Shelf Life

by Nadia Wassef

  “But for you, it’s a passion?” I smiled. I appreciated her honesty.

  She nodded. “I studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Zamalek. I dreamed of being a sculptor. Before that, I wanted to be an architect, but my father told me it was a man’s profession.” She paused. “But really, how many women can balance a demanding husband, his demanding children, and a career without going insane?”

  “Hmm.” I pivoted. “There aren’t any women in the books you’re buying. There was so much avant-garde design in Egypt from the thirties onward, but showing and championing female artists was still too radical.” I wasn’t sure whether I meant to be comforting or critical, only that I wanted to keep my personal life and views private.

  She studied me. “Perhaps my father was right. Or unforgivably wrong.”

  “The problem today goes beyond the lack of women architects. It’s the lack of architects, period. They’ve been replaced by civil engineers, designers with technical expertise but no aesthetic sense.”

  “And that’s how we end up with neighborhoods like Mohandiseen,” she lamented.

  “Exactly. Now, please allow me to leave you in the very capable hands of Hussein,” I said, as I led her toward the stacks of vibrant spines he had theatrically assembled on top of the display cases he’d cleared for this very purpose. He was a quick study. Nihal had hesitated in hiring him, because during his interview, he confessed that he knew nothing about books, coming from the hospitality industry. Then he’d made a wild claim that he could tell what customers wanted before he’d even spoken to them. Nihal decided he was full of shit. Hind agreed, and suggested that for this reason alone, we should try him out at Mohandiseen. This was new territory for Diwan, and we needed people who could think on their feet, who might succeed outside our usual (cultured, literary) customer base. The fact that, after several weeks of training, Hussein didn’t know shit about books was less important than his affable affect and his ability to understand, and charm, a broad spectrum of people.

  As I watched the woman leave the shop, I thought about what it was she’d wanted, and if she’d gotten it. Her precise specifications about color and measurement suggested that she’d bought the books as decorative furnishings, works of art. But her confession revealed that her interest was more than merely aesthetic: the books cataloged the private aspirations she’d abandoned at her father’s direction. It was obvious that her husband would use the new collection as a symbolic extension of his wealth and sophistication. I wondered if he even knew about her early ambitions, if he’d ever asked.

  * * *

  There was one genre missing from Art and Design: the do-it-yourself home improvement book, which was very popular with American publishers. The industry simply doesn’t exist in Egypt. We hire handymen, carpenters, electricians, and plumbers, whose skills are passed down through generations of families, or gained through community apprenticeships, to do these jobs. Several of the builders and contractors whom I worked with had begun their professional lives in one trade and then, through experience, picked up an awareness of the others, and then became successful contractors unhampered by guidelines or organizations that monitored or surveyed their work.

  Their artistic counterparts are artisans, who go through similar processes of training. In the past, weavers, brass workers, coppersmiths, tentmakers, inlayers of mother-of-pearl, potters, and painters had formed an important social strata. Like handymen, masters passed on skills to apprentices, creating a closed system that ensured quality and knowledge control. Unlike more practical, marketable occupations, artisans are becoming extremely rare: unable to turn profits or compete with cheap imports, these makers, and their crafts, are dying out. Every so often, some group or initiative would attempt to rescue these artisans, setting up new shops designed for tourist traffic—but these efforts never succeeded in really changing the tides.

  * * *

  One joy of ordering and stocking Art and Design was sticking it to Hind. Our profit from one expensive, lavishly produced imported art book surpassed what we earned from two dozen Arabic books. Hind and I had staked our battlegrounds in our sections. The surrounding culture reinstated these disparities between Arabic and English in unsettling ways. Our local customer-service staff sold foreign books that, in some cases, cost more than their modest salaries. I started to see these asymmetries everywhere. Even Egyptian paper money embodied the binary of West and East. On one side, the numerical denomination is written in English, surrounded by illustrations of Khafra, builder of the medium-sized pyramid of Giza, Ramesses II on his war chariot, Horus’s temple at Edfu, and Tutankhamun’s funerary mask. On the other side, the Egyptian one, Arabic letters and numerals are surrounded by images of the mosques of Rifa’i, where the Shah of Iran is buried, Muhammad Ali, Ibn Tulun, and Sultan Hassan. This side was reductive, hiding non-Islamic and non-Arab Egypt from view.

