Tagged: intifada
flamingo.ark/type
<from the files of the Five Clans Firm>
Created and produced by Dams Up Water
I. A Flock at Midnight
The rain came down over Nacotchtank, washing the imperial grime from the monuments and depositing it, as usual, in the Anacostia. Somewhere above the river, a helicopter searched for revolutionaries. Somewhere below it, Beaver maintained a floodgate that the municipal government insisted did not exist.
And on the forty-seventh floor of an office building that officially had forty-six, five attorneys were arguing over a bill.
“You cannot charge the Capybara Company for the maintenance of an ark we no longer possess,” Badger growled.
“We do possess it,” Otter replied. “We simply do not possess the jurisdiction in which it currently exists.”
“That sounds like possession with extra steps.”
“It sounds,” said Weasel, without looking up from his cigarette, “like an invoice.”
Mink sat beside the window, studying a message that had arrived through the Supreme Exchange.
The message contained three words.
FLAMINGOS. ALBANIA. ASYLUM.
A fourth appeared a moment later.
URGENT.
Weasel leaned back.
“Albania,” he said. “The last time we had business in Albania, a consortium of foxes attempted to register the Adriatic as intellectual property.”
“They nearly succeeded,” Otter observed.
“They succeeded in registering the logo.”
A knock interrupted them.
Their receptionist announced that a delegation had arrived without an appointment, without diplomatic credentials, and with what appeared to be an entire marsh ecosystem attached to their footwear.
“Send them in,” said Beaver.
The door opened.
Five flamingos entered the Den, their pink plumage bright against the city’s charcoal darkness. Their leader was a tall, elderly bird with a black-tipped beak, a gold ring around one ankle, and the exhausted dignity of a creature who had spent a lifetime explaining to administrators why a wetland was not an undeveloped commercial opportunity.
“I am Madam Vjosa,” she said. “We represent the indigenous flamingo communities of the Albanian littoral and the inland waters connected to our ancestral migratory routes.”
Weasel gestured toward the chairs.
“Please sit. If you have a deed, put it on the table. If you have three deeds, put two under the table. We are a law firm, not a miracle.”
Madam Vjosa did not sit.
“We have no deeds.”
Badger’s ears rose.
“No deeds?”
“We had territories before your species invented deeds.”
A silence settled over the room.
Beaver removed his spectacles, polished them, and replaced them.
“Then,” he said, “you have come to the right office.”
Madam Vjosa explained the situation.
A foreign development authority had declared a chain of wetlands, lagoons, and migratory corridors to be a strategic economic zone. The authority claimed that the flamingos’ traditional territories were subject to a succession of imperial charters, obsolete royal concessions, and modern corporate agreements.
The birds had been informed that their ancestral presence constituted an environmental consideration.
Their territories, on the other hand, constituted an investment opportunity.
“The authority says the land belongs to the state,” said Madam Vjosa. “The state says it belongs to a concessionaire. The concessionaire says it belongs to a holding company. The holding company says its beneficial owners are protected by a trust in another jurisdiction.”
Otter smiled sympathetically.
“Ah. The four horsemen of modern property law.”
“Who are they?”
“Limited liability, offshore registration, indefinite postponement, and a very good lunch.”
Mink studied the documents the flamingos had brought.
“And what do the flamingos claim?”
Madam Vjosa lifted her head.
“We claim the right to remain a people in the place where we became a people. We claim the right to return, to feed, to nest, to migrate, and to leave our children a world in which the water has not been converted into an asset class.”
For once, nobody made a joke.
Then Weasel opened a fresh file.
“Counsel for the birds,” he said. “Let’s see who has been trying to sell the sky.”
II. The Students
The case might have remained a straightforward dispute over indigenous territory if the Antifada had not arrived the following morning.
By then, Walter Kogard’s former students had become an international phenomenon.
Their movement had begun at Universitas Autodidactus, where an uprising over local peoples’ indigenous rights had developed into a decentralized network of student assemblies, autonomous study circles, worker councils, animal-rights committees, and self-appointed tribunals of historical correction.
The newspapers called them the Students, or “the Taliban,” of the Antifada.
The name had stuck for reasons nobody could adequately explain, least of all the movement’s own members.
They rejected the comparison to the Taliban’s actual political and religious project, insisting that their allegiance was to antifascism, anti-imperialism, and the abolition of inherited domination. Their critics pointed out that the distinction was easier to maintain in a manifesto than in a street full of broken windows.
The Antifada’s preferred method was direct action.
Sometimes this meant occupying a lecture hall until the curriculum changed.
Sometimes it meant turning a colonial monument into an impromptu seminar.
Sometimes it meant entering a corporate headquarters, declaring the building a liberated zone, and demanding that the board of directors submit to a public reading of its own articles of incorporation.
And sometimes, regrettably, it meant smashing the very windows through which the public might have watched the proceedings.
The movement had no central office, no supreme commander, and no official membership list. It communicated through an ever-changing mesh of encrypted channels, public assemblies, printed broadsides, and rumors. Its local cells shared principles but disputed almost everything else.
