Utopia (4 page)

Oh, what an adventure!

It was only at that moment that I felt the adrenaline coursing through my veins. Euphoria!

I looked up at the sky and began taking in air in great gulps to calm my heart down a little bit, so it wouldn’t leap out of my chest. Stop! Dammit, you have to stop!

Then we got on the bus, transformed into a man and a woman who were of Them: poor, dejected; coarse, awful-smelling clothes. But whoever said adventures were comfortable?

The bus slowly started moving towards the outer gates. Checkpoints. An American soldier shone a light on our faces.

The moment of weakness is when they can see you, but you can’t see them. But you place your faith in the filthy clothes and the head coverings. No one knows us on the bus; these people no longer know who comes and goes. When we want to go back, it will be easier, because I’ll call my father and ask him to send us someone to bring us back to Utopia.

That happened with Shadi when he found himself besieged in Ataba Square in Cairo, unable to return. He called his father, the communications king, who let out a string of abuse, then sent him a helicopter reserved for the Marines. It was a dramatic, frightening scene when the helicopter started hovering vertically over Ataba, shooting bullets over people’s heads as the rescuers abseiled down to pick up Shadi and his quarry.

The helicopter ascended over people’s heads like one of the pagan gods of the Aztecs. Wow! How exciting!

Germinal whispered in my ear, ‘The clothes smell horrible. This woman didn’t bathe.’

I ordered her to be quiet. Our good behaviour was the only thing protecting us now that we had left the gate, and now that the Marines had inspected our IDs without looking at our faces.

They really don’t look closely at whoever is leaving. All they do is confirm that you’re there. The important thing is who’s coming in. It’s nothing but a show, to let the sheep know who the boss is.

The red planet stomps on the face of the sun

Angels scream as the deed is done

You belong to me, for you’re my prey

As I tear your body apart today

When you’re in my cells and you’re part of me

Then you’ll know the meaning of eternity

–
Orgasm Songs

Night and silence and the thrill of adventure. The desert. I think I dozed off for a time.

A terrible smell came near Germinal. A terrible smell and the breath of a mouth with rotten teeth. A woman: anatomically, at least. Or, as Rasim describes women like her, ‘It’s a man with a hole, that’s all!’

She brought her head close to Germinal like a dragon looming from the back seat.

‘Hey girl, you got a cigarette?’, she whispered.

Frightened, Germinal shook her head no. Oh, the naiveté of your reactions! If a mad dog sniffed you, you wouldn’t behave like this.

‘You got anything to eat?’

For some reason, this woman thought she was sitting behind an open buffet table.

Germinal put her hand in the bag she was carrying and unthinkingly handed her the rest of the hamburger.

The woman greedily wolfed down the sandwich. She chewed it with almost sexual pleasure. She said that if she could find a cigarette, then life would be even more fantastic.

‘Do you work for Hamzawy
bey
?’

Germinal didn’t know what to tell her. She nodded her head yes. The woman said he was a scoundrel, a thief and a bastard. The man is a friend of my father’s, but I agree with every word. She went into great poetic detail about his character.

I turned to her and spoke roughly, trying to unburden myself of my proper-sounding Arabic: ‘How did you guess she works for him?’

‘Because she’s a pretty girl and because she had this sandwich.’

She cupped her hand and, with the tips of her fingers, grabbed Germinal’s chin. There was something uncomfortable about her gesture, about this movement that transgresses normal behaviour. So Germinal jumped as if she had been touched by a snake. The long nails must have scratched her soft skin.

‘He loves pretty girls,’ the woman added. ‘He has an army of maids. The son of a bitch has sex with three girls in one bed sometimes, even though he’s past sixty. But it’s what they eat: lobster and that new medicine that he gets shipped fresh every day from France.’

I knew the name of the new medicine because my father imported it: Libidafro. It was impossible for the woman to pronounce. Years ago, they had Viagra, then along came this drug that could work miracles. So the men of Utopia never give up sex: they don’t grow old and don’t get feeble, and their lust for women is eternal, like Greek gods. But the older ones only get their opportunity with the Others, unlike the young guys. You conquer a woman by way of your machismo, your money, your prestige, or your power. The grown-ups have power, prestige and money, but they don’t have the natural machismo that drugs can’t produce.

