Charlie forgot it was Monday. He forgot he’d rented a party boat for the interns and that Aos had picked up sweet treats from El Abd, the famous bakery. Also kofta sandwiches from some hole-in-the-wall operated by a man with only six fingers, who claimed a propane explosion had blown the other four clean off. Charlie had forgotten the party boat would play loud Arab pop from Beirut and loud Persian pop from Tehran and would circle the island of Zamalek for three hours while the interns ate their fill and danced their hearts out beneath multicolored twinkle lights strung up in lieu of a canopy. The boat was really a floating dance floor with a motor attached; the captain was really a young man with no prospects. Charlie had even forgotten that he’d prepared a speech. He wanted to thank the interns. After all, they conducted introductory interviews and wrote draft testimonies so Charlie, Sabah, and Michael could spend their time on more important things. As three nonprofit crusaders, they would’ve preferred to slave in their own salt mines, but their desire to do everything was precluded by the volume of work. Charlie also wanted to thank the interns for not going home. At least, what remained of the interns. Many had abandoned post when the revolution started. Some were frightened and left. Others had frightened parents and left begrudgingly. Charlie had no idea what differentiated the interns who went from the interns who stayed. All he knew was the interns who stayed deserved recognition in the form of a party boat.
“Is everyone outside?” It occurred to Charlie that the answer to his question was clear. The office was quiet. The desks were empty.
“Yes,” said Rupert. “Rose-Marie is so excited she’s stammering.”
Rose-Marie, from Stockholm, who spoke four languages, who had thick-rimmed black glasses, who’d traveled through or studied in more countries than she cared to count—the display of counting seemed to embarrass her—had several nervous tics. Among them, an affection in English for gerunds. In her mouth, I’m leaving for the night became I’m leaving-ing-ing . . . for the night. Followed by an exhausted look, as if Rose-Marie were tired of waiting for her speech to correct itself and had recently decided to stop making an effort.
“Give us five minutes,” said Charlie.
“Okay,” said Rupert.
Charlie listened to the sound of the young man retreating on the balls of his feet. A soft walker. The office door opened, then swung closed on spring hinges. “Do you think he was trained to walk so quietly?” asked Charlie. “Or was he born that way?”
“Impossible to say,” said Aos. “Now, to that letter . . .”
Charlie loved the sound of the spring hinges, which indicated the front door was in use, that the office served a purpose, that Charlie’s life, by proxy, meant something. He checked the clock on the wall. “I can’t believe I forgot about the party boat.”
Aos’ ambiguous gaze—where, exactly, was he looking?—made Charlie feel as if he were secreting information through his pores and Aos was absorbing that information straight out of the air like a sponge.
“Was it a rejection?” asked Aos after a few seconds.
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Know things before I tell you.”
Charlie frowned when Aos noted certain patterns in the mail. Such as how rejections arrived on Mondays, normally. Today was . . .
“Fine. It’s a rejection.” Saying so aloud caused an intangible ache. Charlie couldn’t feel it, exactly. Or rub the spot. The ache existed everywhere and hid itself in its own abundance.
“Whose case?”
“Dalia’s,” said Charlie, seeing her. Either his memory was getting more visceral or Dalia had left her shadow in the room. Charlie wanted to believe she’d left her shadow, as a gift. He shrugged to obscure any injury caused by failing her.
“Don’t pretend this doesn’t hurt you.”
“Please stop reading my mind. You’re only making things worse.”
An entire friendship—years old, with scars—declared itself. A hand on a shoulder, left there for too long; awkward laughing; finally, an embrace.
Aos said, “We don’t have to give up,” and Charlie said, “I know. I won’t. I love her.”
* * *
The music blared nonstop as the party boat cruised up the smooth, brown river. The food was already gone. Thank God, thought Charlie. He was bursting. The sandwiches and sweet treats existed now only as aromas for those dancing near the take-out bags. Charlie’s memory was two-faced. Bliss, regret. He’d eaten too much, too quickly. He could still taste the pistachios and the honey. Or maybe the rose water. Charlie probed with his tongue, desperately trying to dislodge whatever piece of nut or pastry haunted him. Failing to erase the flavor, Charlie resigned himself to the sad fate of remembering.
