25

“I hadn’t lost my mind yet, even as I stood, devil-may-care, at the brink of madness.”—Tarek al-Masri

We finished Friday prayers at Amr Ibn al-Aas in Old Cairo. Exiting the mosque among a crowd as thick as the congregation on the Day of Judgment, I pushed ahead of the others in my organization as though I had nothing to do with them. As I bent over to tie my shoes, the emir leaned to my ear while putting on his own shoes. “Get rid of your beard. Keep your mustache and keep your hair long.”

I gave an imperceptible nod. He left in the direction of the Citadel with his acolytes in tow. I hoofed it toward Giza, crossing Abbas Bridge into the hubbub of pedestrians and itinerant vendors of Giza Square. Adel Ramzi, my cellmate from prison all those years ago, suddenly leapt to mind. I could almost hear him making a racket like that on his own, belting out some lyrics while strumming an electric guitar. He got out a year before I did. I’d bumped into him three times since my release, in different circumstances each time, and he never lost that special spark of his. Shortly before I left to Saudi Arabia, he had found a job with a band at a nightclub on Pyramids Road. I hadn’t seen him since my return.

I switched direction and headed over to his place in Zamalek. He lived in a ground-floor apartment at the northern end of Bahgat Ali Street, close to my father’s apartment, which my uncle Salem had taken over. What made me want to visit Adel now? Was it really because his father was a barber or was it so I could pass by Nadia’s house? Did my mind need to concoct some lame excuse to reassure my feet, which were driven by Nadia’s sudden appearance in front of Maison Thomas? Maybe memories come back to us the way disasters hit us: when it rains it pours.

I got off the microbus at the beginning of 26 July Street, cut through a couple of back streets to Mohamed Mazhar, then turned left so I could pass in front of the Heart of Palm and check it out surreptitiously. This was actually the third time I’d cased the place, and each time I was torn by contradictory feelings I’d always avoided. I could feel them building up inside like a seething volcano about to burst through my ribs, especially when I thought of Murad Kashef going in and out of there every day. I hated that place and everyone inside—except for her. The longing made me slow my steps in front of her house, though I was sure she’d lied to me. She wasn’t divorced. Or maybe they’d separated but he was still living in there, with her. I looked up toward her window hoping to catch sight of her, but all the windows were locked. The place looked deserted, lost in a deep slumber like the remains of an ancient city. I noticed that some boards were missing from the side of the small sentry box, which stood to the right of the gateway. That too appeared to have been unused for a long time. There was a barrel inside it pierced with random holes, betraying the rust that was corroding it from the inside. My steps grew leaden. My mind urged my feet forward, but my heart held them back.

As I neared Adel’s place, I caught sight of him hailing a taxi. I recognized him instantly, despite the toll age had taken. Some part of me commanded my frozen feet to move. I ducked into the nearest building entrance and cowered in the shadow, heart racing. Suddenly, in that darkness, my blood ran cold and I had a violent urge to pee. Maybe I even wet myself a bit. Murad Kashef was watching me.

I crouched down and recited a stream of supplications and incantations to calm myself. It took me half an hour to summon the courage to venture out again. My knees still trembled as I walked the rest of the way to Adel’s place. I was totally drained by the time I got there. His father’s barbershop occupied the left side of the ground floor of the building. It had a new sign: a large pair of scissors, a black silhouette of a man’s head, and the words “Ramzi’s Salon for Men.” I crossed the street toward the shop, then switched directions in order to enter the building itself. I rang the doorbell. I could hear slow, shuffling footsteps. Behind the panel of frosted glass in the door, I saw the fuzzy shape of a tall, skinny man with disheveled hair. The panel opened first; then the door swung open to a beaming face and a satirical “If it isn’t Sheikh Tarek, the fiddler. It’s been ages, comrade!”

I smiled from my heart for the first time since my return to Egypt. That surprised me. I’d thought my smile had died and that I only used my lips to curse and pray for the demise of those who set me on the path that I was now so desperate to leave behind.

