I sign out for my video equipment from the library’s AV room. People watch me. There are only three film majors, and we are all, always, watched. I exit the campus. Passersby stare. The only people who are allowed to film on the streets are the TV. They work at the Egyptian Radio and Television Union. If you work there, you are also the TV. You are also, maybe, someone with ties to the surveillance state. Someone it might be better to stay away from. I cross. On the old campus I go to the walkway between the basketball and tennis courts. The floor is paved with pink and yellow hexagonal tiles. I step only on the yellow ones. One step. Pause. One step. Pause. Sideways step. At the end of my path is the science building. I walk up the five steps at the entrance and set my tripod to the side. The university cameras are old, batteries last fewer than twenty minutes before going out. I look for a power supply. A guard approaches me. He shakes his head. You can’t set up here. But I’m on assignment. Sorry. But my professor asked me to. Sorry. But I’ll fail if you don’t let me. It’s against the rules. Please. We can’t allow it. But I have permission. Show me your permission. Here.
You can’t be?
I look at him. He peers as if into my face, through it, eyes wide. His silence like a gasp. He had known Baba. He sets up my power. Asks if I need anything. What a great pleasure to meet you. Your Baba was a great man. If ever you need anything. Anything at all. I adjust the camera. I hit record.
—
The first sit-in I witnessed was eight months ago, last winter. A silent sit-in, candlelit. It was the first political act on campus. University guards had hovered in the distance and then come closer, but they seemed unsure what to do. I also watched from afar. No one would talk about it at first except in whispers. H called it the thing. Then the government daily Al-Ahram ran a piece. Accompanying pictures showed three young men in black T-shirts, leather straps on their wrists, one of them with dreadlocks. It went: The American University encourages disobedience. It’s the nesting ground for a new and dangerous movement. They take drugs and engage in sexual acts. They worship the devil. They practice homosexuality. They might have AIDS. The sit-ins are part of a larger movement of disobedience. They believe in anarchy. A Nirvana album cover runs alongside. Suddenly everyone is talking about it. The journalist is campaigning to get the university shut down. H calls on the home phone one day soon afterwards to say we are in for excitement. She has done some research. The same journalist wrote a piece a few years ago about young rockers. He described them as atheists. Then one night, without warning, the police had spread across the country banging down doors, dragging more than a hundred young men from their bedrooms in the middle of the night. Nobody knew where they were, if they would resurface. Parents searched and asked in vain. Lawyers were told to keep away. Ninety-seven days later they showed up, all of them, knocking on the doors of their homes. They wouldn’t speak about what happened. Nobody dared to ask. Scars peered from necklines and sleeves.
I don’t know what might happen this time but anticipate something. H’s excitement is my fear. Maybe they will storm campus and arrest students and take them away. But who will they take? How will they know who to take? What will they do? We wait. I wait. I imagine. It shames me, this cowardice. Nobody comes. Men loiter in the streets around campus. They dress normally, simply, in plain clothes, but I know, we all know, who they are. They stand around. They look. They talk on phones. They never bother us. But they are there. One day I hear that a girl has been arrested for drugs. I don’t know if they caught her outside the university. I don’t know if she was caught by these men. Nobody speaks of it aloud, only whispers, rumor. I look to see where they are before I cross the street. I don’t want to cross paths. A friend of Dido’s is grabbed and taken away crossing their path, walking towards them unaware on his way to a café. I begin to wonder what happened to the man who worked for Uncle Mohsen, and the boy who cleaned cars at the garage next door. He never came back. I look at his parents and siblings each time I walk by and wonder if they know, or still have hope. Were there answers, or had they already said final goodbyes? I look around, my eyes darting, searching.
I focus my camera on the sit-in. The organizer talks into a loudspeaker, thanking everyone for coming. He is pleased with the turnout despite the summer. There are forty-one, forty-two, forty-seven students there. He takes out a folded paper from his back pocket. A black-and-white Palestinian kūfiyyah circles his neck. Everyone claps. He makes a peace sign and reads:
Bismallah al-Rahman al-Rahim, In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful,
On July 2, Mohamed and Rana Abdel Jaber had their home destroyed for the second time in twenty-seven days. The invaders sounded an alert, giving them five minutes to evacuate their home that had just been rebuilt. They lived in two modest rooms. Their life savings had gone into building this home, and then rebuilding it again. They took their three children, all under the age of six, and fled. They are now in a white tent that looks just like this. They are among tens of thousands of Palestinians displaced by Israeli forces. These acts of brutality and murder must end.
I zoom with the camera and notice the son of the Palestinian poet Mourid El-Barghouti, a poet himself. I pan. I don’t know him but recognize his face. Their story has been in the papers; Sadat deported Mourid on the eve of the signing of the peace treaty with Israel, and their family had lived separated for seventeen years. I’ve devoured his wife’s novels. The poet wrote that it was the reason he had only one son, otherwise he might have had eight. It was his fate for marrying an Egyptian. They had finally been reunited a few years ago, on pardon from President Mubarak. Mourid had returned to Cairo. I focus on his son’s face, this only child of circumstance, wondering if I can script him into my graduation film. Then I move my lens out to take in the girls nearby. The chanting is insistent. Voices loud. Faces animated. I see determination. Sincerity. A glimmer of sadness. In the end though, all I really see is chatter. I think that’s what I see. I film until I sense I have enough.
I sign the equipment back. Walk down the library steps. Enter the reserves room. It is really a storage closet lined with shelves. A man in a sweat-drenched shirt stands behind a wooden counter. The library is air-conditioned, but this closet is not. 301.H. The man doesn’t acknowledge me but walks to a shelf. Pulls out a folder. Opens it. Brings out the papers. Waves them. The assigned chapter for philosophy class. Fifteen piastres. I nod, give him twenty-five, take the papers. Some students buy actual books, most of us photocopy. He puts the money in a cardboard box below the counter, then turns and rummages in a folder. I exit and turn the corner. Past the mango stand. The shop that sells under-the-counter beer. The man who sells matches and Adams chewing gum and plastic combs off a cardboard crate turned sideways on the pavement. A little girl runs to my side and hop-skips next to me. She holds a packet of tissues to my chest. Fifteen piastres. May God be generous. Ten. Only ten. Ten. I have only enough for my bus fare and a few things from the grocer that Mama needs. Five. Five. Just five. Sorry. Anything. Anything to make my day. She pleads. I’m sorry. She tugs at my shirt. I walk. Please take one for whatever you want. I shake my head. She tries to put her hands around my waist. I keep walking. Please. I shake my head. Please. I walk and say nothing, her hand still on my waist. We get to the corner where the bus stop is. I walk to the glut of people waiting for number twenty-nine. She follows. I stand. She stands next to me. I say nothing. I look ahead. Eventually she goes away.