The city looked strange from on the water. Taller, cleaner, less populated. The Sheraton and the Grand Nile Tower feigned grandeur; houseboats and floating restaurants feigned the same. Charlie’s favorite floating restaurant—importantly, not for its food—was installed in a permanently moored river cruiser now coming into view. A gallant old vessel that once plied south from Cairo all the way to Aswan. Three stories of pure white wood and a grand deck with lawn chairs spread everywhere. What famous explorers, academics, and travelers, who were all dead now, had leaned against the railings of that cruiser while the hot wind blew their tan hats into the Nile? Charlie loved to wonder and loved more to chuckle at the distance of that history. The cruiser had since been converted into a Chili’s, complete with neon sign and bad salad. Charlie had been dismayed upon discovering that fact, but had since then learned to accept that ancient Egypt wasn’t a modern country. Ancient Egypt was an illustrated children’s book. Now every time he saw the sign—when he crossed the bridge or walked the length of the corniche—he solemnly said to himself, “I wasn’t even alive when that boat sailed to Aswan.” The basic math, subtracting his age from the length of history, offered comfort. Not much comfort, but some.
“Ah!” cried the captain over the sound of the engine sputtering. The engine died and the music stopped. Had they run out of gas? Had the fan belt torn? Do party boats even have fan belts? The boat drifted north with the current toward the Mediterranean. With no music left to propel the interns, they became ecstatic statues. One intern had been giving swing lessons to the rest. Even Sabah and Michael, buckling under the pressure of seeing others have fun, had participated. Now everyone was stuck at weird angles. The interns finally sat down on wood benches tracing the perimeter of the boat. The men first, awkwardly; then the women, less so, with some laughing. Michael and Sabah moved to the prow, where they leaned against the railing and flicked crumbs into the river for the fish. Their contentedness struck Charlie as unfair. Their jobs were hard. They had no money. Why was Charlie so miserable when he was literally and figuratively in the same boat? Maybe they were fucking. Obviously they were fucking. They’d probably been fucking for months.
Only two sounds survived the death of the engine: the captain cursing in Arabic and Aos trying to light his cigarette with a spent lighter, to no avail. Click, click. Charlie wiped the sweat off his face with his sleeve and said, “Is it just me or does the light have actual mass today? Like if you put your bathroom scale in the sun, it would cry out in pain. A pound! Five pounds!” Nobody answered, but Charlie didn’t take offense. He hadn’t indicated to whom his question was directed or whether it was rhetorical.
“Would you look at that,” said Michael, pointing up at the Qasr al-Nil Bridge as they floated aimlessly beneath it. Heads tilted back, but the only visible thing was the underside of the bridge—blackened by smoke, time, weather, and brightened slightly by the twinkle lights. When the boat popped out the other side, it became clear the bridge was occupied by protesters. The music had drowned out their shouting, but no more. The protesters flew flags from many nations. Egypt alongside Libya alongside Syria alongside Yemen. There was no visible military presence. No revolutionary guards in red berets. No heads popping from the tops of armored vehicles. Charlie d
id, however, notice a single helicopter circling overhead—the faint whoosh whoosh drew his eye—but didn’t mention it lest it affect the mood. The interns yelled greetings to the protesters. The protesters yelled greetings in return, sharing their surprise, wonder, and excitement in the form of delirious flag-waving.
“Ah!” cried the captain again. Something important had been discovered in the belly of the boat. Charlie hoped the engine would start up and pour fumes, and the music would pour from the speakers at high volume. The sooner the party continued, the sooner it ended. Then Charlie could get back to work. But the captain had only found a box of matches. Aos, at least, was glad; now he could light his cigarette. He smoked it halfway through, then gave the rest to the captain. They joked in Arabic before slipping into more serious conversation. Evidently the revolution had come up. Charlie knew Aos’ position from hearing it so many times. The army couldn’t be trusted, the Muslim Brotherhood was the wrong party to take power, Mubarak should be imprisoned for life. Presumably the captain disagreed. Both men looked incredibly distressed. Aos lit but didn’t share another cigarette.
