Guapa Read online

  “Thieves …” Nawaf shakes his head, not looking up from his phone, his fingers texting furiously.

  “I spent the next two weeks in the offices of vice presidents and deputy heads and vice deputy president heads, sitting with groups of old men who drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, and took phone calls mid-sentence. Anyway, I will spare you the suicide-inducing details of government bureaucracy in this country, but finally after two weeks, I went back to Shami’s office with the signed document. He looks at it and asks me what it is. I tell him it is the document he needed signed. He grunts and tosses it on top of a heaving stack of papers … he looks at me and his bushy mustache is twitching like crazy now. Do you still like the public sector, he asks me … that was all. Do you still like the public sector … I find out later that if he ever needed a document like that signed, he would simply call up his friends at the ministry and get a signature in a matter of hours.”

  “He was just trying to show you that your American degree is worthless here,” Basma says.

  “Well, he was right.” Shami had sold himself to the Americans as a reformer, someone who would facilitate democracy in our country. Presenting yourself as a reformer is the surest way to get rich here, and I had thought that by working with him I would at least try to meet all this reform nonsense halfway. I delved into the murky waters of the president’s agenda, writing reports and briefs about “reform” and defending elections that meant nothing. I was drowning in these words, and the work of transparency and beauty I came back from America to create was becoming clouded. Things I wanted to say were coming out like muddied water on the page. Words that looked so simple on paper concealed more than they revealed, which for words is a cardinal sin. It is like turning on a lamp to see what’s in a room only for the light to be so blinding it makes it impossible to open your eyes. What purpose does the lamp serve then? If a lamp only makes it harder to see then it is of no use, and if your words only serve to conceal the truth, then you might as well not say a word at all.

  Nawaf reaches for the joint and Basma shakes her head. “Finish the stack of translations first.”

  “So you can get stoned on the job but I can’t?” Nawaf whines.

  “I can’t work unless I’m stoned.”

  My phone rings. Unknown number. Taymour must have forgotten his phone at home. That’s why I haven’t heard from him all morning.

  “Hello?”

  “Rasa? This is Maj’s mother.”

  “Hi, Auntie.”

  “Auntie?” Nawaf chuckles. I silence him with a finger to my lips.

  “Have you heard from Maj today?”

  I tell her I haven’t and she asks when the last time I spoke to him was.

  “Last night,” I say. “I sent him a message this morning but I haven’t heard anything.”

  She sighs. In the background there is a sizzle of something being dropped into hot frying oil.

  “He was out late last night,” she says. “His phone has been turned off all morning. I’m worried, especially with … things in the country not being okay. Was he at Guapa, or whatever that silly bar is called?”

  “He was, but I left before he did.” I close my eyes as the sound of Teta’s screams comes back to me. “Don’t worry, Auntie. I’m sure he’s fine … maybe he forgot his keys and his battery died … he is probably staying at a friend’s house … I’m sure he’ll call soon.” Maj is probably passed out on someone’s couch, or else met a guy and spent the night with him.

  “I’m certain he’s got himself into trouble with that silly job of his. And for what? Who cares what the police are doing to those terrorists. He’s just inviting trouble for himself.”

  A wave of paranoia crashes over me as I hang up. Maj is perhaps my oldest friend, and I can’t bear to think he’s been harmed. I’ve never had many friends. Friendships, especially close ones, are hard to maintain when you have so much to hide. When I was younger I spent most of my time playing with one kid, Omar, who lived next door. He was from a wealthy family who made their money in politics. I was never sure exactly what his father did, what mattered was that Omar was from the sort of family that made Teta happy that we were friends. He went to the American school, which was the best school in the country. I went to the British school, which had been the best school in the country until the American school was built.

  On most days during third grade I met Omar at the supermarket after school. We bought Slush Puppies and walked home together. Omar traveled to America every summer and would show me all the cool stuff he brought back with him. In the beginning I tried to keep up with his trends, but I was always too late.

