8

I WAS PREPARING THE JOINT al fresco, the bright sunlight bathed my skin, and I felt unusually happy and at ease. It was a beautiful morning and it made me forget how dull the days were, suspended up here in the sky.

At the top of the tower, a man could think terrible thoughts: jumping into the Nile, not in order to kill yourself but from a yearning to embrace the water. I’d fantasize that, after falling from that great height into the Nile’s broad span, I would be saved, would survive, would plunge down a few meters, then bob back up, relishing the cold water, and maybe swimming over to the five battleships and banging on their hulls with my fist, a challenge to the Knights of Malta’s sovereignty, then back to the banks of the island to find my companions waiting. I’d think about firing indiscriminately on pedestrians along the Corniche. Those people didn’t care about the battleships; perhaps they were in favor of the occupier staying. Thousands of cars passed down that road each day, thousands of pedestrians, gazing over at West Cairo, free from the control of the Knights of Malta, and knowing that over there someone was holding out, someone who might be sacrificing his life to expel the occupier, and yet they did not join him. Cairo was a truly corrupt city. Whenever news reached me of rebellions in the Delta, I wondered at the tame creatures who lived around me and did not resist. I thought of opening fire on the windows of the television building that rang with praise of the Knights of Malta all day long. The official home of government broadcasting deserved to be bombed without any warning being given to those inside.

I thought how afraid the Knights of Malta’s soldiers would be if we took to killing them, then grilling them over coals and eating their flesh. Maybe then they’d leave, not out of fear of dying, but for fear of ending up as shit in Cairo’s sewers. And I thought that all that had happened and was happening was ordained, and yet we went on resisting regardless.

As I fixed the joint, I was staring at a drone drawing away toward West Cairo. A short while before, we’d received a smaller than usual block of hash and orders stressing the need for restraint for a twenty-four-hour period, during which time we were completely forbidden from firing on East Cairo. We immediately realized that a group from the leadership must be moving in the east that day, and might be passing down the Corniche or slipping into the television building, and they were concerned we’d hit them or worried about security measures being tightened up, standard procedure after one of our attacks. The order for restraint was very encouraging, suggesting we were building up to some exceptional action. Would the mounting pressure really force the Knights of Malta to leave? I pictured them bewildered: wanting to leave, but having nowhere else to go. Perhaps we’d throw them out and they’d occupy another country, oppress another people. I didn’t much care. I was bored of being up here. Every day, I’d weigh the benefits of what I was doing and then I’d go back to thinking that there was no other way.

With the first drag, I realized that the hash was spiked, mixed with a large quantity of other chemicals. This was unusual, but I carried on smoking, keen to try a different high. Whatever had been added, pills or otherwise, the effect on me was dramatic.

Following the fourth drag, the chemicals had overwhelmed the hash. I lay stretched out on the ground on the top floor, the heavens above my head aglow, marveling at the insistent light and the purity of the sky, while the metal spikes tilting outward from the top of the balcony’s railing looked to me like a monster’s claw with a thousand talons, and I pictured those talons closing on me and my companions, closing in and crushing us all, without hope of escape. Looking over at those who were with me, I saw them similarly stretched out on the ground or with their backs against the balcony’s wall, all of them silent, and then I was visited by very short bursts of total awareness of everything around me, moments when my senses were fully alert: I could clearly smell the reek of hash smoke filling my nostrils, the scent of the soap I’d washed my face with two hours before, and the anti-inflammatory cream one of us had rubbed on his shoulder. The most distant sounds were perfectly audible: window shutters being closed in a building overlooking the Corniche in West Cairo; starlings gathered in the branches of a huge tree by the zoo and chirruping with wild hysteria. And somewhere in Imbaba, a brawl—twenty men slapping with their hands, and then the real fight, when voices fell still, insults were choked off, and it was out with the blades, tots and teens hurling bricks and stones at the combatants, and then the sound of shotgun blasts from zip guns and the reports of Egyptian-made automatics, and an ironmonger roaring in rage in a street nearby as he fished out guns he’d finished making just yesterday, putting them in a hold-all to be distributed to one side in the battle. And car horns blaring as they circled Tahrir Square in East Cairo, trying to escape that circle of hell, endless minutes of the drivers’ and passengers’ lives lost with no hope of recovery or of putting them to use. I saw the cars creeping forward before they were hidden behind the massive edifices of Talaat Harb Street, which blocked them from view but not from my gaze. I saw all things in outline, the sizes and dimensions of cars and pedestrians described without color, or shade, or surface: outlines that meant I couldn’t tell their make and number, or the bulk and height of those that rode inside. I saw the shapes of bodies walking behind buildings, and I could hear them as clearly as if I were moving among them—an irreducible tangle of human sounds and voices. Slowly, though, these moments of heightened consciousness faded into the long periods of disengagement that followed. Were these really bursts of consciousness, or was I completely out of it, just dreaming that I heard, and saw, and smelled it all? And I thought to myself that they had sent us this spiked hash to make sure we were properly intoxicated: living corpses, incapable of action.

