. . .
That’s not to say life in Cairo was completely miserable. There were good times to be had year round: some during our long summers, and quite a few during our short winters. Such times were, invariably, either days off work or days without it. They say the city never sleeps, they say it bursts at the seams. The city rotates and revolves. The city branches out. The city beats, the city bleeds.
In their places of work and worship, the people of this city swarm. They shop and scurry and go for a piss, so the Wheel of Production might go on spinning despite the traffic. That’s how it all looks, if you’re an eagle soaring up above. But if you’re just a little mouse of a man spinning inside that Great Wheel, you never get to see the big picture. You go to work and do your job, and might even earn a reasonable salary. If, by some great fortune, you manage to see the fruit of your labors, it still won’t move you an inch. Whether you work or not, the Wheel of Production keeps on spinning, and the current carries you along.
Which brings me to the time Mona May and I went with a group of friends over to Moud’s apartment in Garden City. This was after a party at Youssef Bazzi’s place. We stayed up until the morning smoking hash and competing to finish a whole bottle of vodka. I remember seeing the music dissolve into monkeys that clung to the ceiling. There was a blond German tapping her leg to the beat. Erections popping around the room. A young Palestinian-American, with poor Arabic, talking a lot about racism. Smoke, cigarettes, hashish. And more smoke.
“Bassam,” says Kiko, turning to me with a totally bloodshot look. “I’ve got smoke in my eyes.”
“Go easy on ’em, baby.”
I pull a tissue over her eyes and blow gently. The German girl watches with a confused look. As I pull the tissue away, my palm drips with the dark freshness of Kiko’s face. I plant a light kiss on her lips.
“Did you know there’s a kind of sexual fetish called ‘licking the pupil’?” says the German girl in English.
“How exactly do you mean?”
“Yeah, I read about that once,” interjects Moud.
“That’s disgusting,” objects Kiko, wrapping her arms around me.
What are your typical twentysomethings to do in Cairo? Might they go for pupil licking? Are they into eating pussy? Do they like to suck cock, or lick dirt, or snort hash mixed with sleeping pills? Or one might ask how long it would take for any of these fetishes to lose its thrill. Are they good for life?
Everyone here has done lots of drugs, both during and after college. Yet here we all are, little islands unto ourselves, with no greater aspiration than to hang out together. We manage to stay alive by sucking our joy out of one another.
Mona May is standing next to the speakers. Her eyes are glazed over as though her soul’s been sucked up by the music monkeys on the ceiling, and her body sways to the beat.
After a while, taking drugs clearly gets old. Or they are just not enough. And if one of us ever gives in to total addiction, his life would be over in a few months: this we know by trial and experience. Those of us left in this room are too chicken to end our lives in this or any other way, maybe because we still cling to some sort of hope, some sort of love or friendship.
For all that Cairo takes from its residents, it gives nothing in return—except, perhaps, a number of lifelong friendships that are determined more by fate than any real choice. As the saying goes, “He who goes to Cairo will find there his equal.” There’s no such thing as smoking by yourself. And the food’s only got taste if you have someone to chow it down with, happily, carcinogens and all.
In this city, you’ll be lucky if you can get over your sexual tension, and appreciate sex as just one of the many facets of a friendship. Otherwise, your horniness will make you a testy bitch. Kiko rubs my back, and I feel a heat between my legs.
As dawn came up, Moud went to his room, and everyone else went home. Too lazy to head back to 6th of October City, I lay down and fell asleep on the couch. I woke up early with a slight headache, an army of ants marching in the space between my brain and my skull. I went to the bathroom and took one of the pills Moud had brought from overseas to fight hangovers. After taking a warm shower, I called Lady Spoon and agreed to breakfast at Maison Thomas in Zamalek.
