Butterfly Wings: An Egyptian Novel (Modern Arabic Literature) (18 page)

The blindfold was filthy. Its smell was annoying her, and that, combined with the pain in her eyes, made her lose her concentration, and she no longer knew where she was going. After about fifteen minutes, the car came to a stop. The two men who had arrested her helped her out of the car and led her blindfolded directly into a building, where they turned left and entered an elevator. Doha sensed the elevator was not going up, but descending underground. She came out of the elevator and walked a short way with her two companions. She heard the hinges of a door squeak as it was opened. She went through the doorway and heard the door close behind her. Then one of the men told her to remove her blindfold. Doha found herself in a room that looked like a government office. There was a large desk with two chairs and a low table in front of it. A picture of the president hung on the wall behind. On the other side of the room were a leather sofa and two armchairs.

Indicating the sofa, one of the men said, “Please sit down.” Doha’s eyesight was still blurry from the pressure of the blindfold, but she could make out the features of the two men and realized that she had not seen them before. They went out, leaving her alone in the room. She looked at her watch a number of times until she could make out that it was three o’clock in the afternoon.

She sat placidly, her mind numb. She could not take in what had happened. More than an hour passed without anyone coming in. Then the door opened and a man came in. He seemed startled by her presence, or had entered the room by mistake. She was about to ask him what was happening and where she was, but he made a speedy exit, shutting the door behind him.

After some minutes, she heard a key turning in the lock. Was it to lock or unlock the door? She waited five minutes, and then went over to the door. She put her ear to it in an effort to discern any sound beyond. She heard a silence unfamiliar in government offices. It was as though working hours had yet to begin. She tried the door, but it was locked. She went back to her seat to wait.

She remembered that the lift had taken her down and not up. Did that explain the frightening silence, as if of the grave? She wondered how many stories down she had gone. How far underground was she? For the first time, she felt afraid. She was facing the unknown, not knowing what to expect or when her ordeal would end, if it ended at all. She remembered what she had read in the papers from time to time about people who disappeared, never to be heard of again. Her fear was made worse by being alone; alone, as she always was at moments of crisis. There was no one with her and no one knew her whereabouts. She wished she had told her brother Talaat or his wife or Dr. Mushira before she had left the house. But she had not anticipated ending up in this subterranean tomb. Perhaps the text message would produce a result, but how could it when she had not specified her location?

She looked around at the forbidding bare walls. She felt them closing in on her, constricting her breath. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes to shut off her surroundings.

Her whole life played out before her, from her childhood and adolescence through her rebellious phase that had quickly
been brought to an end by her early marriage. That was followed by the years of mental and emotional suffering and her recent revolt against the life that had been forced upon her.

The drawings she had abandoned on the dining table at her brother’s popped into her head. They represented a total transformation of her creative designs, which were no longer empty aesthetic exercises, but held a new social meaning to inspire the new Egyptian woman aspiring to freedom and fulfillment.

When she had been blindfolded, she had seen completely new forms hovering before her, one innovative design after another. These were a continuation of the moment of inspiration she had had at home less than an hour before, and that had been snatched forcibly away. Doha felt that now she could create designs for a whole show expressing her new ideas. It was as if her unconscious mind, where that rare moment of creation had sparked, was not troubled by her present predicament. As if inspiration transcended time and space and could strike at any time and in any place. Even in prison or in the grave.

She longed to keep working on the designs. She did not know whether they would come back to her again.

Did she fall asleep sitting in her seat? How could she have, when she had slept so well the previous night? Was it the emotional turmoil? Was it a means to escape her fear? She had heard the sounds of torture and cries for help. Had she really heard them, or had she dreamt them? She awoke to the door being opened and a man coming in. He had a look of importance about him; and a subordinate, who might have been a policeman, came in after him. Doha could not tell, as they were both wearing civilian clothes.

“Good evening,” said the man as he sat behind the desk.

“Good evening,” replied Doha curtly.

