The City Always Wins

by Omar Robert Hamilton

  * * *

  The pain in my mouth is inescapable. I try to counter it with painkillers, with ibuprofens and aspirins and acetaminophens and codeine, I coat my gums with anesthetic gels and clove oil and ice cubes, with effervescent pills and fingers dabbed in whiskey, but any progress made in numbing the pain is undone as soon as I’m asleep. I lie in bed waiting for it to start, I lie awake in the heavy, yellow dark of this city that is never silent and never still, the dark that fills itself with the names and the faces and the last breaths of the dead and is spent now waiting, waiting, waiting for what’s coming as my teeth start their primordial cracking and crunching against each other. I am here with you. I still love you. When the dream comes the pain hides. In the dream the ceilings are low, the sounds are muted, the light is dark. I walk, slowly, through the mosque’s silent antechamber into a room with a high, vaulted ceiling. I am slick with sweat, my hand aches from being clenched in my pocket. Breathe. You’re inside. In the middle of the room are two ornate carved rocks: Ishaq and Refqa. Isaac and Rebekah. Side by side but not touching, each eternally alone in the vast dark of the cave beneath. A cool wind rises to greet me. A hand closes around my heart. My neck aches and my skin burns. The walls are cracked. Bullet holes. How many bullets, Baruch, did you unleash here? How many before you had a moment of doubt? I am pulled toward one, the wind breathing me in toward its emptiness, my back is burning, the metal splinters want their freedom, and then I know it’s her. It’s you, isn’t it? Is it now? The bullet hole is breathing, sighing, and I’m touching it and it is not cool to the touch but warm and it is not breathing but bleeding and when I pull my hand away it is dripping red and all the other bullet holes are sighing out little breaths of blood and the green paint above me is fracturing and dripping and a flood is gathering, spreading out like a thunderstorm across the mosque’s vaulted sky above. This is the place. This is my name. This is the end. It has happened, at last. When I turn she’s behind me: the doctor, the darkness, her hand outstretched. I follow her out into the streets but the road ahead is dark and she is far ahead and then everything is illuminated by a cloud of white fire by spreading in the sky and from it burning white tentacles are falling and a man is on fire. This was all for you, Bouazizi. Is all for you. We will finish it for you. The doctor turns back and with a great voice like a mountain says: “There are more than can ever be named and you shall name them.”

  * * *

  The street outside is silent. There are two tanks stationed in two pools of silent yellow streetlight and I think of the bats and the river trees and walking with Mariam and the silence of the 18 Days and how I’d stretch my hand out over the river and I feel my rib cage straining to open itself to let an old and warm and lost part of the world into it, to let the bats and the night and the silence into it, to become not alone for a moment. Rania, Rosa, Hafez—we all live minutes apart from one another. Mosquitoes flit effortlessly between our private worlds but we sit alone in our crumbling apartments and plug instead into our cyberpsyche of chats and kisses and matching opinions and block and like and report buttons, retreating from the world that is cold and hard and dark into our digital city of filtered control and clarity.

  “Sisi posters!” a lone voice echoes up from the street. “Sisi IDs! Sisi everything! The Revolution continues!”

  I close the balcony door but the words still shiver through.

  * * *

  The African wild dog has the highest kill rate of any animal. The wild dog hunts antelope in broad daylight. It is not faster or stronger than the antelope. It can’t run farther. But it has a plan and doesn’t question it. The pack fans out—quickly—flanking the deer, forcing it left, then right, then left again, wearing it down with a deadly geometry. Soon the antelope is exhausted. Soon it is dead. The wild dog hunts mathematically. It has a plan. It doesn’t question it.

  We could have seen. The July sit-in. The 2011 heat of summer. The bituminous barrens of Tahrir soaking up the July sun and steaming it back out through the day and through the night and there was nowhere the heat couldn’t get to. The days melting into one another, nerves fraying and fights flaring up. On the fringes of the square were rumors of constant attacks, men with knives and rocks, and Molotov cocktails biting at the borderlands. Inside, Tahrir swarmed with narcs and plainclothes officers circling around us with their mobile phone cameras while state television barked day and night about the swamp of immorality festering in the middle of the city. We tried to end it, to withdraw on our terms, but the men on security refused to leave their posts and we, the nice revolutionists, wouldn’t leave anyone to stand alone.