  While my staff and I inhabited the same city, our cities were not the same. Since the latter half of the twentieth century, the shift from rural to urban life has outpaced Cairo’s ability to care for its citizens. As cities were marketed as the site of opportunity and government support, and massive urban migration followed, severe disparities between communities and classes became more and more accentuated. Aspirational images surrounded us. Billboards flanking Egypt’s highways advertised concrete shoeboxes alongside plush palaces. Opposite realities grew side by side. ‘Ashwa’iyat, unplanned settlements that sprouted up on designated agricultural land, housed millions of hopeful transplants from the Egyptian countryside (where government services were less accessible and job opportunities more limited). Wealthy residents retreated from the growing slums into gated communities with swimming pools, gardens, and golf courses. Design books were marketed to the wealthy, providing images of beautiful worlds insulated from everything and everyone else. In the process, they made this lifestyle appear more organic, less alien. Elite classes were stratified into subsets, each making separate, but similar, aesthetic and commercial choices. The sales rep’s claim about the popularity of The Fireplace Book comes to mind as an example of the strange fantasy I was actually selling. In the case of art and design books, they are the signposting of both outlook and aspiration. I could almost hear the books whispering to their loyal consumers.

  I wondered how much the expensive books and affluent customers alienated and demoralized my less privileged coworkers. The books themselves belonged to a reality that my coworkers could hardly imagine, let alone inhabit. The options for social mobility were laughable. Theft was a constant at Diwan, from both clients and staff. Given the jarring discrepancies in standards of living, currencies, and commodities, I’m honestly surprised that we weren’t stolen from more. It was much harder to forgive customers than my staff. The strangers always seemed remorseless when caught, unfailingly arguing that books were a basic human right, and therefore should be free for all, not unlike those early visitors’ disappointment with Diwan’s non-library status. We installed cameras and metal detectors and hired security guards. The customers improved their strategies for stealing, especially for multimedia items before the digital age made them obsolete. They would smuggle CDs and DVDs into the bathroom, slit the plastic covering on the side, remove the disc, and return the empty box innocuously to the shelves.

  I also faced less literal forms of theft. Late one afternoon, I was speaking to my warehouse manager, Youssef, on the phone. I remember pleading with him: “Youssef, how are you progressing on the shipment? It’s Wednesday and the books need to be on the shelves before the weekend.”

  “Ustazah, we are working very hard, but this is a six-ton shipment that requires both data entry and bar-coding.”

  “Just give me a percentage. How far?” Using a new surveillance program, I pulled up Youssef’s computer screen on mine—even though we were in different buildings.

  “We should be done by the middle of next week,” he answered distractedly.

  I hated being taken for a fool. It was thrilling
to outsmart him. “Allow me to make a suggestion. It may help productivity. Stop playing online solitaire. It looks like you’re losing, anyway.” Silence. I went in with a left hook. “I’m docking your pay for wasting company time and funds—and for the shit example you set. You have until end of day tomorrow to finish the shipment. Feel free to work through the night.” I hung up. I told myself that if my staff chose to withhold their work in favor of playing cards, I was allowed to steal their privacy, to ensure I received the labor I paid for.

  A few hours after the incident, I was walking past the kitchen in the head office, where I found the data-entry team sulking, nursing their tea with uncharacteristically subdued voices. Omar, the IT manager and normally a permanent fixture of this group, was absent. I continued to his office, entered without knocking, and closed the door behind me. He stood up.

  “There was trouble in the Garden of Eden this morning,” I said.

  “Ustazah, when I installed the spy software, you promised me you would not tell the staff.”

  “Omar, sometimes I have to play my hand. You haven’t been burnt. They need you more than you need them.” He looked on politely. I appreciated Omar’s courteous manner as much as his software capabilities. He was a symmetrical young man who styled his jet-black curly hair with a sheen of gel, who always wore crisp black pants and ironed white shirts.

