Utopia (6 page)

Since childhood, I hadn’t experienced life without dreams.

To wait for something. To be denied it. To shut your eyes at night and hope for something. To be promised something …

Only at twenty did I realise the brutal truth: that I had to live without dreams.

There wouldn’t be anything there, my friend. Not today, not tomorrow, nor the day after.

Your life was one looooo(
what are you waiting for?
)oooooo(
nothing
)ooong,grim present.

Only in those moments did I realise that I had to engage in a relentless war with that annoying child within me. The inner child screamed and kicked at the ground with his feet: ‘No dreams? But how?’

Then he would launch into a stream of filthy curses, hitting and biting me. But every night I slapped him and ordered him to be quiet. No dreams, you son of a … There won’t be a tomorrow. They took tomorrow from you, and you have to accept it, just as you have accepted that you don’t have any food or drink or clothes or roof over your head, or a sweetheart or dignity or a family or a refrigerator or phone or television or tie or friends or shoes or trousers or phlogistine or a condom or headache medicine or a laser pointer.

He would let out more filthy curses, then fall asleep.

One
looooo
(what are you waiting for?)
oooooo
(nothing)
ooong
,grim present.

I wasn’t the bravest or the strongest. So Abd el-Zahir walked towards them, brandishing his dagger, and spoke in a voice that he wanted to be powerful, but came out nervous and cracked: ‘What do you want, Bayoumi? For a long time, we’ve been like trains on two tracks, moving in opposite directions, but not meeting.’

Bayoumi swore and burst out laughing. He spat and said, ‘What do you know about trains, you sons of whores? I remember them well, and I rode on them more than once. Trains didn’t meet, except when there was an accident, and when that happened, mangled bodies and blood covered the fields!’

His words were clear. It went beyond a hint.

He stuck his hand in the sack Suleiman was carrying and pulled out the carcass of a giant dog. He lifted it by its neck, despite its heavy weight. I saw his biceps bulging, soaked with sweat, glistening in the flickering light.

‘We’re part of this discussion. This involves us.’ We weren’t about to put up with this, too. An empty stomach drives a hungry man insane. After all this effort, how could the dog we’d spent three days ambushing be snatched from us?

When would we be able to find another dog? There were no longer any dogs in the streets at all. No cats. No rats.

The intoxicating smell of grilled meat in the ruined buildings and joking around with puffs of hashish. And Safiya, who hasn’t tasted decent food in a month? All this would have been waiting for us if we hadn’t come across this son of a bitch.

At this point, Abd el-Zahir lost his head, and screamed with a voice that made the subway passages shake, ‘You’ll see, you bastards! That dog is ours! Ours alone, and you’ll have to take it over our dead bodies!’

With those words, we all charged at those bastards.

I’ll be dead in two or three days.

You ask me how I know that? I’m telling you I have no chance of being saved. I was born to lose, and the young guy coming from Utopia will get the better of me, no doubt about it.

That’s why I remember. That’s why I’m rolling the taste of my life on my tongue, the same way a person gets a bitter aftertaste after emptying a bottle of bad wine.

I remember things, places, faces, words, lines of poetry, books and smells, but mostly, I remember women.

Her name was Azza.

Why do I remember her now?

Azza used to sell bread on our street corner.

Azza laughs. Azza moves. Azza scowls. Azza winks. Azza is elated. Azza argues. Azza wriggles. Azza whispers. Azza smiles. Azza thinks.

Azza sells bread.

She’d tell me over and again, ‘You read a lot. You’re crazy.’

I told her that reading, as far as I’m concerned, was a cheap kind of drug. The only thing I did with it was withdraw from my
conscious self. In the past, they used to read in order to acquire consciousness. I told her about the romantic poet, Kuthayyir Azza.

‘Oh, get lost,’ she told me.

‘So I’m lost.’

She told me that el-Sirgani was a predator who guarded her jealously. That he carried a knife made of a gazelle’s horn that he could run through my glasses. The big guy el-Sirgani wanted her. He thought she belonged to him. After he got his hands on her, he would probably make her work with his niece, Somaya.