‘The son of a bitch sleeps with three girls a day,’ the woman said. ‘But he hasn’t touched his wife in ten years. You ask me how I know all this: there are no secrets here, dearie. What goes on behind the walls is our only entertainment, as you know. Don’t be embarrassed: I know he’s done it with you. If you swore to me on
the Quran that he didn’t do it, I wouldn’t believe you. Hamzawy
bey
couldn’t keep himself more than a week from that soft skin.’

Then she finished the sandwich, burped loudly and wiped her mouth, saying, ‘He has low taste, too. He likes to slum it. I used to work for him, and he wanted me. I’m as ugly as a monkey, there’s nothing about me to attract any man. But he was drunk and demanded me, as if phlegm had collected in his throat and he needed a spittoon. Women like us can’t deny Hamzawy
bey
. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s fear. Maybe it’s his power. It’s a delightful notion, that this wealthy giant of a man wants you. The important thing is that you always accept it. Girl, don’t say that women who do that are always forced. Not on your life. Class has its attractions. The important thing is that the pig was alone with me for a few moments, then turned his back on me once his lust was sated and he realised how repulsive I am. He threw up and kicked me repeatedly, and then he threw me down the stairs like in those old movies, the movies of Yusuf
bey
Wahbi. He began calling me terrible names. I know where this man’s from. These men don’t come from heaven. They all came from the lowest of the low classes, but while we were like dumb animals, they knew how to squeeze blood from a stone.

Then, in the darkness of the bus, she looked at me and said, ‘And you, stud? Do you work for Hamzawy
bey
too?’

‘Mourad
bey
,’ I answered cautiously and in the same rough voice.

The time had come to learn something new about Mourad – my father.

She let out a snort, breaking the silence and darkness of the bus, and said, ‘So, my fine buck, you’re one of those, are you? Heh, heh! I knew it as soon as I heard your soft voice. A perfect match!
She works for Hamzawy
bey
and you’re with Mourad
bey
. If it was the other way round, it would be a disaster. Mourad
bey
would beat her with shoes and Hamzawy
bey
would whip you to shreds. Heh heh! So you and he go the other way. The fat cats approve of the both of you!’

It was amazing information. I began to recall Mourad’s behaviour, and here and there I found some questionable things I hadn’t noticed.

Was the woman spreading rumours without a shred of truth, or was it really like that?

What does it matter? Mourad is the man who gives me orders I don’t follow, and hands me money. What’s the importance of his moral behaviour? I’m not responsible for my father’s morals. Anyway, I won’t be like him.

At this point, the woman lowered her voice as she said in the darkness: ‘Despite that, I bore him a child. The only thing that comes into the world is a child you don’t want and who you pray to God will stop breathing. He was really a bastard son. I was alone when he was born. I cut the umbilical cord with a rusty knife I found beside the bed, then I lifted the baby by his feet and looked at it. A lump of flesh covered in clotted blood. The bastard was demanding his right to live. The bastard was demanding food, air, warmth and affection. There was nothing I could do for him.’

At this point, Germinal asked nervously, ‘What did you do?’

The woman laughed and laughed. Her chest shuddered; her chest rattled. She coughed. Spat. Then she tilted her head back and started snoring loudly.

The shadows of the road danced across her features, made uglier by bitterness and want. Another rocky road was inscribed on the lines of her face.

I was on fire; her words had inflamed my imagination. All this pain. All this suffering. Death. Murder.

I put out my hand and squeezed Germinal’s hand. I’d bitten my tongue from the pain of ecstasy. It’s all I could do now.

We had entered the territory of the Others.

We left the other world behind a long time ago, the day we disappeared beyond the walls of Utopia.

Shubra.

So they call it.

