Live from Cairo

by Ian Bassingthwaighte

  The minibus swung to the curb, exchanged passengers, and reentered traffic; then swung to the curb, exchanged passengers, and reentered traffic. So on to what felt like infinity. When the minibus finally reached Dalia’s stop on the southern edge of Imbaba, she was brain-dead from the dull pain of holding her legs in such an uncomfortable position. Passengers had already disembarked and the man who shouted the route had reached to swing the door closed by the time Dalia realized she needed to get out. She made her getaway at lightning speed, ducking under his arm. The door slammed shut with such force that the tail of her scarf flipped in the wind. As the minibus sped off, the man who normally shouted the route out the window shouted something else at Dalia. Where his hands would fit on her body. The list of her anatomy was loud and strangely comprehensive. Not just her breasts. Her neck, her stomach. The immense and instantaneous repulsion from before resurfaced as the urge to throw something. Dalia picked up a rock and threw it after the minibus, now several blocks up the street. The sound of rock hitting pavement offered little satisfaction. She wanted to hear glass break. Dalia turned away from the smog trail of the minibus, expecting the immensity of the city and the anonymity of the sidewalk to produce the sick feeling one might get if stranded alone on the Moon—with the ability to see Earth, but not travel there. The exact feeling presented itself. Strangely, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. More awe than grief. The distance was unimaginable.

  Dalia walked east along Al Matar Street, then hung left into the labyrinth. Buildings without distinct characteristics enveloped her. They were tall, but not very tall, rectangular, and made of brick. Her building was no different. Not the home she wanted, but the home she had: the heart of Imbaba, or Embaba in the Tigre language of the camel traders who once plied their trade in the great Friday market, where an animal’s value had been determined in part by the distance it could spit. Imbaba had since been paved and built upon. The district had become a knot of corridors, both poor and poorly lit. Dalia found some comfort in the narrowness of the corridors, which recalled alleys. She cherished the moments in which she could trick herself into thinking she was back in Baghdad before the war.

  A neighbor, another Iraqi, sat on the front steps of her building. Dalia didn’t know his name even though she saw him often. He never seemed to move from that spot. Though he’d only spoken to her once, months ago. The night she’d first arrived. “Today from Baghdad?” he’d asked. The question had contained the pain of a hundred thousand journeys, reminding Dalia that her loss was nothing special. She’d hated the neighbor, perched on the stairs with a cigarette in his lips and a warm Coke in his hand, for asking such a presumptive question. The hate hadn’t lasted long. He’d run, too. Had lost someone. Dalia had seen that much in his face and realized her own face must’ve contained such information. “I love history,” he’d said, his body a black shadow on the steps. Yellow light from the building behind him had poured down the stairs. “This street is very famous. Napoléon once declared war on the Mamluk chieftains living here. The street was desert back then. The dead were everywhere. These buildings”—he’d paused, motioned to all of Cairo—“were constructed on top of the bones. This is what I’ve learned. Every famous city is a graveyard.” He’d flicked the butt of his cigarette onto the sidewalk, and the orange sparks went dancing.