  Later, Omar helped facilitate my transition from spy software to motion-activated webcams in the warehouse, whose feed automatically connected to my computer as well as to Hind’s and Nihal’s. They never looked. Employees suspected that I was watching, and they were right. I may have taken inspiration from the Nasser era to confront the legacy of the Nasser era. I remember hearing stories of Nasser’s state security officials dangling microphones from apartment balconies to overhear party guests’ political sentiments. I became omnipresent in my determination to confront Nasser’s socialist legacy—free education and state employment for all—gone amuck: the listless employee. Many Egyptians aspired to a government job, with its promise of shorter working hours, meager pay (which could be enhanced through more creative channels), and the guarantee of a job regardless of performance (Nasser’s laws made it very difficult to fire government employees). Private companies, like Diwan, received bad press. While our pay was better, we demanded an eight-hour workday and measured output, and we fired those who didn’t meet our standards. Egyptians were torn between the path of least resistance and uncharted territory, with its potential for greater gain.

  Beginning in ancient times, the Nile provided water, food, and transportation. When the river overflowed, the fertile silt it left behind made farming effortless. Herodotus, the ancient Greek philosopher, had written, “Egypt is the gift of the Nile.” Depending on where you stood, the Nile’s abundance could be seen as modern Egypt’s curse, perpetuating a culture of inaction.

  When a customer spent a thousand Egyptian pounds at Diwan, their loyalty was rewarded with a one-hundred-pound gift voucher. But because of certain loopholes in this policy, Diwan was faced with a rotating band of thieves straight out of “Ali Baba,” one of my favorite tales from the Arabian Nights. In it, Morgana, Ali Baba’s shrewd slave, foils the plots of the thieves who are trying to kill her master for having uncovered their cave of riches. I had multiple Morganas.

  Omar was my most steadfast accomplice, and his latest contraption captured surprisingly crisp footage. As the Nile waters flowed to fill its different tributaries, money moved through Diwan’s branches. Maged and Omar regularly generated reports to monitor those movements. They’d flagged the Maadi branch for an unusually high number of gift voucher redemptions, which inexplicably took place during the quiet morning shift. I’d transferred Hany, a tentative and gentle cashier who worked that shift at Maadi, to the Heliopolis branch for further scrutiny. The next day, I visited the store under the guise of discussing the displays and checking the branch’s overall appearance. When no one was looking, I quickly placed my new hidden-camera spy pen—a toy from Omar—at an angle on the shelves adjacent to the cashier. I asked Samir to engage his well-to-do cousin, an accountant in a multinational firm, for some undercover work that afternoon. I watched through the spy pen as Samir’s cousin purchased the hefty Star Wars Archives: 1977–1983, priced at a little over one thousand Egyptian pounds. Lo and behold, Hany didn’t offer him a gift voucher. After the cousin left, Hany scanned his surroundings, printed a voucher, attached it to the Star Wars receipt, converted it to cash, and slid the one-hundred-pound note down his navy-blue shirt, flattening it against his belly. After earlier incidents of theft, Nihal had begun sewing the pockets of uniform trousers shut before issuing them to staff.

  Later that day, as I went to Maged’s office, I glimpsed Hany waiting patiently outside. I ducked my head into my bag, fumbling for a distraction. My mouth was dry. We were family. But I knew the drill. I’d participated enough times. Maged will lay out the information in cheerful, buoyant tones, enlisting Hany in the investigation and feigning bewilderment. Omar will explain the numbers and strange coincidences with excessive jargon. Maged will then ask Hany if he has any knowledge that could shed light on the gift-voucher-redemption issue. Hany will appear horrified at this mere hint of wrongdoing, swear on his mother’s honor, and fervently deny the claim. Maged will nod in agreement while pressing Play on the video footage. The hair on the nape of Hany’s neck will rise.

