Birds of the Nile (26 page)

It would be over a year before he was to see her again.

It was a very different Cairo that Blake returned to compared to the one he’d left some eight days before – although viewed from the air, there were no obvious signs of change. That muddy old river, the Nile, still flowed peacefully between its banks, the Pyramids at Giza continued to point skywards and the blanket of smog which had enveloped the city prior to his departure remained, turning the horizon to the west a delicate shade of pink in the early evening sun. In the half-light, even his trained eyes struggled to pick out the thin plumes of smoke rising from the smouldering ruins of burnt-out buildings.

As the plane approached the city centre, he tried to identify the glowing mass of Tahrir Square – but he couldn’t locate it, hidden as it was beneath the smog. The tanks guarding the perimeter fence at the airport were easier to spot – in situations like this the manoeuvre would be standard practice. Buried deep in the basement at the Embassy, there’d be an entry in a Foreign Office manual –
In the event of a coup or civil unrest, be sure to secure certain strategic locations…

He was prepared for changes, having spent the whole of his journey from Luxor devouring the contents of the newspaper. He’d fallen behind with the progress of the revolution but now he could catch up with events, and he needed something active to fill his in-flight hour rather than brood on his unsatisfactory parting from Lee Yong. The main headline of the Saturday edition of
Daily News Egypt
provided more than sufficient distraction.
CAIRO ERUPTS
, it proclaimed, which together with a series of lurid photographs depicting scenes of devastation and destruction gave the impression that the capital had been struck by a volcano instead of a potential coup. The city had indeed boiled over, but it had been mankind’s rather than nature’s doing.

In a staged uprising, it had begun following Friday Prayers. Opposition leader El Baradei had arrived and hundreds of
thousands of protestors had come out onto the streets to demonstrate. There were reports of looting and some of the prisons in the city had been opened and then burned down – allegedly on the orders of the Minister of the Interior. This tactic had allowed the inmates to escape en-masse in an attempt to terrorise the protestors. And to make matters worse, the police had deliberately been withdrawn from the streets so there was no-one to enforce the law. Chaos had ensued and the military had been deployed to assist.

Coupled with this, after four days of continual protest Mubarak had made his first address to the nation and as a concession to their demands had pledged to form a new Government. His announcement had been met with scepticism and derision by the protestors. International fears of violence had grown, and later on the Friday night clashes had broken out in Tahrir Square between revolutionaries and pro-Mubarak thugs, leading to several injuries and the death of Karim Ragab. It was a confused and disorderly scene. Travelling around Cairo was never easy at the best of times, but getting back home, Blake realised, was not going to be straightforward.

His problems began with airport security. He’d checked onto the plane at Luxor without issue, but on arrival in Cairo he was stopped at least twice and asked to explain the purpose of his telescope and tripod. The thinking seemed to be that he was a mercenary hired by one side or the other and that his equipment was some sort of sophisticated weaponry, and it was only after he’d assembled it for inspection and shown them his bird guide that he was allowed to pass. With the personnel on guard excitable and a large number of guns on display, it was a worrying moment.

Then there was the question of transport. The shuttle bus he’d normally have used had been cancelled as there was no access to the city centre. He thought it might be safer underground and he
considered taking the Metro, but in the light of Carpenter’s comments about the closure of stations, there was no guarantee he could get off where he wanted.

He settled for the flexibility of a taxi and was faced with the inevitable touting.
You’re a tourist?
And being of Western appearance and trailing luggage, it was not unreasonable to suppose that he looked like one – either that or a newspaper photographer come to take snaps, his telescope mistaken for a camera.
You’re staying in Cairo? Your hotel will be closed. They’re all closed. You come with me. I show you nice place that’s open
. Blake’s polite but insistent refusal was met with disappointment – it was a scam of course, and the driver would not now be earning his commission. To compensate he quoted double the usual fare, citing the hazardous nature of the journey. After a prolonged bout of haggling, Blake met him halfway and they eventually set off down Sharia Al-Druba. Some things in Cairo hadn’t changed.