  That evening, Dalia passed her neighbor the same way she always passed him. No words exchanged on the stairs, but thoughts of regret sent back from inside the building. She’d never been able to ask his name or hear his story. Dalia feared that speaking to him wouldn’t alleviate her loneliness. If she said nothing, there was at least the illusion her isolation was her own fault. A poor choice she could stop making if she needed to. Inside, more stairs waited for Dalia. Five flights, leading to a long hall, leading to a red door. The sound of the dead bolt unlocking welcomed Dalia back to her cramped apartment. By now, she was almost drawn to its smallness. Dalia lay on the only notable piece of furniture. The couch had been in the apartment when she’d rented it and smelled of past inhabitants. Their sweat, their troubles, their smoke. At first, the smell had bothered her. Now it offered companionship. She looked up at the ceiling and tried to decide whether it was gray or pale blue. The debate had raged for a while. In every light the ceiling looked different. “Blue,” Dalia said to the paint. “Right now you’re blue.” She turned on her side. That way she couldn’t second-guess herself. At eye level was a low-standing table, upon which sat her stuff: a phone, a bank card, a book. The phone beguiled Dalia. She wanted to call Omran. She wanted to confess her fear that the interview hadn’t gone well, but also the hope that it might have gone very well. She wanted to hear Omran sigh, weep, or reassure her. Knowing Omran, he would reassure her with a joke. “Yes, I know it went well,” he’d say. “I feel it somehow in the air. Like how some people can feel lightning before it strikes. ‘Run!’ they scream. This causes a stampede.” Omran would laugh to make time; he would use time to find meaning. “There is no way to stop you from coming.” he’d say finally. Then: “I better wash the dishes. I want you to come home to a clean place. Ha, ha. It’s very dirty. The kitchen, particularly. I’m sorry to inform you. There’s an ant farm in the sugar bowl.” The kitchen, in Dalia’s mind, had come to symbolize something important about Omran. Not that he loved food so much as he loved the occasion of eating every night with his wife, telling jokes, reading the newspaper out loud, and very occasionally, after the food on the plates had devolved into morsels, surprising Dalia with some kind of dessert. Kleicha, baklava, halvah, or—her favorite—kleichat joz, a pastry filled with nuts, covered in rose water, and cut in the shape of a waning moon. Every bite had been an escape from the war and led directly to the frenetic sex normally reserved for Eid al-Fitr—when, after the month of Ramadan, God lifted His restrictions. They would spend that night and the entirety of the next day completely naked.

  Dalia picked up the phone but couldn’t bring herself to actually call Omran. What if their conversation didn’t unfold the way she’d imagined it? What if they argued? Dalia had felt for some time that an argument was percolating. Something about the nature of patience. How long would Omran wait before moving on? Dalia would never ask such a hostile question. Either Omran would be offended or he’d be hurt. Knowing him, he’d say something like “I know what I want.” More than likely, in a tone. A little surly. His point would be that he’d wait until he was decrepit or even dead to be with her. Still, Dalia couldn’t shake the feeling that he was growing anxious. He talked often about the children they didn’t have and therefore still needed. The sooner, the better. He’d just turned forty. “Halfway through a full life,” he’d said like it was an unwelcome milestone. “Quite old to start a family. Soon it will be too late.” The opinion, declared as fact, had frightened Dalia. There was no way to know when or even if they’d be together.

  Eventually Dalia returned the phone to its cradle. Immediately the phone rang. She startled from the sharpness of the sound and the strangeness of the timing. It was as if Omran, having sensed her distress, had called to say Hello and I miss you and I’m here. Dalia waited a few seconds to be sure the phone was actually ringing and not just ringing inside her head. Ring, ring. She startled again. Not from the sound so much as the idea that she’d imagined something into reality.

  “Hello?”

  “Yes, Dalia! It’s Charlie.” A few seconds passed. He cleared his throat. “Hello? Are you there?”

  Dalia couldn’t tell if she was furious at Charlie for not being Omran or if she was furious at Omran for not having called. “Yes, it’s Dalia. I’m here.”

  There was no response. Maybe Charlie had pulled what he figured was a broken phone away from his face to glare at it angrily. He’d never been a patient man. But Dalia had met few patient men in her life, so she couldn’t really blame him. It wasn’t a personal failure so much as a biological inadequacy.

  “Hello?” said Charlie again. At least he didn’t give up easily.

 
“I said I’m here.”

  “Sorry, my phone is . . .” He sounded disappointed in the quality.

  “Never mind. I’m here.”

  Dalia knew there was only one thing they had to discuss. Waiting for Charlie to bring it up felt like wanting to breathe and for some reason not being able to.

  “The interview!” said Charlie, expertly feigning optimism. “Did it go well? Or did it go very well?”