  Two days later those same men were wearing military-grade body armor and pulling people out of their tents. I watched from the sides as our ex-comrades tore down the camp, watched them laugh as they beat and arrested everyone they could grab hold of.

  The wild dog hunts mathematically, it hunts with a system. If the deer could hold a straight line, it would get away. The deer is faster. But it is hard—impossible, maybe—in the thicket.

  * * *

  Across the landing a neighbor now leaves his door open, his television blaring out for all to hear:

  We must be aware of infiltrators! We must be vigilant! Constant vigilance! Spies are among us. British spies look like Arabs but they have military training! American spies pose as tourists and take photographs of sensitive buildings! Palestinian spies survey our prisons constantly, looking for weak spots to spring their leaders! If you see something, say something!

  I wish we’d taken Maspero.

  * * *

  Everything is buried so deep the old man can’t even cry. His boy is dead and he can’t go home and fall into his wife’s arms, pull his children onto his lap. He can’t sit quietly with his friends until it all comes pouring out. He can never feel the break. He’ll never let himself. Ramadan Ali’s father’s tie is knotted and his suit is clean and he’s here.

  “You know, of course, sir, we’re gathering testimonies about what happened at Abu Zaabal. The government must be held to account,” Mariam says.

  I have two microphones set up. One on his lapel and one on the table. I wait for her signal to start recording. I will get back in the game. Ramadan Ali’s story has to be told. It doesn’t matter if no one downloads it, it will be there, a testament, and one day it will be needed. I’m getting back in the game.

  The old man is hesitant. Mariam pulls her chair a little closer to his and says gently, “We want to bring your son’s killers to justice.”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Where would you like to begin?” Mariam asks.

  He clears his throat.

  “Let me get you some water first.”

  She moves quickly into the kitchen. The Chaos office is all but abandoned, though the water’s still connected. Maybe we can build from this.

  She places the glass in front of him. “Take your time: if you could please tell me what happened.”

  “Yes. My son was on his way to work. He works close to Rabaa al-Adawiya Square. He was on his way there when the sit-in was dispersed. We live close by. He was arrested. At random. There’s a video of his arrest that I think you’ve seen. We visited with him in the police station, his mother and I. He was fine. And then we got a phone call. When I … when I went to the morgue. They tell me it’s my boy. They tell me it’s Ramadan. I don’t know. They gassed them. They threw a gas canister into the truck. The police. They burned them. He looked burned.”

  A new banner is strung across the street below. In bold red lettering read the words MARTYRS OF THE REVOLUTION above photographs of dozens of policemen.

  Afterward, I hold her hand in the cold and I realize how long it’s been since we touched each other.

  * * *

  ABU RAMADAN

  It’s not that he’s scared. He just thinks he’ll be sick. How can you walk out there? How can you breathe? When he thinks about the heat, the horns, the sunlight shining off the hood of a car as you cross
the road in front of it, the shouting, the fumes. The fumes. He can feel them creeping into his throat, pulling into his lungs, stealing his last breaths. The fumes. My son. My beloved son. Did you know it was over? Did you have a chance to say a last word, think a last thought? Did you fight the other men, did you try, did you come close? Or was it over from the start? My boy. The city is gas and heat and fighting and suffocation. How long did it take? Did they hear you, the men outside? The police. Did the man who threw the canister into the truck—did he stay to listen to you dying inside? My boy. My boy. How do you take your last breath when there is no breath to be had? My boy. The whole world is your death.

  * * *

  Mariam’s phone rings and I see her body freeze, as it does every time now. It is never good news.

  “Hello, Tante,” she says, and I know that it is Umm Ayman. “How are you? No, I’m not doing anything. You saw the email? Yes, we’re going to do a human chain on the bridge. Yes, we have to focus on small things for now. I know. What? I don’t understand? But, Tante…” Mariam gets up so she can pace, walks to the kitchen.

