9

I HAD AN APPOINTMENT WITH the Saint. He’d called me up and asked to meet at the Baron Palace in Heliopolis. I had objected, told him that the place was too far away and it wouldn’t work out, but he had insisted and said that I was going to like what I saw very much indeed.

The taxi driver told me that Salah Salim Street was blocked for some reason and that traffic was being diverted into Heliopolis itself. He would get me as close as he could to the palace, he said, and I’d have to walk the rest of the way. Nothing I could object to there: it was an excellent opportunity to do a bit of shooting.

We came to the outskirts of Heliopolis. I had only walked these streets a few times before and I didn’t know them. I was outside the zone of my favored and familiar haunts now, as though I was back on the ground during the resistance: vague missions in strange places. And I remembered how, despite everything, we had arranged conferences and meetings to discuss what we’d be doing in the days ahead, and I remembered al-Asyuti, and the Saint, and many other colleagues, and the endless gunfire.

Perhaps it was the Saint who’d informed al-Asyuti what I was up to. The fellow had a soft spot for old comrades, and he preferred to meet up away from prying eyes to keep me safe from arrest. The silence with which he had ended our last encounter had been an unspoken blessing, an agreement to keep me doing what I was doing free from restrictions. But I was out in the open now; if I was arrested, neither al-Asyuti nor anyone else would be able to protect me. Indeed, the ties that bound me to Farida—in jail, her story splashed across the papers—might very well come to light. The journalists hadn’t been able to find a single unattractive picture of her, so they’d added spots to a lovely old photograph and turned her wide eyes into slits, and the shot had run in every paper and news site in the land. If they caught me, they’d say I was taking revenge for what had happened to her, but who cared? Nothing mattered to me except roaming the streets and killing at random. The Saint had sounded nervous when I told him that what I was doing was upsetting the ministry, that I was a threat to public order, undermining security. But that wasn’t what was worrying him; he wanted me at liberty to carry out my mission unobstructed.

I fired off all my bullets in Korba, very close to the Baron Palace. I went into a jeweler’s and killed everyone inside. The broken glass and diamonds mixed together until I could no longer tell the two apart. I walked through the dark of night toward the palace, thinking of killing people with my bare hands.

A vast crowd stood outside the building, hundreds of people, some wearing masks that covered the whole of their faces, others with surgical masks over their mouths and noses. A few wore gas masks. Were we going to be taking on the police? The Saint was going to get me into trouble. But these people weren’t assembled here to fight the cops. They were dressed comfortably and presentably in the kind of clothes you wear when you go to the park to lie on the grass. There was a celebratory atmosphere and even before I crossed Salah Salim, I could hear the sound of ouds and guitars. I was walking through the crowds, making for the palace wall, and the music was coming at me from all directions, and the sound of many voices raised in song—jarring, fervent, full of laughter—grew louder.

From somewhere nearby, I heard the Saint call my name, and I turned to see him coming toward me, smiling as always. He shook my hand and we embraced, without my having the faintest idea what all this was about. He was affectionate this time, more so than I was used to from him, wearing nothing on his face but carrying two rubber gas masks in a black bag, clearly identifiable by the reinforced plastic panes at eye level. Inside the bag, they looked soft and crumpled.

Our conversation was most enjoyable. He chattered about all sorts of things, none of them important, as though discussing what was truly important was a taboo among those who knew.

The crowd began moving toward the palace. They were gathered in little knots, keeping close to the outer railing. Then, quite how I’m not sure, planks of wood and lengths of corrugated iron materialized in their hands, on which they drummed frenetically as they sang their happy song.

But the Saint took me aside.

We walked off, leaving the palace behind us. He was silent, gazing out at the horizon and thinking I knew not what. To our right was the entrance to a long tunnel that dipped down below the road, and a line of classical villas that by worldly standards might suggest luxury, but which appeared to me as empty hulks, glaring out at us. I had met up with the Saint several times over the past few weeks and we had talked a lot, but it was only as we walked down that street that he answered my question.

Without preamble, he said, “No one knows when the Day will come, but many now believe that the whole of human history has been written in hell.”

“It all happened in hell?” I asked. “All those lives, lived in hell? I assumed that the Day had already come but our torment was so great that we’d forgotten, or that we’d forgotten it so that we could be tormented with the illusion of the world.”

He fell silent for a moment, then said: “That’s true. Our memories are dead to us, but closer to the end we shall recall all that we have lived through. Remembering is our true torment, not what is happening to us right now.”