Shubra, which I had only seen in movies. The name has a strange, harsh ring to it. Sierra Madre or Rio Grande must have a similar ring to American ears. The bus stopped in the middle of the crowd and some of the passengers got out. I beckoned to Germinal to get off the bus with me. This was a good enough place to start.

Where had that woman disappeared to? I didn’t know. That’s how nameless faces melt into the darkness and crowds.

A strange mix of smells, sights and sounds. The first and most prominent smell was the stench of sweat. Dissolved in this smell were the strange odours of food, trash, human excrement and maybe blood.

There were carts laden with food. Mixtures of food. There was a mound of rice and a mound of a strange white substance I think
they call ‘couscous’, oranges, tangerines, and unrecognisable hot drinks. For a long time, there have been itinerant alcohol vendors, but what kind of alcohol is this? A fist-sized bottle costing fifty Egyptian pounds, even with all this inflation! If it was urine, it would cost more than that. Old perfume bottles, filled with some substance that is impossible to determine. I think red wine is a common ingredient in all these liquids. Mourad said that selling alcohol in the street was unimaginable twenty years ago, but morals are corroded by poverty just as metal is by dripping water. The strangest thing is that methyl alcohol doesn’t blind these people, the way it does everywhere else in the world. If their stomachs are made of stone, then their livers are made of steel, and their optic nerves are electric cables.

The sandwiches were another problem. A pile of sandwiches. A sandwich, filled with what they claimed was liver, cost only twenty Egyptian pounds! If they were rat livers, you couldn’t sell them for that price.

After a minute in this world, I concluded that these people were just pretending to be alive.

They pretend they’re eating meat, and pretend that they’re drinking alcohol, and of course they pretend they’re drunk and have forgotten their problems. They pretend they have the right to err and sin.

They pretend to be human.

Only then did I understand why we isolated ourselves in Utopia.

In this world there is nothing left but poverty and haggard faces, from which savage, hungry eyes bulge out. Thirty years ago, these people had some rights, but today they’ve been completely forgotten. Even electricity and water is an individual problem for
each one of them. Whoever can get an electric generator or dig a well does all right; the rest just have to make do.

The strange thing is that their numbers multiply with an unbelievable speed. For us in Utopia, the average birth rate is almost zero, while their birth rate is always growing. The average man has ten children, five of whom die because there is no medical treatment of any kind, but there is continual population growth in spite of that. They seem to rely completely on herbs and popular remedies. My father holds a monopoly on all medicine on the market. The prices are unreal, but there’s always someone who will buy. The enigma of this country is that there is a buyer at all times and at any price, which proves that Marx was probably an idiot when he imagined that the balance would tip when the poor are no longer able to buy.

Some of these people are religious, because religion is the only hope they have for a better life after death. A person can’t suffer all his life and then die and be turned into carbon without reward and punishment. In Utopia we have a lot of religious people, and planes are continually going to Mecca for the pilgrimage, but the reason – I think – is that the lords of Utopia are afraid of losing everything in an instant. They fear waking up to find themselves in the middle of this crowd buying rat-liver sandwiches and drinking red wine. The situation demands a great number of pilgrimages and prayers to avoid this bleak fate. In short, it’s difficult today to find a person who is pious for piety’s sake.

We walked in the middle of stupefied crowds. We tried not to draw attention to ourselves, but I felt the enormity of this adventure we had thrown ourselves into.

Germinal clutched my hand nervously, and I looked at where she was pointing.

There was a wooden cage piled high with repulsive-looking chicken skins. The terrible thing was that people were buying these things. I fought back the gorge rising in my throat and pushed it far down. Our reaction was going to give us away. If one of them looked closely at our faces, they would see that we’d never known a single day of hunger.

The vendor called out to us, ‘Come here, brother! How long has it been since you cooked vegetables in grease? These skins completely hit the spot!’

He lifted a strip of skin and waved it as if to entice us.

It seemed that chicken feet were also popular – and heads – and wings. But where was the chicken itself? Even their chickens had apparently been turned into nothing but skin and bone. No muscles and no innards.

A mangy stray child snatched something from the vendor’s stand and ran off with it, pursued by curses and slippers.