The Republic of False Truths

by Alaa Al Aswany

  Making an effort to pull his thoughts, scattered by hashish, together, he cleared his throat and said, “That’s a strange idea.”

  As though waiting for any word he might say so that she could explode, she yelled, “No, it isn’t strange or anything of the sort! The country’s falling apart. Today, they cut off the internet and the mobile phone networks. After the prayers, the Brothers are going to hold demonstrations and God knows what will happen. It’s dangerous for us to be so close to Tahrir Square. We have to go to Mama’s for a couple of days till things quieten down.”

  Ashraf smiled and said, “Just so you know, Heliopolis has demonstrations, exactly like here.”

  She gave him a furious look and shouted, “I’d really like to know why you keep provoking me! Instead of trying to calm me down, you want to scare me even more?”

  His smile widened and he said, “I’m just telling the truth.”

  “Even if there are demonstrations in Heliopolis, it’s sure to be safer than here.”

  “Fine. Go, and Godspeed!”

  “I’m warning you, Ashraf. It’s dangerous for you here. The Brothers could easily attack you sitting here in the flat. Aren’t you afraid?”

  “No.”

  “Of course not. You rescued a Brotherhood girl, so now you’re their darling.”

  “I told you, that girl isn’t with the Brothers and, to be honest, your fears are exaggerated. We haven’t done anything that would make anyone attack us.”

  “In the Brotherhood’s eyes, just the fact that we’re Copts makes us infidels whom they have to slaughter.”

  Ashraf sighed and said, “Are we going to go over all that again, Magda? Your panic is morbid. There’s no point in talking about it.”

  She took a step towards him and said, “Are you coming with me?”

  He shook his head, and she yelled furiously, “Do as you like. I’ll be at Mama’s. If you want to come, you know the address.”

  She turned and went out into the hall and delivered instructions to Ikram in a loud, sharp tone of voice. A little later, Ashraf heard the sound of the door closing and felt a sense of relief. He lit a joint, but Ikram soon arrived and asked him anxiously, “Is Madame Magda upset?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, so why did she leave the house?”

  Ashraf got up from behind the desk and took her hand. Then they sat next to one another on the couch. He planted a quick kiss on her cheek and said, “Madame Magda is afraid to stay here because of the demonstrations. She’s gone to her mother’s house in Heliopolis.”

  Ikram pouted her delectable lips and said, “Can I tell you something, but you mustn’t get angry?”

  “By all means.”

  “I really don’t understand how your wife can run away and leave you when things get difficult.”

  He looked at her and smiled, then took her in his arms. “If I were your wife, I’d never leave you. We’d either live together or die together,” she whispered.

  She had now become unbearably sexy. He hugged her and started kissing her neck and ear. She whispered, “Can I change out of my work things?”

  He ignored the question and devoured her lips in a long, burning kiss. They were so aroused, they made love on the carpet without cushions. His performance was implacable, as though he wanted to rid himself of his anxieties in her body, as though he was using her to protect himself from his apprehensions, as though he was clinging to her to reassure himself that she was still with him. Her body received him with patience and understanding. She withstood his roughness and contained him with such overflowing maternal tenderness that he almost wept. After the lovemaking, he remained on his back, staring at the ceiling, his hand enfolding hers. He said nothing and didn’t smoke his usual cigarette. He remained sunk in thought so long that she asked him, “Who’s the lucky girl?” He smiled and didn’t reply. She planted a kiss on his cheek and whispered, “Would you be so kind, sir, as to tell me what you’re thinking about?”

  “About what Asmaa said.”

  She pretended to laugh and said, “This Asmaa must be very pretty.”

  He turned to look at her in astonishment. Then he embraced her and whispered, “You’re the only pretty one in the world.”

  With frank anxiety, she said, “You haven’t talked about anything except Asmaa since the moment you saw her.”