On the way, the streets were clean and empty of traffic. It’s a holiday: perhaps the Islamic New Year, or Victory Day, or Revolution Day, or Saltwater Catfish Day. Whatever it was, the city looked drowsy and everyone was checked out. At moments like this, I barely recognize the place. When I’m able to get from Qasr El Eyni to Zamalek in under twenty minutes, I almost feel like she’s decided to warm up to me. But I know that wicked smile on her face. She’s telling me, “At any moment, I can have you stuck in traffic for over an hour, with nothing to do but sit back and feel sorry for yourself as the noise of the streets slowly sucks the life out of you.” Open veins spewing blood all over the bathroom.
I met Lady Spoon outside the restaurant. She had on a long white dress showing her arms and a bit of cleavage.
“You smell really nice,” she said, kissing me on both cheeks.
“It’s Moud’s cologne.”
It was her neck that made me fall for her. She’s nine years older than me, but she knows how to stay youthful, exercising regularly and always eating healthy. She’s pretty, cheerful, and has a successful career in advertising. Unfortunately for her, she’s a Protestant and happens to love Egypt, and her chances of meeting someone with both these qualities in Cairo are slim at best. She studied overseas before spending quite a long time being terrified of getting married or settling down. Sometime, she’d like to have children. She had been used to dating men who were older than her, but suddenly, they had stopped showing an interest. Those that did show interest didn’t interest her. This was the first time that she would be dating someone younger than her, which made her embarrassed to tell her friends.
The name “Lady Spoon” was given to her by Mona May. She saw her at a concert once wearing a pair of spoon-shaped earrings.
These were the same earrings she had on now. They swayed with the movement of her hand as she sliced a loaf of bread. In spite of the dryness in my throat, I’d been smoking since I woke up this morning. Cigarettes have a different sort of taste with the morning breeze in Zamalek: something resembling bliss, desire, a softness in violet and orange.
Our breakfast was eggs, along with slices of the finest quality pork, imported from abroad. After honey, jam, and a glass of orange juice, I’m back to life. As the poet says, “You ain’t you when you’re hungry.” At Maison Thomas, her smile nudges me awake under a white bed.
We walked around the streets of Zamalek in the direction of her apartment. She had a thin silver bracelet around her ankle, and toenails painted red. Sometimes we would walk hand in hand, and sometimes with my arm around her waist. Under the shade of the trees, we laughed. We shot smiles at the officers standing guard outside different embassies, but their solemn demeanor didn’t change.
I thought . . . Do I love her?
Of course I love her. I can’t touch a woman I don’t love. But then, what is love exactly? It’s a relaxing of the heart, a tranquility in your soul, a warmth in your stomach. It’s like any love in Cairo, always ready to disappear. A lover of companionship.
In her apartment, we smoked a joint of hash. I rubbed her knee as she played around on her computer looking for an old Madonna song. I lifted her dress above her knees and slid to the floor. Nestling between her legs, I lifted up her foot and started licking her big toe. I walked my tongue in gentle taps along her leg until I reached her knee, which I pummeled with kisses.
“It tickles,” she giggled in English.
I gave her knee a parting kiss, and continued my tongue’s journey up her thigh. I planted a kiss, soft as a butterfly, on her thinly lined underwear and pulled it away with my hands. I plunged my tongue into her pussy. I drank a lot that night. I drank until I felt thirsty. I gave her a full ride with my tongue before she took me into her room, where we had slow and leisurely sex. She turned over, and I put my fingers in her mouth. Wet with her saliva, I stuck them in her pussy. Slipping and sliding. I stuck them in from behind. I grabbed her short hair and pulled it toward me. I humped her violently and then lay on top of her for a few seconds. I got out of bed and threw the condom into the trash. As I gave her a smile, the phone rang.
“Hey dude, where you at?”
“Mona . . . What’s up? I’m in Zamalek.”
“So, you still up for a beer tonight?”
“Maybe . . .”
“I’m with Samira. We’re going up to Muqattam Mountain.”
“So you’ve got a car?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay then. Why don’t you come pick me up in Zamalek?”
“When?”