  When she comes back she almost doubles over herself with tears.

  * * *

  UMM AYMAN

  She can’t stand on another stage or talk to another camera and declare eternal revolution. So many have died, she can’t have another life on her conscience. She can’t send any more young men to their deaths.

  What would Ayman have had her do?

  Every time she joined a protest, every time she joined a call for disobedience, every time she used her son’s name to push his revolution forward she cut short a young life. She can’t do it anymore. She can’t speak for him, she can’t tell people what to believe, or what she believes Ayman would have done, or what might lead us to justice. She can’t sit with another young mother returned from the morgue. She can’t carry the names of all the dead anymore. There is no stopping them. They will kill them all. We have to find a new way. Every protest, every human chain, every time we set foot outside they shoot to kill. She can’t send any more young people to their deaths.

  * * *

  We stand in cold silence along 6th October Bridge. I hold up a poster. FREEDOM FOR ALAA, it says. Hafez and Mariam’s says FREEDOM FOR ASHRAF. Each of the Shoura Council detainees has a poster. We hold them in silence.

  The cars drive past, unlooking, hundreds, thousands of them keep their eyes firmly fixed ahead.

  Alaa, it was only yesterday that all of Cairo shook with your name and your face flew on banners from Oakland to Manila. Only yesterday that you marched into the military court to denounce it before the captivated audiences of the world. You had so many friends once. We were prime time once.

  We stand outside a courthouse. We stand on a bridge. We run from the tear gas and the plainclothes and the shotguns and the informants. We stand on a bridge. Fifty, sixty people where once there were ten thousand.

  * * *

  There was an old man. Years ago now. We were having one of the first Chaos meetings in a café. He was sitting at the table next to ours. He kept glancing up at Rania as she was holding forth about all the earth-shattering things we were going to do. “Something the matter?” she said.

  “No. Sorry. No, nothing,” he said, and turned back to his coffee, his paper. How cowed, I thought, these old bourgeois are. But he couldn’t stop listening to us. After a minute he got up the courage. “It’s just—I wanted to say … I’m sorry but I heard a little of your conversation. And … we’re all behind you, you kids, so, please, don’t stop what you’re doing.”

  I keep thinking of that man, that reflex of shallow pride burning in my throat.

  * * *

  I can’t remember the last time I saw the horizon. Sitting up here in the Virginian, its sprawling terrace overlooking the city lost in smog, the waiters hiding inside, the furniture unchanged since 1970. I gather my collar up. I was unprepared for this winter’s cold.

  “Fucking fascists.” Hafez is talking to his phone. I don’t read Twitter anymore. Egypt. Terrorism. Security. Stability. There are only four words left. Hafez has cut his hair off. I’m sure my own is starting to fall out. I leave him to read his bad news. The city simmers beyond. Through the graying green cloud of pollution a few higher buildings mark themselves out around Downtown, and beyond them like an eternal middle finger rises the Tower of Shame, looming above the skyline, empty, vast, forever unfinished, reaching up through the fumes like a sci-fi signal to our future of ruin. Our Chrysler Building, our expression of our own age in steel.

  There are no birds in the sky.

  “What do you do when nobody looks anymore?” Hafez says. “What’s the point in taking photographs or making podcasts when everybody already knows what you’re saying? They don’t just know it—they like it.”

  “Mariam thinks we shouldn’t stop. She thinks what matters is consistency, just saying we’re still here.”

  “No, you need to be shocking. Each time has to be more shocking than the last. Which is impossible.”

  We fall into a silence.

