Live from Cairo

by Ian Bassingthwaighte

  Charlie, Hana, and Michael crowded around a window facing the square. It was a tight squeeze, but they were rewarded with a fine view: Tahrir, the streets going into and out of Tahrir, the Mugamma, the protesters, the water trucks, the traffic created by their obtrusive parking, the smog, and, between the Arab League and the InterContinental Hotel, a glimpse of the river. They were four or five or maybe six stories up. The protesters in the square were small, but not tiny. Charlie could see, if he squinted, some of the facial expressions: stoic, scared, impatient, angry, confused, lost, tired, and one young man looking enamored of another young man he was holding. Not in an especially romantic way. Just by the crook of his arm. The romance was contained in his face. One man pressed against the other before moving away again. Nobody cared. Or, more likely, nobody noticed. It was sad and beautiful and hard to watch. It was also hard not to watch it.

  The water trucks prepared to spray the protesters by spraying the road. Presumably to test the strength of their cannons. Even though the pressure wasn’t turned all the way up, the water made a slapping sound when it struck the pavement. It pained Charlie to imagine the sound it would make striking flesh. He scanned the crowd for the two people he loved desperately. “Where the fuck is Aos? Or Sabah? Where the fuck is Sabah? Do you see either of them? Will you point them out?”

  The crowd wasn’t huge, but the protesters were huddling in groups and turning to face the different water trucks positioned at various points around the square. What protester wanted to get hit in the back by the water cannons? They just kept turning because there was always a truck aiming at them from behind. Such was the fate of protesters who’d been surrounded.

  “There’s Aos!” said Hana.

  “There’s Sabah!” said Michael.

  “Show me!” said Charlie, still not seeing them.

  Hana and Michael pointed to the same place: a man and woman standing shoulder to shoulder and, unlike their compatriots, not moving. It made them harder to see. Aos and Sabah must’ve accepted the water cannons would be aimed at their backs no matter what direction they faced and so had just chosen one. East, thankfully. Toward the colonial building in which Charlie, Hana, and Michael had perched.

  Charlie tried waving to them. When that didn’t work, he cupped his hands and shouted into the makeshift loudspeaker. “Go back to the office! Or home if you must! Please don’t stay in the square!” Neither Aos nor Sabah looked up. They didn’t even look around. Charlie tried to shout louder and cup his hands at a more perfect angle. “I swear to God I’ll fire you if you don’t leave!” But his voice just wouldn’t travel that far.

  The trucks began “watering the grass.” One at first, then the others, until all the trucks were spraying water. The pressure, which had been turned way up, accomplished the opposite of the presumed goal. Instead of softening the dirt beneath the sod, it just tore the sod away. The protesters, too, were torn. They were torn off their feet. Some were even torn out of their clothes. A scarf went flying. Shoes went flying. As more water sprayed at higher velocity, more of the sod was torn up. Eventually one of the trucks turned left to spray a different part of the square. A few protesters in that section were still dry. The spray became a kind of mist as the truck turned into the wind. Every second the light got more ironic. Soon a tiny rainbow was in the cannon’s mist.

  “Would you look at that,” said Hana.

  “I can’t watch anymore,” said Michael, but he kept watching.

  “It’s horrible,” said Charlie, the most mesmerized of them all. “It’s sick.” It was impossible not to look at the catastrophe unfolding in muddy slow motion. The stream of water making the rainbow, once aimed properly, hit a protester in the chest. He fell back, stood up, fell back again. He rolled a meter or so before coming to a stop. He stopped in the sitting position. The spray of water followed his trail in the mud. The protester didn’t bother moving. He must’ve known there was no escape. He covered his face with his hands as mud covered his body. When the spray moved on to another protester, the mud-covered man looked as if he’d met eyes with Medusa: he’d become a dripping statue of his former self.

