Shooting the Sphinx (24 page)

“You should have told me first.”

“Sweetie, you're a coward.” She took his hands and interlaced their fingers. “You have a hard time telling people what they don't want to hear. You need everybody to love you all the time, but they can't. Besides, you were going to lose anyway, so what difference would it have made?”

“Didn't you once tell me, ‘Surprises give you cancer?'” He pulled his fingers out of hers.

“Ari.” She tried to grasp his hands, but he broke free, went inside, then straight to the door. “Ari!” she called again, surprised, as he walked out.

He hopped in a taxi, a dented black Fiat belonging to a mad driver. They careened across Giza to the highway toward downtown Cairo. They found the apartment around the corner from Samir's office where Rami, Farah, and the other revolutionaries hung out.

Ari paid the cabdriver and got out of the cab just as a bunch of protesters came out of the building.

“Hey, Ari!” some of them called out in English. “Ari, my brother!” They raised their fists to him.

Ari didn't recognize most of them and wondered how they knew him. “Hi, guys,” he said as he passed through the group and went inside the building.

The door was open, so Ari let himself into the apartment. Just like at the police station earlier, the place was a beehive of fervent preparation. Ari passed through the rooms of the grand old Parisian-style apartment searching for Farah. He didn't see her in the living room where people lay all over the floor or sat on couches banging away on their laptops. In the kitchen, big pots of beans and chickpeas were on the boil. A team of women was busy cooking, but Farah wasn't one of them.

Ari found the master bedroom, which was dark, just lit by the screens of the editing system. Rami and five others hovered over the editor's shoulders watching a shot of a bloody unconscious protester being dragged to safety away from some thugs.

“Ugh.” Rami shook his head. “Let's post it on YouTube.”

“Rami?” Ari called him.

Rami turned and squinted. “Ari, the movie star? Do we have a great shot of you.”

“Is Farah around?”

“She's out with Rami's Angels,” said a protester on the bed, and the others laughed.

Rami explained. “She's passing out flyers with the girls.”

“Where?” asked Ari.

“By the museum. Hey, Jameel—” Rami tapped the editor on the shoulder. “Show Ari his close-up.”

The editor clicked open a shot of Ari getting punched in the head by a thug. Ari saw the fist fly at him, his head snap back like a boxer getting KOed, and the permits fly up in the air.

Everyone in the room moaned, “Owwahh!”

“One more time,” said Rami, “in slow motion.”

The editor played the clip again in slow motion. The thug wound up. His fist came around—a metal ring on his middle finger—and connected with Ari's temple. A painful grimace splashed across Ari's face as it sank down in the frame. The papers floated up in the air, a perfectly composed action.

“How did you get that shot?” Ari asked, mesmerized.

“We were following Farah to film her for our documentary,” said Rami. “And those dumb government thugs didn't notice our camera. Now we will put it on the Internet for the world to see.”

“Please don't,” begged Ari.

“Why not?” Rami didn't understand. “You're part of the struggle, man.”

“I don't want to get in trouble with my job.”

“Really?” Rami gave an ironic look. “Don't you have freedom of speech in America?”

“Yeah.” Ari nodded. “You can say anything you want as long as nothing changes. Catch you later.” Ari walked out of the bedroom heading for the front door.

“Hey, Ari, wait a sec.” Rami ran out of the bedroom and caught him in the vestibule. “Would you bring Farah this box of fliers?” Rami picked up a heavy cardboard box off the floor. A sample flier was pasted to the top. “She just texted me that they're running low.”

Ari looked down at the flier on the box top. It was a picture of Farah and three very fine-looking Egyptian girls passing out fliers on the street.

“What's it say?” asked Ari.

“Come to Rami's concert in the Square,” translated Rami.

“Nothing revolutionary, right? I can't get involved in that,” insisted Ari.

“Only a concert, come on, man.”

Ari looked at it. Every time Rami sang a song, it was a revolution. “Okay,” said Ari, and he took the heavy box out of Rami's hands.

