Utopia

by Ahmed Khaled Towfik

  4

  So she’d done it!

  When and how? I never noticed it at all!

  Some of them rushed into the alley and I hurried to join them, only to find Germinal with her back against the wall, clutching the mobile as if she were trying to dial a number – her mother’s number in Utopia, of course. She was shaking and on her face was the most abject look of terror I’ve seen in my life. Sometimes cats show that level of alarm when they are cornered in an alley.

  In her overemotional state, she began scratching her chest and hair crudely in a ridiculous manner, as if she were telling them, I’m not who you think I am – I’m infested with fleas! Look!

  ‘You idiots,’ Gaber hissed in my ear. ‘Who sells mobiles with SIM cards in them? That makes them easy to trace!’

  The men came out of the alley, grabbing Germinal. One of them swore that she had to be punished there and then, in that awful, humiliating way that men harm women. These people had turned into creatures as far removed as possible from humans. The cerebral cortex no longer plays any role with them. They are only driven by sex or violence. Rape gives them both together.

  ‘Listen!’ Gaber said as he stood in the middle of these madmen. ‘This girl is hungry. Hungrier than we are. All of you have stolen at some point because of hunger. You’ve taken back what she stole, so leave her alone!’

  Then he landed a slap on her cheek that knocked her back two metres.

  ‘A beggar robs a beggar! The idiot was dreaming of calling her brother who was snatched to Utopia!’

  Only at that did they all grow quiet. ‘He won’t come back,’ one of them said, as he raised his hand in a gesture meaning, Break it up, men. ‘They will have fun with him, then they’ll cut his hand off and throw him into the desert. Then they’ll make the pilgrimage to Mecca, asking God to forgive them.’

  Germinal was really crying, and her crying grew more anguished. That came at the right time, because they scattered, shaking each other’s hands.

  When they all moved off, Gaber went up to her and kicked her in the side so hard that she fell to the ground. ‘You bitch,’ he said. ‘I swear to God that’s the last time I try to protect you two. I told you, you’re on your own if you don’t follow my orders.’

  Ashamed, we stood up and walked behind Gaber, with our imaginary tails between our legs. So the moment had come when one of these people slapped and kicked us. It’s true that he did that so that other people wouldn’t rip us apart, but I don’t accept anyone laying his hand on me. Even Mourad and Larine. Once I slapped Mourad back. Larine had a hysterical fit because I had laid a hand on my father. So I told her that since he had brought me into the world, he had to bear the consequences bravely.

  ‘If you think we’re staying here for ever, then you’re mistaken,’ I told Gaber in disgust.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting that,’ he said without looking at me. ‘As I said, you two are free to do as you like or take off, but I know what will happen a minute later. If you want to stay with me, then you have to comply with everything I say. I’m the one who lays out the plans and chooses the right moment.

  His ears are filled with wax.

  His toes are ulcerous and stick out of his pathetic sandals.

  His glasses are soldered together.

  His eye is ruined.

  His future is bleak.

  His sister is an animal with consumption.

  His food is rotten.

  His books are out of date.

  His dreams are smothered in their cradle.

  His ideas are obsolete.

  His fingernails are black.

  His hair is gone curly and matted with dirt.

  His name is Gaber.

  His people are riffraff.

  His friends are scum.

  In spite of all of that, he walked like a human being and talked like a human being.

  In spite of all of that, he didn’t throw himself at my feet begging me to cut his arm off.

  In spite of all of that, he had slapped Germinal and threatened us.

  How stupid these people are, and how extremely naive!

  There was an old woman vendor putting out a pile of newspapers: new, unread newspapers. She seemed to be selling them by the kilo; five kilos for an egg, she said.

  He bought some newspapers from her for a box of matches, then he came back to us as he leafed through those things. He handed one of them to us, saying, ‘This is the only newspaper in circulation today. A strange, sick mix of sex, religion, fairy tales and conspiracy theories. The front page is full of the phrases “Revealing the Hidden”, “Behind Closed Doors”, “Magic” and “Rape”, etc., with a general insinuation that all women are whores and all men are pimps. There have to be several nude photos from foreign magazines, with a black bar over their eyes, as if they don’t want to expose the innocent who are the subjects of these photos. Despite the general air of sexual libertinism, poor prostitutes are as ugly as devils, so young men buy these newspapers, looking for beautiful, clean girls who aren’t coughing up blood. As for the other kind of journalism …’

  He opened another newspaper, and continued, ‘It consists of love letters to the rulers. It’s published by people from Utopia and other places – people who were once of us, but who were then allowed by the rulers to live there; they are filled with gratitude, a sense of obligation and awe that is almost like worship. These are feelings that surpass what a dog feels when his master puts grilled lamb with grease dripping from it in front of him. So they write articles that don’t mean anything, words that no one reads except the rulers. In fact, even the rulers don’t read them, because they are confident of their content. These articles are a kind of intellectual tail-wagging. In the past, there was an opposition and they would attack these writers, then they understood that their intervention in these love letters was in poor taste, as if you were reading someone else’s mail!’

  Then he added, as he threw the newspaper away, ‘These newspapers are excellent for wrapping fish in.’

