Chronicle of a Last Summer

by Yasmine El Rashidi

  I don’t know what might happen this time but anticipate something. H’s excitement is my fear. Maybe they will storm campus and arrest students and take them away. But who will they take? How will they know who to take? What will they do? We wait. I wait. I imagine. It shames me, this cowardice. Nobody comes. Men loiter in the streets around campus. They dress normally, simply, in plain clothes, but I know, we all know, who they are. They stand around. They look. They talk on phones. They never bother us. But they are there. One day I hear that a girl has been arrested for drugs. I don’t know if they caught her outside the university. I don’t know if she was caught by these men. Nobody speaks of it aloud, only whispers, rumor. I look to see where they are before I cross the street. I don’t want to cross paths. A friend of Dido’s is grabbed and taken away crossing their path, walking towards them unaware on his way to a café. I begin to wonder what happened to the man who worked for Uncle Mohsen, and the boy who cleaned cars at the garage next door. He never came back. I look at his parents and siblings each time I walk by and wonder if they know, or still have hope. Were there answers, or had they already said final goodbyes? I look around, my eyes darting, searching.

  I focus my camera on the sit-in. The organizer talks into a loudspeaker, thanking everyone for coming. He is pleased with the turnout despite the summer. There are forty-one, forty-two, forty-seven students there. He takes out a folded paper from his back pocket. A black-and-white Palestinian kūfiyyah circles his neck. Everyone claps. He makes a peace sign and reads:

  Bismallah al-Rahman al-Rahim, In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful,

  On July 2, Mohamed and Rana Abdel Jaber had their home destroyed for the second time in twenty-seven days. The invaders sounded an alert, giving them five minutes to evacuate their home that had just been rebuilt. They lived in two modest rooms. Their life savings had gone into building this home, and then rebuilding it again. They took their three children, all under the age of six, and fled. They are now in a white tent that looks just like this. They are among tens of thousands of Palestinians displaced by Israeli forces. These acts of brutality and murder must end.

  I zoom with the camera and notice the son of the Palestinian poet Mourid El-Barghouti, a poet himself. I pan. I don’t know him but recognize his face. Their story has been in the papers; Sadat deported Mourid on the eve of the signing of the peace treaty with Israel, and their family had lived separated for seventeen years. I’ve devoured his wife’s novels. The poet wrote that it was the reason he had only one son, otherwise he might have had eight. It was his fate for marrying an Egyptian. They had finally been reunited a few years ago, on pardon from President Mubarak. Mourid had returned to Cairo. I focus on his son’s face, this only child of circumstance, wondering if I can script him into my graduation film. Then I move my lens out to take in the girls nearby. The chanting is insistent. Voices loud. Faces animated. I see determination. Sincerity. A glimmer of sadness. In the end though, all I really see is chatter. I think that’s what I see. I film until I sense I have enough.

  I sign the equipment back. Walk down the library steps. Enter the reserves room. It is really a storage closet lined with shelves. A man in a sweat-drenched shirt stands behind a wooden counter. The library is air-conditioned, but this closet is not. 301.H. The man doesn’t acknowledge me but walks to a shelf. Pulls out a folder. Opens it. Brings out the papers. Waves them. The assigned chapter for philosophy class. Fifteen piastres. I nod, give him twenty-five, take the papers. Some students buy actual books, most of us photocopy. He puts the money in a cardboard box below the counter, then turns and rummages in a folder. I exit and turn the corner. Past the mango stand. The shop that sells under-the-counter beer. The man who sells matches and Adams chewing gum and plastic combs off a cardboard crate turned sideways on the pavement. A little girl runs to my side and hop-skips next to me. She holds a packet of tissues to my chest. Fifteen piastres. May God be generous. Ten. Only ten. Ten. I have only enough for my bus fare and a few things from the grocer that Mama needs. Five. Five. Just five. Sorry. Anything. Anything to make my day. She pleads. I’m sorry. She tugs at my shirt. I walk. Please take one for whatever you want. I shake my head. She tries to put her hands around my waist. I keep walking. Please. I shake my head. Please. I walk and say nothing, her hand still on my waist. We get to the corner where the bus stop is. I walk to the glut of people waiting for number twenty-nine. She follows. I stand. She stands next to me. I say nothing. I look ahead. Eventually she goes away.