Kogard called this distributed autonomy.
The newspapers called it chaos.
The intelligence services called it a strategic threat.
The consulting industry called it a market opportunity.
One particularly enterprising firm had already released a report entitled Disruption as a Service: Monetizing the Post-Institutional Revolutionary Subject.
It sold for $4,800.
The report’s executive summary had been written by an artificial intelligence that had never attended a protest.
The Antifada had now spread across Europe and into the Middle East. Its slogans appeared on university walls, abandoned factories, port terminals, and the marble entrances of institutions that had previously considered themselves beyond the reach of history. Every movement had a symbol. Every symbol acquired a merchandise line. Every merchandise line required a payment processor. The Antifada had become a decentralized autonomous organization capable of mobilizing thousands of people while remaining unable to agree on whether its own name should be capitalized.
Its opponents called it the Beast.
Its supporters called it the swarm.
Kogard, who had once taught that history was the struggle between human beings and the conditions of their own making, called it a contradiction.
“An uprising,” he told a student journalist, “can abolish a hierarchy and reproduce its functions before lunch.”
That afternoon, the firm’s reception desk received a communique from the Antifada’s Albanian working group.
It contained a demand.
THE FLAMINGO TERRITORIES MUST BE LIBERATED.
Underneath, in smaller type:
THE LAW FIRM MUST DISCLOSE ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CAPYBARA COMPANY.
And, in a final postscript:
ALL PRIVATE ARKS ARE SUBJECT TO INSPECTION.
Weasel read it twice.
“Private ark,” he said. “That’s a new one.”
“Not entirely,” said Beaver. “The ark has always been a political problem. Someone must build it, someone must maintain it, and someone must decide who gets aboard.”
“And someone,” Otter added, “must pay the dock fees.”
Badger slammed the message on the table.
“We have a client seeking refuge, a foreign authority claiming her home, and a revolutionary organization threatening to expose our corporate relationships. Which one are we supposed to handle first?”
Mink folded the communique.
“The one that is right about something.”
III. The Number of the Beast
The first public hearing took place in a rented auditorium beneath the old customs house.
The foreign development authority sent three lawyers, two consultants, and a representative from its office of Strategic Wetland Optimization.
The flamingos sent Madam Vjosa.
The Antifada sent everyone else.
They filled the auditorium, the corridor, the steps outside, and the square across the street. Some carried banners. Others carried books. One had brought a portable printing press. Another had brought a six-foot cardboard model of the Beast of Revelation, complete with a QR code linking to a document entitled Political Economy in the End of Days.
The hearing began at nine.
By nine-fifteen, the chair had been denounced as an instrument of imperial administration and an AI agent.
By nine-twenty, the chair had resigned.
By nine-thirty, the Antifada had established an interim people’s tribunal whose jurisdiction was recognized by nobody, including the people who had established it.
Otter whispered to Mink.
“I’m beginning to miss ordinary corruption.”
At the center of the room, the development authority’s lead counsel rose to speak.
“Our client does not dispute that flamingos have historically occupied the relevant wetlands. However, historical occupancy does not establish a legally cognizable proprietary interest under the current framework of regional administration.”
Madam Vjosa stood.
“Then your framework is defective.”
The counsel adjusted his tie. “Madam, the question is not whether your community has a meaningful relationship with the territory. The question is whether that relationship has been recognized by the competent authorities.”
“Recognized by whom?”
“The competent authorities.”
“And who made them competent?”
“The relevant legal instruments.”
“And who made those instruments?”
“The sovereign institutions.”
“And who gave those institutions the right to decide whether we existed?”
The counsel looked toward the chair, who was now being used as a platform for a student speaker.
“That,” he said, “is outside the scope of these proceedings.”
“Of course,” said Weasel, rising. “The origin of authority is always outside the scope of proceedings conducted by authority.”
A murmur passed through the auditorium.
Weasel placed a document on the table.
“Exhibit One: the original charter of the Capybara Company. Exhibit Two: the custody agreement for the ark. Exhibit Three: the memorandum of understanding by which the ark’s custodians undertook to preserve the original animal types without claiming absolute ownership over them.”
He turned toward Madam Vjosa.
“The ark was never intended to be a warehouse for creatures whose territories had become inconvenient to the powerful. It was a refuge against precisely that eventuality.”
A student in the back shouted, “Then open it!”
Another shouted, “Dissolve the company!”
A third demanded that the firm publish its internal accounts.
Otter sighed, “Here we go.”
The development authority’s counsel seized the opportunity.
“If the firm acknowledges that the ark is not private property, it must also acknowledge that its corporate custody arrangement is without legal effect.”
“Not so,” said Beaver.
He stood slowly, carrying the original charter in both paws.
“Custody is not ownership. Stewardship is not sovereignty. A trustee may hold a thing without possessing the beneficiary right to consume it.”
The room fell quiet.