It was a long and convoluted journey. They couldn’t take a direct route (that was understandable) so instead made a detour to the south – but even then there were alarms and excursions every step of the way. They’d barely started out in Heliopolis for instance when they were subjected to the unnerving crackle of gunfire.

The road the driver had chosen took them through old Cairo and a maze of narrow backstreets jammed with traffic. And what with this and the temporary roadblocks and informal security checks, what was nominally a one-hour trip turned out to be almost two. They arrived in Dokki in darkness – only to be confronted by a makeshift barricade erected across the entrance to the neighbourhood. Unable to make further progress by vehicle, Blake elected to pay the driver off and got out to walk the five-minute distance to his apartment.

It was these last few hundred yards that proved the most difficult. The barricade had been hastily constructed from a selection of wooden pallets, corrugated metal sheeting and
anything that could be found lying about and was manned by a self-appointed militia. In the absence of the police, it seemed that the people were taking the law into their own hands. Partially obscured by the dark, the militia presented a motley and scary appearance. Brandishing a wide array of weapons (Blake saw sticks, golf clubs and at least one machete, but thankfully, no guns), they demanded to see his ID – although when he produced it they were still doubtful, saying he might have stolen it. There was no-one to vouch for him and it seemed he’d reached an impasse.

To break the deadlock he suggested they send for Abdu and after what seemed like an eternity, the old doorkeeper appeared. Wearing his usual toothless grin, he made a merciful sign of recognition and Blake was finally admitted. When at last he turned the key in the door of his apartment, he couldn’t wait to get inside. He’d never felt so glad to be home.

The following day was a Sunday and after the excitement of the Friday and the Saturday, Cairo seemed relatively calm. Peace had descended out of a blue sky and the barricades were quiet. There was less traffic than usual and what there was of it worked at a slower pace. The frenetic bustle he’d left behind seemed to have gone out of the place and it was as though the city was enjoying a lie-in.

He’d been away for just over a week so there was little food in the flat. Early in the morning he went across to the corner shop for supplies. Mr Sayeed, the owner, was already out sweeping the pavement in front of his store. Blake was puzzled.

“What’s this?” he asked. “I don’t often see you out here.”

It was an unusual occurrence – displays of civic pride were few and far between in Cairo.

“I’m cleaning up,” said Mr Sayeed, proudly collecting years of accumulated rubbish into a plastic bag. “You see, Mr Blake, we are in charge now. We can look after ourselves. We don’t need the
police, we don’t need the army, and above all, we don’t need Mubarak! Thanks be to Allah, we have the shabab! They will protect us now!” (It was the shabab, or youth, who were manning the barricade). “I can tell you, Mr Blake, if the police so much as show their faces here they will get their noses broken!” Plastic bag in hand, he straightened his back to address his client. The tidying could wait – customers always came first. “You want bread? We have shamsi or baladi – which would you prefer?”

Seduced by the tantalising smell from inside, Blake took one of each and together with some cheese and a few vegetables he completed the rest of his shopping. As he walked back across the road he was pursued by the tang of disinfectant. Mr Sayeed had followed him out to resume his cleaning and was mopping down the steps. Little by little, Egyptians were reclaiming their country.

After breakfast he made a pot of coffee and took it to his desk where he sat with his bird guide and notebook. Behind him, the muted sounds of a subdued city drifted in through the open window. After previous trips away it had been his practice to reorganise his bird list and compile a report of his visit. But this time he could not, for as soon as he started he realised that the list was still incomplete. At Karnak there’d been Red-breasted Swallows and a Bee Eater – but he could not for the life of him remember whether it had been Blue-cheeked or Little Green. Compared to everything else, it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Try as he might, he could not focus on birds and his head was full of the same subject he’d successfully pushed to one side on the aeroplane with the judicious use of the newspaper.