With difficulty, I got to my feet, staggered over to the railing, and tried waking one of those slumped on the floor, but he didn’t move or answer me. I called his name, but got it wrong. “Ali?” I tried to remember who he was, but couldn’t, and started kicking him gently in the leg. Slowly, he turned to look at me, made no response, and just then my head cleared, and I knew we were in grave trouble; our first lines of defense were high as kites and unable to do a thing. Hash calmed us down and helped us to relax, but this stuff had robbed us of our faculties. I walked around the balcony to the other side and looked out over West Cairo. Everything was as it should be, or so it seemed.

Suddenly, I heard a sharp hiss, like a firework taking off or the air being let out of a tire. I couldn’t tell where the sound had come from. I peered around and a thought occurred to me: maybe we were in hell. Maybe that had been the Devil farting—a tongue of flame and a sound to make you jump. I stared out, ready for a pillar of fire to appear or a line of flame to cross the heavens, but all I saw was a small, dark object plummeting out of the sky at a tremendous speed. Baffling. Then light flooded the spot where it had landed and there was the powerful, unmistakable sound of an explosion, and intersecting balls of fire blossomed out and became black smoke. West Cairo was being bombarded for the first time since the beginning of the occupation.

I raced around to the other side of the balcony, to East Cairo. As I ran, I tilted my body toward the main body of the tower, and the balcony’s fence flashed by me, its railings flickering past my eyes. It seemed to take forever to get there, and I lifted my wrist in order to look at my watch, and remembered I hadn’t worn one for many years, and then I came to a halt. I must have run two circuits around the tower, I thought, and I hadn’t yet reached my colleagues lying slumped and stoned. I must go back in the opposite direction if I wanted to get to the east-facing side. The tower’s balcony was a circular maze with no way out. Then I looked out to the horizon, and I saw that all was peaceful and that nothing was out of the ordinary—the Nile flowing sedately north, indifferent to any shit that might be taking place on its banks—when I heard one of my colleagues scream my name.

Momentarily sobered, I sprinted over, closing the distance in a couple of seconds. The snipers were standing by the railing, looking out over East Cairo. They were staring at the battleships anchored in the Nile directly below us. I stood next to them and heard one say, “There, at the edge of the city,” and he pointed east.

The rocket’s exhaust trail could be clearly seen. It began at the base of the Muqattam hill, rose up until it had passed over our heads, then gradually disappeared. Even as he pointed, another rocket launched, tracing a second white line across the sky parallel to the first, and then a third, and a fourth. My supernatural awareness was fading once again, it seemed, as if the hash high and the chemicals’ unexpected impact were ebbing away as I tracked the rocket rising up over our heads and vanishing into the sky, and I could see nothing but a glimmer, like a tiny star exploding by day. Then it dropped quickly toward West Cairo and the rocket’s body opened to release hundreds of little objects, small bombs that would complete the descent, widening the area of impact and the damage done. They hit a number of buildings and flattened them, even as the bodies of the third and fourth rockets broke open, spilling the cluster bombs that would make sure this patch of West Cairo was utterly destroyed.

