She was a threat to national security. Quietly, he stared and judged and held his peace.
But sometimes she wondered what Egypt would become without him. At the very least, he kept the bombs from flying over Cairo. Until that day, she had an urge to hide underneath a desk every time she heard a siren, like she was taught in 1967. Sadat hated her, but he kept her safe.
Demiana looked up at her teacher who stood above her front desk flipping through her binder. Strands of curly black hair peeked through the ends of her headscarf. She was a slender woman, although her modest pink dress shirt and black shin length skirt couldn’t hide her subtle curves. She tried, but she couldn’t conceal her beauty. A cold beauty as it was.
She licked her finger and turned a page in her binder, turned around towards the blackboard and wrote the day’s lesson. The First Crusade. Yesterday, she’d finished off at the battle of Antioch, after the Crusaders destroyed the Turks, claimed to find a relic of the spear that pierced Jesus, and went on to the gates of Ma’arra.
“The Crusaders were diseased,” she said as she wrote on the board. “And starving. They drank their own horse’s blood at one point. Like animals. They stood at the gates of Ma’arra, in the name of their God, and stormed the gates and killed every Muslim man, woman and child. As we’ve discussed before,” she turned around and examined the class, “this was not new to the Crusader barbarians. They wanted us all dead. But what happened next was far worse.”
She turned her stare to Demiana, who sat with her back straight against her seat and her eyes wide. She did not want to hear what came next, but what disturbed her more was the straight, almost hostile stare the teacher set on her – an eyebrow raised slightly, lips pinched open – the face of sheltered rage.
“In the boundaries of the gates, they boiled us alive,” Ms. Safiya said. “Impaled our children on spits and roasted them with the cut flesh, and ate them.”
“They were cannibals?” Demiana cried. She usually didn’t speak without raising her hand, she knew she’d be scolded, but she’d never heard of people eating each other before. Except in old Egyptian myths. This had to be a myth.
“Only if you define a cannibal as a human that eats humans,” Ms. Safiya said. A few of the girls in her class giggled.
“That can’t be!” Demiana said. “That’s not human!”
Demiana realized she’d just spoken out of turn twice. Ms. Safiya, staring at her for a moment, relaxed her lips. She turned around, picked her binder up from behind her and held it up to her own face.
“Albert of Aix, a Crusader, wrote ‘Not only did our troops not shrink from eating dead Turks and Saracens; they also ate dogs.’” She turned to Demiana again, with the same hostile stare. “The people who ate our flesh considered us worse than dogs.”
Demiana leaned back and shrank into her seat, eyes wide and mouth open, and tried to take in her teacher’s words. Centuries ago, Christian soldiers fought and killed and ate other men. And they did this under the banner of the cross. The same cross Sara told Demiana to take as the source of her hope. The same cross that hung from her neck. She remembered how heavy it was for her that first day Sara gave it to her. She could feel it digging into her shirt, its sides sharp as her teacher’s tongue.
~~~
Zainab sat on Demiana’s couch with her eyes closed. Demiana held a jar of honey in one hand, a piece of cardboard in the other. She dipped the cardboard into the honey and spread it over the bags underneath Zainab’s eyes.
It was the sixth of October, 1981. It had been eight years to the day since Egypt crossed the Suez Canal – the government held its annual victory parade through the streets of Cairo. Demiana watched the parade on her small black and white television. This was the first time she’d watched television in her own home – her brother had bought one and set it up the night before after she fell asleep.
President Sadat rode through the streets in a black Lincoln. He stood outside through the open sunroof between two other men, vice-president Mubarak and another Demiana didn’t recognize, all dressed in their green military uniforms.
“It’s like watching real life,” Demiana said.
“In black and white,” Zainab said.
“Your eyes are closed. You can’t even see anything.”
“I’ve had television in my house for a year now. You get used to it.”
“It feels like they’re gonna pop out of the screen.”
“You’re not the only one with a parade in your house you know? Believe it or not, there are hundreds of people in the world with televisions. Thousands even.”
Demiana licked the honey that dribbled off the end of the piece of cardboard after she finished spreading it on her friend’s face. She set it, sticky side up, on the table next to her. She walked towards Zainab and jumped on the couch. Zainab had her eyes open now, though the honey still stuck to her face, and the two watched the procession.
Demiana’s stomach had felt unsettled since homeroom history. She moved her hand up to her cross and grasped it in her palm. She wished she’d never heard of the Crusaders. She wished they never existed. She wished she could ease the weight that hung from her neck, but she knew her sister and her parents would be devastated if she did.
“Do you think I’m a Crusader?” Demiana blurted. Zainab laughed and poked at the honey underneath her eyes.
“I’m serious.”
“Have you ever eaten another man’s flesh?”
“I’m serious!”
“So am I. Have you ever eaten another man’s flesh? I’m asking you.”
“No.”
“You’re alright then, I think.”
“You know the Crusaders had crosses on their shields.”