Adel’s spirit hadn’t changed, but his body had. He was skeletal. In the three hours that we spent together in his “kif corner,” as he called it, I could see why. After swallowing a few colored pills, he carefully freed a brown lump from a yellow piece of cellophane and set it to one side. A tiny dune of white powder had been given pride of place in the middle of the low table. He used the edge of a book of matches to carefully divide the powder and arrange it in thin lines. Then he unfolded the matchbook, rolled it into narrow tube, stuck one end in his nose, and inhaled the lines one by one. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back for a moment. Opening his eyes, he gave me a goofy smile. Then he turned his attention to rolling joints. These he chain-smoked until the room filled with a heavy cloud that clung to the air and alternately descended around us like a shroud or hovered overhead as though eavesdropping. Adel never opened the windows. He hadn’t even left his house for about a year, he said. His musical instruments were distributed around the room. You could tell from the position of some of them or the way they gleamed, that they were the ones he played most often. Probably his old musician friends called in on him from time to time to relive the past and jam. Adel was a brilliant guitarist. He was also a mad composer of a new wave of music. However, the nightclub customers didn’t like it, so he’d lost his job a year ago, he said.

“So, tell me, why are you running around like a dervish on the Mulid of Hussein? Have you gone back to your Muslim Brothers?” he asked, eyeing me from head to toe as though vetting me for a job. He reached for his rolling papers and started to roll himself another joint as eagerly as though it were his first.

I chuckled, but didn’t answer. I was grooving to “Hotel California,” which he’d just put on his record player. I closed my eyes and listened to the lyrics, patting my thigh to the rhythm, especially during the guitar riffs. When I opened my eyes, I found Adel watching me with a smile.

“Believe me, man, nature beats nurture,” he said. “Leave those religious crazies and come hang out with us here. Take a couple of tokes. Listen to some decent music.” He sucked on the joint, held his breath, and released a thick cloud. “Come on, man. You never fit in with those guys and they never liked or respected you. Soon we’ll perform again for audiences who appreciate our music. I’m sure of it. This fad for the crap people listen to these days can’t last. We can’t go on like this much longer.”

“And you? How can you go on like this?” I said, gesturing around me.

“And what made me pop into your head all of a sudden? It’s been a decade since I last saw you.”

I smiled and stroked my beard. “I was in Saudi Arabia, man. When I got back, I thought I’d drop in on your dad and get me a shave.”

Adel roared with laughter and lit another cigarette. Then he stretched his hand toward a mini fridge that was just within reach, pulled out a bottle of beer, and opened it with his teeth.

“I don’t have anything to offer you to drink here except cold water. Or, if you want, you can get up and make yourself a cup of tea with milk.”

I didn’t want. What I really liked about Adel was that, despite everything he’d been through, he held on to his “fuck you, world” attitude. Even in prison, he more than anyone else inside knew how to make himself at home between those four walls. Adel ended up in jail for a crime he didn’t commit—like most of us. He probably wasn’t very political at first, even if he leaned toward leftist views, but would have been able to cite communist dogma line and verse after all the time he spent with them inside. The difference between us and him was that he was never brought to trial and was never interrogated, not by intelligence or the prosecutor’s office or even by military prison authorities.

For him, it was straight from home to hell. He was a prisoner without papers, alive but nonexistent. Pretty much like what he was now. His real crime was that he fell in love with a girl at the same time another guy did. Adel got engaged to her first, but the other guy had enough pull to end the engagement prematurely. He had Adel arrested and thrown into the clink, where he was forgotten for years. It was not until some Eid feast, or whatever season it was for a presidential amnesty, that someone remembered his name and he was released along with a bunch of ex-cons for “good conduct and behavior”—which was how he’d entered prison to begin with.