The inevitable day came that we had expected. We were terrified. I wanted to know. She wanted to know. El-Sirgani wanted to know.

I only remember that he was breathing through his nostrils like a bull. I only remember that he was tearing at the flesh of his forearms and chest with his knife-blade for no apparent reason, only to show me that he wasn’t afraid of anything.

I only remember the cutting. A cut that started from the upper eyelid, passed through the cornea, and moved to the lower eyelid.

I lost my cornea. Stupid people say, ‘His eye is ruined,’ but they don’t know what the cornea is. I know a lot of things. Even as the blade was tearing my eye, I knew the anatomical difference between the cornea and the eye as a whole.

Nevertheless, I confess that I injured him a lot. If you reckon the loser by the amount of blood spilled, then he lost. It’s true that he was the one who injured himself, but what counts is who bleeds more. His friends carried him away as he bellowed like a bull, threatening me with more of the same. Liquor must have been playing with his mind a lot.

I told her, as she bandaged my bleeding eye, that I wanted a kiss.

‘Get lost!’ she said. ‘Your eye is ruined.’

I laughed in spite of the pain. In spite of the blood that flowed, filling my mouth as I lay on my back.

‘It’s not my eye,’ I replied. ‘It’s only my cornea.’

Her name was Nagat.

She had a ruined eye like me.

She had no work, besides stealing from shopkeepers.

Her husband left her because he tried several times to persuade her to ‘open her mind,’ but she refused in disgust. There was a treasure in his house that could guarantee him a good life, but the treasure refused to be sold.

One night, he came to her drunk, along with three of his friends. Then he left them in the shack with her and went out for no apparent reason. But she came out behind him, locked them in the shack from outside, and filled the alley with screams and wails. Quickly, every one of the neighbours discovered within himself a feverish defender of morals. There in the shack, drunken human flesh, incapable of resisting, waited for someone to slap, kick and spit on it, which the neighbours did enthusiastically.

Her husband didn’t dare to return, because, compared to her, he was weak in body and character.

Nagat laughs. Nagat moves. Nagat scowls. Nagat winks. Nagat is elated. Nagat argues. Nagat wriggles. Nagat whispers. Nagat smiles. Nagat thinks.

Nagat steals fish from vendors, which is her particular line of work. That was before a good-for-nothing from Badrashin stole her fish.

‘Marry me, Gaber,’ Nagat said to me. ‘I’ll be a servant at your feet.’

I told her that people should only get married to bring
someone better into the world. A child more beautiful than you. Wealthier than you. Stronger than you.

What’s the use of marrying misery to unhappiness? Soot to mud?

What new thing would we bring into the world, except more misery?

I told her that in Utopia they deserved to marry and have children. She said that they were rotten sons of bitches. I told her that they were the ones who determined what ‘rotten’ meant, and who the sons of bitches really were. So they had the right to get married and have children.

‘Everyone who owns enough to buy dinner for the next two years deserves to get married and have children.’

Her name was Nagat.

She had a ruined eye like me.

Did I find some enjoyment with her? I don’t recall. I only know that I need her now.

Her name was Awatif.

Why do I remember her now?

Awatif was a nurse before their salaries were cut, and before they found there was no point in working. Most of them worked as doctors, treating people for paltry sums. Their medicine is a blend of herbs, honey and folk remedies; sometimes, it’s medication that the inhabitants of Utopia put on the market but never use themselves. And sometimes they use some of the really effective medicines that people working there steal for us, and which are sold at an exorbitant price, including antibiotics and sedatives.

Awatif laughs. Awatif moves. Awatif scowls. Awatif winks.
Awatif is elated. Awatif argues. Awatif wriggles. Awatif whispers. Awatif smiles. Awatif thinks.

Awatif treated my eye.

Awatif said that she loved a man who could fight and lose his eye over a woman.

Awatif said that the men she’d met were prepared to sacrifice her for a cigarette butt.

Awatif said that I was her man.

Awatif said that I reminded her of a doctor she’d once loved, who then became addicted to morphine and died of an overdose.

Awatif was brown-skinned and beautiful.