  Were we not supposed to be the new New York? It was supposed to be unstoppable. We were the future. But the same guys always win. New York. You think all that beautiful progress of yours, all that music of your father’s, didn’t come with a price? The same price as always. War. Always war. There can be no peace without war. The modern world was birthed by the machine gun. Don’t forget it, it wasn’t music, wasn’t your father’s jazz, wasn’t Ulysses who did shit. It was the Maxim gun. Modernism was born in the trenches. It’s the same playbook every time. War and peace. War and reconstruction contracts. Destroy the South and charge for the Reconstruction. Say you liberated a people and build New York from the spoils. Destroy Iraq and charge for reconstruction. Say you liberated a people. Burn it down and send in Bechtel, Halliburton, BP. Play it smart like the Israelis. Sell the bullet and the cement. Again and again. So don’t whine about progress. Don’t talk about change unless you want to pay the price. Progress means destruction and you have to choose which side you’re with: the steam engine or the men laying the track.

  After a while Hafez turns to me and says, “You know I was there—”

  “Where?”

  “When that doctor … the one you … in Mohamed Mahmoud.”

  Suddenly the setting sun is hitting my face directly. “I didn’t see you.”

  “I know,” Hafez says. “I was filming. When I saw you, I stopped. I don’t know why. My thumb just pressed the button and I stopped. It felt wrong. But now, I don’t know. Maybe it was more wrong not to film it. Back then it used to make a difference. A pretty woman dying on film—”

  “Stop.”

  * * *

  I don’t remember it being so cold in the 18 Days. The days were bright and clear and cheering us on. And the nights? The Camel Battle was hot with flame and energy but the later nights, those dark middle nights, they must have been cold. I can still see Tahrir as it was. At least I think I can. Men from the countryside, their heads wrapped in scarves, their thicker wraps around their shoulders. It had rained. The burning remains of the Camel Battle had been cleared away and the paranoia of the state was worming in: foreigners, spies, Zionists, terrorists—all are hard at work bringing the country to her knees. People huddled in groups around small fires, sharing what spaces of blanket there are, waiting for the next attack. A low mist hung over the gray morning. Will they come with guns again? We will struggle, with these numbers. Delegations from the other revolutionary cities—Suez, Alexandria, Fayoum, Mansoura, Luxor, Aswan—have made camp and are in conversation. They are ambassadors, they come with a mandate. What is decided in Tahrir will be followed throughout the country.

  Alexandria, they say, has become autonomous. The government has disappeared entirely from its streets and civilian brigades are running the city. From Luxor one man jokes how his brother has kept a unit of policemen under siege for four days. Four days! He howls with laughter. They sent them in some water
and said they’ll let them go when Mubarak falls. Everyone bursts into hysterics. I was an engineer, a taxi driver, a teacher, a carpenter, a soldier, a civil servant. My life was not as it should be. My children’s lives … So here I am.

  But my memories are slipping, fading at the edges.

  * * *

  There’s a piece of paper in the trash. I can’t help but pick it out. It’s one of Mariam’s lists.

  Collect letters for prison

  Food rota for prison

  Books for Ashraf

  * * *

  She dresses quickly in the morning.

  “I’m going to help Ashraf’s mother with her shopping,” she says.

  Mariam has become close with Ashraf’s mother, helps her coordinate the food schedule with the other families.

  “You should take a short break,” I say. She hasn’t stopped for a day since Rabaa. I can see her hand trembling when she eats.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Ashraf has a big family. You don’t have to take this on.”

  “I know. I want to.”

  “But you can’t do it forever.”

  “No. Not forever. Just until he’s out.”

  Then she’s gone and I’m alone again in the emptiness of the apartment. How long will we carry on like this? Do we still see anything in each other beyond the memory of our failures?

  * * *

  I sit on a plastic chair outside the prison wall. My phone is dead and I didn’t bring a book. Ashraf’s case is being heard in an emergency terrorism court inside Tora Prison. They don’t let us in to watch the proceedings. So we sit outside. I watch four egrets picking through the pile of trash that no one even sees anymore. They are supposed to be white. A brilliant and proud white, but these wading birds are long grayed by the trash they hunt through. I see the bats flitting through the trees on the Corniche during the silent nights of the 18 Days. Adapt or die. The egrets have made a choice, given up on grace and beauty in exchange for survival here.

  Mariam sits next to the mother of one of the Shoura Council prisoners, pen and paper in hand. She moves from one parent to another, she knows them all, has a respectful rapport with each.