“Your client,” Beaver continued, “claims that a state can extinguish a community’s relationship with its territory by transferring a title from one institution to another. The Antifada claims that the existence of such institutions renders every form of custody illegitimate. Both propositions confuse the instrument with the purpose.”
He laid the charter beside the flamingos’ petition.
“The ark exists to preserve life. The law exists, at its best, to establish the conditions under which life may continue without domination. When either instrument becomes an excuse for its own perpetuation, it has forgotten its commission.”
The cardboard Beast toppled over.
Nobody noticed.
The hearing was adjourned.
Outside, the Antifada declared victory.
Inside, the development authority filed a motion to dismiss.
IV. The Ark’s Manifest
That night, Beaver called an emergency meeting of the Society of Mystic Animals.
The meeting took place in the hidden harbor beneath the Visible Rail-Yield Layer, where the physical city’s foundations descended into black water and the Rail-Yield Lattice Technology ran through the dark eternal like a subway whose stations don’t appear on any map.
At the harbor’s center rested the ark capacitor, moored in hyperspatial suspension.
Its casing bore the marks of countless migrations. Inside were the registered animal ark.types: the beaver, the weasel, the badger, the mink, the otter, the capybara, and hundreds of others whose names had been misfiled, mistranslated, or erased by generations of officials who assumed that whatever lacked a proper record could not have existed.
Hadidos had preserved the registry.
Not because it believed that every creature belonged to the Society.
Because somebody had to remember them.
Weasel stood before the manifest.
“Here’s the problem,” he said. “If we admit the flamingos, we establish a precedent. If we don’t, we establish a different precedent. If we ask the Antifada to help, they may seize the harbor. If we refuse, they may declare us collaborators. If we release the manifest, the Empire will learn where the ark is. If we conceal it, the Empire will claim we’re hiding evidence.”
Otter raised a paw.
“I propose we form a committee.”
Badger glared at him.
“You propose that for every problem.”
“And eventually,” Otter said, “one of them may solve something.”
Mink was studying the manifest.
“The flamingos are not seeking equity in the ark,” she said. “They are asking for its protections while they recover their territories.”
“Then why did they come to us?” asked Weasel.
“Because they heard we had once provided refuge to the Capybara Company. They understand the difference between a harbor and a homeland.”
Beaver looked toward the water.
“The ark can shelter them,” he said. “But it cannot substitute for the territory they have lost. Those who have not been displaced must keep possession, and those who’ve been displaced must reoccupy — perhaps with the aid of Antifada.”
Badger nodded. “A refuge that becomes permanent because the original home remains occupied is not a solution. It is a better-managed displacement.”
The words settled heavily over the harbor.
Then a signal flashed on the manifest.
An unauthorized inquiry had entered the Supreme Exchange.
SOURCE: ANTIFADA \\ DISTRIBUTED NODE UNKNOWN.
QUERY: IDENTIFY THE BEAST.
The manifest began to populate with records from across the network.
University occupations. Labor disputes. Land reclamation campaigns. Anti-fascist assemblies. Autonomous councils. Broken windows. Mutual-aid kitchens. Sabotaged statues. Public tribunals. Pamphlets. Arrests. Evictions. Emergency decrees. Donations. Counter-donations. Arguments over tactics. Arguments over arguments.
The data assembled itself into a shape.
It was not a single organization.
It was not a single leader.
It was a distributed pattern of resistance, reaction, opportunism, solidarity, vanity, courage, and confusion.
A beast made not of one body, but of many cells within one stem, and dreadfully distinct, without agreeing on what they were.
“That’s their genius,” said Mink.
“And their danger,” said Badger.
Weasel watched the display.
“Every institution wants a single enemy. A single enemy can be named, arrested, negotiated with, or killed. But what do you do with a movement whose headquarters is wherever somebody decides the existing arrangement is intolerable?”
Otter examined the incoming records.
“You sell it a platform.”
Nobody laughed.
The display changed.
A new query had appeared.
ANTIFADA REQUESTS RECOGNITION AS THE EXCLUSIVE REPRESENTATIVE OF ALL OPPRESSED ANIMAL TYPES.
Badger’s expression darkened.
“They have done it again.”
“Done what?” asked Weasel.
“Claimed to liberate everybody by becoming the authority over everybody.”
Beaver closed the manifest.
“Then we must tell them no.”
V. The White Wall
The confrontation took place at dawn.
Kogard arrived at the harbor alone, carrying a battered leather satchel and wearing the expression of a professor who had spent the night discovering that his most successful students had not understood his lectures.
“You asked to see me,” he said.
“We asked to see the movement,” Mink replied.
“The movement doesn’t have a representative.”
“Then why does it issue demands in the name of every creature?”
Kogard looked at the harbor, at the ark, and at the manifest sealed behind Beaver’s desk.
“Because the world has organized itself so that those without representatives are often not heard.”
“And you believe your students have solved that problem?”
“No.”
The answer surprised them.
