Live from Cairo

by Ian Bassingthwaighte

  “I saw Charlie sneak in,” said Joseph. “I wanted to see how it went.”

  If Joseph saw Charlie, why didn’t he stop him? Or at least warn Hana before she was assailed in her own office? Hana was miffed, but only a little. It would be petty to mention it. “I’m just glad he’s gone.”

  “He likes to ruffle feathers.”

  “To guilt-trip.”

  “To henpeck.”

  “To beleaguer and displease.”

  The game ended when Hana realized she was smiling. How callow of her to diminish Charlie. His methods were unorthodox and even offensive, but his intentions—well, it seemed to Hana that intentions mattered. Her own intentions were good. She wasn’t to blame. Not for war. Not for quotas. Not even for rejecting Dalia’s petition to resettle. Hana was just doing her job, disgusting as it might seem to people who couldn’t see the big picture.

  Next, Yezin appeared. He wore a curious look, as if he’d seen something interesting from afar and approached now to investigate. “Ah, you survived. I knew you would.”

  Did the whole office know Charlie had snuck in? Hana would’ve been angry if Yezin’s thick eyebrows weren’t so easy to like. Maybe Charlie was a rite of passage. Maybe this was their way of inviting Hana into the fold, by initiation. Maybe they’d be good friends after this.

  “Also, for weeks I’ve been meaning to thank you,” said Yezin. “I keep forgetting. Now is the time.”

  “Thank me? For what?” In Hana’s mind, she hadn’t done anything. Her greatest fear was that she never would. That she lacked gumption. That her life would pass without impact or meaning.

  “For coming here. God knows we needed the help. You’ve seen the filing cabinets. Soon the cabinets will need another row, another room, another building.”

  “You’re welcome.” Hana didn’t know what else to say.

  “Next week we’ll celebrate with cake. Your one-month anniversary. Some people don’t make it so long.”

  “No!” cried Joseph. He put his hands on Yezin’s shoulders and shook him lightly. “You’ve ruined the surprise.”

  Margret appeared in the same suspicious way as her predecessors. As if she’d happened past and, now that she was here, wanted to get a word in edgewise. “That man’s a rite of passage.” Margret seemed to think she was revealing something. “By the way, you set a record for most time spent in his presence.”

  Oh, no, thought Hana. I’m being reprimanded. “I’ll send him away next time. Before he sits. Before he even speaks.” Would there be a next time? Hana had mixed feelings about the idea of seeing Charlie again. She had mixed feelings about her mixed feelings, so that by the time she untied what she really felt—that she wouldn’t mind seeing him—she’d changed her mind and decided to never see Charlie again. He was shortsighted, selfish, theatrical.

  “I wanted to make sure he didn’t crush your spirits,” said Margret. “I’m sure he tried.”

  “He tried very—”

  “Exactly. I knew you’d resist his pageantry. That’s why I pulled your résumé from the pile.” Margret’s gesture indicated the pile was enormous. “I said, ‘This woman’s the one.’ ”

  Margret smiled before she left and Joseph shrugged before he followed her. Meanwhile, Yezin did something strange with his eyes. As if he was trying to express regret or empathy. Maybe he felt guilty for letting Charlie sit on her desk but couldn’t apologize without breaking rank. The best he could do was indicate his heart wasn’t a dead place. That he felt something. A difficult, awkward task, thought Hana. His eyes were wide-open with eyebrows lifted so that he looked assaulted by surprise. A loud sound, a sharp pain, a sudden gust of wind pushing him toward a precipice.

  * * *

  At 6:00 p.m., Hana jammed papers into her briefcase and called Mustafa for a ride home. For three reasons she had yet to call another driver. In ascending order of importance: she still needed to pay for his door; he never asked intrusive questions; he never gawked at her in the rearview mirror. Plus, if she matched his energy—yakking back and forth as if at some point they’d become friends—the forty-minute commute became a window into Mustafa’s life and times. In traffic jams, or when the army blocked the road, Mustafa idled and told Hana about his family, the protesters, the army generals, even the Egyptian Museum. Some people said the Egyptian Museum had become a makeshift prison. At night, police hauled protesters to the basement and tortured them next to a hundred sunken reliefs depicting Ra, the sun god. Mustafa said these facts as if they were speculations; with the hope, perhaps, that they weren’t true.