“Woof,” Ari grunted. “How many is this?”

“It's only five thousand.”

“Five thousand!” exclaimed Ari. “Who are you, Bob Dylan?”

 

Chapter 49

Ari heard footsteps coming up behind him. He shifted the heavy box of fliers from one hip to the other to look over his shoulder. Six thugs were walking half a block behind him along the walkway in front of the museum. Don't look again, he told himself as he heard their footsteps and started to get nervous. He picked up the pace, walking a little faster. They walked a little faster, too. He heard them closing the distance, and he walked even faster, which was difficult on account of the heavy cardboard box.

He thought of dropping the fliers and running, fleeing. He looked at the box top and saw Farah's picture. I've got to find her no matter what, he thought. He kept walking, the box slipping down in his sweating hands.

The thugs started to jog up behind him. They pulled out knives and blackjacks. Ari felt an extra rogue heartbeat of adrenaline surge the blood out to his fingertips. He was overwhelmed. He stopped and put the box down on the pavement panting with terror, cold sweat chilling his brow.

The thugs jogged right past him. They were after someone else. Ari sank sitting down on the box for a minute to catch his breath. What am I doing here? he asked himself as he closed his eyes and breathed deeply until he felt ready to stand. When he opened them again he realized he was sitting in front of a miniature statue of the Sphinx beside a long rectangular reflecting pool.

“Ari?”

He thought he heard his name. He looked around. Farah and Rami's three gorgeous groupies approached flirting and handing out concert fliers to passing men. Ari stood slowly and heaved up the heavy box as the girls came toward him.

“Ari, you joined the revolution just in time.” Farah was happy to see him. “We only had three fliers left.”

Farah broke open the top of the box in Ari's arms.

“This is crazy.” Ari wiped his brow. “I didn't come to join the revolu—”

The girls clustered around him. “
Shukran,
Ari!”

The girls each took a handful of fliers, which lightened his load a little, and he followed them around looking for people in cafés, shops, or just out on the street. People took the leaflets warmly, gratefully. Ari resupplied the xeroxed papers when they ran low. The girls chatted excitedly in Arabic about the concert on Friday. Ari hung back a little to let them flirt. When will I get a chance to see Farah alone? he wondered.

After another half an hour of wandering the streets, one of the girls said good night. Ari followed Farah and the two other girls, walking a little slower, not so energized, chatting a little less. The girls were tall, but Farah was the tallest. She had a long confident stride. Ari told himself to stop staring at her, but it did keep him moving forward.

He pulled out the last thousand fliers and left the empty cardboard box on the corner. Passing out the fliers became harder as fewer people were out walking on the street. Some people already had fliers from before on their way back from wherever their evening had taken them. Another of the girls said good night.

Ari, Farah, and the last of Rami's harem walked even slower, even more tired. Ready to finish their chore, they gave out fliers twenty at a time to anyone who would promise to pass them on until, to their surprise, they had no more fliers. The final groupie yawned and said good night. Farah and Ari stood there facing each other. Dawn started to break in the sky.

“Here's the last one.” Ari held it up. The street was deserted, no one to give it to.

“Keep it, so you remember this night.”

Ari stuffed it in his back pocket and pointed. “The sun is coming up.”

Farah took his arm. “Let's go get some breakfast.” She put a scarf over her head, and they walked up the hill toward Al-Hussein Square outside the ancient mosque.

They bought a few
ataif,
stuffed pancakes; yogurt with saffron; coffee; and a pastry to split. They rinsed their hands in a big star-shaped fountain and lay down on its walls, their heads coming to a point. They ate until the remains of their breakfast lay on the star wall between them.

“Farah?”

“Yes, Ari?”

“I have to tell you something.”

“You have fallen deeply, passionately, madly in love with me?”

“I might have…” Ari found it almost impossible to speak. “… to fire your brother.” Ari veered away from telling her that it had already happened.

Farah laughed.

“What's so funny?” asked Ari.

“And I thought you were nervous from seeing me.”