I didn’t speak. Once again, I thought to myself that we must come from a world quite different from this place we were in now, utterly unlike our illusion—without streets, or buildings, or walls, or trees—and yet we did not recall a second of our time there, and everything we lived through now was but a hell that we’d been warned of in that former world.

“The whole business is deeply painful,” the Saint said. “You’ve no doubt wondered whether we deserve this, wondered what we did in the world to deserve to live in this hell. I don’t know if you’ve come to the conclusion that this is justice, but if you have, allow me to reassure you: you’re almost out.”

I was to leave. At last!

“But don’t get too excited,” he went on. “You will be going soon enough, but no one knows if he will be departing for heaven or to pass another life back here.”

I said: “That doesn’t matter in the slightest. Living in hell and being ignorant of the fact is a thousand times better than this knowing. I understand now why people kill themselves.”

This time, his warning was serious: “That is the greatest error the tormented can commit. Whoever kills himself here shall never go to heaven. He shall cycle through hell after hell and never leave. The suicide is here forevermore.”

“But it’s still better, Saint. What’s happening is more than anyone can bear!”

The Saint laughed.

“You thought living here would be easy? People must show patience. Maybe this time they will leave for heaven.”

He said nothing for a while, and his smile vanished. Then:

“I think that people here have come very far indeed. . . .”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the damage done to the souls here cannot be effaced by entering into heaven. These souls will remain weakened forever. I don’t precisely know what will happen at that point. Perhaps we’ll remember everything, and the memory of it will continue to torment us. Maybe we’ll forget—but if we forget, then what’s the point of it all?”

I could think of nothing to say. He halted, and I halted, and from afar came the sound of metal being struck. No, not metal: the sound of bare feet thudding on the ground.

“Otared,” the Saint said, “be sure to kill as many as you can. The end is very near now, you can’t imagine how near. Don’t waste any opportunity to kill, for what is coming is worse than you can conceive.”

“How will it happen?” I asked.

The sound grew louder as it approached. He raised his head, trying to see if anything was moving off in the distance, and I did likewise, but we saw nothing.

Speaking rapidly as he peered down the length of the street, he said, “I’ve no idea, of course. Maybe those who witness the end will see what no man has ever seen before. Maybe the end will be kind to us both. Maybe we shall stay in hell forever. All that’s certain is that you are to send people straight to heaven.”

“Will we see the end together?” I asked.

Rushing his words now, he said, “I’m sure we will see everything right up until the final moment. Maybe we won’t see it together, but we’ll both see it for sure.”

The sounds were very close now and the Saint’s body tensed. He started jigging up and down, little hops, staring at the nearby intersection on our left. Then he looked at me and said, “Can you run?”

A pack of dogs appeared, running at great speed. As they exited the intersection, their momentum carried them straight ahead, but they quickly altered course and made directly for us, six or seven of them. And no sooner had that happened than a second pack appeared at the very same intersection: much larger, it seemed, endless, all the dogs of Cairo running together in a single stream.

The Saint clutched my arm.

“Run! Run for the palace!”

We ran, the dogs closing on us very quickly. Our walk hadn’t taken us too far from the palace. I could hear the dogs closing on us as we ran, and it struck me that I hadn’t heard them bark once.

Before us was a group of people gathered behind a wall that they’d constructed from wooden planking and short lengths of corrugated iron—enough cover to hide behind but sufficiently low to see over—into which they’d opened plank-lined passages leading to the palace. The knots of people were like tongues of flesh in a black ocean of asphalt. As we drew closer, those behind the wall removed two boards from the front of the structure and waved their arms, inviting us inside. Together we ran for the entrance, and so great was our speed that we collided with those waiting on the other side. Then they replaced the boards and the barrier was restored, a wall to keep the dogs from touching us.

At first, a great number of dogs smashed into the wooden wall. The boards shivered in the hands of those standing behind them and almost broke apart, but in less than a minute the dogs had figured it out and were running down the passageways toward the palace. The torrent of dogs was tremendous, thousands of bodies rushing by as I stood behind the boards, pouring out of Heliopolis and Salah Salim Street and whipping past, caring for nothing, not stopping or turning, not barking, noiseless but for the scrape of their paws on asphalt.

The head of the river breached the palace’s outer railing and entered the building itself, even as its body still roared down the passageways between the knots of people, and then they were through the entrance and inside in their hundreds, dogs spilling from windows and balconies, tails and heads piling up, the rooms on the ground floor full to bursting while more dogs ran past us outside.