Ironically, the powerful man who had Adel disappeared soon grew bored with Adel’s ex-fiancée and divorced her. When Adel asked her to marry him, she rebuffed him angrily, as though he’d dumped her instead of the other way around. Then she married someone else. Adel had told me this story before. At the time, he’d seemed stoic enough to grin and bear it, but now, as I looked at him, he seemed defeated. A boxer who’d been knocked flat one too many times, sprawled on the canvas, looking pleadingly at the referee to have mercy and sound the bell. He sat with his back propped against the wall, emaciated legs stretched out on the floor, shirtsleeves rolled halfway up his arms, revealing bluish veins zigzagging just below his skin like small garter snakes.

He opened an eye to a squint, like a wounded fox, weary of battle but determined to fight to the end. “You don’t look right to me today,” he said. “You have this mutinous look in your eye. Like you got the devil on your back.”

I shrugged and yawned. My attention was caught by a large picture of a veiled woman hanging on the wall. “That’s my mother. May the Lord have mercy on her soul,” he said.

“Your mother? In a veil? You got to be putting me on. All of us in prison thought you were a Copt.”

Adel laughed so hard his eyes watered. “You mean just because I never prayed together with you guys you were going to kick me out of my faith, you bunch of heathens?” He downed half a bottle of beer in one go and continued, “Okay, now that you know I’m Muslim, put in a good word for me with that organization of yours, man. Give me guidance, ye of the ‘Islam is the solution’ set. I can’t believe the crap you’ve been scribbling all over the walls of the schools in Zamalek. You’ve totally messed with the kids’ minds. Turning them off art and music. I mean, everything’s a sin in your book.”

I put up with a few more minutes of his sarcasm. When I’d had enough, I said, “You tell me this, Adel. How can you live like this?”

“Who said we’re living? We’re the living dead. We were slaughtered long ago and we’ve been running around without a head ever since. We’re just pretending to be alive until we really do give up the ghost. The first one did this to us, the second one made us do this and that, and the third one is doing more than that. And we’re never going to stop letting this and that happen to us.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You know, but you’re playing dumb. It’s your Muslim Brotherhood friends who called our current president the Wise One and the one before that the Faithful, because he wanted to win your friends over. The one before that we all hailed as the Leader, adored by millions. We’re a religious people by nature. We love the Lord deeply—when we need Him. But we worship the Leader, the Faithful, and even the Wise One, and we’ll never bring them to account for a thing they’ve done.”

“Okay, you’re right. We like to create idols. When we get fed up with them, we break them and make new ones. But I have nothing to do with all that.”

“Hah! So you’ve struck out on your own now? Or are you playing dumb again?”

I wasn’t going to let his sarcasm egg me on again. I stood up, swayed, and nearly fell over. Adel burst out laughing. “You got a secondhand high, man! That’s proof of the high quality of my stuff.”

I giggled for no reason. I went over to where his instruments were lying. A strange tingling inside me cast me back ages ago to when I used to meet Nadia in the back garden of the Heart of Palm. My hand reached out to touch an old oud, gently, as though it were her hand. I picked it up and ran my fingers along the strings as though stroking her hair. I strummed the opening bars then began to play Umm Kulthum’s “Who can I turn to?” Adel started to hum along.

I stopped after the first refrain and set the oud aside. I looked at Adel, taking in his glassy eyes, then I went to the window, opened it and pulled over a chair, so as to be as far as possible from his smoke.

“Stop talking politics, and tell me why you’re living this way without hope,” I said. “Why are you fucking yourself up like this? You’re better off than me and so many others. At least you’ve got your music and you can do what you want, or you can try to, and your father supports you, and he’s doing okay. So what’s with you?”

“Dig this, man, and don’t be an ass. My father, you, me, everyone out there in the street . . . we’re not living. We’re just acting the part, like extras with a couple of lines to deliver. Very cheap extras, like the ones in rent-a-crowds. As for the ones who don’t know how to act, their job is to pull up a chair, play spectator, and clap. Me, I’m a musical extra. I’m there to complete the set. But I say what’s inside me. There’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, sometimes people deviate from the script.” He fell silent for a while. Then he exclaimed, as though answering a question no one had asked, “Yes! And we’re all sick!”

“Sick?”