“Symbols are what you make of them,” Zainab said. “Besides, I’ve seen crosses on churches all over Egypt. You guys still haven’t attacked.” Demiana giggled.
Zainab poked at the bags under her eyes. Her fingers became wet with honey. She licked her fingers and rubbed them dry against her shirt.
“You know why Ms. Safiya’s so bitter?” Zainab asked.
“Why?”
“Her husband died a few years ago. She’s a thirty-something year old widow.”
“Really? How’d he die?”
“Bilharzia. It was a slow death.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yup. Painful too. She watched him suffer.”
“How do you know?”
“My mother has a friend that lives on her street. All Ms. Safiya has left is her son.”
“The fat boy that walks her to school every morning?”
“Yeah.”
Demiana nodded as if she understood, but she didn’t. She wondered what had changed in Ms. Safiya’s life after her husband died. She wondered how her teacher got around the city – she only knew of two women on her street that drove. And how did her son get to his own school after he walked her to work? He must’ve walked alone, or maybe a relative picked him up from his mother’s work.
Maybe she loved her husband, and maybe he loved her. Or maybe the whole marriage was a formality, its sole purpose to produce children. Maybe a lot of things. The only thing she knew for sure, Ms. Safiya still had one son. One short, fat son.
Demiana sagged into her seat and watched the parade. The tanks rolled down the streets of Suez and the camera cut to a shot of five jets in v-formation flying over the city, then d
own to Sadat. He sat between the same two men who stood beside him in the Lincoln, in front of a large crowd of patrons. He talked and laughed with Mubarak and smoked his pipe. Sadat watched the passing six-wheelers and cargo trucks and tanks and Humvees that rolled by in fours.
He stood up and saluted the passing convoy. Demiana noticed an object the size of a tennis ball fly towards him. She heard short spurts of what sounded like a firecracker and saw the president fall. The screen turned to static.
“What just happened?” Zainab asked, her mouth open like she was dumb.
“Was that a part of the show?”
“Oh God!”
“No,” Demiana said.
“Oh God, I think they just shot him!”
“No they didn’t.”
“He died! They shot him!”
“No. No, it can’t be. They can’t show that on television.”
“They shot him! Didn’t you just see him fall? He’s dead!”
Demiana jumped off the couch and turned off the television. She rested her palms against the table and hung her head above the antenna, more surprised than horrified. The President, the leader of Egypt, the broker of peace between the Arab world and far off enemies, might have died in their sight.
Demiana, head hung low, thought back to the day Sadat announced he released the members of the Muslim Brotherhood from prison. “He released them, then he is one of them,” Sara’d told her. “He’ll die by his own hands.”
For a moment, a brief moment, Demiana wondered if he deserved it. Even if he did, who would protect her from the bombs now? She raised her head and turned to Zainab.
“Did they just shoot him?” Demiana asked.
“Yes!”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Zainab went home a few minutes later, still in shock. The two girls kissed on each cheek at Demiana’s door step. Zainab walked off.
Demiana spent the rest of the afternoon cooking with her mother. The radio sat between them as they cut onions on either side of the table. A man on the radio told the facts of the assassination as they came in. Between the tidbits of information on the dead president’s history, he played patriotic ballads about Egypt.
“It’s the President’s curse,” her mother said. “It happened to Nasser too. He was poisoned.”
“No he wasn’t.” Demiana shook her head. Her mother looked up from the onions to her daughter’s face. Her mother was a fat woman, her face round and dark. She wore a white scarf with a picture of St. Mina around her hair, and a slight smile on her face. Demiana knew what that smile meant. Her mother was annoyed by Demiana’s challenging her.
“You don’t believe me?” she asked. “They’re all destined to be destroyed. The crooked ones, and they’re all crooked. It’s the will of God.”
She tapped her palm lightly against the table. Demiana knew not to argue after that.
“So he deserved it?” Demiana asked.
“Did you see how he freed the Brotherhood? Did you see how he abolished our pope for speaking out against him? This is Egypt. This will always be Egypt. And the next one will go too, one way or the other.”
“Who’s gonna protect us now? The army?”
“The army?” she scoffed. “You didn’t see them shoot your president right in front of you? You can’t trust anyone with a name in this country.”
“Then who?”
“God exists,” her mother said.
Demiana wiped the tears from her eyes with a small handkerchief, she’d been cutting onions for too long. She noticed her mother’s eyes hadn’t even watered. She’d been cutting onions all her life.
Demiana pushed the knife away and rested her head on her palm, staring at an icon of the martyr Abu Sefein, wielding two swords above his head, behind her mother. Even great warriors could die.
She wondered if Sadat ever felt like a stranger in his own country since the peace treaty with the people that sucked the sap from their trees. A lot of people hated him after that. Why didn’t he protect himself? she thought. He should’ve painted his doorpost with blood.
She walked to the kitchen to get a pot for her mother. On her way there, the telephone rang. Demiana went to the living room to pick up.
“Hello,” she said.
“Demiana?” a weak voice muttered.
“Hi Zainab. How are you?”