  “I asked Sabah if we could leave this place,” said Michael, as if he were recounting an argument that had started months ago and had continued ever since. He wasn’t even mad anymore. Just beat up. “She said she’ll never leave home in this condition. But if home were in better condition, there’d be no reason to leave. Get it? She tricked me.” Michael turned to leave, then turned to stay, then turned to leave again. “I don’t know what to do.” He faced away from the square. “I don’t know what to say to her.”

  Charlie, hypnotized by the violence before him, couldn’t turn away from the sight of Aos and Sabah shaking their fists at the water trucks. Mud covered them when torrents converged near their feet. Inexplicably, they ran toward the water. It punched them to the ground. They stood up and ran again. The water punched them in the face this time. The way their heads flew back convinced Charlie that they’d been internally decapitated. While their heads were still technically on their bodies, in Charlie’s mind no neck bone or spinal cord could’ve survived such a blow. Thankfully Aos and Sabah rose from the dead before Charlie could panic or faint. It looked as if they had bloody noses. Or mud had gone up their noses was coming back out a more vibrant color. They shouted—obscenities, probably—at the water trucks. And ran toward them again. A new and profound fear accosted Charlie. What if Sabah and Aos actually reached the water trucks? What would the soldiers do? Pull out their rifles? Shoot without warning them first? The fear abated when the water punched them to the ground again. Aos and Sabah slid back to their starting positions. The cycle repeated itself until exhaustion overwhelmed their rage. They sat down in despair. Mud covered them again when torrents converged near their feet. Aos kept shouting, though he’d switched from obscenities to what must’ve been prayers. His head bowed just slightly. God let the army stand down! God let the army stand down! When those prayers went unanswered, Aos stood and ran again toward the water trucks. He broke away from the group he was with, including Sabah. He was alone now. The water, having nowhere else to go, blasted him squarely in the chest. Aos fell hard and slid back in a weird position. He was lying facedown in the mud. “Stand up!” shouted Charlie. “Don’t lie that way!” But his voice drowned in other voices shouting other things. “Stand up! Aos! Please!” Charlie leaned so far through the window that he seriously risked falling out. He could feel either Hana or Michael holding him. “Stand up, damn it! Aos! Stand up!” Protesters in the square shouted and waved at the soldiers to divert their spray from Aos’ body. But the soldiers weren’t heeding the call for mercy. The water just kept pounding him. Charlie finally pulled his head from the window. He couldn’t watch anymore. This wasn’t happening. “God would never kill such a good man,” Charlie said to himself. He just kept saying that.

  11

  The second-to-last thing Omran did before catching a bus from South Station to New York, where he’d catch the EgyptAir flight to Cairo, was read the newspaper. An odd report appeared before his eyes. The army had planted grass in Tahrir. Twice, actually. The grass had been torn up the first time. The reporter suggested the grass was a gesture of goodwill that protesters had misinterpreted. A promise by the army not just to beautify, but to maintain Egypt until a good replacement for the despot could be found. Grass in Egypt required constant attention; the army would become an army of gardeners. It was a nice idea. Omran didn’t trust it at all. The last thing he did, after returning the newspaper to its rack—fittingly positioned by the tabloids—was call Dalia for a final argument over the phone. From then on, they’d fight in person. As God intended, Omran thought. He called from a pay phone using a handful of quarters. The conversation was thus limited to a few choice words.

  “Will you be there when I arrive?” asked Omran. “EgyptAir. Two thirty a.m.”

  A man at the next pay phone turned to look at Omran with an uncomfortable amount of concern; app
arently something was odd and perhaps even dangerous about an Arab man using a phone in a bus station that was also a train station that was also across the street from the Federal Reserve. Was that really a coincidence?

  “No,” said Dalia. “I won’t. I told you.”

  The sound of her crying freed Omran to do the same.

  The man at the next pay phone made wide eyes; now that the Arab had said good-bye to his family, he was ready to blow himself up.