  I was in no mood for joking, so I asked, ‘What do you plan on doing with us?’

  ‘I’ll take you back to Utopia, of course. I don’t intend to kill you.’

  ‘How?’

  He looked at me oddly and he didn’t speak.

  Part Four

  Prey

  1

  My beloved cornea – and a dream of something beyond sex …

  I know I’m going to die one day from now, no more – don’t tell me otherwise. Don’t repeat this bullshit or else I’ll stab you with my knife. Let me dream one last time.

  I used to hate the two of them like cockroaches. It’s a beautiful thing to hate truly and passionately. It’s been ages since I hated anything this sincerely. I encounter everything with a profound feeling of disgust, but not hatred. You don’t hate spittle. You’re only disgusted by it.

  The Egyptian character has suffered a lot of damage in the last hundred years; it’s like a wife whose husband treated her brutally for several years until she ended up closer to brutishness and viciousness. The more ignorance grew, the less the cerebral cortex dominated behaviour, making the crimes committed by the lower classes bestial, in the literal meaning of the word. Eventually, the murderer stands looking at the camera lenses of the insatiable press with doltish, wandering eyes, and he’s content to repeat: ‘The devil made me do it.’

  It’s a beautiful thing to hate.

  Despite this hatred of mine – or maybe because of it – I don’t intend to kill them.

  They are completely at my mercy: I’d only have to say the word, and it wouldn’t be long before they’d be minced-up meat to be eaten by dogs – if there were any dogs.

  But in fact, I don’t want bloodshed. I don’t want people killed.

  That’s the sticking point for everything: the sole proof I have that I am still human, and haven’t turned into a hyena. In that regard, I’m superior to them. I’m superior to my family and neighbours. I’m superior to what I was yest
erday.

  I don’t want bloodshed. I don’t want people killed.

  The most important thing is that every moment makes me feel that the points of similarity between us are quite strong.

  Here and there, we’re both in love with violence.

  Here and there, we both love drugs.

  Here and there, we both avidly watch movies about rape.

  Here and there, we both talk about religion all the time.

  There they take drugs to escape boredom.

  There they practise their religion because they are afraid of losing all of that, and they don’t know why or how they deserved it.

  Here we take drugs to forget the agony of the moment.

  Here we practise our religion because we can’t stand the thought that our efforts are nothing but scattered dust with no value. The human mind can’t endure a terrifying idea like that, otherwise it would go mad.

  So I don’t want bloodshed. I don’t want people killed.

  But how do I do that while Somaya is snapping like an angry wolf?

  Somaya came to my shack at five in the afternoon.

  She was drunk, or so I surmised from her staggering gait and her slurred speech. She crouched down by the door, squatting with her legs apart to avoid a small, putrid puddle of water there, and she began fiercely scratching her hair.

  ‘You’re a liar, you lying son of a bitch,’ she said, looking at me with her small, stern eyes.

  I knew what she meant, but I feigned stupidity, and asked her what the matter was.

  ‘You know that guy hit me on the neck,’ she replied. ‘After that I couldn’t feel a thing. But I do know that he hit me. You’re a liar, and the son of a liar. You said I fell down without him laying a hand on me, and if it weren’t for you, the men would have torn him to pieces.

  ‘I saw you fall,’ I said as I squatted down beside her, ‘but I didn’t see him hit you, as you say.’

  She was stupid and animal-like. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d relieved herself as she sat there: a stupid animal that sits at the entrance of my house, continuously scratching its head.

  ‘I couldn’t work for two full days. Sometimes I feel as if he drove me out of my mind. My uncle beats me constantly.’

  Then she said determinedly, her ugly face growing serious, ‘I will tell my uncle that the man hit me. El-Sirgani will take revenge for his niece.’

  Yes, el-Sirgani has no mercy on the person who damages his goods. I know that. It’s all part of the tools of the trade for him. El-Sirgani was jealous of Azza’s love for me. He carried a gazelle’s horn knife that he could stick into the lens of my glasses. The burly el-Sirgani desired Azza. El-Sirgani took my cornea from me.

  I leaned toward Somaya and said in a whisper, ‘Somaya, I know this guy. Between you and me, he has a special kind of character. There are men who don’t get their full pleasure unless they hit a woman.’

  ‘All men don’t get their full pleasure without hitting a woman,’ she said in amazement. ‘The reason is that they are filthy perverts and children.’

  ‘Not every slap is the same. The slap you get from clients is different from that powerful hit to the base of the neck. That guy has an inner nature that loves to hit a girl until she blacks out and she becomes putty in his hands. He was clear about that to me, and he’s ready to pay. Like they say, “You pay dearly for your heart’s desire.”’

  I did a small calculation on my fingers. ‘You didn’t work for two days. Let’s say that means two hundred a day for two days. Four hundred Egyptian pounds altogether. We’ll add a hundred for your pain. So, it’s five hundred pounds for you alone. Since your uncle won’t know anything about it, he won’t take anything.’