The protesters on the bridge no longer appeared to be people. The party boat had drifted too far away. The protesters were a single mass stretching from Zamalek to the east bank of the Nile. Yet the interns aimed their eyes at the bridge and spoke in excited terms about the people they’d seen and would perhaps remember as symbols of their time in Cairo. The man who’d dropped a flower in the boat and blessed his country by chanting, “Misr, Misr!”; a boy, aloft on his father’s shoulders, who’d chanted the same word at a higher pitch; the woman who’d shouted loudly that the revolution would end when Mubarak was dead, and not before. She’d gripped her sign as if it had meant everything to her. NO EXILE, it read. NO EXONERATION. Charlie hoped this was the extent of the interns’ exposure to the revolution. They had been instructed to avoid Tahrir, to avoid crowds more generally, to stay indoors after dark. There was a citywide curfew, after all. They were also encouraged to skip work if they woke up with a sense of dread. Even the lesser sense of foreboding. There was no way to know with certainty if the interns obeyed these commands, but looking at their faces now, full of awe and surprise, there was little doubt. Charlie was relieved. He didn’t want to worry about their safety in addition to everything else he worried about. He told himself to stop worrying about so many things. Pick one thing, he told himself, that you’re worrying about right now. And stop worrying.
Bang! A column of black smoke shot out of a metal tube. The captain’s tense shoulders relaxed as the black smoke dissipated. He rubbed his hands together. “I have a good boat. The engine is . . . eh, not as good.” The boat tugged back to the bridge. The interns, brightened by the prospect of floating under the protesters again, talked in the same excited terms about the revolution. How great it was to be in Cairo at this historically significant time. How it wasn’t history yet, but one day people would look back. But the interns fell mute on approach, despite the same delirious flag-waving. Charlie saw disappointment on their faces. Maybe repeating what had been a powerful moment had revealed the artifice. The interns on the boat were small fries and had no role to play in the movement occurring on the bridge, except to wave at it.
* * *
Several hours disappeared in the same frightening manner as the weeks preceding them, with no trace. The party boat returned safely to dock and the staff hurried back to the office, which was technically open for another twenty minutes. Not that Charlie had patience left to wait for a silent, abandoned place in which to work and think. He cleared his throat before anyone got too comfortable. “I hope you all enjoyed the party boat.” Charlie meant what he said, but didn’t sound as if he meant it. He sounded depressed. “Let’s call it a night. Come back tomorrow feeling relaxed and optimistic.” The forlorn display confused the interns, so Charlie said, “Chop-chop.” When that didn’t work, he unleashed his famous death stare. The interns dispersed under the weight of his gaze, but Michael and Sabah wouldn’t leave so easily. His death stare hadn’t worked on them since—well, not in a long time. Sabah said she needed to finish Hassan’s case, which was too urgent and awful; Michael, nodding in agreement, said he was neck deep on account of the party boat. “Now I’m a half day behind,” he said with more regret than his words deserved. The maneuver was so predictable that it had no effect on Charlie. He crossed his arms to show he was impervious to Michael’s entreaties.
Coercing Michael and Sabah to go home had been a nightly ritual for almost two years, a term of service much longer than that of the handful of lawyers who’d come before them. Those predecessors, who’d enjoyed playing Charlie’s second-in-command far more than they’d enjoyed doing the work, hadn’t stayed long. Sabah and Michael were different. Both had arrived during the seasonal burning of rice straw in 2009, when smoke the color of ink hung in the sky above Cairo. Sabah had just finished law school at American University and had refused to leave Egypt despite having the clear opportunity. “I was born here,” she’d told Charlie with a conviction he’d never experienced. Sabah had started working the same day she was interviewed. The same hour, truth be told. Michael had come a month later after the smoke was beginning to thin. Winds had blown the ink clouds west into the desert. He told a short version of what he’d called a love saga. He’d met a girl at Cambridge, where they’d both studied law. She was British Egyptian, born in London, with a heart that brought her back to her roots. Michael’s heart, beating wildly, had said follow her. So he’d followed her. The love saga had ended a few months later after the love interest decided she didn’t like Egypt. Or Michael, for that matter.