  —

  At home Mama has the shutters closed for the heat. The fan is on. The TV is on with volume. The washing machine is rumbling in the background. When I come back in the afternoons, I never know what I might find. There will either be the chorus of domestic sounds, or complete silence. Mama is nowhere. I push through the mashrabiyya doors and see her bedroom closed. I knock gently and pause. I stand for a minute. Strain my ears. Lean my body forward. I wait a minute more, then go into the bathroom. Undress. My clothes fall into a heap on the floor. I roll my hair into a bun. I stand under a lukewarm shower. The water turns from gray to clear. When it turns to a cold trickle, I turn it off. I hear Mama through the door. I wonder what she does. She doesn’t speak much about what’s on her mind. I don’t ask. She doesn’t ask. The unasked questions feel heavy between us.

  In my bedroom I stand over my desk looking out of the window as I towel-dry my hair. My drawer is open, crammed with notebooks, and drops of water fall into it and onto an open journal. They are heavy enough to make a sound. The paper quickly shrivels, and the ink spreads. I pass time outlining the blots of ink, then braiding and unbraiding my hair.

  After a while the home phone rings. I go outside and pick it up. It’s H. We had made plans to go to the cinema but canceled because her father had been glued to the TV and said he had a bad feeling. Not all the channels could be wrong, and all of them, fifteen, were saying the same thing. The fundamentalists were going to bomb cinemas. It was just a matter of time. I stand on one foot speaking to her, watching through the French doors as Mama prunes her plants by the window, muttering to herself. Sometimes she seems to be reprimanding people from her day, other times reciting prayer. Mama had started praying more after the earthquake. She believed in God, whatever He chose for her would be right, but she still worried about things. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Death. Making sure she didn’t tempt fate. We were in the kitchen when it happened. The sky had fallen dark then turned red, and the house began to shake. Mama screamed and leaped up from her chair. I froze. She grabbed me. Suddenly we were standing in the middle of the room, glasses rattling, cutlery flying from the table, food sliding across the tile floor. Mama held me tighter than she had ever held me before, reciting the Shahada. She might have kissed my head. Her version of the story is less dramatic, except that she thought it was the end of the world and was saying prayers for both of us. Later that evening, when neighbors and family had gathered in the garden fearful of another quake, or maybe a building collapse, Mama whispered the fatiha repeatedly under her breath. The entire neighborhood seemed to be there, taking refuge in the open space. They echoed like a chorus. Nothing is built like this anymore. Would their buildings survive? They fretted. Aunty had arrived with a black suitcase that held her jewels. She was the kind of person who was probably more worried about the banks, if they would open again. Her brow remained furrowed the entire evening, and she didn’t say a word. By nightfall the radio announced that the last of the tremors had been felt, and it was probably safe to assume that any building still upright was probably relatively safe to return to. We went upstairs. Eventually the garden emptied out. Mama spent that night praying, on the armchair by her bedroom window, going to bed only when the sun rose.

