The Queue (19 page)

One day long ago, he’d told Amani that everything she did, even if seemingly trivial and irrelevant, had reverberations in the grand scheme of things. Even something apparently insignificant—like the amount of air she breathed—could have consequences. He had smiled to himself while assuming an outward solemnity, and added that, for example, the meager rent she paid her landlord could have contributed to the Gate’s sudden appearance in the heart of the city. And conversely, he told her, she was affected by everything that happened, too, even if she didn’t admit it; if the Gate announced a ban on kites with colored streamers, it could indirectly influence her daily life or work. This interrelation was real, even if there were no explicit connections. At the time, she’d laughed and told him he was completely mad.

For as long as he’d known her, she’d never cared for politics or philosophy. No matter what happened, she focused only on the concrete details of everyday life. Yehya was just like her: he would rather deal with tangible reality and the things he knew firsthand. And so Nagy was always the odd one out, the one who paid little attention to life’s minor details and often appeared lost amid it all. He saw only the wider context, the systems that everything was governed by. He wasn’t interested in
the little pieces; he wanted to understand the broader picture, how it worked and what it meant. At first he’d envied their safe, secure lives, while he had been battered by the Gate’s tempestuous wrath; but now he was going to lose Yehya, and Amani, too. He would be left alone, powerless and bound to life as it had become, no longer capable of the liberty he’d once enjoyed. If he were still a student, or even a hopeful young lecturer, he would change everything about the queue, defend his friends fearlessly, and persist until he’d brought down the Gate and the whole system with it.

He was roused from his reveries by a friendly smack on the shoulder from Ehab.

“Hey, Nagy, I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I just happened to stop by—you won’t believe what happened this morning.”

“Let’s talk on the way. You’re going to the queue, too, right? Listen, my boss doesn’t want to publish any more reports about the queue. He refused the article I wrote a week ago, and today he turned down another one, and before these two he took everything important out of an article I’d written about my trip to Zephyr Hospital with Amani. Can you believe it, he cut three whole paragraphs down to two and a half lines; it looked like a greeting card when he was done with it! And he even rejected my piece on the Violet Telecom boycott. He threw it down on his desk when he saw the headline, and then refused to give it back to me when I asked him for it. I’m telling you, that man is suspicious, acting all high and mighty—how can he ban an article on the phone-company scandal while allowing an article that attacked Zephyr Hospital, even if it
was
short and more vague?”

The Truth
increased its distribution and ran an intriguing interview with the High Sheikh. A bold subtitle hinted that the interview occurred partly in response to rumors that innocent citizens had been shot down by gunfire during the first and second Disgraceful Events, the very notion of which was questionable at best. The rumors were outrageous, it said; unconscionable accusations. In a special column outlined with a thick border, it noted that the Gate had denied these fabrications repeatedly, but to no avail, as they had only spread further.

The editor in chief wrote a brief introduction, in which he explained that His Eminence the High Sheikh, who headed the Fatwa and Rationalizations Committee, had recently received questions from believers about the amendment to Article 4 (A) and related rumors. He had issued a fatwa in response, which, the editor said, was met with overwhelming gratitude from the general public. He also emphasized that His Eminence was the sole person able to illuminate the way forward in these trying times, in which the wise and ignorant alike weighed in with their own opinions. The Sheikh’s explanation in the interview was so comforting that, as was noted in the article, the interviewer had to stop the recording several times to express his deep gratitude and admiration.

The Sheikh told the interviewer that the fatwa contained
two separate decrees, one for each of two categories of people. The first was for those who had started and spread the rumors: he deemed them liars and hypocrites. But the fatwa was primarily dedicated to the second category: believers who were weak of faith. The matter there, he said, was simple and clear. He began by confirming that piety protects people from misfortune and evil—religious scholars and ordinary citizens all knew this to be true. Therefore, if citizens were pious, God-fearing believers (and not weak of faith), they would not bring destruction upon themselves. On the contrary, he said, they would instinctively avoid suspicious people and questionable or forbidden places.

Assertions that people had been injured in the Events were clearly no more than lies and fabrications, spread by an antireligious minority who had suffered injuries themselves. Most people in the nation were believers (thank God!) and so he had no reason to fear for them, not even in the face of bullets. Yet even believers should take precautions to ensure that God keeps them from harm, he added—precautions such as dedicating one’s life to reciting prayers, for example.

The High Sheikh invoked a few passages from the Greater Book, explaining that if a believer were to be struck by a bullet (despite his prayers and supplication), his faith would guide him to the understanding that it was
God himself
who’d struck him down. A wounded believer should not despair or oppose God’s will. Nor should he question the unquestionable—such an act could lead him down a perilous path toward doubt. Instead, the believer must accept the will of God. He must acknowledge how lucky he was to be struck by a bullet, and exalted to a place in heaven ordinarily reserved only for the most dutiful.

At the end of the interview, the High Sheikh noted that everything he had said was part of the fatwa. The Fatwa and Rationalizations Committee had ratified it definitively in its last meeting, and it would be announced at a big press conference within days, to help reassure citizens who were suffering from confusion.

A large photograph of the High Sheikh was printed in the center of the page, him with his solemn smile and the interviewer sitting in front of him. In conclusion, the article stated that the Sheikh commended the newspaper’s efforts to uphold the word of truth, which was why he had given them an exclusive interview.