  “I have to go now,” said Omran. “My bus leaves in—”

  His quarters ran out before he could say Good-bye or See you tomorrow. Omran directed his frustration at the man who was staring at him. “Stop watching me! I’m not a TV!” The man didn’t bother finishing his call or even hanging up. He dropped the phone and speed-walked to the other side of the terminal. He glanced back about halfway to make his disgusted face. It looked like something he’d practiced.

  Omran hardly breathed until his bus was on the interstate. He almost whooped with joy when the driver pressed the gas pedal and the engine shook the bus. The joy was in fact a different feeling he couldn’t name without admitting it existed. Boston eventually became New York; the bus became the subway, which became the plane. “Welcome aboard,” said the flight attendant. Just before takeoff the pilot said bad weather would jostle the plane. “Please,” he said, “buckle up for the entire flight.” Night fell and passed brutally. An infant with an earache in the seat in front of Omran wailed into its mother’s chest. The mother sang to her little siren quietly. Omran listened to the song. Not the words, just the rhythm of it. Her song also calmed him. Few people were on the plane, and the empty seats made the turbulence worse. Omran’s entire row was empty except for him. He prayed for God to fill at least one seat. That Omran might have someone to look at, talk to, and, in the event of an emergency, pray with: an all-purpose companion with whom to fly.

  “Hello, brother,” said a man’s voice behind Omran. Was this really the prayer God had chosen to answer? Of all the prayers Omran had sent? He turned and peered down the aisle. A head poked out a few rows back. A young man with a full beard. The hair was healthy and black.

  “Hello,” said Omran. “Feel free to move up, if you want. The whole row is . . .”

  The man was glad to move. He smelled strongly of apple tobacco and aniseed. How funny, thought Omran. The man’s last joy in America had been a uniquely Arab delight. Shisha, the water pipe. He must’ve been glad to leave. That made Omran glad, too. He was going somewhere people wanted to be. Cairo, Egypt. Where history and science and poetry and math and language and perhaps even life itself had started. It was beautiful, wasn’t it? And sacred? And blessed?

  “I’m going home for the first time in ten years,” the man said proudly. He wore a tie for the occasion. When he straightened it, Omran saw his hands shaking. “I left Cairo on scholarship. My parents made me promise that I wouldn’t stay in America forever. That I would come home, even if the money was worse and the position was less prestigious. I thought now was the time. I’ve been away much longer than I had planned at the outset. Isn’t it sad how fast years pass? At some point my parents got old.” The man pulled out a picture of his mother and father from his wallet and said their names. Yosra Rateb and Anwar Olwi Rateb. He held the picture against his heart.

  Ten hours later, Omran landed nineteen minutes late at Cairo International Airport. It was almost 3:00 a.m. The plane touched down, taxied, and parked at what Omran thought was the gate. The noise of the hatch opening cued the passengers to shuffle forward and out of the plane. The shuffling progressed to the back. Omran was glad to finally stand up and move his feet, but was surprised to discover, on reaching the hatch, that no jet bridge stretched from the plane to the terminal. Instead, stairs led to the tarmac; that led straight to a bus. His journey wasn’t over quite yet, it seemed. The bus was so air-conditioned that Omran felt cold standing in line to board. He found room in the back by the window. Then looked out the glass pane at the yellow city in the distance.

  The line through immigration wasn’t a line so much as a mob of people desperate to be reunited with whoever awaited them. It took a long time to get to the front. Omran didn’t know how long. He couldn’t bear to look at his watch. When he finally got there, the immigration officer asked him the usual questions. What are you doing in Egypt? How long will you stay? Do you have any monetary instruments in excess of a thousand Egyptian pounds? Followed by more pressing questions, but asked so lazily Omran wasn’t sure the officer really wanted the truth. Do you have a camera? Are you a reporter? Are you a spy? Do you plan on protesting? Omran said he was just a tourist on the wrong end of a nonrefundable vacation package. He’d booked the trip months ago before the revolution started. “Bein fakkeiyy il-kammaaša,” said Omran, meaning “between the pliers’ jaws.” Like a rock and a hard place. “I have always wanted to see the pyramids. Now there are no crowds. I suppose God blesses me that way.” The immigration officer stamped Omran’s papers and said, “Mawwart Masr,” then motioned him to move along. He was blocking what remained of the mob. Omran stared at his ninety-day tourist visa and wondered what happened when those ninety days were up. “Yallah,” said the immigration officer. “Get out of the way.”