  His voice serious, he replied, “Forget all this silly jealousy and understand what I’m trying to say. Asmaa represents to me a different generation and a new way of thinking. From the moment I had that discussion with her, I’ve been asking myself, ‘Who’s right and who’s wrong?’ ”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “People my age have suffered all their lives from corruption and injustice but they never did anything to change the situation. I, for example, could have become a successful and famous actor if it weren’t for the corruption in the field of the arts. What did I do to fight that corruption? Nothing!”

  “What would you have liked to do, then?”

  “Corruption in the arts is part of the corruption of the regime. The regime has to be changed first if everything is going to be put to rights. I knew that but I was afraid to get involved in politics.”

  “You were right to be afraid. You’re a respectable gentleman, sir, with a family and children, and anyone who tells the truth in this country disappears down a black hole.”

  “That’s exactly what I like about the young people like Asmaa. They aren’t afraid like us. They’re determined to put the country to rights and they’re ready to pay the price. To be honest, they’re braver than us.”

  A wan smile appeared on Ikram’s face; she still hadn’t completely rid herself of the niggling feeling of jealousy, so she got up and pretended to be looking for her slippers. She walked past him, naked, and her full breasts, freed from all restraints, bounced, while her huge backside assumed a variety of pleasing positions. She knew that her naked body aroused him. He couldn’t bear to see her naked without pouncing on her and initiating a new round of passion. This time, however, he remained wrapped in his silence. She bent over him, kissed him, and asked, “Do you love me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay. If you love me, no more talk about the demonstrations.”

  With an expert hand, she began playing around at the base of his belly, whispering, “We’re together and there’s nothing to disturb us. Let’s have fun and talk later.”

  They lost themselves in a wild bout of love. Then she took a bath and came back, her hair up, wearing a blue housedress and looking as fresh as a newly watered rose. He suggested they have lunch in the dining room. They ate together and chatted. She made a point of telling him funny things about her neighbours in Hawamdiya. When he’d done eating, he told her, “Thank you, Ikram.”

  “For what?”

  “For making me happy.”

  She smiled gratefully, so he took heart and said, “Please, make me a cup of coffee to drink on the balcony.”

  In a tone of humorous complaint, she replied, “It’s no use! You still want to go on watching the demonstrations.”

  He quickly crossed the hall, went into the study, opened the balcony door, and began following what was going on in the square. She removed the dishes from the table and washed them in the kitchen. While she was fixing her make-up in front of the large mirror in the living room, Ashraf’s voice suddenly rang through the hall in a shriek.

  “Come here, Ikram! They’re killing them! They’re shooting them dead!”

  25

  Dear Asmaa,

  I hope you’re well. I’m writing this letter quickly on a piece of paper because the internet has been cut off. I have no idea how I’ll get it to you. I went back to the house to take a shower and change my clothes and I’m going back to the square even though I’m dying from lack of sleep. Today,
after the afternoon prayer, I was in the middle of a demonstration heading for Tahrir Square, and when we reached the Shura Council building, we found the army blocking our way. An army officer with the rank of captain approached us and said, “Listen up! There are Central Security forces trapped in the square and they want to get out. They’re just poor lads and none of this is their fault. They haven’t had a wink of sleep for three days. Will you let them cross to the other side so that they can get in the police vans and go back to camp? Then they can all go back to their villages.”

  The appearance of the soldiers really was pitiful. They seemed to be exhausted and some of them were so tired they were sitting on the asphalt. I consulted with my colleagues and then told the officer, “Tell them they can go through, sir, and we won’t get in their way.”

  The officer smiled and asked, “Can I take that as a promise?”

  We gave him our word and made a double human barrier, leaving a gap in the middle for the soldiers to go through, and began shouting, “We are your brothers! We are your children!”

