Uncle was still drawing the flags. I liked the flag of Ottoman Egypt the most. It was red with a white moon and star. My second favorite was the Egyptian Revolution flag. It was a mix of three flags, including the one we used to have when we had a king. The ugliest was the United Arab Republic flag when we were one country with Syria. It looked like our flag now but with two green stars. One star was for Egypt and the other for Syria. Uncle said the idea of a United Arab Republic was a failed idea from the start. I looked at him. Everything Nasser did was a failed idea. I waited for him to say something else. He asked for more water. When I came back with it I asked him about Nasser. Dido says Nasser was a great man. The men who made the revolution were all great but their children are corrupt. Nasser did great things for Egypt. Mama doesn’t like him. Baba does. Dido hopes there will be another Nasser one day. How come they never tell us about Nasser at school? Uncle slapped his hand on his thigh. He had only finished half the water. The glass was on the arm of the sofa. He put it to his mouth and swallowed the rest. He put his arm out and I took the glass. Uncle started telling me about Nasser. He had no vision. He was delusional. He didn’t think into the future. He took from the rich and gave to the poor. It was the worst thing he ever did. The poor got things for free and then became lazy. They got land and benefits then thought they could do nothing and Nasser would still give them more. He also made education free, which was very expensive, and so very quickly he didn’t have the money to pay for it anymore. Education went down the drain. Teachers weren’t being paid properly, so they didn’t make an effort. Students had to start taking private lessons. They started memorizing and stopped thinking. Everyone became lazy and stopped thinking. It was a lethal combination. He paused to breathe. What does lethal mean? To kill a country and its future. To destroy any opportunity for future generations. To take a beautiful field of flowers and pour concrete on it and still expect the flowers to grow. I was always falling and hurting my knees on the concrete playground at school so I decided this must be bad. Nothing he did was sustainable, Uncle said. He took a big breath. Mama was always using that word. She used to tell Baba that his lifestyle was not sustainable. Uncle said we were still paying the price for Nasser’s mistakes. But how come Dido said Nasser was a great man if he did so many terrible things? It was about education. At school they taught children that all the Egyptian presidents were great. Only the king was bad. Why was the king bad? Because he was a creation of the British.
Uncle asked if I ever went with Mama to the co-op. I nodded. Every week. Sometimes on Saturday, other times after school. The co-op was close to the house. It was like a shed on the pavement, a big shed. It was painted blue on the outside but the paint was peeling. You could see the wood. At the beginning of the month there would be a long line from the inside to the outside and onto the street. In the middle of the month it was emptier. The shed was lined with shelves. It was dusty. Sawdust covered the floor. They had bags of rice, flour, sugar, oil, boxes of tea. There were also frozen chickens, but they were in a freezer behind the counter. If you wanted a chicken you had to ask and a man would bring it out. He took your booklet. It was small, the size of the box of cigarettes hidden in the bathroom cabinet. In the front of it was Baba’s name, Mama’s name, and a number. A code for how much we were allowed of each thing. Sometimes people would try to take more than what they were allowed. They would raise their arms and shout. One man tried to take a chicken but wasn’t allowed. You were allowed a whole chicken only if you were a family. Some people were only allowed half a chicken, so they could have one chicken every two months since they only sold chicken by the one. People shouted and tugged at their clothes. It was only the men who got angry. I would stand by Mama’s side holding her hand. She never spoke to anyone. She would stand and look straight ahead as if nothing were happening.
I watched until I understood everything about the co-op. They also sold bread, but you had to get it from a window on the side. We were allowed five baladi breads a day. Uncle told us one day that bread was our downfall. People were taking their allowance and selling it to other people who wanted more. They sold it for much more than what they bought it for. Mama looked at him with her hands crossed on her chest. There is a black market for everything now, I heard her say. Uncle shook his head. The catastrophe is the government employees are doing it too. Some people couldn’t get booklets because they didn’t have birth certificates, and you needed a birth certificate to get a booklet. So what would those people do? Black market. Uncle said co-ops exist because of Nasser’s mistakes. He bankrupted the country so it had to ration subsidized foods. Why can’t they just sell things in a supermarket? He laughed loudly. It would be a revolution. The country wouldn’t survive another revolution. But Baba said we had two revolutions and nothing changed. Baba said we need a real revolution. Your Baba means a different kind of revolution. If the revolution were to come, it would be one of hunger, like the bread riots. I looked at Uncle. They didn’t teach us these things in school. Only Uncle and Dido told me. And Baba too, until he left. Mama said it was best to keep such thoughts to oneself, but Uncle never kept any thoughts to himself. He said that where he lived was like putting a finger on a pulse. Measuring a heartbeat. In Faiyûm, where all the farmers lived, you knew what people would accept and what they wouldn’t. If they stopped having co-ops, the farmers would go into the streets and start throwing stones and setting fires, like when flour became more expensive. It made bread more expensive. People revolted. Those were the bread riots. This is the revolution of hunger. It was the year you were born. Uncle put his hands on the sofa and pushed himself up. He put his hand on my hair and ruffled it. You learned a few new things today.