—
I begin most days at the club with Baba now, surrounded by his friends of circumstance. I run while he swims, then we have coffee before I go home to work. We have never really spoken about his years of absence. I have a vague idea of what happened, the problems, his refusal to offer a major contract he had tendered to one of the president’s sons, the corruption charges they manufactured and landed him with, case after case, unrelentingly. Where he went, what his life was like during those years, I have pieced together stories, but never ask questions, never raise the conversation, despite still holding it all close. Sometimes Baba will make mention of what life has taught him. After all I have been through, he will say. I nod, then try to change the subject, to steer conversation to something else. I came to understand from my own experience that Baba had been a victim too. They had broken him. I knew he would also never really come to terms with being absent when Grandmama died. I could see all this in his face, every single day, the nervous tic that marked him. The right corner of his lips would turn downward for a second, pulling his whole face into a droop, before turning up again. He would then scrunch his nose, as if in discomfort, and blink. It was the kind of blink that lasted longer than necessary. The kind of blink you took notice of. It was almost as if he were trying to blink something out of his eye, or perhaps even his memory.
Although Baba’s twitch seems to have lessened these days, I now understand what Dido used to say about my anger, that Baba’s circumstances should have unleashed it. Only in writing this now, reflecting back on it all, projecting myself into these pasts, real and imagined, considering the last few years, do I understand that in the end it did. Things built up; our frustrations, desires. And we all released something, given the chance. Our breaking point was about opportunity, human emotion being offered an outlet, in tandem discovering its source. In a notebook I write this down. I also make note of my anger. I seem to have developed more empathy than anger. Is this normal? I write. I find that note now, circled in a green pen and underlined twice. It is dated December 31, 2012. My desire to pull Baba from a past that lurked at every corner and bring him into a new present felt extreme during that time. I wanted him to be excited about revolution, to shake off his skepticism, the shadow of past lives. I wondered, constantly, about memories overwritten, what it would take to overwrite his — all he had seen, those years of hiding and distance. I now realize that it takes either a larger trauma or fleeting euphoria to erase what was. I can’t imagine what might efface our most recent disappointments, except maybe the passing incandescence of love.
—
I ask the taxi to pull over just after the Azhar Mosque. A year ago to this day in July, the city was at a standstill. Millions in the streets calling for the ouster of then-president Morsi. I counted myself among them. Most friends, acquaintances, colleagues I know, even those who now say his ouster was a coup, were there with me. Baba found the crowds too much and preferred to watch it all on television, calling in every hour or so for an update from the ground. Mama had come with me. She had started to attend more protests than I. She had been scared when the protests had begun those years ago, but then after a few, she said she felt liberated. She would take her flag and march, chant, clap, wave her arms emphatically with the crowds. I didn’t know it then, but her stamina came to outlast mine. I hear her voice in my head now as I step onto the street. A building-size flyer of the new president, Sisi, hangs off the sides of one, two, I count five buildings on the street. Time changes perspectives, she used to say. Things become darker, like paint. I also think of Uncle, warning Dido and me that in life we have to assess things and always take a position. It’s all relative, he told us. I wonder if my position is too often ambiguous. A position of trying to weigh things and assess and be objective is sometimes a clear position, and sometimes no position at all. I think a lot about what it means to be a witness, the responsibility of it. I wonder about my writing, if fiction is a political statement or simply no position. Is the silence of objectivity and being an observer, witness, the same as complicity? This question occupies me. H categorically tells me it is not. She says I shouldn’t mix things. She no longer believes that everything in the universe is connected, but she says that intent is the most important thing. What is one’s intention? I imagine it’s the position of the yogi, which she now is, teaching classes every day. I know that Dido thinks otherwise, and it makes me question why I am more forbearing in the name of change when he only stands by the absolute. These thoughts stay with me as I give the taxi two pounds more than the tolled fare. When the meter was first introduced, we all complained and said it was thievery. Then we forgot. Swiftly. I appreciate a meter after a lifetime of bargaining.
I maneuver myself through the cars that are paused at an angle, waiting midstreet for takers. It’s midday in the summer heat, and tourists are scarce. Travel warnings are reissued for Egypt each month. I spot a couple coming out of the mosque with backpacks, she with a scarf draped lightly over her head. I walk towards the pavement. The call to prayer filters in somewhere from a distance, echoing, one muezzin mimicking the next. No matter what time of day it is, there always seems to be the chant of prayer. An old man, frail, in a paper-thin white shirt, leaning over a cane, shuffles in my direction. I dip into my pocket and pull at the corner of a five-pound note. I scrunch it into my hand. I watch the man as he moves towards me. He doesn’t look up, and people clear the way, moving from his path. Most pedestrians are this way, they walk, they cross, they move in the direction they are going without looking up, or to either side. He walks right by me, not raising his head. I turn around, watch him, then step forward towards the alley. It is lined with cavities, stalls, layered with brightly colored T-shirts, socks, bras, underwear, galabias, scarves, ties. Some of the things are made locally, but most of them, more and more, are from China, shipped across the world to accumulate in homes as junk. SpongeBob T-shirts. PedEggs. Wind-up dolls. Padding the walls of one stall are mattresses, lined, piled, straight, at an angle. Two boys lie around playing Nintendo. In another, mesh sacks overflow with Egyptian cotton. This was the founding street of Cairo. It’s hard to stop, to browse. What remains of its width fits two people and the bustle is intense. To pause means to obstruct the entire one-kilometer stretch, from one side of the Old City to the other. Music filters out of a crackling radio somewhere, Quran plays like a drone in the background. When I look up, I see the glistening silver dome of the Citadel perched on a limestone rock above the old city. I pause and then sidestep into a shop. Makhazin Sono Cairo, I say. The man gets up from his stool. Sticks his head out of his stall. Points to a line of neon plastic beach balls hanging from one shop. Gives me directions. I thank him, bowing my head. He asks if I will stay and have a glass of tea. I thank him again. Something cold to drink? Thank you. You don’t like our tea? It’s not that. Give us the opportunity to host you. Thank you, but I have to meet someone. He laughs. In a breathing space between people I step back into the moving crowd. I mimic the steps of the woman before me. In her I find my pace.