  The scene was rapturous and moving. About forty soldiers went through, one after the other, to the next street and the Cairo Centre building, where a large police van was waiting, which they were supposed to climb into. As soon as they reached the van, however, something happened that we could never have expected. A police general appeared. I shall never forget his face. He was thin and excitable. He distributed ammunition to the soldiers and gave them an order, and they began firing on us with live bullets. We tried to escape but discovered that they’d caught us in a pincer movement. The army had closed off Tahrir Square to give the police the chance to kill us. We ran towards the Shura Council, pursued by bullets. I saw more than one fellow demonstrator fall. Under the continuous hail of bullets, there was nothing we could do to help them. Imagine the horror! We were all running, and every moment another young person fell to a bullet aimed at them from behind. We entered the Shura Council and the workers there gestured to us to hide, but the soldiers followed us inside, shooting. Don’t ask me how I managed to escape the slaughter, I don’t know myself. Perhaps it was luck, because I ran to the Council’s back door, on the Lycée side. I shall remember those terrible moments for as long as I live. I saw my fellows dying of gunshot wounds. I saw the martyrs’ bodies scattered over the asphalt and I saw one fellow demonstrator die in front of me. He choked, and then his body shuddered and he died. I saw a soldier advance towards one martyr and rob his pockets, then remove the watch from his wrist and take it. This took place in front of his officer, who was shouting, “Fire, private!”

  The shooting kept up. I shall never forget the rancour and spite on the face of the police officer as he directed foul insults at us, examined the fallen, and, whenever he found someone who had only been wounded, kicked him with all his might where the wound was. I got out of that hell by a miracle. All day, I’ve been going over what happened and asking myself, “How could the army officer permit himself to trick us? Doesn’t he know the meaning of military honour? Plus, why such criminal behaviour from the police officer? How could he kill young Egyptians with such ease and deliberateness? What kind of pleasure was it that he felt when he kicked a wounded person in his injured foot? Why do they hate us so much?”

  The martyrs will ascend to their Lord, who has promised them Paradise, but I’m sad, Asmaa, because the best of us are dying. Every one of those martyrs could have played a role in Egypt’s rebirth, but Egypt killed them. I shall never forget what I lived through today. I shall never forget the martyrs who fell in front of me and I shall never rest until we have brought every murderer to trial, starting with Hosni Mubarak and his criminal minister of the interior and all the way down to the army officer who tricked us and the murderous police officer. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Perhaps to rid myself of the burden of the experience, perhaps to document the massacre. I don’t know how I’m going to get this letter to you. Let me know that you’re okay, by any means. Asmaa, death visited me today. The bullets passed me by and killed my fellows. I didn’t die today, but I might at any instant, because the regime is becoming ever more criminal. If I die, remember that I love you.

  Mazen

  26

  At fifty-nine, Muhammad Zanaty looked a decade older than his years. His body had grown so thin that his clothes, which were old, had become too large for it, and his hair had fallen out, with the exception of a few locks distributed on either side of his broad bald patch. His thick eyebrows had turned white and wrinkles had taken over his face. Even the skin of his hands was strewn with age spots. Why had Muhammad Zanaty’s health declined so fast? Was it because of a quarter of a century of exile in Saudi Arabia? Or because of his debilitating work in accounts? Or because of the non-stop, vicious battles that he waged in defence of his livelihood, or the problems with his kidneys that afflicted him when he decided, despite the warnings of his friends, to save on the cost of mineral water and drink Saudi Arabia’s tap water instead?