  “Chicago Bulls?” he would scoff. “It’s all about the Lakers these days.”

  One day, on my way to meet Omar, a boy followed me from school. I recognized him from class and knew enough to avoid him. He was weak and scrawny and would only bring me trouble. I turned around and glared at him for a few moments, then carried on. Still, I could hear his footsteps behind me. I stopped again.

  “What’s your name?” I demanded.

  “Maj,” he replied.

  “Listen here, Maj. You can’t follow me. You understand?”

  I turned around and continued walking. Five minutes later I looked back.

  “You’re still following me.”

  “We live on the same street.”

  I sighed. “Fine. Keep some distance then.” He took two steps back. “No, farther than that. One more step. Okay, that’ll do.”

  I met Omar at our usual spot by the supermarket.

  “Who is he?” Omar asked, gesturing toward Maj.

  “Some kid who followed me from school,” I said. “Just ignore him.”

  We bought our Slush Puppies (of course Maj picked the pink one) and went to pay. The old man behind the cash register looked at Maj and smiled.

  “Look at you, with your caramel skin and big lips,” he said. “So beautiful you could be a girl.”

  Omar and I snickered, but Maj looked pleased. We left the supermarket and were walking down the street when four boys began to follow us. They cornered us in an empty alley between two buildings. It was the perfect place for them, because the alley was narrow and leafy, so you couldn’t see it from the street if you just happened to be walking by.

  One of them grabbed Maj by the back of his shirt and threw him to the ground. As Maj tried to get up, another boy kicked him from behind. A third poured Maj’s pink Slush Puppie over his face, rolled him over, and rubbed his face in the pool of pink mud that had formed.

  The leader of the gang walked up to him. He was in our class. His name was Hamza. He looked like a frog: short and fat, with yellowish skin and a wide nose. He pointed at Maj and laughed, and the other boys followed suit. Omar joined in with the laughter, hoping it would save him, but it only brought him to their attention. One of the boys walked toward him with an angry look on his face.

  “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!” Omar stammered. “You don’t know who my father is …”

  The boy backed away and turned to me. I held my Slush Puppie in front of me like a sword, trying to keep my face as calm as possible. I didn’t understand what they wanted, so I could say nothing to reason with them. Behind me Hamza whispered in my ear.

  “Throw the first punch and I’ll be right there with you, Rasa. Throw the first punch and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  I had never been in a fight before and didn’t know how I would fare. For all I knew I could have had super strength. I clenched and unclenched my fists. The boy reached over and flicked my ear and then stood back with his arms crossed, an amused smile on his face.

  “I can’t hit him for you, Rasa,” Hamza whispered. “If I do, everyone will think you’re a girl. Do you want that? Do you want everyone to say you need another guy to protect you? Listen to me, throw just one punch and you’ll have proved yourself. No one can say anything.”

  I clenched my fist, counted down in my head: three, two, one — and still my
fist remained by my side. Then, just as quickly as the boys appeared they were gone. I looked around. Maj was on the ground. Omar was shaking, his face red and furious. I walked over to Maj and pulled him up.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  Maj smiled and nodded. He wiped the mud from his clothes and face, then carried on walking as if nothing had happened. Shaken, we continued home. Just before we turned onto our street, Omar bent over and vomited.

  “Ya habibi, that looks exactly like tabbouleh,” Maj said with a groan.

  “Looks the same coming up as it does going down,” I remarked.

  I’ve never really been able to eat tabbouleh since then.

  After that Maj attached himself to me, even though he wasn’t any safer with me. In the beginning I tried to ignore him and hoped that he would go away, but he was always there, prancing a few meters behind.

  “Have you heard from Maj today?” I ask Basma as she scrolls through our work e-mails.

  She shakes her head and asks why.

  “His mother just called. He didn’t come home last night.”

  “Who’s Maj?” Nawaf asks.

  “Do your work and don’t ask questions,” I say.