She was beautiful. The jewel that nature carefully polished and made beautiful for princesses to wear – and that fell in the mud. A mangy dog picked it up between its teeth and began to run – and run …

And as I chase the dog, it’s not for the sake of the jewel.

Instead, it’s because I’m hungry. God Almighty, I’m hungry.

Fists flew everywhere.

Punches. Stabs. Kicks. Gobs of spit. Curses. Fists. Blades. Sweat.

I’m very weak. I have nothing that enables me to face a situation like this. I can only pretend that I’m fighting, like those fake swordsmen who dance at weddings, but I know my limits and I know that it’s what has kept me alive. You have to stick to gangs. Stick to the strong who take what they want. You have to gain their trust, and convince them that you’re necessary. But you shouldn’t attach yourself to them more than you have to, and lose your life when they lose theirs …

I tried my luck with violence and lost my cornea. That’s enough for one lifetime. I won’t lose a cornea and a nose, or a cornea and an arm.

Punches. Stabs. Kicks. Gobs of spit. Curses. Fists. Blades. Sweat.

When I realised we were getting the worst of it, I decided to flee.

I turned and forgot all about grilled dog meat. I jumped onto the subway track and raced in the darkness.

If luck was on my side, I’d find the passageway that would lead me outside.

Someone behind me yelled, ‘Wait!’

I didn’t know whether it was one of my friends blaming me for my cowardice, or one of my opponents who wanted to catch up with me to rip out my throat. Same difference. I just ran and never looked back.

In Utopia, they don’t eat dogs. They raise them to pamper them, and for their protection.

We were like them once, then we learned that dogs were a cheap source of protein. If the revolution happens, we’ll begin by devouring all their fat, pampered dogs.

This was the passageway. I ran through it and stumbled. I’d lost the torch, but I knew the way in any case.

There was an old poster advertising a mobile phone – a special offer from some company. This was when there were mobile phone companies, before Mansour
bey
, the telecoms king, took them over. Of course, no one was interested in us using those things at all any longer, but this part of Egypt was still covered by the network anyway.

There was another poster for cooking oil.

There was a poster with a half-naked, beautiful girl on it. Someone had disfigured her features and blacked her out. Someone did that one day, claiming that he had done it to safeguard morals. The truth is that it was a symbolic rape of that beautiful woman, but sexual prohibition was no longer one of our problems today, strangely enough. With all this poverty, the barriers of morality had collapsed, and sex had become the easiest thing to get. Sex for a paltry price, or else rape.

But in spite of that, I continue to aspire to something else. I aspire to something beyond sex. To that thing that leaves you lying beside her, after your lust is depleted, paying attention to her, and perhaps caressing her smooth cheek with your finger.

A mysterious affection that I won’t call love. I’m not that naive and starry-eyed. I’ll call it ‘something beyond sex’.

Azza, Awatif, Nagat …

I opened the iron gate and emerged into the open air and darkness.

I carefully closed the padlock so that no one else could sneak in. Those people in the subway tunnels could take care of themselves, and they knew how to get out.

I was saved by a miracle.

But I was hungry.

Later, once I’d caught my breath, I would know if it had been my good luck to have remained alive and hungry, or if it would have been better for me to have died in the dark subway tunnel.

I don’t know. I don’t have power over death. I’m a bacteria forced to live, no matter what.

At least there was Safiya. My sister.

There’s one thing in my life that has remained clean or that I have succeeded in making that way. Once, on the television at the coffee shop, I saw in a Western film a noble knight who was walking with a woman when he came across a muddy puddle. So he took off his cloak and threw it on the ground so she could walk over it and not get her shoes dirty.

With Safiya I didn’t play the role of the knight. I played the role of the cloak itself.

That’s why I was alive. I wouldn’t die and leave Safiya to steal or shake her behind, selling the only thing she has to sell. I wouldn’t die and leave her to women who would scratch her face and call her filthy names. I wouldn’t die and let her go hungry.

I wouldn’t die and let her live without a life.

The numbers don’t lie.

For every one hundred crimes of violence against women, eighty-five women are killed.

For every one hundred female murder victims, there are four who have their throats cut like sheep, and two are burned.