She climbed out of bed with a gentle smile. Sex was over now. We’ve still got some friendship and goodwill on our faces. People are eating each other alive out there, so why can’t we keep things civil?
“How about in an hour or so?”
“Let’s make it an hour and a half. Outside Diwan Bookstore.”
“Okay.”
“Bye.”
“See you later.”
After a quick shower, I gave her a kiss and a pat on the ass, which was my way of showing gratitude, or something like that. My hair was still wet as I went out. On the way to Diwan, I whistled to myself these words: “Okay . . . Bye . . . See you later.” I had a smoke in front of Diwan’s display window, which was full of those trashy English books that sell best in airports and supermarkets—the kind that soak your mind in grease and fry your heart in oil. It won’t be long before they start selling them with Kentucky Fried Chicken. I tried calling Mona, but she didn’t respond. Then I caught her sticking out her head and waving at me from Samira’s car. Her hair blew in the breeze, or maybe it was just the loud music spilling out of the radio. Flags fluttered along the street, the car stopped, and I hopped in.
In order to get to Muqattam Mountain, we had to pass through the decaying remnants of Old Cairo. Oddly enough, it took us only seven minutes to get from Zamalek to Abd al-Khaliq Tharwat Street. On a typical day, it might take us a full hour and a half to get to the Azhar Bridge at the end of Abd al-Khaliq Tharwat, but on an atypical day, like this one, Cairo seemed to be liberally bestowing her gifts on all those traversing her streets.
All this emptiness was due to a lack of spare change on holidays like today. The streets, especially downtown, take on a completely different appearance. Mona’s wearing a long skirt of some light fabric. I stick my head between the seats and see she’s bunched up her skirt in her lap and is rolling a joint. I’m distracted by the glow of her knees, and Samira’s turning up the music. Jimi Hendrix’s guitar shrieks like a hen laying its first egg. I open the window as we pass over the Azhar Bridge, and imagine I catch a whiff of cumin, pepper, and spices. As we exit the bridge and enter the Husayn District, I smell some burnt coffee beans that, without being an expert, I can tell are of poor quality. The scent fills my nostrils. Among the tombs in the City of the Dead, the smell of liver fried in battery acid lingers like a rain cloud. We finally emerge from the torrent of odors that fills Cairo all the way to the edge of Muqattam Mountain. We go to Bar Virginia and order some beers.
We only talk about things that will lighten the mood: films we’ve seen recently, some interesting new music, tales of the wonders and oddities recited by taxi drivers, the jesters of the city.
The sun is about to set, and Cairo’s laid out before us like a grid, a two-dimensional image from Google Earth. In the middle of this mess of satellite dishes, horrendous-looking houses, and high buildings, there appears one of the city’s old ponds. It’s a small spot of water, the last that remains of the many pools left over from the Nile after it was circumcised by the Aswan High Dam. In the background there echoes the voice of Muhammad Muhyi, singing a song by Hefny Ahmed Hassan.
A gentle breeze blows. Condensation collects on the green bottles of beer. A moist handshake of appreciation between the beer and its connoisseur.
Samira’s fooling around with her phone. Mona takes her beer and clinks it with mine. Her smile, a lock of her hair blown by the wind, and Cairo at sunset in the background. For a few moments, I feel something resembling happiness.
. . .
REVENGE HAS NO PLACE IN MODERN LIFE (2)
I made only two visits to the secret bunker underneath Garden City. The first time, it was just me and Ihab Hassan. The second time, Madam Dolet joined us too, as the three of us took shelter from the evil spirits that prowled the streets above. It was the beginning of the Storm.
The location of our bunker was a secret even to many in the Society of Urbanists. The Society—or should I call it the Organization? I don’t really know the difference—kept a well-maintained archive of the mysteries and truths it had discovered over the millennia. Yet its contents remained scattered and dispersed, beyond the control of any single member: were it all to be assembled, no mortal could withstand its blinding light.
