The Queue (4 page)

Yehya and Nagy wandered through the near-empty streets. No one knew when rush hour was anymore; there were no set working hours, no schedules or routines. Students left school at all sorts of times, daily rumors determined when employees headed home, and many people had chosen to abandon their work completely and camp out at the Gate, hoping they might
be able to take care of their paperwork that had been delayed there. The new decrees and regulations spared no one.

Yehya shook his head in silence. Since the Gate had materialized and insinuated itself into everything, people didn’t know where its affairs ended and their own began. The Gate had appeared rather suddenly as the First Storm died down, long before the Disgraceful Events occurred. The ruler at the time had been an unjust one, and popular resistance gathered to oppose him. The ensuing uprising wracked his reputation and jeopardized his properties and those of his cronies. It threatened to sweep away the system he and his inner circle found so agreeable and desperately wanted to preserve. One night, as tensions were building, the ruler broadcast a short speech on television, in which he spoke of “the necessity of reining in the situation.” There was no other harbinger of the Gate’s appearance: the next day, people awoke and it was simply there.

At first no one knew what this immense and awe-inspiring structure was that simply offered its name—the Main Gate of the Northern Building—as the pretext for its existence. Yet it was not long before people realized the importance that it now played in their lives. As the ruler faded from the public eye, it was the Gate that increasingly began to regulate procedures, imposing rules and regulations necessary to set various affairs in motion. Then one day the Gate issued an official statement detailing its jurisdiction, which extended over just about everything anyone could think of. This was the last document to bear the ruler’s seal and signature. As time passed, the Gate began to introduce a few new policies, and soon it was the singular source of all regulations and decrees. Before long, it controlled absolutely everything, and made all procedures,
paperwork, authorizations, and permits—even those for eating and drinking—subject to its control. It imposed costly fees on everything; even window-shopping was now subject to a charge, to be paid for by people out doing errands as well as those simply strolling down the sidewalk. To pay for the cost of printing all the documents it needed, the Gate deducted a portion of everyone’s salary. This way it could ensure a system of the utmost efficiency, capable of implementing its philosophy in full.

A full range of security units soon appeared, too: the Deterrence Force existed to guard the Gate, and appeared only when something signaled danger near the building itself. The Concealment Force was tasked with protecting Zephyr Hospital and other facilities whose documents, files, and information were highly secret. Finally, the Quell Force handled direct confrontation and random skirmishes with protesters during times of unrest and chaos. It was well known that these guards were the least disciplined of all, yet also the fiercest in combat.

Yehya was no stranger to the string of disasters that the Gate’s appearance had unleashed on the people. The company he worked for had nearly gone bankrupt after it was forced to pay new mandatory fees. Then a leaflet arrived, notifying the company that they’d been assigned with supplying equipment to the Alimentary Force. The task was prohibitively expensive and impossible to carry out without sustaining significant financial losses, and the company didn’t even work in food services to begin with. But their appeals were returned to them stamped
REJECTED
. They were forced to lay off a number of employees to fulfill the assignment, and though Yehya survived the first round, he didn’t expect to outlast the next. Murmurs of discontent circulated among the staff, but no one had
the courage to speak up. It soon became clear that the Gate and its security units had tightened their grip throughout the region. The Gate’s influence had begun to seep into businesses and organizations, onto the streets and into people’s homes.

Then one day, Yehya heard about people who could no longer stand what was happening. Word spread that a small group of people, who had recently joined together, were going to organize a protest. He was skeptical that an uprising would be possible under the Gate’s reign, but all the same he excused himself from work and left at the agreed-upon time, having decided to watch from afar. He had taken just a few steps in the direction of the square when he suddenly lost all sense of things—he realized he’d fallen to the ground, although he didn’t feel any pain, and then he lost consciousness. He didn’t wake up until he arrived at the hospital. Later, he learned that the Gate had closed that day in response to what became known as the Disgraceful Events. It hadn’t opened since, nor had it attended to a single citizen’s needs, yet it also hadn’t stopped issuing laws and decrees. It had to open, Yehya figured. What reason did it have to remain closed? The Disgraceful Events had ended by affirming the Gate’s hold on power and its growing omnipotence. Closing indefinitely made no sense, unless it was simply dealing out another form of punishment.

When they arrived at Amani’s building, Nagy made his excuses and left so that Yehya could be alone with Amani. Yehya rang the bell a couple of times before Amani opened the door. Despite how deeply she had longed to see him, she looked into his eyes for just a fleeting moment before her gaze instinctively traveled downward. She scrutinized his clothes, and he quickly realized she was searching for any sign of bandages.
Her face fell when she didn’t see any, and she was filled again with a sense of anxiety. Though she hadn’t believed in miracles since she was young, she kept wishing for one. She held fast to her hope that Yehya would undergo the operation: that it would succeed, he would recover, and this ridiculous nightmare they had been thrust into would end.

No matter what happened, Amani never changed. Yehya knew she was guided by her emotions and never considered things rationally. He knew she waited for her dreams to magically come true and never took obstacles into account, even if she was aware of them and how difficult they would be to overcome. He dealt with her optimism by trying to make reality match it as best he could, but this time was different. She’d been drawn into the incident herself. He pulled her close to him, putting an end to her inspection and wishful thinking. He kissed the top of her head and then her lips, but he couldn’t hold her as he wanted to—the pain shot through his left side mercilessly, and he sat down, telling himself that there had to be better days ahead. She sat with him for a few minutes in the living room, then went to the kitchen and returned carrying two teacups and the cake she’d baked to celebrate his thirty-ninth birthday. He reflected with wry humor on the fact that it was the first birthday he’d celebrated with a bullet lodged in his guts.

