Utopia (8 page)

If we couldn’t trust him, then who could we trust?

Soon we were somewhere in these ruined buildings, then we were at a small shack made from scrap wood, disassembled parts of car frames, newspapers and a very odd assortment of things. He pulled back a piece of tarpaulin so we could enter and, feeling compelled to, we did so.

The condition of the hut was worse inside. There were two car tyres being used as seats, and there was a small kerosene stove and a mound of books, the likes of which I had never seen in my life.

The only evidence for the presence of electricity came from a feeble lamp connected to an ancient car battery. The lamp cord had been hung on a stick jutting out from the wood. Darkness would have probably been better and brighter than this light. This measly light was what you would expect over your last words before white foam-flecks dribbled out of your mouth and you died.

For the first time, I was able to get a good look at the features of this rescuer. He was around thirty years old and skinny, with tousled hair. He showed clear signs of malnutrition, but he had a strong physique, like a wolf. On his nose were glasses that had been soldered together hundreds of times, and under them was a face that was filled with stitches, like the face of the monster in the Frankenstein movies. I also
noticed that he had one cornea that had melted and turned into white paste.

‘Thanks for rescuing us,’ I told him,

‘My name is Gaber,’ he replied, as he pushed away some junk to give us room to sit down. ‘No thanks needed. I hate killing of any kind, although you two came, of course, to acquire a unique souvenir! You’re from Utopia, of course!’

‘No, we’re not from—’

He gave me a sharp look with his eye that had turned to paste, saying, ‘Don’t try to fool me. We all know what thieves do when they sneak up on us. And when they’ve finished their mission, the Marines’ helicopters come to rescue them with their quarry. What does your father say to you when you come back to him with one of us? “Dirty!” “Shame on you!” “Oh how cruel!”’

I looked at Germinal and she looked at me.

An uncomfortable feeling washed over us. We didn’t fool anyone. The Others would have torn us apart on the spot: as for this guy, he had a fate in store for us. I didn’t know what it would be, but it was slow in coming, slow, and everything that is slow is cruel.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Alaa,’ I told him indifferently.

He smiled maliciously and said, ‘Of course, if you thought that I’d believe for one moment that you are Alaa, then you take me for an idiot. But it’s not important. The only value in names is in letting you know that I’m talking to you. We’ll assume that you’re Alaa, and she can be Maha. Alaa and Maha. Nice. Are you two brother and sister? I’ll assume that too. But if you’re not brother and sister, then you should know that I won’t allow any
funny business under my roof, or rather, under the tarpaulin over my shack, because I didn’t bring you here for that, and I don’t live by myself.

We heard movement, and a teenage girl entered the shack. She seemed pretty, even if the filthiness of her tattered clothes concealed any beauty. The filth stiffened her dress so that it neither fluttered nor moved, as if it were tanned leather. When she saw us, her eyes had the look of a timid animal withdrawing into the thicket. Later I learned that those two eyes could say everything, as if they were communicating directly with the soul.

‘This is my sister,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘Come here, Safiya. You were asking me about how those rich people who live in their private settlements – look, here’s two of them!’

She gave us a look of incomprehension. We appeared to be in a worse state than she was.

‘They had to look like this as a disguise,’ he explained. ‘It’s a kind of grease that actors put on their faces. They came to grab one of us to amuse themselves.’

Gradually he began to grow more agitated, as though he were spitting out the hatred that had built up in his soul. ‘Why don’t you leave us alone? You stole the past, the present and the future from us, but you hate to let us live our lives.’

Before I could understand where it was coming from or when it appeared, I found a giant machete blade under my chin.

‘I wonder if I should take a souvenir from you, the way you do with us?’ he said between yellow teeth. ‘A girl’s ear would be an excellent souvenir. A delicate, clean, red ear. Everyone will envy me over it – maybe they’ll borrow it from me.’

Then he burst out in savage laughter. Savage laughter. Savage.