Kogard set his satchel down. “They have discovered that a decentralized network can act faster than an institution. They have not discovered that speed is wisdom, that outrage is judgment, or that dismantling a hierarchy automatically produces justice.”
“Tell them that,” Badger said.
“I have.”
“And?”
“They accused me of being pedantic.”
Weasel grinned.
“Congratulations, Professor. You’ve achieved tenure.”
Kogard ignored him.
“The Antifada is not one thing. Some of my students are building schools. Some are organizing tenants. Some are documenting imperial claims. Some are convinced that every obstacle must be broken before it can be understood. The network allows all of them to call themselves the same movement.”
“And the Beast?” Beaver asked.
Kogard looked toward the water.
“The Beast is the temptation to turn a multitude into a single will. The Empire does it through bureaucracy. A revolutionary movement can do it through moral certainty. Both promise that the contradictions will disappear once everyone obeys the correct authority.”
Mink considered this.
“Then the Antifada needs a constitution.”
“No,” said Kogard. “It needs to learn why constitutions exist.”
He opened his satchel and removed a document.
It was a proposal for a public assembly in Albania, where representatives of the flamingo communities, neighboring animal peoples, local residents, independent ecologists, and the development authority would meet under an agreed set of rules.
No party would be permitted to claim exclusive representation of the affected communities. No corporate title would automatically supersede evidence of prior use or customary stewardship. No agreement would be considered legitimate merely because it had been signed by an institution with the power to enforce it.
And no participant would be permitted to destroy the meeting’s records.
Weasel examined the document.
“It’s almost reasonable.”
“I know,” said Kogard. “I’m worried about it too.”
“What does the Antifada get?”
“The opportunity to prove that it can do something other than oppose.”
“And the flamingos?”
“A hearing in which they are not treated as exhibits.”
Beaver took the document. “Then the Five Clans’ Firm will represent them.”
“On what terms?” asked Kogard.
“Under the terms of our charter.”
VI. A Settlement in Pink
The assembly convened three weeks later on the Albanian coast.
The location had been chosen by the flamingos, who explained that the negotiations should take place within sight of the territory under dispute. The development authority objected that the site lacked adequate facilities.
The flamingos pointed to the water.
The authority requested a risk assessment.
The Antifada proposed an autonomous zone.
The flamingos requested that the Antifada stop speaking for them.
For eleven hours, the parties debated jurisdiction, historical evidence, migration corridors, water rights, environmental restoration, and the distinction between a people and a stakeholder group.
Otter negotiated.
Mink translated.
Weasel uncovered a series of internal memoranda showing that the development authority had classified the wetlands as unoccupied despite possessing records of seasonal nesting activity.
Badger demanded that the authority explain the discrepancy under oath.
Beaver drafted a framework for interim protection while the territorial claims were reviewed.
The Antifada’s Albanian working group initially rejected the proposal because it did not establish a permanent revolutionary administration.
Madam Vjosa addressed them.
“You came here to help us recover our home,” she said. “You have spent the entire day explaining why our home must become your political project.”
A young student stood.
“We are trying to dismantle the systems that made this possible.”
“Then dismantle them,” said Madam Vjosa. “But do not ask us to exchange one master for another merely because the second master speaks in the language of liberation.”
The student sat down.
The settlement was signed shortly before sunset.
The development authority agreed to suspend the contested concession, restore access to specified nesting and feeding grounds, recognize the flamingo communities as participants in all subsequent territorial proceedings, and submit its historical records to independent review.
The flamingos agreed to participate in a process for determining the boundaries and stewardship arrangements of their traditional territories.
The Capybara Company offered temporary refuge to displaced birds through the ark’s custodial network, without claiming ownership of the refugees or their territories.
The Antifada agreed to support the process without claiming exclusive authority to represent the flamingos.
In a separate memorandum, the firm demanded that the authority cease describing an occupied wetland as “available land.”
The authority declined to adopt the wording. It did, however, agree to discontinue the phrase “unutilized biological surface.”
Otter called this a victory for civilization.
Badger called it a vocabulary adjustment.
Madam Vjosa called it a beginning.
Before departing, she approached Beaver.
“You have given us shelter without asking us to surrender our home.”
Beaver bowed his head.
“That is what an ark is for.”
“No,” she said. “That is what an ark ought to be for.”
Then she spread her wings.
The flock rose from the water in a great pink formation, moving over the coast toward the restored marshes. For a moment, the sky appeared to have acquired a new jurisdiction.
The lawyers watched them disappear.
Weasel lit a cigarette.
“Do you suppose the development authority will appeal?”
“Of course,” said Mink.
VII. The Beast Has No Headquarters
Back in Nacotchtank, the firm returned to its ordinary business, which is to say that it resumed billing the living for disputes among the dead. And the Antifada, having discovered that a successful intervention in one territorial dispute could be exported to a dozen others, had begun to operate on a scale that made the old international order look less like a system of sovereign nations than a collection of unattended filing cabinets.