  One day passes, then another, and nothing has happened, so H’s father says maybe now it was safe to go. Wednesday, midday showing? I nod, as if she can see. Let’s take the metro? I hear her father responding before I do. He screams. Have you l
ost your mind? I don’t plan on telling Mama, she will worry, and sense my worry too. I don’t know if I’m afraid of death, but I am not keen on being blown up. H believes everything is connected, the stars, the moon, our lives, particles, air, the sea. No matter what you do, you are already figured into a larger program of the universe. Whether she takes the metro or not, if she is meant to be blown up by a bomb, it will happen, one way or another. It will catch up with her, possibly within minutes. It is just a matter of time for scientists to name the theorem. Her conviction intrigues me. In astronomy class the professor had raised one eyebrow as she delivered her hypothesis. He was American, the only American, and asked if she had been watching The Simpsons. The Simpsons? None of us knew what that was. Yet H still listened to her father, a retired mathematician, who calculated probability for everything. Chances of being blown up. Breaking your leg. Getting an A. Getting married. Getting divorced. Having a car accident. Winning the lottery. Baba coming back? When I asked her why she listened to anyone at all if everything was already predetermined, she shrugged and said it was all programmed, even the listening to her father. And the rescheduling of our cinema plans. Really? What about provoking fate? I get a piercing look. The reports of men throwing acid on women for being indiscreet are exaggerated. She hopes I don’t believe the hype. I do. But what is indiscreet anyway? Wearing short sleeves? Open necklines? Going naked? We all ask this. When had there become such a thing, indiscreet? I decide that H is the happiest, most well-adjusted person I know. I will start my film with her, asking if she is angry.

  —

  I sit on the sofa opposite Mama. She asks how my day was. Okay. Yours? They caught two terrorists on the road to Sinai. Mama knows I am asking about her day. When she answers about the news, I take it to mean the day was hard. Some afternoons I come home and find the door to Baba’s office ajar. Mama will be sitting on his chair, staring, into nothing. She had stopped asking the lady to clean it months before I realized, and now I could see the dust even through the slight crack of the door, illuminated by rays of sunlight streaming through the wooden shutters. Mama talked more and more about the news. Again she worried about us and Iran. It was no longer about the veil. It didn’t scare anyone, since almost everyone seemed to be wearing it and no one had really changed. A study that plays repeatedly on TV claims eighty percent of veiled women wear it for economic reasons. It means they don’t have to do their hair or buy fancy clothes. It is cheaper to be veiled. The other twenty percent wear it for other reasons. They don’t say what percentage wear it because of religion. It is the terrorists who scare Mama and everyone else now. The only person who doesn’t seem to have fears is Grandmama, not of death or disease or bombs. She says what happens will, I should enjoy every moment I have. I listen intently, wishing Mama worried less too. I look at her, sitting across from me in her robe on the sofa, thinner than she used to be. I wonder about her thoughts.

  We are watching Channel One. They are playing a montage of images to the sounds of Verdi’s Aida. They play it often. Every day and now several times a day. I know it well: 1954. Alexandria. Nasser’s speech. The withdrawal of the British from Egypt. Cut. Headshot. The Muslim Brotherhood member who tried to assassinate him that day. He fired eight shots, which missed. Nasser didn’t so much as flinch. He just kept speaking. Let them kill me, he said. If Gamal Abdel Nasser should die, each of you shall be Gamal Abdel Nasser. If Gamal Abdel Nasser should die, each of you shall be Gamal Abdel Nasser. If Gamal Abdel Nasser should die, each of you shall be Gamal Abdel Nasser. If Gamal Abdel Nasser should die, each of you shall be Gamal Abdel Nasser. We are made to write out these words in an exam. After the picture of the attempted killer, they show many of Nasser. In his motorcade. Standing in a convertible waving to the crowds. Leaning forward. Streets lined with millions waving back. The crescendo of the third act of Aida. As I walk in the streets downtown, this montage bookending every other program, I can see people watching, entranced. I begin to realize the power of these montages, these visual narratives of my childhood. We had all seen these scenes innumerable times. Images imprinted on us through repetition. I wonder how to use this in my film. Even the background music, playing as if from memory. I stare at Mama, then turn my head back to the TV. They have moved to Sadat and footage of the October 6 parade, followed by the only image of his wounded and limp body that had ever been seen. Then his wife, children, grandchildren, the international dignitaries at his funeral. They spend extra seconds on photos of Nixon, Ford, Carter. After that come mug shots of the killers. Dark pictures, possibly photocopied, to make faces more blackened, more haunting. To this day I don’t recognize Baba’s cousin, even though I know him by name. His sister is always at Grandmama’s. We call her the Bulldozer, because of her size. She knows this and laughs one day, saying that at least she isn’t the Terrorist like her brother. I want to ask her how she felt about him, how they had turned out so differently after spending the first eleven, twelve, maybe thirteen years of their lives side by side. Did she feel love for him? Did she have any sense of who he would become? I wonder, but it isn’t the kind of thing one is to talk about. I raise it with H instead. She tells me that if she had a brother who killed, she would let him be. Fate and the universe would take revenge. But she would give him the silent treatment. Love him inside but blank him, pretend he wasn’t even in the room, even if he spoke to her. She delivers this with absolute certainty, as if it’s something she has already thought through at length. I wonder what Baba might have done if this were his brother and not his cousin. Baba always used to say that as we age, things change, we become more rigid, and then eventually, most of us, become forgiving again. He called it the cycle of life. Much he had said had been true, the things I remembered anyway. The things he told me. There was much I didn’t know, and many things I imagine I had inherited, borrowed, maybe even imposed on him, the man I wanted him to be, pieced together, fading memories held tight by strands.