We remained silent. I was torn between showing fear, which would inflame his sadism further and showing indifference, which would provoke his insane fury. In the end, I continued to look into his face with my own face like a hawk, expressionlessly. I looked at Germinal out of the corner of my eye, and found that she had decided on the same thing.

Eventually, he calmed down. ‘Make us something to eat,’ he said to the girl.

Gaber told us of his friend who was called Azuz.

He had a large body and a left eye that constantly fluttered. As if he had been expecting bad luck since birth.

Azuz entered the ruined buildings to relieve himself one night, when three guys from Utopia seized him. They were forced to kill him when they were unable to abduct him. Three powerfully built young men with cruelty, coldness and condescension in their eyes.

People here only found out what had happened to him when they saw the Marines’ helicopter circling over the ruins, its bright searchlights sweeping over the place. At that point, they knew that one of them had fallen.

People began pelting the helicopter with stones, and Mursi pulled out the pistol he had manufactured himself in a metal shop and fired off two shots at the helicopter.

The noisy beast rose higher as it pointed its searchlights in every direction, and then descended a little, making it possible for them to see a Marine sitting by helicopter’s open door. He had placed the machine gun between his thighs and began firing bullets indiscriminately at the angry crowd.

A lot of them fell dead. Mursi himself fell dead.

The helicopter entered the ruins, then a rope-ladder dangled from it. The three young guys climbed up the ladder, shouting wildly, and then the machine ascended. The sons of bitches thought they were acting in a Hollywood movie about the Vietnam War. The boys got inside the helicopter and they looked down on the angry crowds. One of them brandished something bloody in his hand as he let out a stream of curses.

Gaber hurried to where Mursi’s body was and picked up the pistol. He steadied his right hand with his left and aimed carefully, but the shot that rang out didn’t injure anyone. He only seriously hurt his arm, and its echo reverberated for ages.

The helicopter moved off into the distance.

The crowd hurried to the ruins by torchlight. And there, beside a wall, they found Azuz’s body, riddled with stab-wounds. He had only one arm. The guys from Utopia had worked hard at it until they could tear it off, and they clearly didn’t have a butcher’s expertise at dismemberment. But if they hadn’t taken a souvenir, then no one in Utopia would have believed them when they got back.

The helicopter moved off into the distance.

But it left behind more blind, black hatred that could find no outlet to pour itself into.

Azuz’s brother, who couldn’t stand his brother when he was alive, swore that he would cut off the forearm of anyone from Utopia if they fell into his hands. But this time, he would do it with his teeth, not with a knife.

The opportunity never arose, even though the crowd kept waiting expectantly to see how that could happen.

They knew that he would carry out his revenge to the letter, but with any unfortunate one of the Others who fell into his
hands in the next fight. There is someone who will lose his arm because he vied with Azuz over a crust of bread. That’s for sure.

This was the story Gaber told us, and more than anyone else, I knew it was true.

Look at me, little girl, say your final prayer

As I crush your ribs and leave you there

I squeeze out your soul with my burning flame

So it goes to heaven broken and lame

When the angels ask how it got that way

It’ll say, I slept with the Devil today

It was the Devil himself who gets so high

On the screams of virgins before they die

–
Orgasm Songs

The food this girl Safiya prepared for us was a mix of broad beans and falafel, the sacred food of the Others. Sometimes we eat these things, of course, for variety’s sake, but not like this: they were almost-spoiled leftovers from several earlier meals, which she mixed together and heated on the stove. Then she poured oil over the mixture, took a handful of spices and scattered them over the pan.

‘We use a lot of spices because they can hide the taste of anything,’ Gaber explained. ‘They hide the taste of spoiled
chicken, sour beans and rotten eggs. Spices are the one commodity whose price hasn’t gone up, because we need them to stay alive.’

He handed me a plate and another one to Germinal. Then the girl handed him a piece of blackened bread, and he kept it for himself.

I had eaten broad beans before; it helps to change things when you’re bored of your usual meals. But our digestive systems couldn’t put up with it any more. So I refrained from eating because I didn’t know what condition their toilet would be in. I don’t mean that I didn’t know: it’s just that I didn’t want to know.

