Shooting the Sphinx (26 page)

“Don't.” Ari held his breath.

Detective Kek froze for a moment. He spoke calmly, trying to talk Samir down. He approached step by step, as if in a minefield. Inching forward until he was close enough to reach up and steady Samir's precarious balance. Samir grasped both of his hands, poising himself.

“We won't go until you go!” Ari recognized the Arabic. “We won't go until you go!” The sound of the chanting grew. It seemed to arrive on the street below with the cacophony of pelting rocks, boots running, tear gas exploding.

“We won't go until you go!” Samir joined in the chant. An exultant look came into Samir's eyes. “We won't go…” He lost his fear. Detective Kek tried to pull away, but Samir simply leaned backward over the street below. “… until you…” He pulled the small detective up and over the railing. “… go!”

“Samir, NO!” screamed Ari as he ran out onto the terrace to catch hold of them, but they were gone.

He heard the sickening crunch. He looked over the edge. The roof of a blue car directly below was crushed. Ari saw a dead hand sticking up, Samir's hand with the open handcuff dangling from it.

The melee in the street below grew silent. At one end was a line of police with truncheons. At the other end were a thousand protesters armed with rocks. Both sides had seen the two men fall.

A few angry protesters ran up to the crushed car to take a look. Samir and Detective Kek lay in each other's arms, peacefully motionless on the crumpled roof of the car. One of the protesters lifted Samir's hand by the handcuff for all to see. Everyone at both ends of the street began to comprehend that the two had fallen to their deaths after some police action.

A protester yelled for vengeance. A roar erupted. All the protesters charged in a wave straight down the street, overrunning the police line, catching the police, beating them. No one stopped. A river of rage flowed past the two dead bodies, unstoppable, unquenchable.

 

Chapter 52

Mena House was perfectly quiet except for the sprinklers watering the green lawn. The hotel chambermen went around changing the linens. Beth sat out on the terrace going over Omar's budget with a red pen. She enjoyed a glass of mango juice.

The door burst open. Ari came in and started gathering up his belongings. Omar followed him.

“Beth,” asked Omar, finding her on the terrace, “did you make the wire transfer to my account?”

Beth picked up a piece of paper and handed it to him.

“Here's the confirmation.”

“Six hundred and fifty thousand dollors?” He scanned the page.

“That was the amount you asked for, wasn't it?”

Omar read the number, then folded the paper into his pocket.

“Good, good.”

Ari pulled out his suitcase and started stuffing all his clothes into it.

“Did you get the permits?” Beth stood up and looked at Ari quizzically.

“You don't need them now,” said Omar. “I've got to close my studio and shut down production.”

“What?” She was alarmed. “Why?”

“Later tonight, the police are going to withdraw from the city to create anarchy and make everyone want the army. Cairo will have no protection at all.”

Beth surveyed Omar with a piercing look. “Then you need to reverse that wire transfer.” She pointed to the paper sticking out of Omar's pocket.

“That is impossible,” said Omar. “The banks are closed.”

“You're going to steal
six hundred and fifty thousand dollars
?” she erupted.

Omar shook his head earnestly. “No, no, no, Beth. When the revolution is over, come back. Then we'll finish your film.”

“But you said … you said we would be able to shoot, no problem?”

Omar chuckled, caught for a second. “I lied.”

Irate red blotches flushed out onto her face and the tips of her ears. “Ari, Ari! Do something.”

“Think of it as an opening bid,” said Ari as he walked across the living room with his suitcase.

“Are you crazy?”

Ari stopped packing his things for a moment and looked at her. “There's been an accident, Beth.”

“What happened?”

“Samir fell out the window.”

“Oh my God.” She was calm again. “Is he hurt?”

“He's dead.” Ari zipped up his suitcase. “Beth, I've got to head to the airport, try to get to Jordan.”

“You won't be with me when everyone comes to Cairo?” She walked over to him. “I … need you … here. To explain.”

Ari looked to Omar.

“Not a good idea,” Omar said.