  Immigration spit Omran into baggage claim, where bags slithered under black flaps. Behind the flaps, Omran could see flashes of men working. Harder, perhaps, than he would’ve liked. His blue suitcase arrived before he was ready to pull it off the carousel. Omran let it do another lap. The bag contained his whole life: four collared shirts from before the war, washed and ironed; four pleated pants, with stains on the knees and the ass from working the ditches; miscellaneous socks, undergarments, and toiletries, including an ointment designed to give his scars a more natural pigment; a prayer rug worn in five spots—where his knees, hands, and head had rested; and a card from Faisal to Dalia saying, Thanks for letting me borrow your husband and You can have him back now, but in the Arab way. Poetry and proverbs. Ending, of course, in a question. Who can subsist without love? It was Faisal’s attempt to help Dalia understand why Omran had to come back.

  The blue suitcase came round again. Every other passenger was less reluctant to collect his or her things. The mother with the formerly crying babe, sleeping now, and the man who’d wept into his tie after showing Omran the picture of his parents. The man’s hands were still shaking, but his smile was bright. A slew of other strangers, all with a story about why they were returning to Egypt today. Today, like yesterday and also tomorrow—stretching indefinitely into the future—was the middle of a revolution. Why didn’t anybody around the carousel look afraid? Or even annoyed? They were pleased to see their bags, to grab them, to go. Omran thought he should also be pleased. Wasn’t Dalia there? Wasn’t she waiting for him?

  Customs officers waved passengers through as if they didn’t care what came into their country. Drugs? Guns? Bombs? No bomb could do any real damage in comparison to the waste laid by the revolutionaries. The officers, thought Omran, were not revolutionaries. They were part of the old regime. They had government jobs. Now that the government had abandoned post, wouldn’t those jobs become vacancies filled by other men with better connections to the military? Omran heard families and friends reuniting for the first time in months or even years, and taxi drivers shouting loudly about low fares and fast drives into the city. Omran heard laughter leaking through the frosted-glass wall between him and the rest of the world.

  Finally, the blue suitcase came round a third time. Before Omran could decide whether he wanted it, a security officer pulled the suitcase off the carousel. He glared at Omran, who couldn’t meet his eyes. Omran’s conviction and bravery were gone like hand luggage he’d left on the plane. Except not on the plane. He’d left every virtue he’d ever had in Baghdad, where he’d also left his wife. How could he face her? Having no way to excuse what he’d done?

  The security officer set the blue suitcase next to Omran, who was the only passenger left by the caro
usel. The officer, a young man with a stern face, said, “Yallah.” Not just a command, but a threat. Go, now! Or else! Omran grabbed the suitcase and hurried toward customs. The official sitting there at the desk waved him through like a cow toward a slaughterhouse. Omran paused before the frosted-glass door. Though he only paused for a moment; the door, detecting his presence, opened automatically. He wasn’t near ready, but had no choice but to go. The officers were watching him. The crowd on the other side of the frosted-glass door was smaller than he’d imagined it. Families were still laughing after having met; taxi drivers were still shouting about fares and arguing with each other about whose car was in better condition. Then Omran saw Dalia standing at the back. Behind the families; behind the drivers. His heart beat like boots on a wood floor. Could everyone in the hall hear the sound? He walked toward her more slowly than he thought he ought to. On the plane, he’d imagined running and grinning widely. Omran stopped a few feet from the woman he loved. Something told him not to touch her. When and if to embrace must be her choice. He’d already done his fair share of the choosing.