The vendor called out to us, ‘Come here, brother! How long has it been since you cooked vegetables in grease? These skins completely hit the spot!’
He lifted a strip of skin and waved it as if to entice us.
It seemed that chicken feet were also popular – and heads – and wings. But where was the chicken itself? Even their chickens had apparently been turned into nothing but skin and bone. No muscles and no innards.
A mangy stray child snatched something from the vendor’s stand and ran off with it, pursued by curses and slippers.
Piles of filthy, used clothes were sold for a hundred pounds apiece. Some people claim that the Egyptian pound used to be more valuable than the dollar once. I don’t believe that: a dollar now equals thirty pounds, and here was a horrible example of inflation since that shirt should not cost more than a quarter-dollar. That was the reason why such things were valued at hundreds of pounds. In any case, I suspected they preferred to barter, believing the trade would be closer to the real value of things.
We left this market area and made our way through a cluster of hovels made of tin sheets or bamboo and scrap wood. The ground was wet and our feet sank in it – a mixture of mud, leftover washing water and overflowing sewage. I walked cautiously because stumbling here would be a kind of suicide.
At the doors of the hovels stood filthy, repugnant-looking women, cackling at me seductively. I thought the youngest of them had passed thirty-five a long time ago; still, she was not practising her trade because she hadn’t got married yet but, rather, for the money.
As far as I knew, no law had been passed allowing prostitution, but it was now really out in the open. It had become stronger than the law, stronger than tradition.
The age of marriage had reached forty years for women, and there was no longer an age of marriage for men. Then one of those economic revolutions happened, and conditions for marrying became easier. It became sufficient to find someone who accepted you –no need to provide a home and a salary. Everyone took care of themselves and the children would find what they needed to live on somehow. So the age of marriage had been lowered again.
All of this was uglier than it needed to be.
More disgusting than it needed to be.
More real than it should be.
When ugliness and rot are on the march against all the excitement that imagination can produce, intrusive thorny branches coil around fruits, and scorpions crawl among pearls.
Her name was Katie. She was American. The first girl I knew. At thirteen she was the eternal romantic dream. She was larger than life and reality. Then I made her my conquest that night on the damp sand of the beach. What did I know, what did I see, what did I smell with her? I fell from the peaks of Olympus to crawl through the mud, and I learned that reality is uglier than you can imagine.
We needed to finish our mission and leave – to kidnap our victim and flee.
A girl looked at me and winked, paying no attention to Germinal, who was walking next to me.
At that point, an idea occurred to me.
Men could be risky, definitely riskier than this soft, easy prey.
Germinal seemed to understand as well, and she moved away from me. So I walked by myself to where the girls were standing, looking for someone who would be available for a good time. I picked out one of them. I chose her simply on the basis of her physical strength: she would have to endure being violently pursued by cars in the middle of the desert. Maybe she’d be a shooting target.
She was a hideous girl – the only thing that separated her from a man were trivial anatomical difference: wide haunches and big bones. If she glued a moustache on, she would look like Mourad. She was definitely right for the job.
I looked at her forearm intently. Yes, it was certainly the right size, and there was a roughness to it that would prove its origin: no one would call me a liar at our get-togethers when I opened the plastic bag to show them this forearm. They made fun of Ramy and accused him of buying the hand from the cemetery guard, because the hand he had brought was smooth and elegant.
I approached her, and she straightened up and laughed, revealing yellow teeth that hadn’t been cleaned for years.
‘How much?’ I asked her in an experienced tone of voice.
She replied in a hoarse, grating voice that reminded me of the sound made by rubbing the Styrofoam pellets that wrap electronic equipment: ‘I take fifty. All night long for two hundred pounds.’
‘Where?’
She laughed stupidly, then pointed to the ruined buildings around us, saying, ‘In my palace, baby – anywhere.’
I stuck my hand in my pocket, but she said, ‘Not me. Him.’
She pointed to the ruins. Of course, she would have a pimp to protect her and take her money.
‘He’s my uncle.’
I looked behind me and found Germinal watching the scene from a distance. So I pulled the girl by her wrist and we walked, making our way into the middle of the darkened ruins. From time to time we encountered young men squatting as they smoked foul-smelling hashish. Or they clutched a container holding I-don’t-know-what and sniffed its contents. Occasionally one of them called out to us: ‘Go right ahead!’
They seemed to know the girl and didn’t interfere with us. She was a working girl doing her job, and it was not good manners for anyone to hassle her.
‘Here he is, just ahead.’
There was a grey-haired man with a huge body, standing beside a leaning lamppost. In his belt was a giant butcher’s knife, and in his fist was a blade he had fashioned out of a car spring. I think they call it a ‘shiv’. He had one bad eye, covered with a white cataract, and there was a scar that cut across his face lengthwise. He seemed closer to a thug than a pimp, which was little more than an academic distinction in these dregs of humanity.
I approached him, still holding the girl’s wrist, and said hoarsely, ‘One time.’
I pulled fifty pounds out of my pocket.
He counted them several times as though he were stripping bare the contents of the US Treasury. Then he spat, off to the side, and stuck the money in his belt.