The first sign was a photograph from the Albanian coast: a crowd of students, dockworkers, marsh-dwellers, and itinerant revolutionaries stood before the gates of a foreign development authority. Across a banner, in black letters against a field of white, ran the new slogan:
BISMILLAH, C’EST LES TÉNÈBRES.
In the name of God, it is the darkness.
Nobody could agree on who had coined it. The Francophone Antifada claimed it was a dialectical inversion of the language of imperial enlightenment. Its Arabic-speaking affiliates interpreted it as an indictment of the powers that invoked divine order while engineering earthly dispossession. A Parisian student collective insisted that the phrase belonged to the streets and could not be reduced to a translation.
A theological committee issued a statement distinguishing the invocation of God’s name from the political appropriation of religious authority. The committee was immediately accused of institutionalism.
Within forty-eight hours, the slogan had appeared on walls in Marseille, Brussels, Berlin, and London. By the following week, it had surfaced in demonstrations connected to territorial conflicts in the eastern Mediterranean, anti-colonial struggles in Africa, land disputes in the Americas, and a series of national confrontations in which the Antifada’s local affiliates had taken positions that their respective governments described as foreign interference.
The movement’s supporters called this international solidarity.
Its critics called it communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy.
Its more enterprising members called it a distributed intervention architecture and began offering seminars on the subject.
The Antifada had discovered that the nation-state was not the only jurisdiction in which political action could occur. A conflict over a wetland in Albania could become a question of indigenous sovereignty in the Americas, which could become a dispute over military occupation in the Middle East, which could become a student uprising in a European capital, all before the diplomatic corps had finished agreeing on the spelling of the relevant place names.
The same network that circulated eyewitness testimony also circulated accusations, counter-accusations, forged documents, genuine documents stripped of context, and manifestos whose authors had never visited the countries whose destinies they proposed to rearrange.
It could mobilize assistance across borders faster than a ministry could issue a press release.
It could also turn a local grievance into an international confrontation before the people most directly affected had agreed on what they wanted.
The Antifada had become a force in national conflicts without becoming a nation, a government without becoming a government, and an army whose most effective weapon was the possibility that nobody could establish where its command structure began or ended.
The Beast of Revelation had acquired a communications department.
It still had no headquarters.
But it now had regional chapters, competing interpretations, and a remarkable capacity to make every government on earth feel personally addressed.
One morning, Weasel found a new memorandum on his desk.
RE: GLOBAL ANTIFADA REVOLUTION
The memorandum had been prepared by the firm’s intelligence service, reviewed by Beaver, annotated by Mink, challenged by Badger, and returned by Otter with a note reading: Can we charge the client for the interdimensional ramifications?
Weasel read the summary aloud.
“The Antifada’s interventions increasingly cross national boundaries. Its networks connect indigenous territorial claims, revolutionary movements, religious solidarities, labor struggles, and campaigns against foreign domination. Its decentralized organization allows rapid mobilization but complicates questions of accountability, representation, and political responsibility.”
He paused.
“That’s a great deal of language to say that nobody knows who’s in charge.”
“On the contrary,” said Mink. “Everybody knows who’s in charge. They simply disagree about which everybody.”
Badger pointed to a map on the wall. Red lines connected demonstrations, occupations, disputed territories, military flashpoints, and autonomous assemblies across several continents.
“Look at the pattern. A local conflict erupts. An Antifada cell intervenes. The intervention attracts foreign attention. The government declares an attack on national sovereignty. The movement declares that sovereignty was already compromised by imperial power. The opposition calls for international assistance. The authorities call for security cooperation. Then every party discovers that its original dispute has acquired a dozen new sponsors.”
“And a dozen new enemies,” Otter added.
“Precisely,” said Badger. “A dispute that began with a question of land becomes a referendum on the world order.”
Weasel stared at the map.
“Perhaps that is the point.”
“Perhaps,” said Beaver. “But the world order is not the only thing at stake. There are people living inside these conflicts. A movement may cross a border in solidarity and still cross the wishes of the people it claims to defend.”
The partners fell silent.
On the wall, the map refreshed.
A new message appeared from an Antifada node operating somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean.
BISMILLAH, C’EST LES TÉNÈBRES.
Beneath it, a second line:
NO NATIONAL QUESTION IS MERELY NATIONAL.
And beneath that, a third:
NO INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT MAY CLAIM TO SPEAK FOR EVERY PEOPLE.
Beaver read the three lines carefully.
“Perhaps they are learning.”
“Or perhaps,” said Badger, “they have discovered that every contradiction can be turned into a slogan.”
Weasel smiled faintly.
“That’s what slogans are for.”
VIII. The International
Kogard returned to the Den on a wet Thursday evening.
He had spent the previous month traveling between universities, autonomous assemblies, and political gatherings whose organizers were united in their opposition to domination and divided on almost every practical question of what should replace it.
He looked tired.
“The Antifada has become international,” he said.
“International?” Otter asked. “My dear professor, it has become a jurisdictional nightmare. We’ve received inquiries from thirty-two countries, eleven unrecognized governments, the Librarians of the Supreme Exchange, and a revolutionary council that insists its legal personality is independent of its physical existence.”