  Nawaf sighs and flicks through the stack of reports on the desk. “I don’t know any of your friends. You guys never invite me out with you. How am I ever going to meet a nice girl?”

  “We don’t invite you out because you’re a brute,” Basma says. “You’re only in this company because you’re my second cousin.” Nawaf gives her the finger, and Basma blows him a kiss and hands him the joint. “I’m joking habibi … here, have a puff.”

  I look over Basma’s shoulder as she sorts through the mail.

  “Are we getting any new requests from last night’s crisis?” I ask.

  “I thought you were calling it a revolution,” Nawaf says, blowing smoke up in the air.

  Until a few weeks ago I had referred to the events as a revolution. When the protests first began six months ago, I had heard about them from Maj. This is different, he’d texted me. This is huge. And so we went to the midan, clad in our running shoes, flag in hand and chants ready. The first two days there were the usual suspects: the chain-smoking trade unionists, the women syndicates, the bearded Islamists, and of course the younger adults like us, who for the past few years had been hidden behind computer screens, writing increasingly angry anonymous tweets about the regime, the hypocrisy, the façade and hopelessness and injustice. Until then we had all accepted that this was how it was, there would not be anything to look forward to, we either had to get away or die trying. But as I held the leathery hand of a curly-haired trade union activist, I realized that being cold and wet together was better than being warm and dry in the richest country in the world.

  Every day for that first week the numbers grew. I stood side by side with people from villages I had never heard of who were speaking in dialects I didn’t know existed. The revolution treasured us all with the unconditional love of a mother. She held us close, promised she would always be by our side, and told us to go out and raise a storm. And amid the tear gas and beatings and arrests, we stayed. They arrested Basma one day, but she escaped from the police van and disappeared into the crowd. Thugs infiltrated the midan, beating, stabbing, tearing off clothes. We laughed in their faces and sang and danced and shared tips on how to lessen the pain of the tear gas the regime thugs lobbed our way.

  Even Teta’s threats didn’t stop me from going. She yelled and slammed her fists on the kitchen table. Everyone else is going, I explained. I can’t just stay at home and read about their deaths on Twitter. I hugged her, kissed the elegant wrinkles on both her cheeks, and promised I would stay close to home.

  The eighth day of the protests began like any of the seven that preceded it. I packed my protest bag and headed to the march, following the cloud of American tear gas that enveloped the city center. I met Taymour a few buildings down from ours and we joined Maj and Basma in a corner of the midan. Maj jumped on my back and I carried him as we walked. We locked elbows and marched, singing the old nationalist songs we sang in school, but the words had meaning now and the melody had power. We were singing for us, reclaiming our past and celebrating our future. Everything we thought was for the president was actually ours. We were not just taking back the streets, we were taking back our lives.

  The crowd arrived close to our neighborhood, only two streets down from Teta’s building. Then it happened. A lightning crackle of gunfire. I looked at Basma. For the first time in the ten years I’ve known her, there was fear in her eyes, real terror, but also hope and power and anger. The crowd looked around, at one another, at the dense buildings that lined the streets. Then more crackle, and someone screamed that they were shooting from the roofs, and suddenly everyone was running.

  A young hijabi woman beside me tripped over her own feet. Her head made a noise as it hit the pavement, a cracking sound I heard for months afterward. I dropped to the ground beside her, turned her over, shook her body to wake her. She was still breathing but her head was heavy in my hands. I yelled for the people to clear a way, but no one listened. Everyone was shouting too loud, the crowd stumbled over us to flee. I lay on the woman and buried my face in her stomach, my hands over my head to protect against the stampede of boots above us. I don’t know how long I was down there, but suddenly there was a violent tugging on my shirt.

  “Rasa, yalla, get up!” Taymour’s voice rang in my ear. “We have to get out of here.”

