* * *
Lying in bed with Ruby proved Charlie’s heart hadn’t changed much over the years. How irritating to know he still loved what caused him to suffer. Tonight he suffered a loud and smelly bedfellow. Soon he’d suffer her death. Ruby was old and sick more days than she was well. He promised to put her down when her tail stopped wagging. When her tail stopped, then her heart must; she would be ready to go. “My sweet,” he said, petting her. Charlie also suffered Dalia, a bedfellow of a different sort. She made it damn near impossible to sleep. God willing, her death would come as her absence. Charlie would send her away. To be happy, to be safe. To have agency again. To work. To find home. To grow old there, if that’s what she wanted; or to go somewhere else, if she disliked Boston. It was boring! It was cold! Dalia would hate it there! The idea of Dalia’s hating a place she would be free to leave—well, Charlie had never been so happy and so miserable at the same time. Fortunately, the call to dawn prayer thrust him from that fragile state. “Fuck,” said Charlie. He hadn’t slept. He hadn’t even undressed. That made getting dressed easier. He smelled his shirt to make sure it was fine to wear again. Or wear still. His shirt passed the test, barely. Now Charlie was ready for work. He’d intended to eat toast on the way out, but forgot to toast it; he ate stale bread instead. It tasted like the plastic bag it came in.
It was Friday, April 1. Still early. There was no light in the sky. Nor any cabs in the street. “Funny,” said Charlie to God, might there be one cursing him. “You’re very funny.” He jogged from his door to Sharia Tahrir, the main drag heading east across the river. His rush was spurred by the idea that Omran had started packing. In an ideal world, Omran would calm down. He’d stay in Boston a while longer. Maybe a lot longer. That way Charlie would have time to help Dalia immigrate through legal means. Was a domestic appeal, such as family reunification, a viable option? Could he fast-track Dalia through the visa queue after Omran was granted—well, if he was granted—American citizenship? Or was a green card enough? Could Omran, as a resident alien, sponsor his wife? If so, how long would that take? Maybe a few years. Maybe five years. Worst-case scenario, was five years that bad? Worst-case scenario was more like ten years, or never. The math, stretching toward infinity, convinced Charlie that what remained of the legal route was, at best, impractical and, at worst, a sham. The only real way forward was to finish what he’d started. If Charlie could forge another resettlement petition, an urgent one, before Omran quit his job and got his passport, providing irrefutable evidence that Dalia was coming to America, then catastrophe would be averted. Charlie would be directly responsible for reducing, not increasing, the number of refugees in Egypt. More important, he’d finally atone for the crime of loving Dalia by making it impossible to love her. What yearning not killed by time would be killed by distance. Fifty-four hundred miles of sand and salt water, to be exact.
Charlie jogged all the way to the Dokki metro stop before he saw any cabs. He was yet thwarted. The few cabs speeding by were already occupied; the others, parked by the curb, lacked drivers. “Now you’re just being mean,” said Charlie, glaring skyward. Next he tried the metro, but found a locked gate at the bottom of the stairs. “Fucking gate.” He shook it. “This isn’t supposed to be here! Somebody isn’t doing their job!” He retreated up the stairs and checked the parked cabs again, just in case. He glared at the sky a final time. “I don’t know how people suffer your wickedness.” Then Charlie jogged east across the river. The burn in his lungs felt good, but also horrible. He needed to stop drinking. He needed to eat better. He needed a gym membership. The Nile, thought Charlie, was too wide. Jogging across turned his work outfit into a sweat rag. Then, right before Tahrir the street became Tahrir the square, Charlie turned left and descended the stairs to the corniche. He didn’t want to disturb the protesters. Or worse, anger them. As if they might intuit his bitterness and, as punishment, beat him to death with their signs. Not that Charlie was against the protesters or their dream of jailing Mubarak and his nefarious sons, who had appropriated public money for private wants. Arresting them was a noble cause, to be sure. Praying they’d die in prison was less noble, but still just. If not just, then justifiable. Still, the whole thing hampered his work. Not only had the revolution scared half his interns out of the country, but it drew Aos from the office nearly every day. Before, after, sometimes even during work. Charlie had long disguised his worry for Aos’ safety as disapproval of his desire to protest. When Aos arrived at the office in the mornings straight from the square having not slept and smelling badly of smoke, looking as if he wanted to talk—needed to talk, had witnessed something—Charlie would pretend he wasn’t perceptive, hadn’t noticed, and couldn’t offer to discuss much less relieve any burden. The ignoble behavior was excused, at least in Charlie’s heart, by his intentions. A despondent Aos might avoid the square. Thus its danger. Perhaps his death.