“Does it have a bank account?” Weasel asked.
“It has three.”
“Then it exists.”
Kogard removed his coat.
“The difficulty is that the movement can no longer distinguish between witnessing a conflict and intervening in it. A national crisis becomes a global cause. A global cause becomes an obligation. And an obligation becomes a license to act on behalf of people who never appointed you.”
Mink nodded.
“The flamingos nearly became an example of that.”
“They still might,” said Kogard. “Their case has become a symbol in conflicts far beyond Albania. Some groups invoke it to defend indigenous territorial rights. Others invoke it to argue that every state is an illegitimate arrangement. Still others claim that the ark should become a permanent international sanctuary under the Antifada’s administration.”
Badger laughed dryly. “They’ve gone from opposing imperial custody to demanding custody of the revolution.”
“Not all of them,” Kogard replied. “But enough to make the question unavoidable.”
Beaver opened the charter.
“The ark cannot become the property of a movement, however righteous its cause. Nor can it be used to excuse the seizure of another people’s home.”
“And what can it do?” Kogard asked.
“Offer refuge. Preserve records. Provide evidence. Maintain the conditions under which those displaced by power may recover the capacity to determine their own future.”
“That’s not a revolution,” said Kogard.
“No,” said Beaver. “It is a responsibility.”
For a moment, Kogard seemed prepared to argue. Then he sat down.
Outside, the rain beat against the windows. Somewhere in the city, a crowd was chanting. The sound rose and fell between the buildings, a rhythm without a visible conductor.
“Bismillah, c’est les ténèbres,” Kogard murmured.
“What does it mean to you?” Mink asked.
He considered the question.
“Baruch HaShem. The abyss, black darkness, and all that jazz. Just another riff in the cosmic jig.”
“And the Antifada?” asked Weasel.
“The Antifada must decide whether it is a network through which people exercise their freedom or a network that exercises freedom on their behalf.”
Otter closed the memorandum.
“That sounds like a constitutional question.”
“It is.”
“Then I regret to inform you that you’ve come to a law firm.”
For the first time that evening, Kogard laughed.
IX. Coda
The ark is not a state, an empire, or a revolutionary headquarters. It is a custodial undertaking established for the preservation of life across conditions of political catastrophe. Its doors may be opened to those in need of refuge, but its manifest shall not become a register of subjects. Its charter may be invoked to defend the displaced, but not to acquire their territories. Its stewards may advise, shelter, and bear witness; they may not substitute their authority for the self-determination of those whose lives are at stake.
The Fire in the Belly
A Short Story for Edward P. Jones
By Antarah Crawley
12 September 2012
I don’t know what day it is. I awoke this morning with my head on the belly of my companion Shams. I am a boy in a country which isn’t familiar to him anymore. The only boy I know is Shams here, whose situation just twelve hours ago I knew nothing of except that he, like me, had been on a bus to Cairo. From where, again, I don’t know.
I sat on one of the chairs reading the menu while I waited for Shams to wake up. The merchant didn’t seem to be preoccupied with us, as his business was filled with men and women—workers, other merchants, mechanics, students, elders, young men like myself—whose collective voices were loud and mesmerizing. Shams and I were just two of them, and I’m sure we weren’t the only ones who slept here last night. The sun was now coming in through the street windows and the atmosphere in the café was grey with smoke on which lingered smells of honey, coffee, apple, tobacco, eggs and fal. The tinkering of cups and spoons and the bubbling of pipes accented the voices of organizers and unsettlers. Shams, however, continued sleeping as though he was born into this place.
Not eleven hours ago he had asked me if I had a cigarette while Altair Sawalha stood atop an overturned van and shouted for the end of the regime. He smiled at me, recognized me as his friend, another boy in belly of the madness. I gave him one from the pack I had in my pocket and watched him light up and then turn back towards Sawalha and shout with the crowd. I felt like I had known him before, and that that fist in the air with a butt sticking out smoldering between knuckles was something I was responsible for.
He finally awoke, subtly shifting up and wiping his eyes. “Shams,” I said. He looked and smiled at me with his eyes still half closed.
“These fuckin’ beds, huh,” he said putting his hand in the arch of his back and stretching.
“Yeah. Let’s get a move on then, right.” And we got up and waded our way through the crowded cafe out to the street.
I heard them blocks away: chants of “Go! Go! Leave! Leave!” and “He shall leave!” I listened to them. Shams listened too. He had heard enough that he knew what it meant, and he joined in with his fist up. Then he looked at me and smiled and we laughed as we walked toward where the sound was coming from.
We found ourselves on a particularly crowded section of one of the big streets; I think it was Ahmed Ourabi. The noise had become monotonous—crashes, sirens, yelling. It was all atmosphere now. As we walked we talked about how much we despised Mubarak. It was mostly recounting things we had heard at the rallies and what we had learned from talking to other protesters, but it was liberating nonetheless. Shams had never heard of the other world revolutions, so I took great joy in recounting the uprisings of the French and the Russians and at seeing the looks of astonishment on his face as he learned they we were not alone in this cycle of revolution.