  Mama and I sit watching TV until the call to prayer. It sounds from the mosque across the river and echoes into the house. The president had issued a decree banning mosque speakers above a certain decibel, but they had become louder again after a few months of quieting down. It’s the most pertinent daily reminder of the increasing antagonism between the Brotherhood and the state. Mama prays but shakes her head every time the muezzin begins to warm his voice into the loudspeaker. Her neck tenses and she shuts her eyes for a moment. God had helped her in the years since Baba left, but it didn’t mean religion had to be imposed like this. They didn’t have to force it all down our throats.

  When the massacre had happened, even Amina the housekeeper said she was against this new Islam. She had missed work that day and come on Saturday instead. Mama was still asleep when the doorbell rang. I stuck my head out of the window. Who? She waved and called her name. Mama is sleeping. I can wait. Do you want to leave her a message? I’m coming to work. Today is your day? I didn’t come on Wednesday because of the accident. I buzzed her in. The back steps are narrow. She clasped one side of her galabia in one hand and put her other on the black metal banister. She heaved herself up onto the first step. Paused, and looked up at me. She was already out of breath. I know that she walks twenty minutes to the bus stop from her house. Takes one bus then another. The second drops her off five minutes away. It takes her twenty more minutes to walk those five minutes. She lives in a shed on the roof of a building with a single lightbulb and no running water. I looked at her with a pained expression on my face. I didn’t want to watch her climb the two flights but also felt I should. Can I help? God bless you. I moved my head in awkward acknowledgment. Took half a step back. Watched as she labored her way up.

  Amina changed out of her galabia, shielded by the door of the broom closet. I sat in the kitchen. She asked when Mama would wake. I shrugged. Maybe an hour? She went to the fridge. Opened it, peered inside. Amina knew she could have whatever she wanted. She took out four eggs. Maneuvered them into one hand. Opened the drawer of th
e fridge with the other. Took out two baladi breads. Nudged the fridge door closed with her voluminous hip. She paid no notice to me as she went to the stove. Put the eggs down on the counter. Barricaded them with the bread. Oil. Salt. Pepper. Cracked the eggs into the pan and let them fry on the highest heat, the oil splattering everywhere. Turned the left burner on and put the bread on the flames. As she was flipping it over with her fingers, Mama walked in. It was early for her. She had slept badly. She was wearing her red satin robe, one Baba had brought back from a trip. She asked how we were as she went to the counter. Unplugged the kettle. Took it to the sink. Filled it with water. With her back to Amina, she asked how she was. So you didn’t come on Wednesday? Mama had started to ask questions like this. Questions that were weighted. Questions that had already been answered. Questions that pretended to pose themselves but were rather statements, usually of disapproval. She said them with her neck tensed and slightly shaking. Amina turned off the stove and told Mama that she would never believe what she had been through. They had surrounded her whole neighborhood and every single building, armed, masked special 777 forces and tanks. Weapons like we have never seen before.