Ihab only found out about this place by chance. He had been investigating the construction of Cairo’s sewer system when he learned of an obscure faction within the Society that, long ago, had obsessively set about constructing complicated networks of tunnels under major cities. These tunnels led only to empty rooms. With time, many of them disappeared. Some became rivers, or filled up with ground water. A few, however, remained intact. In the 1950s, this information was brought to the attention of one of the Organization’s leading members, who went on to form a secret subcommittee dedicated to the maintenance of the tunnel networks in several locations around the world: Cairo; the suburbs of London; Washington, D.C.; Rio de Janeiro; several boroughs of New York City, with the exception of Manhattan; Port Said; Santiago; and so on. Ihab became privy to these networks as well, but the other members of the Administrative Council—including Paprika herself—remained totally unaware of their existence, save for the more famous ones such as the catacombs of Paris.
It was during my first visit to the Garden City bunker that Ihab unloaded on me his whole family history, beginning with the story of his grandfather Hassan and the “idealistic crazies”—his words—of Egypt’s nineteenth-century Renaissance. He wound it all up by lamenting his current plight as the Organization’s chief administrator. He was at war, and defeat for his side meant nothing less than global catastrophe.
I didn’t get why he was telling me all this. When I asked him, he replied with the simplicity of a man peeling a peanut: “Because you’re an intelligent young man, someone I can trust. Besides, you’re not one of them.”
He paused, before confessing, “I want you to make me a website.” After repeated attempts to explain himself, he suggested we create something similar to WikiLeaks.1 Being an intelligent young man, I didn’t find it difficult to guess what he was after.
“So we’re talking about exposing the Organization?” I asked.
“You want to play this game with me?” he countered. “I mean, like most kids your age, you’re not easy to impress. I get it. But don’t you want to make something of yourself, to have your own story to tell to future generations?”
I accepted the offer, perhaps because I really was worried about turning twenty-five without having a good story to tell. My life might pass by in a single shade of misery. This “game” opened a new window and gave me the energy to jump through.
Mona had recently been telling me about how disgusted she was with her job at some local programming company, so I shared the offer with her as a possible way out. Ihab had promised to pay cash, out of his own pocket. She was unimpressed at first.
“Dude, I don’t do websites. I’m in IT. You know what IT is?”
“But you’ve done websites before, no?”
“Way back, when I was in college.”
“All right, why don’t you come over and meet this guy. Just to make his acquaintance.”
I can say without a doubt that the look on Mona’s face when she first met Ihab was unlike any I’d ever seen. She was actually impressed. This guy was legit. It was love at first sight, and when Ihab brought out a bottle of aged wine, it was like he’d tickled her clitoris with his tongue.
“I’m screaming with excitement,” she says with a voice as soft as honey.
I want some excitement too, and getting my cock sucked won’t quite do the trick. I need to discover a whole different erotic zone. I need someone to dig a well in my side and accidentally hit upon a site of pleasure long buried under layers of skin, spleen, and bullshit. I need, not so simply, Mona May. I don’t totally buy everything Ihab’s telling me, but I wouldn’t totally reject any of it either. What he has to say blows like a gentle breeze on my face, and I can sense something new on the horizon.
“Let’s follow the light,” Mona says, “and catch fire like a bunch of moths.”
And so she returned to her old hobby of web design. Of course, this meant she would meet Ihab often, alone, without me. Of course, they developed something of a relationship. Was I jealous?
Of course not. The whole thing was so cute it was enchanting, and I was content to see the joy on their faces each time they were together. To see her finally regain her appetite for life was enough to make me feel optimistic. “Someday I’ll get what I want,” I started telling myself. “Someday I’ll succeed.”
I only wished, sometimes, that I could be part of their relationship, something of a third rib.
I wished the same thing with Reem and Paprika. I wanted only to exist in their presence. I realized for the first time that this was the kind of love I needed: to be that sort of “third party,” suspended somewhere between reality and delusion.