  Did he fear the revolution as much as he claimed to welcome it? The question swirled in Hana’s mind, but she never dared release it into the wild world of Mustafa’s taxi—a wheeled collection of oddities that defined its driver. Every time Hana got a ride, she noticed something new. A box of tissues was glued to the dash and pictures of Mustafa’s family were glued to the box. “For easy seeing,” he’d said. There was the flag of Egypt and, strangely, the flag of Germany, both on tiny plastic sticks jammed in the middle console. Mustafa loved the clinical style with which the Germans played football. “Kampfgeist,” he’d said. “The fighting spirit of German national team.” There was also his Qur’an, a constant bulge in his shirt pocket behind his cigarettes. Hana’s favorite oddity dangled from the rearview mirror. A bright yellow SpongeBob SquarePants, the size of a fist. “My last birthday gift,” Mustafa said after he’d caught Hana staring. “My daughter bought me the toy she wanted for herself. I did not give it to her.” The doll swung on the mirror every time the taxi flew around a corner. The repetitive motion had the same psychological effect on Hana as a seat belt. If SpongeBob was safe, then she was, too. Hana worried less about Mustafa’s lead foot and resigned her fate to the will of the cosmos.

  That night the cosmos was in a bad mood. Gridlock on the Qasr al-Nil Bridge meant Mustafa’s taxi wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. They were stuck. Possibly forever, judging by the number of cars. The cumulative effect of so many idling engines was a slight vibration in the bridge itself, which caused loose screws or cracked plastic or some other part of the broken door to make a soft rattling sound.

  “What’s the smoke up ahead?” asked Hana. “Tear gas? Fireworks?”

  From a distance, every protest and every celebration in the square looked the same. It was hard, then, for Hana to know whether the revolution was going well or not. She felt bad for not asking more often and worse still for being in a position where she didn’t have to know.

  “Hm.” Mustafa excavated his mobile phone from the middle console. “Let me find out. My friend broke his taxi. He has nowhere to go but the square.” Mustafa dialed, chatted, laughed, chatted some more. Several minutes later he hung up. “Not tear gas,” he said gladly. “No army today in the square. The protesters are blocking traffic by themselves accidentally. Too many people. Copts, Muslims, atheists, foreigners, even women and children. The smoke is a bus that caught fire from no coolant. My friend says they’re dumping water on it.”

  “Children? In the square? Are they protesting?”

  “If the parents are protesting, the children must come.”

  “The children are safe?”

  “The children are bored easily. They don’t stay very long. They beg their parents.”

  “And the women?” Hana had heard about molestation and rape in the square, but felt somehow divorced from the danger. Maybe reading about rape all day at work made the endemic feel as if it belonged in other countries. Or maybe because her entire Egyptian experience had occurred in a building or a taxi. She hadn’t even seen the pyramids yet, much less stood in the heart of Tahrir.

  “I’m sorry to talk about this, but, yes, sometimes the women are touched. Worse things also happen.” Mustafa put his head down as if he found shame in a crime someone else had committed. “I saw once and tried to stop, but the crowd was too thick. The woman was carried away.”

  Pedestrians on both sides of the bridge streamed f
reely toward the square. Most faces Hana saw contained some degree of excitement. There were only a few sour faces. Old men, mostly. Maybe shouting protesters kept the old men awake at night. Or the old men were also protesting. Maybe they were kept awake by their own shouting. Hana suddenly loved the old men with sour faces. Not to mention, the way bright scarves floated atop brown shirts, black jackets, and tan pants. There were so many women. Why hadn’t she noticed before?

  When the bridge finally cleared enough to allow cars through, Mustafa zipped to Hana’s building. “Ma salaam. Good night.” Mustafa gripped the wheel as if he wanted to peel away. The night’s profits were already bound to be low. And lower still if he didn’t find more customers before they found other taxis.

  “I’ll call soon,” said Hana, rolling the base fare around her generous tip so that Mustafa wouldn’t try to hand back the extra money. It turned out he didn’t like accepting more than the journey was worth. “By soon, I mean tomorrow. God willing.”