“Demiana, I can’t give you a ride tomorrow,” she said.
“Oh, that’s okay. Why not though?”
“I just can’t,” Zainab said. She sounded sad. “Not tomorrow or the next day.”
“Why? What’s wrong? Did I do something?”
“No, don’t say that! But I won’t see you tomorrow. I’m sorry.”
Are you stupid a gruff voice yelled in the background. To apologize to a Nazarene?
“Why? What’s wrong? Why is your dad yelling at you?” Demiana cried.
“I’m s-,I – I have to go.” Zainab hung up. Confused, Demiana called Zainab back.
Zainab’s father hung up on her when she asked to speak to his daughter.
Demiana told her mother she couldn’t cook anymore that night, she had too much homework. She went to her room, dug her face into her pillow, and cried late into the night.
~~~
Word had spread quickly through the radio and television the next day. Sara was right. President Sadat had been assassinated by the Brotherhood. Egypt was under a state of emergency, and would be for the rest of the year. The whole schoolyard talked about it. One girl sat alone on the ledge and wept. A few seemed happy he was dead. But whether they loved or hated him, all feared the uncertainty of Egypt’s future.
All but Demiana. She didn’t care one way or the other. She walked to school alone that morning, she told her parents she was sick of riding to school every day. She stepped over bottles and old newspaper pages and used charcoal outside the shisha bars.
The streets were lined with plain grey concrete buildings. She spotted clouds floating aimlessly over the cement skyline above the buildings. The stench of cow hock pierced her senses like sharpened steel as she walked, without a car window to weaken the smell. Cairo’s busy streets felt like a wasteland. The roads were dirty and the people were garbage.
Demiana arrived at the school alone. She was a few minutes early. She looked around for Zainab. She wanted to ask her what happened. She couldn’t find her.
“Hi,” a voice from behind her said. She turned.
“Oh, hi Laila,” Demiana said and feigned a smile.
“I heard about what happened,” she said. She rubbed Demiana’s shoulder and faked her own smile. “I’m really sorry.”
“I don’t care if he’s dead,” Demiana said. Her cheeks flushed after she realized what she said. Luckily, only Laila heard, and she didn’t care.
“I’m talking about Zainab. She came to my apartment last night. She told me what happened.”
“She did?” Demiana yelled. “She told me nothing! What happened with her? Where is she?”
“I don’t think she’s coming back to school. Her dad found a husband for her.”
“Husband? She’s sixteen. She wanted to get married after university. I wanna talk to her.”
“I don’t think you can do that. I don’t think her dad likes you. He thinks it was the Nazarenes that killed him. He said you’re Mossad.”
“Mossad? I don’t even know what that is.”
“I know.”
“And doesn’t he hate Sadat? One time, in the morning, we were driving and he was going on about how he wouldn’t mind if someone killed him.”
“He’s crazy.”
“Doesn’t it make more sense that people who agree with him may have killed Sadat?”
“It does, but her dad’s crazy.”
Demiana’s head felt light. Her knees went weak. She sighed and held back her tears, and walked over to the ledge and sat. Laila followed. There was nothing she could do but sit and wish it wasn’t true. Demiana watched the crowd
s move. f many of them didn’t even stop their lives for Sadat, who would stop for a nobody like her? All she did was lose a friend.
Just last week, she’d sat on the side of the streets in a plastic beach chair with Zainab, eating peaches and contemplating how the world would end. Zainab said they’d know it was coming when the last peach tree died. “Might as well end then,” she said. “That’s not a world I’d wanna live in.” They laughed. Those were good peaches.
She spotted Ms. Safiya a few metres away, walking towards the school. She held her little boy’s hand, he couldn’t have been more than ten years old. A short, fat boy with dark brown hair, a white shirt and blue suspenders. He pulled the collar of his shirt over his nose and paced in front of his mom. She tugged his arm, pulling him back. She smiled that morning. For her, in that moment, Egypt was whole. Ms. Safiya had what she needed, no matter what news played over the radio.
She walked him to a bus stop where a skinny woman in a blue dress stood. Ms. Safiya waved to the woman as she approached.
At the bus stop, she kissed the woman on each cheek and tugged the boys hand into the other woman’s open palm. Ms. Safiya slouched to her son’s level, kissed him on his head and stood up and waved goodbye as she walked away.
That day, Demiana understood the sting of that long goodbye. She wished Ms. Safiya didn’t need to leave her boy. She looked so happy while she was with him.
The bell rang. Demiana made her way to her class line with Laila. She heard a heavy thud from the loudspeakers. After the national anthem, the principal took the microphone.
“Sadat is dead,” she said, “but Egypt still stands. God keep Egypt in the hands of the righteous.” That was all. For all the mourning and cursing of the killers the media showed throughout the country, that statement seemed too simple. Almost stupid. The short, fat woman opened the doors of the school and Ms. Safiya led her class in. She was straight-faced and sterile again. There was no assassination, no country in crisis in her classroom. She wouldn’t allow it.
A face like the moon Page 7