The long route to the office—north along the corniche, then east onto Ramses—ended by the Nasser metro stop, named after the pan-Arab and doggedly socialist president who’d survived numerous assassination attempts only to succumb to his bad habits. The heavy smoker had a family history of heart disease and had repeatedly been warned by his brothers’ fates. But Nasser’s apparent immunity to political rivalry had deafened him to the whine of what must’ve felt like the lesser threat: his own body. He was only fifty-two when he died. The Lebanese Le Jour bewailed that all Arabs were made orphans by his death, not just Egyptians. The headline testified to Egypt’s once-great standing as the heart of the Arab world. Politically, but also culturally. The country’s greatest exports had been its movies, books, and art.
Crossing the intersection above the metro stop—Ramses going one way, 26th of July Street going the other—was like playing Frogger in real life. The fast-moving traffic refused to stop under any circumstances. But traffic at that hour was light. Charlie dashed across without dying or even thinking he’d nearly died. No chicken heart beat under his cotton shirt. His heart raced for plainer reasons: the long jog, the humid weather, the idea that Dalia could be stuck in Egypt for life. Such pounding didn’t mix well with Charlie’s unprecedented hangover, which had lasted all of Thursday—he’d taken his first sick leave in four years—and was just now beginning to tail off. He sat on the curb for a few minutes to wait out the queasiness. An errant plane in the sky, revealed in such darkness by the red flashing lights on its wings, reminded Charlie that Tim had flown back to his war. Good riddance, he thought. Also, and reluctantly, good luck.
Charlie carried on to the office after the worst of the nausea had passed. Round the corner, down the block, through the gate. To his dismay, the office door was already unlocked and the lights had already been switched on. Charlie’s plan had been to arrive so early there was no chance anyone else would be there. He had things to do that ought not to be witnessed. “Hello?” asked Charlie after the door’s spring hinges cried out. First in pain at stretching, then in joy as they compressed again. He felt a twinge of guilt for seeing Aos and still wanting solitude. Couldn’t Aos be trusted? Hadn’t he already been told? Still, Charlie loved how the office felt in the early morning when the only sounds were his own breathing and the coffee machine failing to work properly. He loved sitting at his desk with an insurmountable task before him, and starting anyway. He loved perching on the edge of a lonely morning only to hear the door open at the right time.
“I couldn’t sleep,” said Aos. He opened his eyes as wide as possible, then held them open with his fingers. “Like this, all night.” The whites were strawberry. “I had work to do, so I came in. A few hours ago, I think. What time is it?”
Charlie’s eyes were also strawberry, or at least felt like strawberries. Almost granular. He made a show of parting the blinds and peering out the window. “The sky is barely light at the edges. The traffic is, eh, not the worst I’ve ever seen. What is that? Five? Six?” He walked to the kitchen and filled the coffeepot with tap water. He’d been told not to drink tap
water on account of heavy metals, but, like Nasser, believed greater dangers would get him first. “It’s hard to know for sure. I forgot my watch. At home, I think. I hope so.” Losing the watch would be an insult to his mother, who’d offered the antique ticker in lieu of a maudlin good-bye. Dying had made her oddly practical and painfully frank. “I know you hate it here,” she’d croaked from her bed. It had been late spring at the time. Hail nonetheless pecked the window. “Truth be told, I’ve always felt the same way.”