“Have you ever been to Qasr al-Aini Hospital?”

“Once, a long time ago, when I—”

“We’re living in the Arab Republic of Qasr al-Aini!” he announced dramatically, then downed the rest of his beer. “Every now and then this guy in a white coat comes up to you and says, ‘I know exactly what’s ailing you and I’m going to treat you using my method.’ So you get to be his guinea pig. He tests a bunch of the wrong medications on you and you get sicker, the pain grows worse, and you die. Others thank him and applaud. Until their turn comes. Every doctor is surrounded by a huge army of nurses, assistants, herbalists, charlatans, and snake charmers. Then there are the officials with all the rubber stamps to complete the picture and make you feel like you’re a real hospital. But we die anyway. Do you know why this happens?” Before I could answer, he said, “Because the guy’s not a doctor and he knows fuck all about medicine.”

Not only did Adel and I fall silent, so too did the noises from outside. Maybe it was like Adel said: everyone was watching us, like statues, after learning their allotted role in life. But no one applauded for Adel Ramzi after he spoke. They would only applaud the self-acclaimed doctor. I had nothing to add. Like Adel, I’d chosen my role. I might depart from the script as well.

Adel strayed into a world of his own. He stared with leaden eyes at an oil painting of a young woman in her twenties, with wide eyes and a shy smile. His eyes seemed to water. Was that his ex-fiancée? Oddly, for a second there, she resembled Nadia. The cheekbones. The hair. A look in her eye that seemed to reproach me. I grew uneasy, then tense. I looked back at Adel to find him rolling another joint. His fifth? Seventh? I’d lost count. You couldn’t miss the trembling in his fingers as they slowly worked to mix the tobacco with the crumbled hash. I moved over and sat down on the floor next to him.

“You should have killed her and freed yourself of the suffering she caused you. She doesn’t deserve to live.”

Adel turned to me, his eyes filled with a deep melancholy. “And who’ll ease my suffering once she’s dead and gone?” For the first time since I set foot into his apartment, he seemed totally lucid. His voice softened. “I fall asleep staring at her picture every night. I look at those eyes, at that pretty smile. . . . Do you want me to leave all that beauty and survive on her guilt? Shame on you, Sheikh Tarek. You don’t kill a rose just because you got pricked by its thorn.”

I thought of Nadia, the flower of my life, which had nearly wilted. I grew restless, feeling my frustration build up inside me, pounding at my ribcage, but I kept it penned in. I stood up to leave. I avoided shaking Adel’s hand for fear I’d burst out crying, and headed to the door.

“Hey, where are you going, fiddler?” His voice sounded frail and desperate. “Don’t tell me it’s going to be another decade before I get to see you again. We’ve only got so many decades left.”

“I told you already. I’m going to your dad to get my beard shaved. It’s my only solution.”

I raised my hand and waved it high in the air to say goodbye. I couldn’t look back. It was already hard enough keeping the tears from spilling down my cheeks. After shutting the door behind me, I was drawn more and more to the idea of deviating from the script.

We left our place on two motorcycles. I rode one and they followed some distance behind me on the other. I’d been haunted by a sense of foreboding since the previous day. I was almost positive they were going to betray me in some way. Maybe the emir ordered them to eliminate me. Why else did the two of them keep whispering furtively and giving me nervous looks? But how? I was the one carrying the bombs and they were unarmed. I tried to focus on the road ahead to avoid crashing into a swerving car or a spaced-out jaywalker and giving the game away. I’d made up my mind to inform on them after the Maison Thomas job. The government would help me. I wouldn’t be the first or the last to do this. A lot of others had snitched on their organizations and were rewarded with a cushy life and a new identity. There was this police officer who’d called me in for questioning once but couldn’t find anything to pin on me. He gave me his phone number. I could give him a call and tell him everything I knew about these guys. Which wasn’t much. I probably didn’t even know their real names, but at least I’d clear myself. Then he’d get a promotion and I’d be reborn. I was plagued by second thoughts. If they were caught, they’d be tortured and spill everything to the police. They’d surely confess my role in the bungled Security Directorate bombing, after which the police would show me no mercy. The Interior Ministry was the target of that operation, after all. In such cases, when it has to do with the police’s rights, a whole different set of rules comes into play. They would never let me go, even if the Prophet himself descended from heaven to plead my case.