  Taymour pulled me up and we stumbled hand in hand through the hordes of people. I chanced a look behind me, but the young hijabi woman was swallowed by the crowd. Maj and Basma were also nowhere to be seen. Rocks and Molotov cocktails flew over the crowd in all directions. Heavy tanks had now blocked all the roads out of downtown, making a death trap of the center. Crowds of people with blood on their clothes streamed into the alleys. On the ground lay bodies and pools of blood that appeared glossy over the asphalt. Some people were crying, a few were laughing hysterically. We turned around and spotted my neighborhood supermarket one hundred meters down the road, where I had bought yogurt and cigarettes only a few hours earlier. The supermarket was across from our building but the road was heaving with people running in all directions. I pulled Taymour in the direction of the supermarket. We sprinted down the street, arms over our heads. We pushed ourselves through the packed shop and crouched in a nook between the door and a fridge. My phone vibrated as a text from Maj reassured me that he and Basma were okay. We huddled together in the shop, our heads in each other’s necks, for thirty long minutes, until a lull in the shooting allowed us to run across the road and into Teta’s building.

  “I can’t go upstairs,” Taymour shook his head. “Your grandmother will see me. I’ll hide out by the stairs until I can leave.”

  “She won’t know anything about us. She’ll think you’re just a friend.”

  “I’m not just a friend, Rasa.” There was blood smeared on Taymour’s right cheek. I looked down at my hands. For the first time I noticed they were covered in the woman’s blood. “Listen, just go upstairs, she’ll be worried about you. I’ll be fine.”

  In the living room, Teta was pacing under a cloud of cigarette smoke, while state TV showed a documentary about the life of the Prophet. When Teta saw me she burst into tears. Then she hugged me tight. Then she slapped me so hard she split my lip.

  “Never go back,” she ordered, with the ferocity of the president himself.

  I nodded. I was shaken. But as the sniper shots cracked outside, I knew I was going back. I was willing to die for this. We were all willing to die for this. Because this was more important than one single life, more important than ten or even fifteen lives. And when the president appeared on television that evening, scolding us like misbehaving children, I was sure of only one thing: that to stay at home would be to return to the fear and denial that had ruled us for generations.

  On that day we had sixty-four dead and more than th
ree hundred disappeared. After that, the casualties only rose. Whenever I tried to leave Teta threatened to throw herself off the balcony, or guilt-tripped me by feigning heart palpitations. State TV warned of terrorists infiltrating the protests to kidnap children and rape women. And though many were convinced it was regime thugs that were responsible, the number of people on the streets began to shrink. And one by one, many of my friends decided they had too much to lose for something so uncertain. The new media production house Basma and I had started to build, which we thought would be the first in a cannon of new local media free from the constraints of the president’s propaganda, turned into a measly translation company for foreign journalists coming in to write their own stories of the events. After a while Maj was the only one I knew who kept going to every demonstration. He tweeted and wrote chants and organized a fringe stage for the stragglers who were not backed by the powerful bearded men. He saw the attacks get worse, the bodies burned to a crisp and mutilated by blunt knives, and he hurled rocks and pieces of concrete at men in uniform. But everyone else stopped calling it a “revolution.” Instead it became a “crisis,” and when the president declared he was fighting terrorism people eagerly backed him.

  Many of those I marched alongside now cheer as they smash the revolution to a thousand pieces, and I don’t know what to think anymore. Anyway, there are enough opinions about the events that I don’t need to form another one. I am not smart enough to find the solution to the country’s problems, or the solution to Palestine, or terrorism or peace in the Middle East. I can’t even find a way to be with Taymour.

  I look at Nawaf and smile. “I don’t know whether it was a revolution or a crisis.”

  “Anyway,” Basma says, changing the subject back to work. Since the protests, Basma has stopped talking about politics. She’ll refer to it occasionally, only briefly and with an exasperated look, like she is dealing with stupid people. Maybe she’s right to do so. After all, it’s not like I’m starving or unable to live. I’m simply bored. Is boredom reason enough to rebel?