  Hana rushed inside as if the repose of home awaited her. That comfort would clear her mind and perhaps even allay her conscience. Wasn’t rejecting Dalia’s petition the only sensible choice? The elevator door, however, was stuck. “Damn you,” Hana said to the door, though her true marks were Charlie, Margret, and the vile creatures Mustafa had seen steal that woman. Hana yanked the handle so hard the door bounced open the other way. How embarrassing to forget to push a door so clearly designed to be pushed. She slipped into the lift to escape the possibility that someone had seen her. The cable whined as floors slid past. When the lift finally came to a stop, it halted in such a way that Hana experienced a fleeting weightlessness. The feeling was hard to enjoy despite her wanting to; she was too focused on whatever feeling would come next. Hana sped down the hall to find out. The polished concrete guided her to a familiar brown door. Though not entirely familiar. The inlaid geometric pattern seemed to get more complicated as time passed. “Here goes nothing,” said Hana, fishing in her pocket for her key. Would the repose of home waft out when the door opened? Would every worry fade away as she reclaimed her weightlessness? Alas, no. Her door revealed the same dark apartment poised above the same elusive city. Just like last night. Just like every night. Hana wondered when and if that would change. She dragged herself to the kitchen in the meantime. She wasn’t hungry, but nevertheless felt the need to eat. “Food cures loneliness, too,” Ishtar had once said, wrist deep in mashed fava beans. “You’re with whoever taught you the recipe.” Dinner that night was leftovers from the night before: fattoush, chopped garlic from a jar, and falafel smothered in tahini, which was what Ishtar had made whenever she didn’t feel like spending hours laying pastry or braising meat. Hana had tried to re-create the meal with mixed results. The results were worse after a day in the fridge. She stopped eating to call Ishtar.

  “Hello?”

  “Mother bear,” said Hana. “Update from the front line: still alive, still miss you.”

  “My bean.”

  “What bean?”

  “My little bean,” said Ishtar.

  “Not poppy seed? Wasn’t that my . . . ?”

  “Poppy seed was before you were born. Even when you were smaller than one, I still called you that.”

  Hana didn’t like to think of herself as formerly microscopic, with no ability to bear witness, to bear thoughts, to control anything. She entertained the idea, if only in her head, that she was born at the moment of her first memory. She was three years old. There was cake. She was already in America.

  “How did bean come about?” asked Hana.

  “You were a weirdly shaped newborn. I was just looking at old pictures a minute ago. They reminded me.” A single forlorn laugh indicated that Ishtar was still looking at the pictures and secretly wanted Hana to know. “So, what are you doing?”

  “Picking ants out of my sugar bowl.”

  A long pause told her the conversation wasn’t going as well as she’d thought. Why not? What happened? Was Hana supposed to ask more about the pictures? Or reminisce about childhood? Or tell Ishtar how much she was missed? Hana had already said that, but maybe Ishtar wanted to hear it again.

  “You should call more than once a week.” Ishtar’s words burst from some confined place. “Really, it’s not enough.”

  “What’s your ideal number?”

  “Seven?”

  They both laughed sadly.

  Hana didn’t know exactly what she’d called to say, but the vagueness of her want didn’t make it less pressing. “Pretend you’re still in Baghdad,” she said finally, and calmly to make the transition easier. In case it caused Ishtar some grief. “Pretend you need to leave now before something bad happens. Your death, your capture. Or something less dramatic. Theoretically, I mean. Not actually less dramatic. Is a lifetime of forced isolation and poverty really less dramatic than death? This is a formal interview. Your one chance to convince me to help you run. What would you say? What did you say, actually?”

  “What a way to change the subject. Wow, really.”

  “I know, I’m sorry.”

  “That was thirty years ago. No, more than that. Thirty-one.”

  “You don’t remember what you said?”

  “I didn’t have to say much. Your sister was in tears. You were a bulge in my stomach.”

  Hana’s sister hadn’t been a topic of conversation in some time. It was good to hear her name again. Leilah. Not that Ishtar had actually said her name. All the same, it was good to talk about her. The initial relief gave way to pain and longing. Hana needed to walk. Except the phone had a short black cable. Hana pulled the cable to see if it would stretch. It didn’t, but the phone’s cradle did fall out of the wall. Meters of telephone cord, formerly spooled in the hollow behind the cradle, unfurled on the floor. Hana was suddenly free to walk wherever she pleased, so long as she didn’t mind the sound of the cradle dragging behind her.

  “Hello? What happened? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here.” Hana dragged the cradle toward the balcony.