And I heard the sound of things being demolished, and of particles of soft dust, of the moans of the dead, and of souls ripped from their bodies—though which was ripping which, I couldn’t tell—of women weeping, their hands slapping their cheeks as the fire consumed their children, of cars speeding by, then stopping, the drivers sprinting heedlessly toward shattered homes, shunting the rubble aside in terror, and thousands beneath the wreckage pleading for water or for death, of doctors bellowing, asking for things I couldn’t understand, of boys on motorbikes lifting up bleeding bodies and gunning away, stony-faced, in search of a hospital, of workmen from the south calling out the names of their friends as they heaved the debris away with their bare hands, of a man lighting a cigarette, then smoking it with equanimity and enjoyment, his body lying beneath tons of concrete, and brick, and wood, no hope for him at all, saying, “Why not enjoy yourself before you die?” of a woman crying, “At last!” as she surrendered to a freefall as rapid as the bedroom door, ceiling, and floor that plummeted down around her, of someone calling out from the mosque’s minaret, and no one understanding him and so leaving him to rave, of dogs howling and not understanding, barking and not understanding, running and not understanding. And I did not understand.

When night fell, the rockets were still being launched from the edge of East Cairo, and white smoke trails were replaced by the jets of flame spat out by the rockets as they disappeared into the darkness. Half West Cairo in ruins. The drug was still working, and it looked as though it wouldn’t stop any time soon. None of the members of the resistance on the ground made a move and no citizen of East Cairo stirred to attack the rocket launchers or stop them, and I later learned that that day had been the calmest in East Cairo since the occupation began. Not a single Maltese trooper was harmed, and the public acted as though what was happening was perfectly normal. One of my colleagues, slumped next to me in an attitude of surrender, said, “Even if we’d been fully awake, we wouldn’t have done a thing.”

I watched East Cairo through my scope, looking for just one soldier, a single officer, to bring down. The rifle was steady in my hands, but I was not, and I saw thousands standing by the Corniche, watching the bombardment of West Cairo with an extraordinary lack of emotion, as though it were some imaginary city being bombarded in sound and light on a movie screen. The vendors moved through the crowd in perfect safety, and many of them sat down in the middle of the road as if taking a break from some grueling exertion. No one crossed any of the bridges to help the inhabitants of the west.

By the following morning, the black smoke from the fires had traveled a considerable distance south: a vast cloud of darkness stationary over what was left of West Cairo and an unbroken tail trailing away from the city. Life went on in East Cairo as though the day before had been just like any other. Cars sped down the Corniche, their passengers glancing casually at the ruins of their neighbor, and by noon, crowds had gathered where they’d stood the day before—leaving work and coming to stand and see what had happened, hoping that the city would be bombarded again today.

By dawn, I’d sobered up, though a faint, scarcely perceptible effect could still be felt. My companions were waiting for the next drone to show up with the day’s orders, but it never came. The twenty-four hours was now up and we were free to start shooting. We readied all the ammunition, climbed to the top floor, and turned our guns on East Cairo.

I shot at those standing and walking along the Corniche, the closest road to the tower. I pointed the gun in their general direction and fired. I didn’t aim at anyone in particular. I shot at the cars that drove by, killing a number of drivers, and the vehicles piled up in the road. But none of this stopped them. After sunset, thousands trekked down to the Corniche for a reprise of the previous day’s scenes, and to me it seemed as though they weren’t there to watch the West Bank smolder, but were waiting to be shot at.

I ordered everyone to cease firing. Then I instructed them to take aim at the furthest stretches of the Corniche and blaze away indiscriminately. We hit numerous buildings in Bulaq Abul-Ela, around Tahrir, and in Abdel-Munim Riyad Square, then started picking our targets, taking out anyone we caught passing through those distant areas and hitting the cars with many rounds. I didn’t know why I was doing it, but I was happy. Enjoying myself, even. The pleasure and contentment I’d felt the morning before returned. No drone arrived asking us to stop. None of the civilians or occupation soldiers turned to look at us. Many of them must have guessed that up there at the top of the tower were snipers murdering people, but they didn’t care and made no move to stop us. After three hours of shooting off half-inch rounds, our ammo ran out. The rifles were panting in our hands, but we were in raptures.

Gradually the crowds broke up. By midnight, the Corniche was free of vehicles and foot traffic, and East Cairo was sound asleep. Not the troubled sleep of a city traumatized by the many bodies that had fallen that day, but an indifferent slumber. The hundreds of corpses scattered before us were testimony to the lethargy and brutishness that afflicted the place. Even the corpses themselves were stupid and dull; no one who’d stared into their open eyes could sympathize with them. This was the first time Egyptian citizens had been indiscriminately targeted. Previously we’d hunted down those who collaborated with the occupier and senior government officials, and maybe killed one or two others unknowingly by accident, to zero-in the scope, or even for fun (how could a day go by without any shooting?), but today was revenge—and tomorrow would be, too, and all the days to come.