Yehya sat in front of Um Mabrouk on a plastic chair, his leg resting on the stone table. He had a cup of tea in one hand and the report that Ehab had written—a different copy of the same report that the editor in chief had ripped up—in the other. Ehab sat beside him, next to him was Nagy, and strewn around them on the ground was a mess of newspapers. Yehya shrugged and said that the editor in chief had made the right call: the report wasn’t fit to print. The story simply made no sense—it contradicted all the other accounts in all the other papers, as well as every statement released by the Gate, and it went against the Committee’s latest fatwas, too. Ehab’s report was just based on rumors: rumors that there were citizens injured by government bullets who hadn’t come forward, and that others were blind to their injuries. Rumors that they had disposed of the bullets removed from people’s bodies, and then denied that the bullets had ever existed. Rumors that a few people had managed to climb over the stone barricades, enter
the Restricted Zone, and approach the Northern Building. Rumors that some of them had been killed by birdshot, but that the survivors had rallied and retreated, only to disappear completely. Rumors that they had not been seen since.

Ehab had also included a short paragraph about the microbus driver who had reported seeing an injured young man carrying a bag of spent birdshot covered in blood, during the second Disgraceful Events. Ehab noted that after this testimony was made public, the driver had disappeared. Then the Gate had announced that the driver was a well-known, longterm drug user, addicted to hallucinogens. The young man he spoke of didn’t exist, the Gate’s statement said, and neither did his injured leg, as no trace had been found of either. Ehab quoted an article stating that the driver had been admitted to a government clinic to treat his addiction, but that no one knew where he was being treated or whether he’d been released. Yehya handed the papers back to Ehab with a snort of derisive laughter, while Nagy shifted in his seat and told him that he should make copies to distribute in the queue.

People passed hearsay, a growing number of leaflets, and newspaper articles along the queue; they feverishly searched for fresh information anywhere and any way they could, while time passed and no one moved an inch forward. Most recently, a postal worker joined the queue, carrying an official petition addressed to the Gate from a group of people called the “Disgraceful Events Victims Association.” It openly accused the High Sheikh of causing distress across the nation because he had questioned the faith of the injured in his interview in
The Truth
.

The petition’s signatories said that the interview had damaged their reputations among their families, acquaintances,
and colleagues, and they attached certified documents proving that they were devout believers. Many held Certificates of True Citizenship, and moreover, they really were injured. Their petition included legal grounds, prepared by a lawyer who was also gravely wounded. It proved that the fatwa was riddled with errors, and they demanded that it be repealed and reviewed before being made public.

In response, the Center for Freedom and Righteousness delivered its own urgent petition to the Booth. Based on the High Sheikh’s interview, it accused the injured of failing to perform their obligatory religious duties, and stated that this negligence had directly caused their injuries. The Center demanded that these people’s files be handed over to the Fatwa and Rationalizations Committee in full, so that it could rule on their cases and take appropriate measures against them. Yet despite the general outrage, the fatwa wasn’t revoked or even amended. It had already been announced in a press conference, and a series of supporting statements was released in the days that followed, while the latest message from the Gate denied that anything called the Restricted Zone had ever existed.

The man in the
galabeya
rose to the occasion and began his thirty-first weekly lesson in support of the High Sheikh’s fatwa. In his opening remarks, he said that the fatwa represented the esteemed Committee, which included religious scholars of purest intention and infallible opinion. He added that to question them or gossip about matters of religion—as some fools were doing—was religiously impermissible.

He and his followers had arranged rows of chairs at the front of the queue to accommodate the growing number of listeners. After a prolonged debate over proper religious seating arrangements, the first row was designated for the women, so that they wouldn’t be harassed if they stood at the back. Ines sat front and center and listened with rapt attention. She wore a drab
isdal
over her everyday clothes, and it fell from the middle of her forehead down to her toes, so that every hill and valley of her body was concealed. After concluding the lesson and answering all questions, the man in the
galabeya
looked closely at the women and then launched into a prayer praising these modestly dressed believers who followed the path of righteousness, emphasizing what good wives and mothers they were.

He arose from his seat to distribute an array of small booklets to the women, with titles like
The Nature of Women, Torment and Blessing in the Grave, Suffering the Temptation of
Women
, and
Conjugal Rights
. He gave Ines the whole collection, saying it was a small gift to welcome her into a sisterhood of repentance and to celebrate her return to the path of guidance and truth. The booklets would help her learn more about faith, the world, and religious practicalities.

He returned to his seat and spoke of the importance of the High Sheikh’s fatwa. It not only set matters straight, but also lifted people out of their ignorance and confusion by educating them on the vile conspiracies being hatched against the nation. He thanked and praised various centers and associations, all led by hardworking, God-fearing men, who had taken it upon themselves to lead the charge of societal reform down a path of righteousness. He concluded by declaring his solidarity with the Center for Freedom and Righteousness, and announced that he was a signatory of its most recent petition, which proposed that the intentions of the injured, and their religious and ethical commitment, needed to be monitored.

Yehya grew angry as he listened to Ehab describe the fatwa and the week’s lesson. He’d seen a change come over several people standing near him in the queue, even Ines, but he still wasn’t keen on Nagy’s suggestion to form an oppositional group, something like “The Honorable Injured Citizens Association,” or “The Righteous and Injured.” His mind was filled with a growing pain that painkillers could no longer alleviate, and the medicine itself knocked him out. It made him dizzy and unable to focus, so much so that he couldn’t even check in on Amani.

Ines hadn’t missed a single weekly lesson since committing herself to her new attire. She felt a deep sense of relief and was gradually accepted by a new crowd, which was somewhat different from the groups of women she’d known at her school.
She joined them for social and spiritual activities, visited proselytizers, and attended religious gatherings and prayer groups. Most meetings were held outside the queue, and the women would gather in a clique and head to a designated car, which dropped them at the meeting place and returned them to the queue when it was over. She became immersed in it all and her fears began to fade, though she was still occasionally troubled by worrisome thoughts. Attending meetings meant she spent less time in the queue, and while she was no longer concerned about Shalaby, she had developed an interest in Yehya.