Aos perched in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall, resting his back against the doorframe as if he was settling in for what looked to be a dismal chat. It was unlike Aos to be so grave. “I almost got run over by a horse on my way here. Can you believe that? There wasn’t even a carriage attached. Just a kid on a horse on the sidewalk shouting, ‘Whoop, whoop.’ I could feel the animal’s hair as it ran past, whipping me.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t a donkey? And the boy wasn’t an old man taking his carrots to the juice shop? And the whoop wasn’t the driver bidding you to step aside lest he cream you? The old men take their carrots to the juice shops in the morning before the traffic is bad.”
“I don’t know what I saw.” Aos expelled his doubt in a sigh. “There was a lot of wind. If it wasn’t a horse, it was a storm.”
Charlie hit the power button on the coffeepot, but the water wouldn’t drip. He tapped the side of the coffeepot with his finger. When the water finally started dripping, Charlie said, “This machine . . . I’m telling you. What it lacks in reliability, it makes up for in life span.” The rhythm of the dripping hypnotized Charlie, who was predisposed to that kind of thing; he’d had more than his fair share of out-of-body experiences. He saw himself in Hana’s office failing to change her mind. He saw himself leaving Dalia to perish in the sand. He saw Omran, stricken with grief, wading into the ocean. “I’m just going to say what I’ve got to say,” said Charlie, snapping out of it. “I’m sorry, I should’ve told you before.”
“I didn’t know you were withholding.” Aos poured his share of the coffee and sipped the hot, black magma without even blowing the steam.
“I’m not going to appeal Dalia’s case. . . .”
Aos, in a clear case of jumping the gun, moved to give Charlie a hug. As if he was sorry, but ultimately thought it was the right decision; there was no time to waste on a lost cause, disheartening as that may be.
“. . . I’m going to forge a new one from scratch.”
“Huh?” Aos froze in an awkward position. His arms had been lifted slightly in preparation for his sorry embrace. “What do you mean, a new case? Dalia’s case was rejected. That’s it. We move on.”
“I went to Hana’s office. I had to see her. I told you.”
Aos retreated. Then gulped his hot coffee and made a pained face. “I thought you were joking. I mean, having a moment of crisis that would later become a joke. I know how you are. Everybody knows.”
“Well, I . . .”
“Oh, God. You really went.”
“Look, I—”
“What did you say?”
“Greetings, strange, callused life-form.”
Aos tried to smooth his hair. Not that it needed smoothing; the smoothing only made things worse. A lick of hair, broken free from the gel, stuck up. “Please, tell me what you said. Tell me what you wanted.”
“A yellow card. It’s just a piece of paper. It’s not like I . . .”
Aos walked back to his desk, sat down, and resumed translating documents. He gripped his pen with such rancor that Charlie assumed Aos was writing through the paper and on the desk. Soon he’d be writing on the floor. Not even wood could endure such irate scribbling.
“We can’t reform the system,” said Charlie after a few distressing seconds. “The only thing we can do is subvert it. You said so yourself about Mubarak. ‘Subversion is the only way to even the odds when you have no money and no power.’ Word for word, I think. We were playing chess at the time. You’d recently taken my rook with your knight.”
“I never said that!” shouted Aos. He looked as if he wanted to stand up and march around the room in an angry rectangle. “That’s not something I’d say. Without rules, there’d be chaos. I love rules. I follow rules.”
“Except the ones declared by your government. Do those rules get their own category? Are they exempt because you chose them?”
“Don’t even,” said Aos. “I don’t want to talk about . . .”
“What? The revolution? That thing lying dead in the street? That thing that has failed and will fail to change anything?”
Aos took a while to breathe again. “I forgive you for saying that.”
How could Charlie express regret without apologizing? To apologize at that point in the argument would be to admit defeat. “I shouldn’t have gone there. It’s not my business.”
“Injustice is everybody’s business. You of all people . . .”
“Look, my point is—”
Aos slapped his hands together. “You’re conflating rules and laws to make a point that’s not fair.” Aos was calm, but only in comparison to the loud sound he’d just made with his hands. “Really! Rules and laws aren’t the same. The former are instituted in good faith, often by committee. The United Nations is a committee, isn’t it? They don’t wield any real power. Laws are instituted by lawmakers, who are instituted by whoever paid for their campaigns. Who absolutely do wield power! And lack conscience! To say they’re the same—God, Charlie. What have you done?”
