Ahmed Khalifa - Imagining Liberty - Volume 1

He’d predicted the Islamist rise to power years back. He had watched it all play out, and even attended Brotherhood rallies. He took pictures, lots of pictures, but he felt it wasn’t his place to interfere.

“The English have done enough to Egypt,” he joked. “If you guys wanted the Brotherhood in charge, who am I to say you can’t?”

“Liars and scoundrels, the lot of them,” Youssef scowled. “They clawed their way to power on our backs and they’re clawing at us on the way down too.”

I asked him about the beating. He waved me off.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” he said. “Bunch of nonsense, really. Those people aren’t Egyptian. They don’t represent this country. I should know, I’ve been here ten years.”

I lost it then. I couldn’t hold them back and the tears streamed. To hear this complete stranger talk about his devotion to the country I’d abandoned four years prior, even as rivulets of blood snaked down the wreckage of his eye stirred a burning passion in the pit of my stomach, equal parts love and hate. Love both for this man who dismissed the nearly-mortal beating he’d received as uncharacteristic and the country that inspired him, and hate for those who’d repaid his love with barbaric brutality.

I pulled him towards me and wept at how unfair it all was. He winced- I must have squeezed a bruise. Then, somehow, he found the strength to laugh.

“Get off me, you sentimental sod,” he joked. “We’ve only just met.”

Youssef slapped me on the back of the head and joined him in his laughter. Soon, we were all laughing, clutching our sides and gasping for breath. We took leave of our senses and our laughter boomed through the room, magnified a hundredfold.

It didn’t last long, despite my fervent prayers. Our revelry died down and sober reality set in once again. Youssef told Benjamin the best course of action was to go directly to the British Embassy. The hospitals would be unpleasant and the streets would be downright hostile. It was agreed he would spend the night on the houseboat, under the watchful eye of Amm Attia, and take a cab straight to the Embassy first thing in the morning.

It wasn’t as intimate as I expected, the conversation between us and the man whose life we saved. He was polite, of course, and treated us like old friends, promised us the world and more. Some part of me had expected unabashed gratitude, tearful proclamations of eternal indebtedness and yet here I sat with the red eyes while Benjamin clapped me on the back and told me to ‘grow a pair’. It would have been comical had his nose been pointing in the right direction. As it was, it just made me queasy.

I excused myself, citing a need to sleep in my own bed for a night. They both protested.

“I’ll send Amm Attia out, we’ll set up the shisha and play some cards,” Youssef said. “Benjamin, you play poker right?” Benjamin answered in the affirmative and told me I should stay.

“It’s been too long of a day,” I replied. “I need to sleep sober tonight, somewhere with a soft bed. And I need to go to my apartment anyway, make sure everything’s there.”

With defeated sighs all around they let me go. Benjamin pulled me into a hug and told me to keep my chin up, that I was a good kid.

I awoke with a start to the demonic buzzing of my phone. I checked the time- an ungodly hour- rubbed the sleep out of my bleary eyes and hoped to God whatever it was didn’t require me leaving my bed.

It vibrated again and I somehow managed to unbalance myself enough to fall out of bed. I noticed the pants around my ankles and remember the quaking wreck I had been the night before. Deciding that further movement was futile, I resigned myself to a life on the floor, swiped right and read the text. Come to the boat. Now.

I sighed at the melodrama of it all. Three in the fucking morning and he wanted me to traipse halfway across Cairo. I hit the “Call” button and it rang twice before Youssef rejected the call. A moment passed, then my phone buzzed again.

Come to the boat. Now.

Tendrils of unease snaked through my stomach. Even throughout all that had happened, Youssef had never been this curt with me. I got to my feet, pulled my pants all the way up and latched the Flail around my waist. It was still early and I anticipated a chill, so a sweater went on over my shirt. One three-touch-tap (phone, wallet, keys) later I made my way downstairs to hail a cab.

The only cab I found- a clunky monstrosity gushing great plumes of vapor- wound its way through the tight streets of Zamalek. We turned onto Abou El Feda Street, where the boat was moored and were greeted with shrill sirens and an ocean of red lights. Fire trucks, police trucks and ambulances swamped the narrow road, making its traversal impossible. I pushed the folded twenty into the driver’s hand and threw the door open. No, no, no.

The smell hit me first, filled my throat and nostrils at a hundred paces. Thick, heavy smoke settled in the deepest part of my lungs, and I forced it out in great, hacking coughs as I shoved my way through throngs of onlookers. The taste came next, salty flakes of ash and still-alight cinders forcing their way into my mouth, into my eyes, singing my eyelashes and streaking my cheeks. I took the stone steps two at a time and sprinted the rest of the way, stopping next to where Youssef was standing just short of the burning wreck. The roof had caved in and the boat resembled nothing so much as a jagged crater, displaced from its home in some forgotten abyssal dystopia. Flames tasted the air and found it to their liking; they slurped it up greedily. In our silence, what was left of the gangplank came free and fell into the water with a syrupy plop.

My mouth made sounds without words, without meaning. Maybe he understood and maybe he didn’t, but Youssef answered anyway. “It was Ismail. Amm Attia saw. He had Sabah with him, but I don’t think she wanted to be there.”

Sudden, implacable rage. I saw it in my mind, as clear as if it had been a TV program. My Sabah, my sun and stars, once resplendent in leather and moonlight, dragged kicking and screaming by the hair by her brute of a brother. My friend. Her brother. My friend. “Benjamin?”

“He is alive, for the moment,” said a deep voice from some ways behind me. I turned to find the porter sitting in his wicker chair. He had dragged it against the stone steps where it was invisible to anyone coming down. Even at a distance I could see his fingers trembling as he rolled the cigarette and licked the paper. His left eye was a swollen red mess.

I rushed over and came to my knees at his feet, fingers probing the old man for further damage. “What happened? Are you well?” I was shaking him now, on the verge of tears. He put down the cigarette and took my head between his palms. His good eye softened. The warmth of his hands was reassuring in the crisp cold of the early morning and I felt myself relax against my will. He held me for a few more moments without uttering a word.

When he finally spoke, it was with measured calm. He’d sensed my fragile state; I’m sure, and acted accordingly. “I’m fine and Benjamin is too, praise God,” he said, picking up the cigarette once more. “Ismail came last night looking for him. He had men and gasoline and Sabah. Youssef had left not long after you did. When I saw the pickup truck with the men in the back I ran to wake Benjamin and he took my rowboat. The night hid him well. Then I went out back to stall Ismail. And then…”

He trailed off, gesturing to his eye. He lit his cigarette and I pulled one from the pack in my pocket. I took a seat on the rough stone beside his chair and we took it all in; Youssef lost in anguish, the policemen crawling over the scene like fruit flies, the black hole that was the houseboat collapsing in on itself.