The smell of burning still hung in the air and, because we were as close as could be to the black cloud suspended over our heads, we covered our noses and mouths with strips of wetted cloth to block the airborne ash and dust. I was checking the day’s haul through my scope when a group of nine or ten individuals appeared, wearing rubber masks of characters unknown to me, though I did pick out a poor imitation of actor Samir Ghanim. The masks’ broad grins, arched eyebrows, and staring eyes suggested comic actors. One of the men bent down, reaching out his hand to that of the nearest corpse, looking for a ring or watch to remove, and then going for the clothes, rummaging for cash, which he took, and on to the neck and ears, for jewelry, which he stole, and then throwing everything he’d found into a plastic bag held in his left hand. All this happened quickly, hurriedly, though it didn’t appear that they were afraid of the police or anything like that, but rather that they were rushing to strip the greatest number of corpses in the shortest time possible.

A bigger group came in their wake, wearing black trash bags that completely covered their necks, and heads, and hair, their eyes visible through irregularly ripped holes. I saw the bags plaster to their faces as they breathed in and puff out as they exhaled. The group was looking through pockets and bags, taking papers, ID cards, phones, watches, cheap rings, bags, shoes, and belts—everything the first group had left behind. Having searched the dead with frantic haste, they left, leaving nothing behind but the corpses’ clothes.

Next came a small gaggle of teens. No more than five. Fifteen or sixteen years old, say, bare-chested and very scrawny. Their skin gleamed in the low light, either from sweat or something they’d smeared on themselves. I couldn’t tell. Many tiny scars could be made out on their bare chests, and stomachs, and arms. Their heads were wrapped in sheets of newspaper and the pages of magazines, with only a single hole for their eyes. One of my colleagues said that people called them ‘cockroaches.’ I remembered what they called us: hornets. This lot were more squalid still. They stripped the clothes from the dead, one corpse at a time, leaving nothing behind, and giving special attention to the female bodies: lifting arms, clutching at breasts, and pinching thighs. Two teamed up to raise the legs of a young woman and part her thighs, then they started peering at her crotch.

I was really very tired by now, hardly strong enough to keep watching through the scope, but then one of them gave a violent jerk and I saw what he was up to.

He’d discovered that the girl was still alive. She lay there, sluggishly, limply moving her arm. She was signaling: requesting aid or asking for death. The cockroach stripped her of her clothes, shoved his trousers down, then flogged his cock erect and pushed it into her, clutching her upraised thighs. He was fucking her at a quite incredible pace, like some kind of purpose-built machine plugged into the mains, and the rest of the cockroaches gathered around. They were smoking through the sheets of newspaper they’d taken for masks, poking the cigarettes through the mouth-holes and puffing out smoke while they watched the machine at work. One of them stepped forward, felt the woman’s head, and neck, and arm, then signaled to the machine that she was done, she’d died. His gestures were unmistakable, and the cockroach suddenly fell still, his cock still in the corpse, and let her legs subside, unopposed, on either side of him. Then it was mere seconds before he was back to pumping, and thrusting, and gripping the thighs, and then he was done, and the rest of the cockroaches could take their turn.

The corpses were spread out along the length of the Corniche, thicker in some areas and thinning out to none in others. I began combing the street through the scope to see what was going on, on the lookout for more thieves. More people started showing up, searching the bodies. They weren’t masked or dressed alike in any way. They moved slowly between the dead. Looking for their relatives, of course. They just looked at the faces—wouldn’t touch the naked bodies or rifle through what clothing remained. Just looked at the faces, weeping. One large group walked together. They carried pictures in their hands and held them up to the faces of the dead. One woman walked along screaming in anguish, not looking at any of the dead faces, just wailing on and on, inconsolably, and when the others had all departed she remained, screaming intermittently until dawn. There was a man, carrying a small girl on his arm. Five or six, she looked. He was stooping over every corpse, turning the head to show her its face. He would point at the face and talk to her, and she would shake her head, then coil her little arm about his neck and bury her face in his shoulder. At each body he stopped, not leaving a single one without first pointing at its face and addressing the girl in his arms. But she always said no, moving her head very slightly, almost imperceptibly, at which the man would move on to another body and stoop.