I said, yelling above the crowd, “You see it was all a matter of time. Revolution is inevitable; you can’t keep the people down and oppressed indefinitely. All dictators make that mistake. Ali made it. And he paid. Now Mubarak is going to pay.”
“Right on!” he said. He would always yelp in agreement. He was childlike and I loved him for it. I loved to see him grow, like a young schoolboy learning his alphabet. I wanted him to know as much as me.
Every now and then as we walked we’d see a pile of debris, charred sticks and bricks. Shams would go into the pile and pick out a stick with a charred end, then go to a building or concrete wall and inscribe some amusing message like “Fuck Mubarak” or “Down with the fascist regime!” I felt proud seeing him do that. I feel proud knowing I spread the revolution to another fellow countryman. After each message we eagerly tried to alert passers-by of our accomplishment while many cheered laughed in amusement.
As we walked, I would muse things over with him, ideas that I had been thinking about. I felt like a great outlaw leader telling him these ideas; he seemed to absorb them like a sponge.
I said, “It seems to me that there are certain tools that every human needs—that they should be equip with from the earliest parts of their life until they get old and wise. How to eat, how to breathe, important things. But people don’t talk about another really important skill that people need. And if they’re not going to use it, then they should at least be well versed in it.”
“Yeah, what is it?” he’d interrupt, eager as ever.
“I’m getting to that. This skill—the ability to revolt—I believe every person should have!”
“Yeah! Of course!”
“Yeah, I believe every person should live through at least one revolution. And it doesn’t even have to be violent. It can be like, changing your hair color to red when you and everyone around you has natural black hair. You should be able to say ‘fuck them!”
“Fuck ‘em!”
“I think revolution is a natural and organized process in the grand scheme of things. If everything is smooth and level where you are, and everyone is living the same and indefinitely, then something’s wrong! You’re being oppressed and lied to.”
“Well we’ve been being oppressed and lied to for decades!” He was getting it.
“That’s right, Shams; that’s why it has to go. That’s why this revolution is so important. Man, it’s probably the greatest thing to happen to this country.”
“Yeah,” he screamed, and he screamed loud and jumped in the air with his fist up. Our fellow protestors, walking around us, with us, would sometimes join it. I don’t know if they heard what I was talking about or not, but their common cry of agreement made me happy. I turned back to Shams:
“You ever heard of Daoism?”
“No what’s that?” he asked, not surprisingly.
“In China they have this thing called Daoism—I don’t know why more people don’t know about it. In Daoism, the world and the universe and the people and animals are all one and this whole entity is always going through revolutions and transformations.”
“Wait, what’s an ‘entity’?”
I laughed. Why go to school, huh, if you’re not going to learn about the world or Daoism, or simple vocabulary. Shams was like every other kid in 6th of October City before he met me: wasting his time at technical college. Being taught the expendable things in life. While he was doing that I was learning the good stuff. Before I left for Cairo, before I knew anything about the revolution, I was already on my way to stirring up trouble.
About ten months ago I lived with my uncle In 6th of October City. All while living with him we would leave the house every morning and walk in opposite directions. He went to the auto-body shop where he was the manager and, to his knowledge, I went to Al-Khamsa Technical School every day to learn mechanical engineering so that one day I could work in his exciting shop. And that was true for a while.
About a year ago I met Alex, an American who worked at October 6 University. We had got to talking on the street because I was wearing a Smiths tee shirt. I didn’t know much about international history then, but I was big on American and English rock. We talked Smiths, Adolescents, Mott the Hoople, Patty Smith, Libertines, Strokes, Moldy Peaches, everything. He seemed to like me. I guess I wasn’t like my classmates, whose hair was shorter and who wore Polos and Levi jeans. I looked like a young tanner Kirk Hammett, with straighter hair. He asked me if I was busy; he said he had had some 45s at his apartment which was a couple blocks away on No. 27 street. I told him that I didn’t have anything to do even though it was Monday and I know I didn’t look any older than nineteen.
I’m grateful now that he was so unsupportive of my technical education. If I hadn’t gone with him I’d probably be in my uncle’s auto shop right now, learning how to change a transmission or whatever you do there.
Alex’s apartment was in a nicer building than I’d seen some of my friends live in. We went in the ground entrance and walked up the steps to his flat.