The man indicated that his assistant should wait outside. The subordinate saluted, said, “Yes, sir!” and went out. The man took a stack of papers out of one of the desk drawers and started writing without looking at Doha.

It was Doha who started the conversation. “Can you please tell me where I am and what is required of me?”

Without lifting his gaze from the paper, the man said, “You are being taken care of.”

“What do you want from me?”

“We have not received any orders concerning you yet. We are to take care of you until your position is clarified.”

“But that’s not legal. You have no right to treat people in such a way.”

The man continued with a politeness that Doha felt contradicted the indecency of what he said: “You ought to be aware that you are receiving the very best treatment. Ordinarily, you should have been placed in a holding cell at a police station with pickpockets and criminals. But here you are, esteemed and respected, in a government office. You must have quite considerable connections in the government. You should realize you are indebted to someone.”

“If I was in a police station, my family would at least know where I was.”

“Not necessarily,” he said, as if talking to himself.

After a while Doha said, “I want to call my brother to let him know I’m all right and haven’t fallen into the Nile or been run over by a car.”

“My instructions are clear: no calls.”

“All the world’s legal systems allow detainees to speak to a lawyer.”

“But you are not detained. No arrest warrant has been issued for you.”

“Well, what am I doing here, then?” snapped Doha.

“You are being looked after until we receive instructions.”

“What instructions?”

“We don’t know. Perhaps to arrest you, or to imprison you, or to release you. Please don’t ask me any questions. I’m as much in the dark as you are.”

“At least let me know where I am.”

“That’s irrelevant.”

“What should I do?” Doha said, to herself as much as to him.

The man finished writing and was heading for the door when he said, “My advice is that you wait patiently. Rest assured that as soon as we receive instructions concerning you, we’ll be with you.”

He left with his papers, locking the door behind him.

29 Esmat Bey

T
he night was receding when Abdel Samad left Esmat Bey’s apartment. Shyly, as if morning were reluctant to break, the sky started to illumine the world. Abdel Samad walked until he returned to the spot where he had been picked up. The scene was quite different. The streets were deserted. The groups of youths hanging around the bridge had gone, and the lions of Qasr al-Nil had a tinge of sadness. Thick mist filled the air, and Abdel Samad could not make out either Saad Zaghloul’s face or a single star in the sky. At the boundary between night and day, there were only stray dogs in the street, quickly crossing the road with their heads hanging low to the ground. He crossed Qasr al-Nil Bridge, retracing his steps, as if by running a film in reverse events could be erased. The streetlights on the bridge were still lit, their glow reflecting off the surface of the Nile, which looked black, as though in mourning. He stopped halfway across the bridge and stared at the water. He recalled the final scene from the film
The Beginning and the End
. In the same spot, the heroine of Naguib Mahfouz’s novel of that name, Nafisa, who had become a prostitute and whose life
had become meaningless and valueless, threw herself into the Nile. Nafisa’s justification was that she needed money to pay for her brother to go to the military academy. Abdel Samad also needed money.

That Esmat Bey was a bastard. A prick. He had not given him the five thousand pounds he needed. A measly hundred pounds that he had flung in his face, saying, “Who do you think you are? Marlon Brando? You’re not worth anything and don’t have any experience.” Son of a bitch! Who did he think he was with his pathetic Charlie Chaplin mustache?

A police patrol went past on the bridge. He felt his back pocket for his ID card. He remembered the day he had gone to the police station to apply for it, and how it had seemed the passport to independence. But rather than becoming independent, he had remained stuck in his father’s house. Now his independence day had finally arrived. He had to leave his father, his home, his job, and everyone he knew. No one must know where to find him, since he owed more than he would ever be able to repay, even if he worked for years. Now he had to rely on himself and nobody else. He took the hundred-pound note out of his pocket. A good start. He would go to a cheap hotel in Attaba Square or Hussein and grab some sleep during the day that had not dawned for him.

Ominously, the light of dawn still did not reflect off the surface of the Nile. He felt its waters calling to him, but he turned around and headed off to Attaba.