‘Here?’ the girl asked me, as she undid her skirt.
‘I’d prefer to go somewhere else. I’m shy.’
She let out a loud, vulgar snort, and headed off with me.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Germinal trying to join us, afraid and stumbling. Amidst these ruined buildings and rats, she had to be living the worst moments of her life.
Finally, we were almost alone. The girl opened her mouth to speak:
‘Come on. You’re the fi—’
But the next instant, I attacked the base of her neck with a hand-chop I had learned in Cambodia. She fell to the ground, motionless. Only her eyes were fixed in a stare.
The next moment, I heard Germinal calling me. By some miracle, she had made her way through the ruins and all the drug-users who were gathered there.
‘It’s done!’ I told her, breathing heavily. ‘I’ll call my mother and ask her to send someone to get us out of here.’
I put my hand in my pocket to pull out the knife I was going to use to carry out my mission.
At that moment, we heard a commotion. I lifted my eyes and saw ten of those young men surrounding us. I heard someone say, ‘They aren’t like us! They’re from Utopia!’
Part Two
Prey
1
My beloved cornea – and a dream of something beyond sex …
I know I’m going to die two days from now – don’t tell me otherwise. Don’t repeat this idle talk, otherwise I’ll stab you with my knife. Let me dream one last time.
I haven’t done this for a long time.
My beloved cornea – and dream of something beyond …
When did everything disappear?
I don’t know.
It’s like watching the sun at sunset. You never know when the day is finished and night has begun. Or when the light faded and things grew cold,
and when twilight’s red blood flowed, staining the horizon. Or when the colour violet came to dominate everything. You can’t grasp the moment itself. You can’t say, ‘Here it was day, and here night came.’
I only remember that things grew worse without an abrupt change. Each time, the difference between yesterday’s situation and today’s was slight, so a person closes his eyes every night muttering to himself: ‘That’s life. Life is still possible. You are still capable of finding food, shelter, and some treatment. So let tomorrow come.’
Then you wake up one day to realise that life is impossible, and that you are incapable of obtaining tomorrow’s food and shelter. When did that happen? You ask yourself, but get no answer.
The agreed-upon time was midnight.
I made my way between the ancient hovels in what used to be Shubra Street. Yes. I remember that there was a wide street here, where cars would travel on both sides.
I made a bet with Zenhom that there was a cinema here once. The son of a bitch has no idea what ‘cinema’ means, but he argues in vain.
To be honest, I, too, don’t recall whether there was a cinema here or not. But at least I remember what a cinema was. There were enormous images that moved, and there was darkness where you could easily smoke hashish. I seemed to have had one or two experiences there, but I don’t recall who I was with.
The agreed-upon time was midnight.
The subway gate was locked. But I knew how to open it: just stick the tip of a nail into the rusty government lock, hit it with a rock and the lock opens up, as does the chain. All the night boys like me knew this entrance. But we were always careful to lock it when we left. We didn’t want anyone to be able to enter our secret underground world.
I pulled back the iron security gate and slipped inside. The empty, darkened passageways smelt rotten.
I lit a torch and raised my arm to widen the circle of light.
There lay broken-down subway carriages like lifeless beasts. They came to an end when the masters stopped using them and departed for their settlements, Utopia and others like it. There was no longer any maintenance. There was no longer any electricity. Eventually, these rusty beasts had slipped into an eternal sleep. It was clear they wouldn’t be moving again.
Some young men don’t know that they exist at all!
At some point, these carriages had been quite famous; this had been the greatest thing the government had achieved in ages. I don’t know when they broke down and fell apart, but it was probably at the same time as the birth of Utopia. I think people enjoyed this public project for fifty years at least. After that, it became a shelter for stray dogs.
Then there were no longer any stray dogs.
There was no longer anyone but us.
My beloved cornea – and a dream of something beyond sex … Alas!
They recognised me by my limping walk and from my build, and Mina shouted out, ‘Hey, Gaber! Christ, we’ve been waiting for you a long time!’
You can’t tell anyone’s religion here unless he utters an oath along the lines of ‘by Christ’ or invokes the Prophet Mohammed’s name. Even names have become everyday and neutral, not indicating anything: Fareed, Awad, Emad, etc. If there’s one advantage to this society of ours it’s that it’s never heard of religious divisions. The paradise of sectarian equality has been realised, but in an astonishing way that never occurred to the most freethinking philosophers. Since poverty has made everyone equal, no one knows any longer whether you’re Muslim or Christian, except when you announce that you’re going to Mecca on pilgrimage, or your inner wrist is exposed, showing a tattoo of the cross. Had it not been for the end of the petroleum era, the situation, which was ripe for explosion at the dawn of the twenty-first century, would have ignited.
‘You got any flog?’ Abd el-Zahir shouted in my face.
I let out an ugly sound from my nostrils. Do I have phlogistine? These idiots can’t pronounce the whole word so they’ve decided that it’s ‘flog’.
‘Where would I get it, you son of a—’
Then I stuck my hand in my pocket, took out a joint and tossed it at him.