“Nothing yet. But I have a plan.”
“What plan? More importantly, what motive? You’re too close. Too biased.”
“I am biased. By my conscience. That word you just mentioned. Conscience. C-O-N—”
“How can you say that? You can’t say that after you tell me you love her. Like you’d do this for everyone else.” Then: “You haven’t told Dalia, have you? Oh, God. Please tell me you haven’t told her.”
“What would I say? ‘So, we’ve spent all this time together talking—and entirely by accident, I’ve fallen . . . and now I’m going to . . .”
“Oh, no. No, no.”
“It’s not like I have a choice.”
“That argument wasn’t valid the first time. Why are you still using it?”
“The heart wants what it—”
“Please, shut up.” Aos removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “You’ll be deported. You’ll be hung from the bridge by your neck.”
“By who? The government? What government?” Charlie’s wild gesture—guns blazing—was meant to indicate that Egypt was like Montana before it became a state; there was no law in those plains. “It’s less complicated than you think. There’s only one document we can’t forge. The yellow card. Only someone inside the UNHCR can issue that. That’s why I went to see Hana.”
“Don’t count me as part of your plan,” said Aos. “I don’t even know what your plan is.”
“I’m trying to tell you.”
Aos refilled his coffee, then continued burning his throat. “What did Hana say? She was willing to give you a yellow card, just like that?”
“She’ll come around. All we need is leverage.”
“What leverage? Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I can’t believe I just asked that. I should be ashamed. I am ashamed.”
By now, Charlie’s first cup of coffee was the perfect temperature. He swallowed the contents without enjoying the flavor, then waited impatiently for the effect. Hopefully a clearer mind would make sharper points.
“What do Sabah and Michael have to say about this?” asked Aos. “I can’t believe they’re on board. Did you brainwash them? Did you promise them paid vacations? You know there’s nothing left in the budget for—”
“I’d rather not discuss the budget,” bemoaned Charlie. “And, no, I didn’t tell them. Nor am I going to. We have other clients and they need lawyers who aren’t . . . well, I’ll say it plainly. Who aren’t involved.” Charlie regre
tted saying other clients. He should’ve said hundreds of other clients. He should’ve said a legion of suffering. The legion was growing every day, both in size and sorrow. “Michael and Sabah are liable if they know. Protecting them is the only way to protect our clients.”
“What about me? I’m liable, too. Not that I’m going to do this, because I’m not. I could go to jail. Where? Abdeen? Tora Mazraa? Good-bye, hot food or even sufficient cold food. Good-bye, soap and water. Good-bye, personal space. I’d have to use a man’s soiled thigh as a neck rest. That’s probably not good for my posture and definitely not good for my . . .” Aos had to wash his hands just thinking about it. “Imagine weeks, months, even years of beatings and sleep deprivation. Then at the end of it all you just disappear.”
“So, about leverage.” Charlie took his turn to lean on the doorframe. The polish on the wood in that spot was long gone from all the leaning. “We write a new case, unrelated to Dalia, and submit it. Mark it urgent. You know, using the medical-necessity angle to our advantage. Really harp on that side of things. Are you listening?” Aos nodded; cold water poured from the sink. “The case is a whole family. There are kids involved. One died already. The older one. Another is sick and declining fast. Probably terminal. Mom’s the primary client. Her kid can’t be treated in Egypt. Money’s not the issue so much as geography. Her kid is twentysomething. I don’t know. A little older. But once a child always a child, right? Parents always love what they make. He’s really sick and needs out. Lupus. Cancer. Something. The mother is frantic. We submit the case and it gets stuck, as usual, in the review process. On Hana’s desk.”
“What’s that supposed to accomplish?”
“A week after we first submit the case, we send an amendment. It’ll say, ‘Please remove X from the file.’ X being the name of her son. Hana will know why. There’s only one reason that happens. X died because the UNHCR didn’t review the case fast enough. The brilliant thing is the case won’t have time to be fully processed, so we don’t need yellow cards or medical documents. Just a testimony to get us started.”
Live from Cairo Page 13