When I met with Reem to be briefed on the topic of the third film, I felt for the first time that the Society had swallowed me up. It was as if my whole life were a puzzle, a network of mazes designed by one of the Society’s architects, sprawling underneath the city of Cairo.
This time we met at Cilantro in Dokki. The first surprise she had for me was that she arrived all alone, without Paprika. The second surprise was a red scarf wrapped around her head, which I would later realize was a hijab. And the third and final surprise: this was to be a forty-five-minute film about her, the one and only Reem Abd al-Rahman.
“I’ve been trying to quit,” she said, asking me if I could spare a cigarette. I gave her a light. She puffed out a thin cloud of smoke as the waiter took away our coffee.
HEFNY AHMED HASSAN2
The better part of the Organization’s archive of mysteries is shared orally, not among all members, but in a chain of transmission that binds together “teachers” with “companions.” The Society, eschewing hierarchies, does not have masters and students. Indeed age itself is not a factor, as a particular “teacher” may be only twenty-one, while his “companion” has long passed sixty.
Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet, was still a young man when he moved to Ethiopia. Yet he happened to have given birth to an idea that would be valued as one of the Society’s most important mysteries. It was not made known to all, of course. Ihab wasn’t among those so initiated, while Paprika and others were. Madam Dolet claimed that it had something to do with the chemical infrastructure of rainforests, which allowed certain individuals to modify their ecological parameters while under the influence of a plant-based drug compound.
A secondary part of the Organization’s archive consists of two subsections. The first subsection contains ancient manuscripts composed in languages both living and dead. Some of these are to be found scattered among the museums of the world, and while publicly accessible, the languages in which they were written remain indecipherable. Most, however, are stored in libraries buried underground or in the depths of the ocean, where they are watched over by appointed custodians.
The archive’s second subsection is made up of published works, some of them written by the Organization’s own members. They include mostly poets, novelists, sociologists, architects, artists, and intellectuals whose membership in the Society is kept a closely guarded secret. Some of their works are written under pseudonyms, or are attributed to other authors. The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, the poems of Abul ʿAla al-Maʿarri, the fairy-tales of the Brothers Grimm, the Epic of Dhu al-Qarnayn in its Malaysian recension, James Joyce’s Ulysses: these works and others that remain shrouded in history.
For the Society’s members, secrecy is not a luxury. It’s a fundamental aspect of their existence, a strategy necessary to achieve their goals.
Another fundamental aspect of their existence, as already stated, is their rejection of any manner of hierarchy. But this applies only within the Society itself. With regard to the rest of the world’s population, members have long believed themselves to be distinguished by a superior intellect. As such, they are qualified to lead, and are alone capable of providing true happiness and prosperity for all. The only problem, as members see it, is that humankind happens to be governed by those beholden to fear of the strange and unknown. Such ignorant men are not only an obstacle to the general progress of humankind—they are a threat to the very existence of those who are not so ignorant.
One of the Society’s members was a British surgeon credited with devising ingenious methods of organ transplantation, as well as with performing the world’s first successful open-heart surgery. (Naturally, these innovations were kept secret for decades before being shared with the medical community at large.) In addition, the surgeon—who spent his last years hidden somewhere in the south of India—was known as the originator of a powerful legend that is told by Society members to this day.
“Naturally, it’s all a bunch of bloody nonsense,” the surgeon would say of the legend. “None of us believes a word of it. Still, it gives a lot of symbolic weight to our existence, and explains in a metaphorical way how we, as members of the Society, came to be. In any case, the story concerns the first man to lead his tribe to reside in a cave. Let us observe how radically life would change for this group. Let us feel the warmth they felt, having retreated from the winds outside to bask in the sun-soaked rocks of the earth. This warmth would have been a totally new experience for the species. Subsequent generations of humankind would come to know this warmth as ‘safety.’