‘This is what I’ve got.’
He made another ugly noise and moaned, ‘Great. We’re back in kindergarten.’
But he lit it anyway, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke. There was no longer anything capable of having an effect on that nervous system; no doubt he needed a ton of hashish to feel temporary happiness. Phlogistine – the lord of drugs, but where were we supposed to get some? In Utopia, rivers of phlogistine flowed. They ate and drank it. They sweated it. Women had phlogistine periods and men urinated it. Water didn’t pour out of taps – phlogistine did. They washed their feet in phlogistine. They put phlogistine in their dogs’ water bowls. If a revolution ever happened, it wouldn’t be for equality, but to answer the demands of those who had been deprived of their natural right to phlogistine.
Abd el-Zahir was a thug, but he was a good guy. I admit that I loved him and trusted him. Especially when that insane obsession wasn’t taking over and he wasn’t telling us his plan about biroil and Utopia. I considered those ideas a kind of intellectual masturbation. He hadn’t done anything. He wouldn’t do anything at all. So he spent his time describing the hellish pleasure that would await him if he carried out that biroil plan.
‘Suleiman is waiting for us there,’ said Mitwalli, scratching his ear with a finger, ‘at the Saint Theresa entrance.’
The rusty, filthy signboards didn’t say anything at all. But we’d learned how to find our way by the light of the flickering flame.
So we jumped onto subway carriages that no longer contain a single seat or a single pane of glass; and from there we jumped onto the rails and then to the other side. We started running in the dark, heading towards that entrance.
That’s where we saw them.
There were five of them standing there, and we understood at once they were Bayoumi and his gang.
In the middle of them, by torchlight, we saw one person with torn clothes, terrified, with blood pouring out of his nose.
They had grabbed Suleiman.
A person could endure life without shelter.
Without food.
Without drink (perhaps for several days).
Without clothes.
Without a roof over his head.
Without a sweetheart.
Without dignity.
Without a family (except Safiya).
Without a refrigerator.
Without a phone.
Without a television.
Without a tie.
Without friends.
Without shoes.
Without trousers.
Without phlogistine.
Without a condom.
Without headache medicine.
Without a laser pointer.
But he couldn’t endure life without dreams.
Since childhood, I hadn’t experienced life without dreams.
To wait for something. To be denied it. To shut your eyes at night and hope for something. To be promised something …
Only at twenty did I realise the brutal truth: that I had to live without dreams.
There wouldn’t be anything there, my friend. Not today, not tomorrow, nor the day after.
Your life was one looooo(what are you waiting for?)oooooo(nothing)ooong,grim present.
Only in those moments did I realise that I had to engage in a relentless war with that annoying child within me. The inner child screamed and kicked at the ground with his feet: ‘No dreams? But how?’
Then he would launch into a stream of filthy curses, hitting and biting me. But every night I slapped him and ordered him to be quiet. No dreams, you son of a … There won’t be a tomorrow. They took tomorrow from you, and you have to accept it, just as you have accepted that you don’t have any food or drink or clothes or roof over your head, or a sweetheart or dignity or a family or a refrigerator or phone or television or tie or friends or shoes or trousers or phlogistine
or a condom or headache medicine or a laser pointer.
He would let out more filthy curses, then fall asleep.
Onelooooo(what are you waiting for?)oooooo(nothing)ooong,grim present.
I wasn’t the bravest or the strongest. So Abd el-Zahir walked towards them, brandishing his dagger, and spoke in a voice that he wanted to be powerful, but came out nervous and cracked: ‘What do you want, Bayoumi? For a long time, we’ve been like trains on two tracks, moving in opposite directions, but not meeting.’
Bayoumi swore and burst out laughing. He spat and said, ‘What do you know about trains, you sons of whores? I remember them well, and I rode on them more than once. Trains didn’t meet, except when there was an accident, and when that happened, mangled bodies and blood covered the fields!’
His words were clear. It went beyond a hint.
He stuck his hand in the sack Suleiman was carrying and pulled out the carcass of a giant dog. He lifted it by its neck, despite its heavy weight. I saw his biceps bulging, soaked with sweat, glistening in the flickering light.
‘We’re part of this discussion. This involves us.’ We weren’t about to put up with this, too. An empty stomach drives a hungry man insane. After all this effort, how could the dog we’d spent three days ambushing be snatched from us?
When would we be able to find another dog? There were no longer any dogs in the streets at all. No cats. No rats.
The intoxicating smell of grilled meat in the ruined buildings and joking around with puffs of hashish. And Safiya, who hasn’t tasted decent food in a month? All this would have been waiting for us if we hadn’t come across this son of a bitch.
At this point, Abd el-Zahir lost his head, and screamed with a voice that made the subway passages shake, ‘You’ll see, you bastards! That dog is ours! Ours alone, and you’ll have to take it over our dead bodies!’
With those words, we all charged at those bastards.
2
I’ll be dead in two or three days.
You ask me how I know that? I’m telling you I have no chance of being saved. I was born to lose, and the young guy coming from Utopia will get the better of me, no doubt about it.
Utopia Page 4