  “What are you doing? What’s that sound?”

  Before Hana could explain—mounting laughter prevented her from opening her mouth lest a guffaw escape—a new sound filled the air. A buzzing sound, like mosquitoes or bees. Every light in the room brightened. A few bulbs even changed color. Soft yellow became nearly white. “Shit,” said Hana. That sound could mean only one thing.

  “What?”

  “The electricity—” started Hana, but it was too late. The lights went black and the call ended. There wasn’t even a dial tone to keep her company. Still Hana couldn’t bring herself to hang up the phone. She just held the handset against her ear. It felt comfortable. Then for a reason beyond even her own understanding, Hana continued to talk. “Hello?” she said, testing how weird it would feel to speak with an imagined, silent Ishtar. Weird, but not horribly weird. Not so weird she couldn’t do it. “Do you mind if I change the subject again? I know, I’m scattered. You’ve always said that about me. That I’m scattered.” The weirdness plateaued. “I rejected a petition to resettle. A petition? Jesus Christ. Her name is Dalia. I felt terrible. You know, typing the letter. Checking the box on the form. The form lingered in the mail for a few days. Like ten days. Twelve, maybe? Margret says it takes time to disseminate even basic information. Yesterday that information was disseminated. Now I feel much worse. Guilty, even. Why? Because Dalia’s from Baghdad? No, that’s too simple. And makes no sense. I’m not from Baghdad. Not really. You’re from Baghdad, but Dalia’s not like you. Not that it would matter even if she were exactly like you. Your history isn’t relevant to her case. Or my opinion. Still, it makes me wonder. What if Dalia were from another conflict zone? Sudan, Somalia. I’d have to reject her case all the same, but would I feel the same?” Hana toggled the switchhook in a futile attempt to revive the dial tone. She thought of Rita. Why was that so much easier? “I had good reason, I think, to reject her. Dalia’s case wasn’t urgent, where urgent means . . . oh, I d
on’t even know. How can I know? More importantly, how can I judge? And I got to thinking today in the car. Was your case urgent? Would I think your case was urgent?” Hana toggled the switchhook again, desperately. “Maybe the process was different back then. Another time, another war. I know that. Tell me, what was it like? Were the questions intrusive? Did people look at you skeptically? I wanted to ask before, about a hundred times. Only the story felt like yours and Leilah’s. What right did I have to that narrative? I wasn’t there, not really. Leilah said my only function at the time was to make you puke. She laughed with a bleak look in her eyes when she said that. You remember the look? It surfaced occasionally. I never figured out what it meant. I think it meant she missed home. You two always had that in common.”

  Tired of wounding herself, Hana finally hung up the phone. The dark and quiet made a perfect vacuum. To disturb the stillness, Hana searched for the origin of the power outage. She searched as if she might actually find something. As if there were a small chance it wasn’t the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces cutting power from afar with a switch. The council loved cutting power to demonstrate its reach. Far and wide, into every person’s home. After checking the outlets and the fuse box, which proved inconclusive, Hana finished walking to her balcony. She held the railing with both hands. The chipped paint gave the railing a venerable feel, as if it had witnessed history. The whole neighborhood, as far as she could see, was black except for the white glow of camera phones, which turned every pedestrian into a journalist. The river of light flowed south to Tahrir, where protesters guarded the tent city. Tents provided shade, food, and medical treatment for both protesters and passersby. At night, the same tents became freedom hotels. Any friend of the cause could sleep for free on the ground. The act of sleeping defended the tent. After all, the army couldn’t crush a tent that was full of people. Not without alienating more politically correct allies. Not without risking sanctions. Newspapers celebrated or decried the freedom hotels as per their political slants, but Hana was of the opinion that tents were meant to be slept under. Did that make her a friend of the cause? Would she ever go there to sleep? The idea excited Hana even though the revolution wasn’t hers to defend. Then again, whose revolution was it? Having begun in Tunisia. Having spread across northern Africa into the Middle East. Having been broadcast worldwide as a symbol on TV. Tahrir, she knew, living down the street from the square, was a symbol; but it was also a real place with tents that were getting torn down. Not that moment, but some nights when the army rolled in unannounced, armored vehicles kicking up dust that had been lodged in the cracks of the streets for decades. Hana wanted to breathe that dust instead of just watch it plume and eventually settle.