As soon as the old Southern woman was taken away, Ines — that foolish young teacher he considered a bit strange — had appeared in front of him. Everyone had something to say to her, and she tirelessly listened to their trifling concerns and endless stories, but no one had ever heard her utter anything important or useful. Yehya wasn’t at all inclined to speak to her. He didn’t want to tell her he would be leaving for a couple of hours, despite the conventions of the queue, which had developed over the passing days and were now practically set in stone. If he told the people around him a bit about himself and where he was going, he would be allowed to keep his place in the queue — even if he left for a long time — but Yehya decided to shirk tradition and take the risk. He left without a word and calmly slipped away. Nagy caught up with him, instinctively falling into step without knowing where they were headed.
The weather was hot and humid, and as the sun climbed upward, it appeared to dissolve the sky behind it. In front of them, the street looked like it had just emerged from an invisible war: papers strewn everywhere, broken bottles scattered on the ground, boxes of garbage plucked out of the bins, piles of burning rubber tires still spouting smoke and occasionally flames. Nagy realized that it had been a while since he’d heard any news from Tarek. He asked Yehya, who waved the question away. He hadn’t seen or called Tarek since that dismal night in his office, when the doctor had shown him those documents. They left the main road and headed toward Amani’s building, Yehya instinctively taking the side streets. They passed several sleepy cafés and a few small shops lining the road, most closed for the day behind heavy metal grates, even though it was barely four o’clock in the afternoon.
Nagy said he’d heard many shops had closed for good. So many shopkeepers spent so long in the queue that they couldn’t buy or sell anything or supervise their employees, and so they decided to get rid of their merchandise. He heard that even people who didn’t need to join the queue did the same when the Disgraceful Events began; they closed their businesses one after another, fearing the losses that loomed on the horizon. A relative of his, a man in the know, told him that sometimes other people didn’t believe that the shops were vacant and broke in. When they didn’t find what they’d come for, they took everything they could carry: computers and chairs, cheese cutters and deli-meat slicers. Even metal padlocks disappeared off doors in those parts of town.
Yehya and Nagy wandered through the near-empty streets. No one knew when rush hour was anymore; there were no set working hours, no schedules or routines. Students left school at all sorts of times, daily rumors determined when employees headed home, and many people had chosen to abandon their work completely and camp out at the Gate, hoping they might be able to take care of their paperwork that had been delayed there. The new decrees and regulations spared no one.
Yehya shook his head in silence. Since the Gate had materialized and insinuated itself into everything, people didn’t know where its affairs ended and their own began. The Gate had appeared rather suddenly as the First Storm died down, long before the Disgraceful Events occurred. The ruler at the time had been an unjust one, and popular resistance gathered to oppose him. The ensuing uprising wracked his reputation and jeopardized his properties and those of his cronies. It threatened to sweep away the system he and his inner circle found so agreeable and desperately wanted to preserve. One night, as tensions were building, the ruler broadcast a short speech on television, in which he spoke of “the necessity of reining in the situation.” There was no other harbinger of the Gate’s appearance: the next day, people awoke and it was simply there.
At first no one knew what this immense and awe-inspiring structure was that simply offered its name — the Main Gate of the Northern Building — as the pretext for its existence. Yet it was not long before people realized the importance that it now played in their lives. As the ruler faded from the public eye, it was the Gate that increasingly began to regulate procedures, imposing rules and regulations necessary to set various affairs in motion. Then one day the Gate issued an official statement detailing its jurisdiction, which extended over just about everything anyone could think of. This was the last document to bear the ruler’s seal and signature. As time passed, the Gate began to introduce a few new policies, and soon it was the singular source of all regulations and decrees. Before long, it controlled absolutely everything, and made all procedures, paperwork, authorizations, and permits — even those for eating and drinking — subject to its control. It imposed costly fees on everything; even window-shopping was now subject to a charge, to be paid for by people out doing errands as well as those simply strolling down the sidewalk. To pay for the cost of printing all the documents it needed, the Gate deducted a portion of everyone’s salary. This way it could ensure a system of the utmost efficiency, capable of implementing its philosophy in full.
A full range of security units soon appeared, too: the Deterrence Force existed to guard the Gate, and appeared only when something signaled danger near the building itself. The Concealment Force was tasked with protecting Zephyr Hospital and other facilities whose documents, files, and information were highly secret. Finally, the Quell Force handled direct confrontation and random skirmishes with protesters during times of unrest and chaos. It was well known that these guards were the least disciplined of all, yet also the fiercest in combat.
Yehya was no stranger to the string of disasters that the Gate’s appearance had unleashed on the people. The company he worked for had nearly gone bankrupt after it was forced to pay new mandatory fees. Then a leaflet arrived, notifying the company that they’d been assigned with supplying equipment to the Alimentary Force. The task was prohibitively expensive and impossible to carry out without sustaining significant financial losses, and the company didn’t even work in food services to begin with. But their appeals were returned to them stamped REJECTED. They were forced to lay off a number of employees to fulfill the assignment, and though Yehya survived the first round, he didn’t expect to outlast the next. Murmurs of discontent circulated among the staff, but no one had the courage to speak up. It soon became clear that the Gate and its security units had tightened their grip throughout the region. The Gate’s influence had begun to seep into businesses and organizations, onto the streets and into people’s homes.
Then one day, Yehya heard about people who could no longer stand what was happening. Word spread that a small group of people, who had recently joined together, were going to organize a protest. He was skeptical that an uprising would be possible under the Gate’s reign, but all the same he excused himself from work and left at the agreed-upon time, having decided to watch from afar. He had taken just a few steps in the direction of the square when he suddenly lost all sense of things — he realized he’d fallen to the ground, although he didn’t feel any pain, and then he lost consciousness. He didn’t wake up until he arrived at the hospital. Later, he learned that the Gate had closed that day in response to what became known as the Disgraceful Events. It hadn’t opened since, nor had it attended to a single citizen’s needs, yet it also hadn’t stopped issuing laws and decrees. It had to open, Yehya figured. What reason did it have to remain closed? The Disgraceful Events had ended by affirming the Gate’s hold on power and its growing omnipotence. Closing indefinitely made no sense, unless it was simply dealing out another form of punishment.