“But…?” Beth reached out to Ari. How many times had he taken that hand? Smiled his smile? Kissed a coward's kiss? To be wanted for whatever reason, no matter what, had taught him how to make himself wanted. She wanted him now more than any one ever had before. He tried to smile from habit, from discomfort, from pity for her adherence to actions that had lost all meaning for him. Ari tried to smile his familiar smile. He tried. The muscles in his cheeks and mouth had forgotten how.

“You're in Omar's capable hands now.” Ari couldn't engage. He didn't feel anything anymore. “Isn't that what you wanted?” He started toward the door.

Beth stopped him. “Ari, please don't go.”

Ari looked at Omar, who had no trouble smiling, then back at Beth. “I'll leave you two to … negotiate.”

Ari picked up his suitcase and camera bag and walked out.

 

Chapter 53

Ari sat in the middle seat as the hotel van sped down the road beside the Sphinx. He saw the scars where Napoleon's cannonballs had shot off its nose for target practice. And still it stood, intransigent, challenging those who pass before it with an age-old question: Do you know yourself, you four-legged, two-legged, three-legged creature? Do you know how brief is man, who lives but a dawn and dusk in my shadow and then is done? Who are you?

Ari had shot the Sphinx, chipped off a piece and taken it with him. He had seen Samir smile in a shaky old helicopter when the world outside turned upside down around them. Some smiles are hard to come by. That was a rare smile, priceless. The van passed the ticket booth for the light show and the café. Ali, the ticket seller, tossed a few coins to the little boys begging, the police nowhere to be found. Then the Necropolis was behind him.

Ari tapped his pocket and felt the crinkle of paper. He drew out Rami's flier and held it in his hand for a minute until he could dare to unfold it. There smiled Farah and her sisters of a new Egypt, of a promise of freedom from the truncheon, and the gun, and the bribe, and torture, and tear gas. He had one last piece of unfinished business, one that might follow him forever. He turned back and looked at the Sphinx. “Who are you?” it seemed to ask.

Do I even know? he wondered. Who?

He handed the flier with Farah's picture on it to the driver.

“Take me here, to this concert,” said Ari.

“You will miss your flight, Mr. Ari,” the driver protested.

“Just for a minute. I need to tell someone … who I am.”

The driver agreed to take Ari as far as Talaat Harb Square and wait for him on a side street, but they never got that far. They came to a line of police and were diverted up another avenue until the van was engulfed in white smoke. The driver slowed to a crawl.

“What's happening?” asked Ari.

Then, through a break in the smoke, he saw a mass of protesters running toward them. The driver stopped. There was no time to turn around without hitting someone in the crowd running by. Eerie clouds of tear gas floated by completely covering the van in a fog.

The driver locked the doors. A wave of police in riot gear ran past. Rocks started landing on the van's roof. The rear window cracked. A protester slammed up against the window, his face mashed in agony as several riot police whipped up their truncheons and brought them down with quick lashing blows.

Through the glass, Ari saw the panicked pleading eyes of the protester, his tears streaming from gas down the window, his convulsions with every impact. Unable to look away, Ari could feel an urge ignite in his gut. He was more afraid than he had ever known. His brain commanded him to stay still and frozen, but his hand, as if by itself, reached for his camera bag on the seat. He unzipped the black knapsack and pulled out his fancy digital camera. His thumb switched it on. He raised the eyepiece to his eye and started to shoot.

“Mr. Ari, no!” begged the driver. “The police! They will take your camera! And then they will…”

It only took a few moments for one of the police to notice the filming. Then he stopped beating the protester and yelled at the others. They looked at Ari in disbelief, then dropped the beaten man on the ground and hurled themselves at the van's side window, smashing it in. Beads of broken glass spilled with a sudden noise and fury into the van, the muffled protection of it ruptured, violated. They reached inside and tried to grab at Ari. Still filming them, he slid away across the seat away from their clawing hands to the other side. He unlocked the door and jumped out into the gas, which stung his eyes and made his nose run. He dodged as fast as he could away from the van.