  She let out an uncouth, stupid guffaw, and asked, ‘Five hundred pounds for me alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’m benefiting, of course. That’s why I’m defending him. It’s my job to humour his nature as long as he pays. Between you and me, he robs people who live in Utopia. That’s why he has a lot of money and phlogistine on him.’

  ‘Flog?’

  She said it with a dreamy look, floating in heavens of chemical contemplation.

  ‘Yes, flog. Can you imagine that?’

  ‘Heh heh.’

  I left her where she was and hurried back inside the shack.

  The guy was sitting on the ground absent-mindedly looking at the roof, while the girl sat beside him. She was resting her head on his shoulder.

  ‘Listen,’ I told him nervously. ‘Do you have any phlogistine on you?’

  ‘You know that you took everything I had on me.’

  ‘Do you have any cash?’

  ‘I have some,’ the girl said as she fumbled around in her shoes. ‘How much do you want?’

  ‘Give me five hundred pounds – quickly!’

  She handed me a five-hundred-pound note. I crumpled it up in my hand and went out to where Somaya was crouching, continually repeating, as if there hadn’t just been a conversation, ‘He hit me – hit me. You lied. If it weren’t for you, el-Sirgani would have torn him apart.’

  I put the note in her hand and said, ‘It’s for you alone. I told you the guy has a certain character. Only don’t get el-Sirgani involved in this. The guy may ask for your services again today or tomorrow, and he’ll pay what you want.’

  ‘I’ll stick my neck out for you!’

  She felt her neck and this superficial, foolish joke seemed to delight her, and she began to laugh without interruption. Then she blew the contents of her nose onto the ground and departed.

  Don’t deny that I’m good at dealing with difficult matters. She’ll come back, asking for more; blackmail is a game for anyone whose soul has gone rotten, but I hope the guy and his girl will have returned to their world before then.

  2

  At the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the last census to be held, there were thirty-five million Egyptians living below the poverty line. Unemployment, which reached its highest global levels, stood at ten million. Note that 78 percent of those committing rape were unemployed: that is to say, the crime of rape is really a crime by an entire class of society. Not to mention, of course, the dissolution of the middle class that, in any society, plays the role of graphite rods in nuclear reactors: they slow down the reaction and, if it weren’t for them, the reactor would explode. A society without a middle class is a society primed for explosion.

  That is exactly what happened, but the explosion didn’t do away with the wealthy class. It decimated what remained of the middle class, and turned society into two poles and two peoples.

  Only the wealthy class realised that there was no life for it unless it became completely isolated, following the same logic behind medieval castles, when rulers would hold decadent parties while pestilence decimated the sea of poverty outside. The Masque of the Red Death – where did I read a story with that title, and when? And who wrote it? I don’t remember…

  I’ve read a whole lot. I’ve read everything. Until the letters dissolved into each other, and until I ended up not belonging to the Others and not belonging to Utopia. In every situation, I am strange, different, peculiar, foolish, uncomfortable and unintegrated.

  Was any one of them capable of preventing this?

  I don’t know. I’m not an economist or a politician. Besides, I haven’t received a formal education, since I enrolled at the free university of life.

  But there had been some terrifying indicators, and everyone should have taken notice of them. When you smell smoke and you don’t warn the people around you, then in some way you’ve participated in lighting the fire.

  When I look over the newspapers of the first decade of the century, I smell a whole lot of smoke. The newspaper pages reek of smoke. So why didn’t anyone do anything?

  Because everyone colluded against us.

  Everyone colluded against me.

  One day, I will die, and I’ll come back to haunt them in
the guise of a demon or a ghost, and I’ll make their lives hell. None of them will be safe, no matter how much they try to hide from me.

  But I won’t kill these two.

  The guy from Utopia was sitting down, not doing anything.

  ‘You’re here eating my food and sleeping under my roof,’ I said to him in an imperious tone. ‘So you have to try to earn your daily bread.’

  He gave me a challenging look. I could tell he wanted to tear me apart, but he was completely at my mercy. That’s why he was staying silent. If he possessed one respectable quality, it was intelligence.

  ‘We’ve got money,’ he told me. ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘I don’t want any of your money,’ I told him in disgust. ‘I want you to help me.’

  There was a lot of work in the network of subway tunnels, but I wouldn’t tell him anything about it. If these two managed to return to their world, I didn’t want to find the authorities completely blocking up the subway system with concrete. That would mean we would be choked off.

  That network was my private world: I knew every inch of it, and I was a king down there.

  I handed Safiya a bottle containing a mixture of cough medicine and Parkinol with opium, and whispered, ‘As I told you, don’t use a lot of it, and don’t try it yourself.’

  I left the shack with the guy, walking among tons of refuse and sewage, among the young men who fight and hurl rubbish at each other. We walked for about fifteen minutes through this ruined city, and we finally reached El-Moallem Taha Square, which is fenced in. At the gate we were met by an enforcer whose job is not wholly clear to me. All he usually does is intimidate people as they arrive.

  He handed a knife to each of us. Within was an expanse of ground almost the size of a small city square, and there were around fifty people like us, constantly working.

  There was a pile of dead chickens in the corner. A pile almost five metres tall. There was no smell because they’d died that day on some farm outside Cairo.