Why had he let Lee Yong go in the way that he did? It went against the grain but could he not at the very least have taken some form of contact? Somewhere he thought he might have written down a mobile phone number – but was it hers or was it Reda’s? A forwarding address would have been better – or anything that would have allowed him to stay in touch. After
what they’d been through together, it didn’t seem a lot to ask. At the airport, he’d had to push himself to use the words he professed to despise so much –
Perhaps we’ll meet again sometime –
but he’d lacked the courage to follow it through. Such trivia came so easily to others, why couldn’t he do the same? In the end he’d done nothing and he was left with the thought that he’d let an opportunity slip through his fingers. Reda had rejected her – and so, in his own way, had he.

He poured another coffee and tried to concentrate, but he couldn’t shake off his feeling of self-reproach. After an hour of inconclusive contemplation he grew exasperated with himself, and in a fit of pique finished off the list the only way he knew how, adding
Reda
and
Spoonbills
after
Lee Yong
and
Hossein Rasheed
. Thinking it would put an end to his torture, he meant to rip the page out, throw it into the bin and start over. But when the time came he could not bring himself to do it. What he’d written down was the truth – it told a story, although it wasn’t the one he’d intended.

Eventually he got up from the desk and began wandering round the flat, searching for some form of distraction. In the kitchen he looked through the cupboards to see if he’d forgotten anything at the store. In the sitting room he checked his answer-phone for messages, but there were none – a fact which only added to his depression. Then, as if to prove he still had a friend, he rang Carpenter on the off-chance. Rather predictably, there was no reply. Finally, when he’d exhausted all the possibilities, he decided to abandon the project for the day and settled for an early lunch.

That afternoon he took a stroll down to the barricade. He’d been boxed up in the flat for almost twenty-four hours and needed to stretch his legs. It was also an opportunity to make his face known to the shabab – he didn’t want to have to call on Abdu every time he needed to go in or out of the neighbourhood.

At close quarters and in daylight the shabab were nowhere near as frightening as they’d appeared in the dark. They were mostly fresh-faced lads from the locality and their purpose, they told him, was to prevent infiltration by strangers. There’d been reports of pro-Mubarak thugs and plainclothes police entering the suburbs and creating unrest through looting and violence. The shabab had sworn against this and were determined to defend their families, their friends and their neighbourhoods against all-comers. They would rather die, they said, than fail.

With the intention of clearing them from the streets, the Government had imposed a curfew for sixteen out of the twenty-four hours of the day. The shabab had vowed they’d ignore it – and to show proof of their defiance, when the appointed hour arrived and a flight of jet fighters flew low overhead with a deafening roar, instead of going home as they were supposed to they shook their fists and gestured rudely.
You don’t scare us like that!
Neither they, nor the tenants of Tahrir Square, were going to be easily evicted.

And so the protests continued.

Monday was another quiet day. But that wasn’t to say things had returned to normal. Quite the reverse – things were far from normal and if anything, it was much too quiet. During the hours of curfew the buses and the trains stopped running, and apart from those who relied on their own efforts for a living, no-one was going to work. Across the road from Blake’s flat, Mr Sayeed continued to sweep the pavement with newly acquired pride, but there was little in the way of passing trade to disturb him. Like an engine that lacked oil, deprived of its commerce the city had ground to a halt.

As for Blake himself, he was unsure as to what normality was any more. After a lifetime accustomed to work, he’d returned from holiday on Saturday and had spent Sunday supposedly tidying his affairs. Now it was Monday and normality meant he’d
have gone into the office. But even if the political situation had been otherwise, he couldn’t go in now, and it was the fact that this comfort was denied him that induced a feeling of restlessness. He called the Embassy twice, but the switchboard was closed. He tried Carpenter again but there was still no reply. This lack of response and the unnerving quietness of the place began to make him feel uneasy. It was as if he were being lulled into a false sense of security.

In the meanwhile, the city slumbered on – but there was an underlying sense that sooner or later something was bound to happen.

It began on the Tuesday morning – quietly at first, starting as a low murmur of voices in the street outside. Then, as the day wore on, it grew to a fully-fledged crescendo. Singing and chanting, like a floodtide coming unstoppably into shore, a sea of faces was passing by his window, heading for Tahrir Square. It was difficult to tell, but it looked as if all of Dokki had turned out. Slowly but surely, and in ever-increasing numbers, the people of Cairo were on the march.