Panting shallow breaths, he tried not to draw the bitter steam down deep into his lungs. He found a pocket of clear air and sipped a breath, coughing violently on the awful taste. He ran along between vague human forms also running. He followed them, filming them, all trying to make their way out of the gas.

Ari turned a corner into the clear. He burned. His skin, eyes, nose, throat, lungs—he tried to cough out the acrid film in his throat. Ari noticed a liter bottle of Coca-Cola held out by a hand in front of him. He took it gratefully and swigged, swished, and spat. Ari felt better immediately. There, sitting beside him on the curb, was a young Egyptian with tight wavy hair, shiny sweaty cheeks, and an open generous face. He cupped his hands.

“Pour some,” said the protester. “It helps with the gas.”

Ari poured Coke into the protester's hands, and the protester slathered it all over his own face, behind his ears, his neck and hands, and all over his exposed skin.

“Now you wash with Coke, to keep the sting away,” said the protester, who took the Coke bottle and poured it into Ari's hands. Ari covered his skin with the sticky brown liquid.

“
Shukran,
” said Ari, thanking him.

“
Aala wajib.
” The protester took a scarf, poured Coke all over it, tore it down the middle, gave half to Ari and wrapped the other half around his face. Ari copied him.

“For breathing the gas,” said the protester as he put the Coke back in his knapsack.

An empty green gas canister rolled by in the gutter. On the bottom it said, M
ADE IN THE
USA. The protester picked it up. On the side it said, M
ANUFACTURED BY
C
OMBINED
S
YSTEMS
I
NC.
J
AMESTOWN
PA. The protester held it beside his masked face and posed, the perfect picture.

“Will you show this film in America?”

“To anyone who will watch.” Ari nodded, then nodded again, and once again after that as if convincing himself, girding against his fear.

He picked up his camera, sticky in his Coca-Cola-drenched fingers, and started to film the revolution. The protester gathered up an armful of fallen rocks, broken pieces of cement and brick from around him in the street. He loaded up as many as he could carry. Ari followed him, jogging against a stream of protesters running away from the square, away from the gas and the police, away from the action.

Ari kept chasing into the pandemonium, following the protester from behind as he ran down the boulevard toward the fighting in the square. They dodged exploding gas canisters that landed at their feet. They kept running toward a long barricade made of trash and big sheets of galvanized metal torn from the roof of some building.

Many protesters with armfuls of rocks manned the barricade. They took turns hurling their rocks and fragments of cement and asphalt with all their rage as hard as possible at a line of police in the distance. The rocks landed unpredictably, kicking sideways, or bouncing up off the pavement, driving the police to retreat. Once someone had used up all their rocks, they sprinted back away from the cover of the barricade to gather more rocks and make room for the next protesters.

Ari poked his camera over the top of the barricade, peeking at the police lines. Rubber bullets bounced off the galvanized metal, banging on it like thunder. Ari ducked, trying to become as small as possible. He wished himself away, anywhere else. He prayed to a god he had never believed existed. Deliver me out of here, please, and I will be utterly honest with myself and everyone else for the rest of whatever life you give if you let me live, God.

The hailstorm of bullets fried his nerves. His heart beat in crazy rhythms. He could feel his fingertips swell painfully from wild surges in blood pressure. He screwed his eye into the viewfinder of his camera as if he could disappear behind the lens. Surely the black, sleek, shiny object could protect him and make him invisible.

Crouching, he looked up through the lens. He saw Farah run toward him. She was dressed in black and carried an armload of rocks. She looked into his lens. The rocks fell out of her hands as she saw that it was Ari behind the camera, and she turned on him. A moan, then a torrent of jumbled-up Arabic and English spewed from her lips as she beat with her fists on his back, then his chest, as he stood up and stopped filming. He heard snatches of words above the din: “Pig … American … Fascist … traitor … how … why…?” Two tracks of tears from gas were already streaming down her face. She was screaming, crying, beating on him until the wave of her fury crashed against him. Her legs buckled and he caught her.

“I know,” said Ari holding her up. “I know what I've done.” I shot the Sphinx, he thought to himself.