She didn’t have any candles in the apartment, and neither of them felt like acting out the usual celebrations anyway—it was enough just to be together. She poured them tea and cut the cake into generous helpings, wishing all the while that the bullet would simply disappear. She kissed him on the forehead and handed him his plate, but he couldn’t eat with her; the stabbing pain had spread into his whole stomach and down
his thighs. He lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes, and she brought him a glass of water and sat in a chair next to him, not daring to touch him. She was distraught. It tormented her to see him sprawled out like this, weak and defeated, and she felt so stupid and powerless. She knew that a glass of water wouldn’t do anything to help. Yehya fell asleep and Amani wandered through her memories, pausing in front of the Northern Building where Yehya stood impatiently every day, waiting to enter. She’d seen the Northern Building often, but only ever from a distance: a strange crimson octagonal structure, slightly higher than the concrete walls that extended from it on either side. The main entrance to the building was the Gate itself, built into one of its eight sides. It had no visible windows or balconies, only barren walls of cast iron. If it weren’t for the people who’d once entered it and told of all the rooms and offices inside, anyone gazing up at it would have imagined it to be a massive block, solid and impenetrable.

Yehya didn’t sleep long. He was concerned when Amani fell silent and began to watch him attentively; she was counting his exhalations and synchronizing her breathing with his, so she would notice if anything changed. He gathered some strength and shifted on the sofa, and his face regained some life. It saddened him that they couldn’t find anything else to talk about, just this bewildering mess that had become their sole subject of conversation from dawn until the ominous hours of the afternoon. He woke up and fell asleep and walked and ate and drank, and deep inside his body was a bullet that refused to leave him.

Yehya sat up, and when Amani saw this, some of the concern lifted from her face. She suggested they visit Tarek if there was still time; she was sure she could appeal to his sense
of duty as a doctor and win him over, especially since things had changed since their last visit. Yehya had begun the necessary procedures: he had a place in the queue and would stay there until he received the permit. It was simply a matter of time now, nothing more, so maybe Tarek would show a little compassion and agree to help Yehya before all the paperwork was finished. There was no time for delay, or for adherence to arbitrary rules that weren’t helping anyone. Yehya nodded, took a small bite of cake, and slowly stood up, clutching his side.

They were nearly out the door when the telephone rang, and Amani hesitated a moment before returning and picking it up. Nagy’s baritone sprang out of the receiver, and he was pleased to hear her voice—it had been a long time since he’d seen her, maybe not since Yehya had been injured. He’d just finished his errands and was returning to the queue, and offered to walk Yehya back, but Amani asked him to meet them at the hospital instead. It was a chance to meet up after not having seen each other for a while, even if the place itself held bad memories for all three of them. Yehya took the phone from her to remind Nagy to be on his guard and watch his words if he arrived before them, to say nothing to Tarek about the other people waiting in the queue or why they were there. As Amani and Yehya walked down the stairs, she reminded him about the letter she’d sent him through Um Mabrouk; Yehya hadn’t told her what he was going to do about the suspicious doctor who’d dropped by the office where they worked. Yehya realized with surprise that he’d completely forgotten about it. Her vague letter had confused and worried him when he received it, and he’d meant to ask her to explain what had happened. It held only one real piece of information: Zephyr Hospital, the
place the man worked. Nothing aside from that, no name or rank or even his job title. The doctor hadn’t asked her to do anything, not even to inform Yehya that he had come—he’d just asked Amani a brief question and then left. Although this enigmatic message was the reason Yehya had left the queue to visit Amani, it had evaporated from his memory, its place filled with pain. But again they put the discussion aside: it was getting late, and they hurried to catch Tarek.

Nagy took the quickest route he knew to the hospital. The streets practically looked like a carnival these days; ever since the Events had ended, they were overflowing with street vendors selling all kinds of food, drinks, clothes, and an array of everyday items. He enjoyed the lively, bustling atmosphere. Most important for him, it was a gold mine of books and papers. He noticed a wooden birdcage covered in a pile of newspapers and magazines in a dimly lit corner, and a man sitting cross-legged next to it, half asleep, his head drooping onto his shoulder as if he were about to wake at any moment. Nagy scanned the headlines, searching for something in particular. Without waking the man he left money for a copy of
The Truth
and a magazine—in theory a quarterly but now published only as often as its editors could manage. Hunger stirred in the depths of his belly, and he paused in front of a cart where sweet potatoes were roasted and sold. But the smoke rising from it brought back memories of those recent unsettling events. He stood there, frozen for a moment, and then quickly walked on, empty-handed but for the newspaper and magazine.

Examinations Conducted, Visible Symptoms, and Preliminary Diagnosis

The patient is conscious, alert, and aware of his surroundings; blood pressure and pulse are normal; visible symptoms include: signs of choking and disruption of the nervous system, bleeding around entry and exit wounds caused by a [redacted], sign of recent abrasions and bruising on the back, pelvis, and forearm regions, [redacted;
injury
written above it] penetrating the pelvic region along with profuse bleeding, deviation of the wrist. Procedures conducted include [long sentence, redacted]
.

Required follow-up: Complete blood workup; kidney and liver function analysis; ultrasounds of the abdomen, pelvis, and chest; X-ray of the right forearm
.