30 The Minister of Defense

D
oha al-Kenani, the wife of Medhat al-Safti, who had dared to criticize the party, was the talk of the town. One newspaper wrote, “Doha al-Kenani disappears in mysterious circumstances.” Another had, “Unconfirmed reports of Doha al-Kenani’s detention.” The paper that had interviewed her published a special issue with the headline “The ruling party consumes itself … Doha al-Kenani arrested for her patriotic views.” The paper also printed a full list of those arrested since the demonstration at the High Court. This comprised more than three thousand people, mostly young men and women.

Another headline read, “Exclusive: From his cell Dr. Ashraf al-Zayni calls for civil disobedience.”

Events went far beyond expectations. Opposition and civil society leaders convened a mass meeting that lasted a whole day. They even agreed on the need to organize and act together. A joint statement, issued in the name of the Coalition of Egyptian Political Forces and signed by the main opposition leaders, demanded the immediate release of detainees.

It was decided to keep the meeting open until the demands were met. As soon as the news spread, people from all sectors of Egyptian society joined in. Within twenty-four hours, the meeting had become a determined popular sit-in, unlike anything the country had witnessed before.

In the twenty-four hours that followed, the government made no response to the assembly’s demands. The coalition issued a second statement. This said that the Egyptian people had had enough and, in its entirety, refused to deal with a ruling party that had wrecked political life by passing extraordinary laws to ensure its control of the country for decades. The statement continued, saying that it was time for the people to rise up and shake off the corrupt and tyrannical regime choking it. Finally, it adopted the imprisoned Dr. Ashraf al-Zayni’s call for civil disobedience, to start the next morning.

The various groups that had responded to Dr. Ashraf’s call communicated via the Internet and SMS messages. The press and satellite channels could not keep up with the unprecedented rate of developments. Texts and emails went out calling upon all those who rejected the party of oppression and tyranny and its corrupt government to stay at home and not go to work until the popular demands raised by the opposition forces had been met. The next day the country stopped work. Public life ground to a halt. Employees did not show up to government offices and to businesses, and the streets were virtually empty. The few people who did not adhere to the general strike made the country seem as if it were moving in slow motion. Daily life continued extremely slowly, at a pace insufficient to meet the needs of business.

The people’s opinion of the regime became obvious to the world. There was no longer any doubt that elections, in which
the party would always claim more than ninety percent of the vote, had been rigged. Foreign news agencies began to write about what they called “the first unrigged referendum Egypt has witnessed on the popularity of the ruling party and the strength of the popular opposition.”

At this point, the government finally decided to act. Abdel Rahman al-Safti, the party secretary-general, called upon all party members to confront the conspiracy being hatched against Egypt. A conspiracy backed by foreign powers to destabilize the country and threaten the security of citizens. The minister of the interior issued a statement saying that some popular leaders had been arrested for conspiring to overthrow the regime, and that it had been established beyond doubt that Dr. Ashraf al-Zayni, currently in detention, was involved in this dark conspiracy hatched abroad.

The interior minister’s statement made it clear that the security agencies had had Dr. Ashraf al-Zayni under observation for some time. It stated that they had proof that he had returned from abroad a few days before the High Court demonstration. He had been in a European country to meet intelligence agents from an enemy state who had given him money to cause disturbances in Egypt by implementing a wide-scale plan, the details of which would be revealed at a later stage.

According to the statement, Dr. Ashraf al-Zayni had been confronted with this proof and had given a detailed confession, including the names of the members of the clandestine organization planning to overthrow the regime. These included the fashion designer Doha al-Kenani (it omitted to mention that she was the wife of Medhat al-Safti); university professor Mushira Abdel Rahman, who had been arrested a few hours before the statement; and thirty-seven well-known names
from the opposition, all of whom had been arrested, in addition to a number of young people, prominent among them Hassan al-Lithi, Hala Abdel Shahid, Ayman al-Hamzawi, and Salwa al-Eleimi.