  Whatever the reason, he was now an exhausted old man who gave the impression that his journey was nearly done. The one thing about him that hadn’t changed was his smile. Whichever picture of him we look at, we find it unchanged—since the beginning, in a black-and-white picture in which he appears as a pupil at Talkha Secondary School for Boys, then in the pictures taken on the trip to the Barrages that he took when he was a student at the Faculty of Commerce, Cairo University, and again in the pictures with his colleagues at The Egyptian Contractors company, where he worked following his graduation, and up to the most recent pictures, which he took of himself, in his office at El Ghamidi and Co. Importing, in Jeddah; throughout, Zanaty’s smile had remained the same—innocent and modest, with an unusual stamp of tolerance and contentment. How often that smile had opened closed doors to him, how often saved him from tight spots! Zanaty didn’t graduate with a good degree, and there were lots of accountants better than he, but none of his colleagues at work could hold out against him when there was any sort of competition. When it came to handling bosses, he was a creative artist of the highest calibre. He always knew how to influence his boss and win him to his side, how to put on a show of absolute obedience and bedazzlement by the man’s genius, and how to go into ecstasies over everything he said, seemingly regarding it as the essence of wisdom and good business practice. In the presence of his chief, Zanaty was transformed into a different character: he altered, shrank, dwindled, bent his back, and spoke in a submissive, obedient tone of voice, because he considered that to show self-confidence before one’s superior was an impertinence. And whatever the context or subject, Zanaty would draw close to his boss, bend over, and say in a voice that was low but audible to any who might be listening, “Your Excellency only needs to direct me and I shall execute your instructions immediately. I am at Your Excellency’s service.”

  These submissive whispers would instil in the boss’s soul a refreshingly manly feeling of control that would dispose him favourably towards Zanaty. Despite the fact that he had never in his life read anything but commentaries on the Koran, Bukhari’s Authentic Traditions of the Prophet, and the Al-Ahram Friday edition (which he borrowed from one of his colleagues in the housing compound), Zanaty possessed an innate power of expression approaching the poetic. Who but he would say to his boss, “Your Excellency—God bless you!—is like an ocean in knowledge! Every opinion Your Excellency expresses, I memorise word for word and then think about again at home, where I find I discover new meanings and learn beneficial lessons. God preserve you for us and bless you, sir!”

  The last expressions he would modify when speaking to his Saudi sponsor, so that they came out as, “God reward you well; may you live long! God have mercy on your parents and give to you as you have given to others and in keeping with your generosity to us!”

  Like a champion sportsman glorying in his achievements, Mr. Zanaty was proud of professional contests, in which he beat everyone. On one p
articularly difficult day that he would never forget, his proposed secondment to Saudi Arabia came close to being cancelled as the result of a rumour put about by a colleague who was angling to travel in his stead. Immediately, Zanaty went to the general director of The Egyptian Contractors and said to him, in a lachrymose, tremulous voice, “Sir, Your Excellency, I have faith in Your Excellency’s sense of justice. I have three children to support and their mother doesn’t work and I’d like to go to Saudi Arabia so that I can cover their expenses. Should Your Excellency order the cancellation of my secondment, I shall gladly accept Your Excellency’s decision, for I think of Your Excellency as my father, my model, and my ideal.”

  This “dose of medicine” was enough for the director to write, in green ink, the sign-off that changed Zanaty’s life: “Secondment approved.”

  Should Mr. Zanaty be regarded as a hypocrite? To be polite, we might say that he excelled at adapting to whatever circumstances he found himself in. Like millions of Egyptians, he didn’t waste his energy on things unrelated to his three life goals: to make an honest living, to raise his children, and to be safe from scandal in this world and the next. He had made the pilgrimage to God’s House twice and the lesser pilgrimage five times and he never skipped a religious obligation or forgot to follow the example of the Prophet, all of which are things that God, Mighty and Glorious, takes into account. When he spent the summer holidays with his family in Cairo, he was happy, indulging himself (to the extent that his age permitted) in legitimate pleasures with his wife, delighted to find himself amongst his children. Lately, however, he had noticed that his enjoyment of his Cairo holiday was less, and even that, on returning to his housing in Jeddah, he would feel that he had taken off his elegant summer suit and donned instead a wide, comfortable robe. He had become used to life in Saudi Arabia, and influenced by it, to the point that he had started to speak like the Saudis, saying “Peace be upon you” on the telephone instead of “Hello” and using Saudi expressions, such as ratib for salary, dawam for “working hours,” and haris binaya for “doorkeeper.”