Putting his spoon down on his plate, he said, ‘Of course, you don’t understand a thing about the situation we’ve got into. But I’d hate not to tell you everything. The picture you’re seeing now was there from the start, but unfocused. Then, little by little, it expanded. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer, and then came the moment when the collapse occurred. It seems to me that it happened in the first decade of this century.

‘Suddenly, the dam broke: tourism was no longer capable of feeding these mouths. Israel opened its own canal, which became a ready substitute for the Suez Canal. As for the Gulf countries, their oil petered out or was not needed after the appearance of biroil, and they kicked out their imported labour force. So the economy became burdened by a crushing weight, and services for the poor disappeared because the state wiped its hands completely of its responsibility for them, and privatised everything. There was no longer a government, or no longer a government that cared about us. Eventually, salaries were halted, and services were halted, and the police melted away. Consequently, we are no longer taxed.

‘Your parents were from a class that could use its influence to
get rich: bank accounts abroad, loans from banks, monopolies. Everything played into the hands of your fathers and against us, all down the line. So your class was able to stick together, and its wealth expanded, while we fell into the abyss.

‘Then living with us became an impossible matter, so your class was forced to isolate itself, seeking safety in those settlements along the North Coast. They employed Marines because they could guarantee their loyalty, unlike the loyalty of their wretched bodyguards. The idea that this ocean of poverty would rise up used to keep them awake at night. Since the dawn of time, all popular revolts have begun with slaughtering the rich.

‘And now two societies have formed: one of them owns everything and the other owns nothing. The second society is only important as a consumer market, nothing more. Even if it suffers poverty, the density of its population makes everything possible. If each one of us buys one olive, then the olive-seller will become a millionaire.’

Then he stopped eating, and asked me, ‘Do you have Israelis in Utopia?’

‘A lot,’ I replied. ‘Some of my best friends are.’

‘That’s an important characteristic with your people,’ he said, as he resumed chewing. ‘They’ve assumed their position in the new Middle East they used to talk about. The triangle that Israel dreamed so much about – Gulf money (before it dried up), Israeli know-how, and cheap Egyptian manual labour. We, the poor, haven’t stopped thinking of Israel as an enemy.’

Angry from all this lecturing, I said: ‘Why would I consider Israel an enemy? Just to make you happy?’

He looked at the girl, exchanging a feeble smile, and said, ‘Go to sleep now. Sleep. You don’t know the half of what I know.
And the other half you aren’t interested in knowing. Sleep, and in the morning we’ll see how you can get out of here with your ears still on.’

Then he said urgently, ‘I’m not kidding. They know where I live, and they will come back here when the effect of the phlogistine wears off. When that happens, I have to be here to protect you, otherwise—’

He drew his finger across his neck in an unmistakable gesture.

So we couldn’t escape. It wasn’t on the cards, not to mention that we were really exhausted. It was the most abominable night of our lives, sitting there stuck to each other in that foul-smelling shack. We didn’t dare stretch out or touch any part of the wall. Would we remain this way until morning? And then what? Everything rested on this guy’s plan.

I don’t understand him: I think he’s a cultured type in an environment that isn’t his own. The sheep that thinks becomes a danger to itself and others. I’m considered a cultured person in Utopia. I’m one of the few who’s read everything that’s fallen into my hands, but that doesn’t make me feel one iota of sympathy for him. Culture isn’t a religion that links hearts and joins them together. In fact, it probably divides them because it informs those who have been wronged about the horror of the injustice they are suffering and tells the lucky ones what they can lose. It makes you nervous and wary. Not to mention that your cultural convictions can be transformed into a new religion that merits your death, and leads you to consider others as unbelievers.

Gaber’s snoring had begun to grow loud as he lay in the corner, curled up in a ball.

What does he want from life? Why does he go on living?

If I threatened him with a knife, he would shout and kick my hand. Why?

In the faint light, his sister, half-asleep, lay beside Germinal, looking at her.