  Maged will give him two choices: The first will be to resign, signing a declaration that the company has fulfilled all its obligations toward him and that he will not file any labor complaint against it (a clause we’d added following previous cheeky thieves who’d done just that), and write a series of checks to the company, paying back an estimate of what was stolen. Or Hany could choose to let us call the police; they will take him to the police station, where he will be questioned and charged based on a confession he gives, either of his free will or after unorthodox persuasion. He will emerge a broken man, weighed down by the shame of what happened to him. His record will render him unemployable, and he will have a life of only more crime to look forward to.

  Hany will offer meek resistance and beg for mercy. Maged will tell him this is mercy. Hany will ask to speak to the kindest lady of Diwan—Nihal. Maged will continue to berate him. Hany, exhausted, shaking, will sign the declaration. Omar will enjoy all the excitement. Samir, the world’s most verbose driver and vocal critic of his employer, will struggle to keep his part in all the drama to himself. Maged will feel triumphant, but maybe frustrated at not having gone far enough. I will swallow the rust of my rage at this nation that has left its citizens few options for security and stability outside of theft. The Hanys that I have met, and employed, will never be able to save money, take out a mortgage (home financing formally began in 2001 and is still in its nascent stages), or piece together a decent life, even with years of hard work. They will hope for a pocket of concrete in which they can raise a family and live in debt. Faced with Hany’s life trajectory, what would I have done? Hind and Nihal, certain of their own morality, were unwavering in their decisiveness to punish thieves. They knew that if their circumstances were the same, they would never steal. I began to realize, with some disappointment, that my clemency stemmed not from some inherent kindness but rather from a lack of confidence in my own moral fiber. What kind of an asshole do you have to be to prosecute Jean Valjean?

  * * *

  Outside, the asphalt steamed with heat. Samir leaned against the side of the car, merrily bantering with the porters sitting nearby, regal in white galabeyas. Upon seeing me emerge from the office building, he gestured to them that their conversation would resume on his return. Still eager to distance myself from Hany’s plight, I locked my eyes on the passenger seat that awaited me, hoping that my paces were more measured than they felt.

  “I saw Hany walk into the office. Did he sign, or call your bluff?” asked Samir, gripping the steering wheel of the car in anticipation.

  “You should never look
on the misery of others as entertainment.”

  “Yours or his? Everyone in the company knows that you’ll never call the police. So, every thief takes his chances: if he gets caught, he pays it back.” Samir pulled out of his spot, slipping the parking attendant a couple of pound notes.

  “A thief should be punished, but sending him into the unjustness of our justice system is ending his life,” I responded.

  “If you’re weak enough to steal, you deserve what’s coming. You just feel guilty because you have money and he doesn’t,” Samir explained. We were driving to Sun City Mall, our newest location and the first in a mall. Before opening our earlier locations, we’d had months, sometimes even years, of debate. About neighborhoods, about cost, about brand, mission, responsibility. At this point, we’d resolved to go bigger (and not go home), so we didn’t deliberate for nearly as long, despite the seriousness of the commitment. Malls were the future, whether we liked it or not, and Diwan had to be there. Besides, we were still trying to make ends meet, and we weren’t succeeding. But there was always the hope that the next store would bridge the ever-widening gap.

  I looked out at the rooftops, crowded with satellite dishes, air-conditioning compressors, and loose cables, as we inched down 6th October Bridge. The bridge, an elevated highway, is named for the date that Egypt crossed into occupied Sinai on Yom Kippur in 1973. Ironically, the bridge was conceived as an observatory for Egyptians to enjoy the view of Cairo’s landmarks on their commutes: the Cairo Tower, the Nile, the Maspero Television Building (named after Gaston Maspero, the French Egyptologist), the Egyptian Museum, Cairo’s railway station. Instead, we peered into the windows of homes and offices directly abutting the freeway, glimpsing the lives of people who’d never expected a bridge to be constructed in front of their kitchen sinks and cubicles. I was grateful for August’s heat, which brought the annual exodus from Cairo to the crystal waters of the north coast. The city was empty, and I was free to rush through it. I didn’t mind the weather. The relentless sun soothed me. As if he could hear my thoughts, Samir interjected, “When are you heading to the coast? I can’t take this heat anymore.” He blasted the air-conditioning.