  Dalia had learned to forgive the careless way Charlie spoke to her. He was better at law than conversation. His single-mindedness rendered him unaware of everything outside his purview. That purview didn’t include handling touchy subjects with much finesse. Charlie atoned for that shortcoming through devotedness. He labored without rest or even remittance. Dalia didn’t pay him, anyway. She wasn’t quite sure who did. His clients were asylum seekers and refugees who’d lost jobs, assets, limbs, even members of their families. This insolvent community was bound by the kindred suffering of its constituents. From them, Dalia had learned Charlie’s name. She’d learned the Refugee Relief Project was where you went if you wanted to leave Egypt.

  “I don’t know.” The more Dalia thought about the interview, the worse she felt.

  “Come on. Not that bad.”

  Charlie had always been mysteriously devoted to and inexplicably optimistic about her case, which made Dalia worry that nothing would come of it. She’d never had good luck before. Why now, all of a sudden?

  “How can I know? I answered their questions. I tried my best to answer them.”

  “Good. That’s good news. Now we wait. I’ll let you know when I hear something. Meanwhile, call Omran. Calm him down, please. He’s very anxious.”

  “I will.” Dalia hung up. Though she didn’t plan to keep her promise. Not today, at least. The argument buried in Boston wasn’t the only thing she hoped to avoid. More difficult, possibly related conversations awaited her. Such as what would happen if her petition to resettle was denied. Fall out of love from distance and time and stress and lack of money? Hear later that Omran had remarried? And had kids? Dalia was fixed on avoiding those questions entirely. If she didn’t voice her fears, maybe they’d die inside her. That theory, like a mayfly, lived a short life. An oppressive stillness filled the room. Suddenly Dalia needed to call Omran. Not tomorrow. Not later that night. Not ten minutes from now. Her fingers, cured by necessity of their paralysis, punched the phone so fast she dialed the wrong number. She tried again. Ring, ring. Dalia loved that sound almost as much as she hated it.

  “Hello?”

  “Omran?”

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Omran.”

  The long delay revealed the call’s tired journey.

  “Hello?” they said at the same time.

  Dalia wanted to cry. The business with the phones had grown so old.

  “There you are,” said Omran after the delay worked itself out. The drone of his voice had a calming effect. “Can you hear me? Or do I sound like . . .” He mumbled unintelligibly.

  “I can hear you.”

  “Thank God. I had a dream last night that you called. I was trying to tell you something important, but you kept saying, ‘What?’ That’s all you were able to say. What, what, what.”

  A thousand conversations beginning with the same inescapable misunderstanding had trained them to force their communion along. This to prevent awkward silences from becoming lonely moments. Omran made the first move by saying that nothing was to be learned from his dream. He just worried the way all people worried in the absence of whom they loved. Dalia made the next move by changing the subject. She asked Omran what he’d done that day. The boring question betrayed her want for normalcy. Omran said his day was still young. He deplored the time difference. “I just ate lunch. Before that I ate breakfast. I also watched the morning news.” The news was painful to watch. He always said that about the news. It caused him pain to see the conflict, to know—and be reminded—where his wife lived. He was ashamed of leaving her. Omran never said so explicitly, but the truth hid poorly in the long drawl of his sadness. Dalia sought to cheer him up by telling what she feared was a lie. That the interview had gone well. “Really?” asked Omran. He sounded much younger and suddenly free of constraint. “Are you sure?” Withholding the whole of the truth—Dalia wasn’t sure or even confident—wasn’t entirely selfless. She enjoyed her power to affect Omran almost as much as she enjoyed winning arguments or having sex. A sorry inkling alleged that sex would be changed. The inkling bit with such force that Dalia couldn’t think about anything else. She envisioned Omran sitting naked on her couch. It was more strange than sexy. Time made everything unfamiliar, even a body. So did trauma, distance, secrets. Dalia knew things that Omran didn’t and could never. How might the violence she’d endured come back later as a shadow or even a bright, painful light? Would that haunting affect where she put her hands? Or what she felt when she touched him?

  To celebrate the good news about the interview, Omran read a poem by Rumi. He read two lines with particular yearning. “If one asks you how the Messiah revived the dead, before / him kiss me on the lips—‘Like this.’ ” Dalia blamed the effect of the poem on her mood; it made her skin itch, which made her heart sunder.