A long time passed, maybe half an hour, before the great torrent of dogs began to slacken and the last groups of stragglers appeared, sprinting toward a palace that was
now completely crammed, the remaining dogs thronging around it.

Silence descended and many of us put on our masks in readiness for whatever was coming next—everything was unexpected. I looked around for the Saint and spotted him a few meters away. I called his name and he came toward me, and I to him, and as we met I asked, “What now?”

“This is what I told you about. Now the palace will collapse.”

I lifted my eyes to the old ornamental façade and said to myself that a building like this must be indestructible, that it would never come down.

“Everyone around us knows that this will happen,” the Saint went on. “They’ve all come to see the show.”

His words seemed strange, but I’d grown accustomed to all the strange things happening around me. Patting my shoulder, he said, “Don’t worry. They all know. You’re among friends, Otared.”

And indeed I did feel much better. I was among those who knew; one of them, standing with them. I was about to ask the Saint if this was to be the end, but the roar of the palace’s collapse prevented me from talking. The internal walls and ceilings were the first to fall, then the dome caved in, then the outer walls subsided onto the dogs milling around the outside of the palace. As the ground quaked beneath our feet and a tremendous noise stopped our ears, a cloud of dust rose dozens of meters into the air. Then the dust cloud reached us, smelling of rain, and enveloped us completely.

I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in the fate of the dogs. No doubt they’d all perished beneath the rubble.

The crowd calmly dispersed, walking off with a bare minimum of handshakes and clipped farewells, and were gone. The Saint lit a cigarette.

“The dogs are dead, my friend. Tomorrow’s the end.”

*

I walked away in the direction of central Heliopolis. I walked and walked, got lost down streets that all looked alike and amid old houses, until I came to a place with a great park and tall buildings. There, I followed the metro’s tracks, before deciding to risk a detour into the maze of side streets. I was getting lost on purpose.

But these streets weren’t entirely unfamiliar. I’d seen them, or ones like them, before, though I couldn’t remember the names. This was a dark street with spare little trees hanging over the walls of the houses on either side. The streetlamps were off, and the light from a shop door shone white and uncommonly brightly in the distance. There were no pedestrians here. No cars. I thought that I might sleep there on the sidewalk and nobody would bother me. I would sleep deeply and wouldn’t wake until tomorrow morning, to witness the end. There was a man sitting on a wooden chair outside the shop. He was very far away, but even so he looked perfectly at ease, his arm hooked over the back of the chair with a native indolence dear to my heart.

I was walking down the sidewalk toward the light when I noticed a window set into the high wall on the other side of the street, pure darkness behind its vertical metal bars and unlit white candles melted and fixed in place along the sill. The whole frame was illuminated by the lightless, glowing white of the candle wax. If there was any way out of this hell, then the window was it.

The man sat calmly, waiting, drenched in the strong light spilling from the shop at his back. I looked through the shop window and saw only wooden shelves holding nothing but a few old watches, and no one inside despite the dazzling glare. The moment he saw me, the man gave a smile of joy and waved his arm in greeting, but he didn’t move from his chair. I drew closer, trying to recall if I’d seen him before, but unlike the street he wasn’t familiar at all. Overcome by curiosity, I went up and greeted him.

He said that he had been waiting for me for a long time. Many years had gone by, and he had sat out here each evening at the same time. He knew that I would come one day at precisely this hour. I wasn’t late, he said, glancing at his watch—I had it down to the very minute—and then he told me that he had been given the hour, but not the day. And gently he chided me, but he also said that he had never been bored, that he would have waited many more years and never lost his faith that I would come.

I asked him if he would rather we went inside, but he said it would only take a couple of minutes at most. He wasn’t going to get up. I must finish it all now.

On the sidewalk opposite, I saw the silhouette of a woman carefully setting a lit candle on the windowsill, then grasping one of the thin bars and murmuring to herself, the light unveiling her lined face.

The man never spoke a word to prompt me, but his expression and his smile said as much: an invitation to come closer, and closer still. I drew up to the chair, circled his neck with my hands, and started to squeeze, and before I could increase the pressure he reached out, and gripped my wrist, and croaked something I couldn’t understand. I let him go. He coughed a little and rubbed his neck, then asked if he was supposed to resist, so that the death wouldn’t count as suicide. I had no ready answer to that, but after some hesitation I told him that it would be considered a regular death. He shivered with delight, and smiled once more, and this time he turned his face away, toward the window. And, docile as anything, he laid his hands in his lap. The candle was out and the woman was gone. I clasped his neck again and started to squeeze with all my strength.