As we approached our target, I set aside the dream of escape and rebellion. It was time to get to work. My two escorts stopped right in front of Maison Thomas. I parked my motorcycle a short distance away. According to the plan, one of them would make as if to leave, but would take up a post nearby in order to keep watch. After setting the bomb, the other guy and I would make our getaway on his motorcycle. The stolen motorcycle I’d just parked would be left behind to mislead the police.

I tightened my grip on my briefcase as I passed my colleagues, then crouched low to keep out of view of the customers inside. It was almost two a.m. The street was nearly empty and there were only about ten customers inside the restaurant, plus the four employees. I clicked open the briefcase. It contained three small time bombs that I’d made myself using a new method I’d just invented. I took one of them, which contained only a small amount of explosive substance, set the timer to detonate in fifteen seconds, and placed it right below the front window. I quickly crept away and readied myself to hop on the back of the motorcycle. As I drew near my colleague, his hand reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun. He gave me no time to do anything but gape. He fired at me twice and sped off. I howled from the pain. A bullet had struck my shoulder. The other missed. Some people in Maison Thomas were about to rush outside. I took to my heels and ducked down a side street. Before I reached the end I heard the explosion. I turned left and slowed to a walk, keeping one hand pressed on my shoulder to stanch the bleeding, which fortunately wasn’t severe. No one was following me. I must have managed to turn the corner without being seen. I picked up the pace again and headed in the direction of the Heart of Palm, which was close by. I stopped at the kiosk nearest to it and dialed her number. The vendor took stock of my shoulder, where the bloodstain had spread a little, and his eyes bored into my face, scrutinizing every feature as if about to paint my portrait. After innumerable rings, Nadia finally answered. She sounded groggy. When I told her who I was, she was fully awake. I just had a minor motorcycle accident, I said, raising my voice slightly in order to peel the salesman’s prying eyes off me. I told her I was bleeding and, lowering my voice as I went around to the side of the kiosk, I added that I couldn’t go to a hospital. I told her where I was. The light in her bedroom flicked on. I made out her silhouette behind the thin curtains. A few seconds later, she appeared at the gate, signaling for me to come inside. I returned to the front of the kiosk to replace the receiver. The vendor’s expression had softened and he wished me a speedy recovery. I hurried along the pavement, sticking to the shadows of the thick hedges, and slipped through the gate. She took me straight to the cellar, and within a few minutes she had the bleeding under control.

Over the next three days, I felt drawn back to a point in the remote past, when Nadia was in her teens. After all, she hadn’t changed that much. She had filled out a bit and her skin had lost some of its luster, but her spirit was the same as always. I felt as though I could alter the course of fate, marry her, and regain my father’s right to the villa and its riches. Before she died, my mother told me that Abbas had cheated my father and forced him to flee the country forever. Not a word had been heard from him since. Did Abbas frighten my father that much? Maybe he laid a trap for him—got him implicated in a crime, for example. Would that have kept my father from asking after us, even from afar?

I shook my head to clear the question from my mind. I had to stop letting it nag me since I’d never find an answer. I could never get one from my mother, who died young. All she ever said was, “I put my faith in God. He’ll deal with Abbas, the traitor.”

Despite the way Nadia had treated me in the past, I had an overwhelming desire to make love to her right there in the basement. I wanted to do things with her body and imagine Murad Kashef watching me in bed with his wife. But she blocked my advances even if there were moments when I felt she was encouraging me. How I wished I could succeed with her, then make her feel the loss and defeat I’d felt when she left me. If only I could get her to make love to me just once before I left this villa, because after I left I’d never be able to be near Nadia again. I wouldn’t even be able to set foot in Zamalek again.