  3

  The Refugee Relief Project, located six blocks north of Tahrir, lived in a one-story cinder-block building guarded on all sides by a wall. Natural light was provided by four windows Charlie called fire exits, all of which were painted shut. The project’s nickname was the Oven, and the joke was you could hard-boil an egg in the air. The reality was less dramatic. People inside tended to sweat, but not from heat alone. Clients sweat because they were asked to recount a tortured past they desperately wanted to forget. Interns sweat after discovering they weren’t made for nonprofit or third world. Aos, the translator, sweat because he was underpaid. He overdressed to compensate. Two junior lawyers—Sabah, an Egyptian, and Michael, a Brit—sweat because law school hadn’t taught them to work so hard or fail so often. Charlie, nothing if not a comrade, sweat to share their pain.

  Clients were Africans and Arabs from all walks of life. War, in every form it came, was the great equalizer. Bricklayers, professors, novelists, engineers, thieves, accountants, and men and women who’d dedicated entire lives to prayer with nothing to show for their prostration. All running from something. The fear of deportation. The nightmares. The physical traumas endured. The psychological traumas developed. The fucking boredom of waiting around all the time. They wanted to leave Egypt. Charlie’s imagined job was to make that happen; his real job was to very occasionally make that happen. He took solace in the daily grind to forget the likely outcome. The grind included interviews, testimonies, phone calls, and what he referred to as Calamity Management. Last week a man without an appointment, filled with some anger but more fear, had burst through the door holding a knife against his neck. He’d said his name was Ali. Then he’d named his wife and his children: Ramlah, Sabri, Shazi, and Hassan. He’d asked for a stamp in his passport and the four passports in his back pocket. He’d turned to show the bulge. He wanted to go to America and threatened to cut his own throat if he couldn’t go. The blade had rested firmly on Ali’s skin. Charlie had urged him to drop the knife, to sit down, to begin the long application process. That had only made Ali more agitated. He said he knew the truth. Nobody ever got to leave. Or so few he’d never seen it happen. Charlie had begged Ali to be reasonable. It had been a poor choice of words. To such a perturbed man, the implications must’ve been sinister. Go home! Give up! Get it over with! Ali had backed away from the office wearing a frightened look on his face. Charlie had begged him to wait, but it was no use. Ali turned and ultimately fled the building, knife caressing his neck as he ran. Since then Charlie had suffered from wondering. Where did Ali go? Was he still alive? Is it my fault if he isn’t?

  The latest calamity had arrived that morning in the form of a rejection letter from the UNHCR. Charlie held the letter—addressed to him, but
regarding Dalia—in his hands. He’d read it several times already but read it again while slouching in his chair so that passersby would think he was dead or drunk and wouldn’t bother him. He hoped that by the time he finished reading the letter, the world would’ve ceased to exist. Sucked into a black hole. Burned up in the sun.

  “Are you all right?” asked Aos, appearing suddenly. In addition to being Charlie’s only translator, he was Charlie’s only friend. At least the only friend he saw outside working hours. Still, Charlie found himself hiding the rejection letter in his desk drawer instead of declaring that another case had gone belly-up like a bloated fish in a toilet bowl.

  “Fine.” Charlie grinned. A poor disguise, but he couldn’t think of a better one.

  “I saw you reading a letter. In complete despair.”

  A few weeks had passed since Charlie had called Dalia to ask about her interview. He’d made the mistake of confessing his good feeling. Charlie wondered how many times he’d done that before. Offered false hope as petty consolation.

  “Do you think I’m cruel?” asked Charlie.

  “Cruel how?”

  Behind Aos, Charlie spied a moving body. An intern! Charlie loved the interns. They were unpaid and not bothered by that. Hopeless romantics, all of them. Italians with a taste for adventure; Swedes who wanted to practice their Arabic; Americans with something to prove to their parents. Charlie squinted. It was Rupert, from London, with red hair.

  “You told us to convene in the courtyard for lunch.” Rupert looked excited and tired and fucking hungry. Maybe a little sorry for interrupting. “For the party boat? Right? That’s today? I thought it might not be today, but then it was marked on the calendar.”