“You're not angry at me?” Why didn't I just tell her the truth? He berated himself in his mind.

“Fired from a stupid American movie, why should I be angry?”

“It's not stupid.” Ari took offense.

“It's a blessing.”

“It's a very important film … about the truth,” he insisted.

“In a few days, you won't think so. Nor will Samir. Don't you get it? You are like two flies on the back of a camel walking into a sandstorm. Everything will be turned upside down. Everything.”

Ari stared at her, furious that she had called his movie stupid, mad at himself for telling a half truth, afraid she would hate him for hurting her brother, needing her to absolve him when she didn't even care. She looked so beautiful, her brown eyes so wise. If I kiss her maybe she won't hate me when I tell her about the police. He leaned over and felt her breath on his lips, sweet. He kissed her, barely, softly. Her lips trembled. She pushed him away gently.

“Stop. Ari. Where do you think you are? This is Cairo.”

“Sorry, sorry.” He withdrew, crushed.

She caught his hand and squeezed it. “After the revolution, if you still feel this way, if you still remember me even, come find me and we can do this for real, but not now. You mustn't kiss me because you feel badly about hurting Samir.”

She knows, thought Ari. She knows everything. Tell her what you came to tell her. Don't be a coward.

“I might have to…”

“Yes?” she prompted him gently.

“Call the police on him.”

“What? Police?” She recoiled trembling with revulsion. “No, no, you can't do that. And think of yourself; don't call in the police. It is so … unnecessary. It will be the end of him.”

“Why? They say it's just a bureaucratic thing.”

Farah took a deep breath, then spoke. “Remember how I told you he had disappeared for a year?”

“The day he dropped you off at college, yes?”

“When he finally came home, he was a walking skeleton. His clothes hung on him like a wire hanger. His back had skin that looked like scrambled eggs, even the soles of his feet had scars on them. He could not control where he went to the bathroom.”

Ari understood. “The Muslim Brotherhood raped him?”

“No, no, not the Brotherhood, the government, Ari. He was locked up for a year in a secret prison.”

 

Chapter 50

Omar's office was a big art deco affair with high ceilings, metal moldings, and cone-shaped sconces on the walls. He had a big mahogany desk, which had probably been there since the beginning. It looked like a movie set of a studio chief's office from the 1930s.

Ari was daydreamy from no sleep. He half expected a lion to roar, trumpets to sound, and little spotlights to cut up through the air from out of the brass inkwells attached to the antique desk blotter. A black-and-white movie might start any second, and the three of them would morph into Boris Karloff, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre hatching some plot.

Beth and Omar sat at the desk pouring over Samir's budget. Ari couldn't focus on it anymore over their shoulders. He had passed out Rami's fliers until dawn. His mood had collapsed into exhaustion and gone sour. He pulled his chair over to the window and looked out through wooden Venetian blinds at some electricians pushing big old arc lights on battered rolling stands down the street toward a soundstage. The round housing fell off an arc light and clattered onto the street. Ari wondered if those spotlights were from the 1930s, too.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the last flier from the night before. He sneaked a peek at Farah's picture with the other girls.

“Samir has two drivers in here for every vehicle.” Beth pointed at the numbers with her red pen. “Should we cut them?”

“They are cheap,” said Omar, “a few dollars a day. It's not like teamsters in New York.” He rubbed his face wearily. “Is anyone hungry?”

“I could eat,” said Beth. “Should we take a break?”

“The meal is ready. They will bring it.” Omar called out to his secretary in Arabic.

Ari stood up and stretched. He didn't want to make small talk with them, so he picked the
Cairo Times
from Omar's desk and leafed through the Arabic pages not understanding a word. He just looked at the pictures, mostly of police looking heroic and some of the protesters looking guilty and suspicious.

A porter carried in a big tray with a lot of little dishes on it.

“Do they have hummus?” asked Beth.

“Always,” answered Omar as he offered the bread basket to her.

Ari picked up a spoon and scooped up some rice and lamb onto a plate. With his other hand he turned the page of the newspaper.