“This first man—and by the way, he might have been a woman—wasn’t the strongest one in the group. He was no fierce warrior. With his weak and emaciated figure, he was the one most sensitive to the cold, and the one most fearful of being attacked by wild beasts. However, he was different from the other weaklings in the group. Perhaps it was something in his nerves. Perhaps he had a different sort of memory, or an odd mutation in his genes. Perhaps it was a preplanned coincidence that led him to find sanctuary in the cave, and thus teach humankind what it meant to feel safe.
“This man’s tribe would not consider him a hero or a ruler. The power he wielded was not political in the primitive sense, but psychological, and he would subsequently be known by many different names: the magician, the priest, the wise man, the poet, the playwright, the thinker, the mathematician, the physician.
“But the most significant change the tribe witnessed after inhabiting the cave was that their number soon doubled. So it was after the first year, and again with the passing of the next. The population grew until the cave was no longer big enough for all of them. The first person to attempt to expand the cave from within, or to build an extension outside, was the world’s very first architect. It is from him that, according to the legend, all members of the Society are descended.”
To return to the Organization’s notion of secrecy. This was first discussed in the streets of Thebes not long after it was founded. After centuries of conflict and unrest, it was finally put into practice in the months preceding the burning of the Library of Alexandria.
Transmitted like phantom genetic material between its members, the Society’s occult knowledge grew and mutated year after year. Some of it spilled out into the open, but most remained jealously guarded. Occasionally, something unexpected would happen. The Internet, for example, emerged completely independently of the Society. The same thing happened with television. Sometimes, certain members even forgot that they were part of the Society. At other times, it was the Society that forgot about them. But eventually, there would be a knock at your door, or a text on your phone. A delegate might even tap you on the shoulder while riding the subway, pull closer, and whisper in your ear a few precious words, his eyes glowing with the warmth of brotherly love.
The most precious secrets maintained by the Society concerned the spreading of a sense of safety. You’ll feel it when you shake hands with one of them. The heaviness will be lifted from your shoulders and you’ll become almost sleepy. You’ll feel like an infant returning to its mother’s womb.
You’ll be running around from place to place, running across time, when you realize it’s totally unnecessary. The idea will take hold in your mind. It will travel from companion to companion, carried along with the humors, and settle into the great archive of knowledge.
. . .
CONCERNING THE INFLUENCE OF THE PAST ON THE FUTURE
I entered the College of Economics and Political Science under the influence of my father, who passed away when I was in high school. He left behind a fantastical sort of library consisting of the complete works of Mohamed Hassanein Heikal and the writings of Abdel-Halim Mahmoud, former Grand Imam of Al Azhar. In college, I received an eclectic mix of continental philosophy, centering mostly on the works of Foucault and Arendt. (Unfortunately, neither were members of the Society.) Perhaps my wit was stronger than my foresight, but the lesson I learned from the two of them was that there was no longer any hope.
With the turn of the millennium it seemed that ideology had been replaced by culture, and that politics had become a form of business management. There was no longer any vision, nor any missions to achieve the impossible. It was as clear to me as it was to many others that there was no longer any hope, and that the fate of humankind was pain and misery. Nothing could be done to stop what was now inevitable. We might throw up dams to try to halt the flow, but no sooner would our work be finished than the torrent would burst through.
I could therefore easily understand why the Society would want to preserve their secrecy. Until we’re able to find some way to put an end to the pain once and for all, we best remain hidden. Only then can we reveal ourselves and bring our full plan to light.
In October, it’s night outside. The only sound you hear is the music blasting out of a car whose teenage driver thinks that going faster and louder will make things better and better.
The other day, I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a bottle of hot sauce, some bread, and cigarettes. A news report on the television suddenly caught my eye . . .
Notes
1. A website that came out not long before the Storm, dedicated to publishing leaked documents about American military operations in Iraq.
2. An Egyptian folk singer known for the popular epic Shafiqa and Metwelli. Set in the late nineteenth century, the epic tells the story of a man who murdered his sister in order to avenge the family’s honor. Let us remember that this took place in the past, since, as we have already seen, revenge has no place in modern life.