“Get out,” said Charlie in a stern voice. “Come back tomorrow feeling relaxed and . . .”
Sabah grimaced and Michael waved absentmindedly. Still, they acquiesced. Michael shoved papers into his briefcase willy-nilly while Sabah took a more ordered approach to her packing. The unspoken slight being they wouldn’t relax. They wouldn’t even try to relax. They’d work from home late into the night and return tomorrow having neither slept nor showered. And likely cantankerous. Charlie’s punishment would be enduring them.
Aos was the only permitted exception to the nightly exodus. Charlie’s office, Charlie’s rules. Not because he owned the office, but because he’d been there since 2007. Considering the pay and conditions, four years was a long tenure. Charlie had arrived immediately after the US troop surge in Iraq. After his brother deployed for the second time to a country that was already contending for the top spot on the Failed States Index, the Fund for Peace’s list of countries that best meet a set of horrible criteria, including the inability to maintain control of sovereign territory, corruption, lawlessness, the nonprovision of public services, and the involuntary movement of people, meaning refugees. Timothy Wells, brother and army specialist, off to make things worse. In Charlie’s opinion, at least. And things did get worse in Iraq. The US Department of Defense claimed to observe security and economic improvements after the surge, but the discrepancy between officially counted civilian deaths and actual civilian deaths increased. Charlie didn’t blame the entire war on his brother, but only because that would be irrational. He did, however, consider his brother an accomplice to war crimes. Turning a sovereign country into a war zone over weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. Inciting a forced migration, the scale of which was beyond comprehension, only to make that migration physically and legally precarious. Most nights Charlie worked so late one day inadvertently became the next as he tried to undo what his brother had done.
“I’ve always loved my work,” said Charlie after Michael’s and Sabah’s chairs had lost the body heat contained deep within their padding. “This is the first time I’ve loved a client. It’s not like I have a choice. The heart wants what it wants.”
“I’ve heard that before,” said Aos. “Who said that?”
“Emily Dickinson, Woody Allen. Other people.”
“It’s bad advice.”
“Still, you see why I can’t give up.”
What else could Charlie say to untangle the knot of his affections? That he’d always been attracted to slightly older women, as if they knew something he didn’t? That Dalia had more than age, fortitude, and beauty on her side? Though he’d be lying if he said there wasn’t some physical element that drew him to her. It was, even to Charlie, a little strange. All but her hands and face were covered. Unless the office was especially sweltering, in which case Dalia would bare her forearms and untuck her scarf from her shirt. It wasn’t sexy in the American sense of the word, but watching Dalia roll up her sleeves nonetheless made Charlie feel as if he were bearing witness to a private act. He’d reflexively look away and pretend to write on his legal pad. Somehow Dalia had crawled under his skin despite Charlie’s thinking his skin was too thick to crawl under. It was both fantastic and utterly terrifying. He knew he shouldn’t love her. It was, among other things, unprofessional. Then again, he did love her. The whole thing surprised Charlie just as it must’ve surprised Aos. Normally Charlie reacted less intensely to his work. If not by choice, then by necessity; the onslaught demanded he jump from case to case to case. Now, in lieu of jumping, he was flailing. His mind was elsewhere. He couldn’t write fast enough. Sometimes he couldn’t write at all. He was busy aching and plotting and begging God to help Dalia. Why beg God when Charlie was on the skeptical side of agnostic? It was irrational. No, it was completely insane.
Aos raised his eyebrows. “We never give up. We can appeal the case, same as always. Or find another way to help. A job, a resident visa.”
“Appeals never work,” said Charlie. “And bah humbug to the other stuff. What good are temporary measures? We need to get her out of Egypt as soon as possible. Not five years from now. Not even one year from now.” The sense of urgency was informed by circumstances beyond Charlie’s control: the longer Dalia stayed, the more he wanted her; also, the more other clients suffered the spoils of his distraction.
Live from Cairo Page 5