It was also nicer than where uncle and I lived. It was more ethnic—more Egyptian, I guess. He had several hookahs and a painting of the flag’s crest, an eagle, on the ceiling. When you walked through the door there was a window right across from you looking out to the dusty street you just came off of. I saw a counter with some bar-style chairs with no backs—stools—to the left of me. That was where the kitchen was. When I turned to the right I saw his living room, the walls of which were lined with shelves, some of them makeshift, mounted with more books than any household or institution I’d ever been in. I didn’t even know what one would need with so many books. I suppose Alex saw my astonishment at his collection:
“Do you read much?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
I went over to the shelves. To the right of the window on the wall opposite the door were two bookshelves separated by a television on a stand. There was a whole bookshelf with a makeshift annex on the wall to the side of that. I walked, briskly perusing the titles; I had a fine grasp of English for a mechanics student. There was A People’s History of the United States, Naked Lunch, Down and Out in Paris and London, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Nietzsche Reader, Walden, law primers, Chemistry books, the theory of relativity. When I got through browsing both walls I turned back and began browsing them again.
Alex laughed as he shut the door and turned into the kitchen. “Here’s the finer parts of the entire Western World. Right at your fingertips.” He went into the refrigerator and brought out two beers. You-eng-ling. “Want one,” he asked rhetorically as he handed me the freshly opened bottle. I walked over and lifted the cold beer, putting it too my lips. Terrifically watery, but I suppose that was America.
“I might just substitute school for this,” I joked.
He laughed, “Hey, by all means. Make yourself at home,” he smiled. And turned with his beer and went down the corridor gesturing something like he’d be right back. “Oh,” he cried back, out of sight, “Feel free to look through the records and put on any one.”
I turned to look. On the wall of the entrance door, to the farthest side, there was a stereo with a cassette/CD player and a turntable sitting atop four milk crates of vinyl records and CDs. Beside it was a worn in looking leather couch. But it wasn’t worn in like a poor family’s like some of the kids I knew. It was ripped and duct-taped real cool-like. It was a red couch with black trim with white cotton sticking out where it was ripped. It sat low and broken-in in front of a black chest that served as a table, facing the television that I realized was covered in dust. On the trunk-table were Rolling Stone magazines, jars of shisha, a pack of cigarettes—an American brand, Parliaments—a cereal bowl housing a fern of some sort and a zip-lock bag of what looked like densely packed nuggets of green herbs. There were text books on the floor, I suppose for teaching.
I walked back over to the books and looked up and down the shelves, sipping at my beer. I saw two titles that looked intriguing—The Story of American Revolution and The Catcher in the Rye. I took the books and my beer and sat them down on the trunk-table. I took the liberty of lighting a new coal for one of the hookahs that was out and reclined on the couch while I read.
I read whole books on days when Alex was home all day, working as far as I knew. Eventually, when we got to know each other better, he’d let me stay in while he went off to the university. He trusted me not to steal anything. And in fact I never took anything of his out of the house except a cigarette or two. He never let me smoke his cigarettes. He said it was because he only had half a carton left, but I think he was peculiarly suspicious of Arabic cigarettes. But not Arabic shisha for whatever reason. We talked about the world and its revolutions; I was fascinated by that stuff. I read or skimmed about half of the books on the shelves—more than I think any working countryman under 50 has ever read in their lifetime. I listened to every record he had, from the Cure and Fugazi to Cat Power and Adele. Ramen and Parliaments, revolution and rock and roll. Day in and day out for nine months.
“An entity is…um,” I had to think about how to describe it. “It’s a body of matter and meta matter, I suppose.”
“I still don’t get it,” Shams said. But I don’t think he cared.
The street we were on was getting agitated. The people were getting rowdier, but the street itself felt like it was heating up. I told Shams I thought we should turn off onto another street when we saw one. We were trying to move out through the crowd of excited men to the sidewalk so that we could get onto a less intense street when we heard shots. The shot of an automatic rifle was followed by shots of voices. They were chastising and cheering, for what, I don’t know. I was shaken up by the rousing of motion around me. People were jumping up and knocking into each other, screaming and yelling at whomever. I tried to use the wave of the crowd to see who the agitators were, ‘cause Johnny Rotten said the pit was always in front of the stage. I caught a glimpse of green cameo uniforms and beige vests. It was the military. I caught another wave. They had their tanks with them. I was going to join in with provoking them, but it seemed like the crowd was commending them. I couldn’t see if anyone had been shot. They might have shot a pro-Mubarak type, which by all means would have been grounds for commending. But they were the army; I didn’t get it. I was being railed in the head by another man’s elbow, and at this point I was being dragged along. The voices and the crowd where all one, but I remembered Shams. I looked back and saw him, integrated with the crowd. He was chanting what they were chanting, something I didn’t pick up.
I called to him: “Shams! Shams!” He was in a trance; he kept on moving with the men around him with their fist in the air shouting as gasoline spittle flew from their inflamed tongues. Then I realized I had stopped moving as one with the crowd. It had stopped moving as a unit and I could break away from the current to go back and tap him. “Shams, Shams, come this way!” I led him by his hand to the sidewalk, which was no less crowded but closer to one of the side streets. We turned and stumbled to the ground. Shams panted furiously and turned to look at me.
“What energy! Whooh!”
I lay against a building catching my breath as he and I continued to witness the power rising up off of the crowd. They were turned towards the middle of the street responding to the army that was marching through. Others, the mellow ones, where around us watching on; periodically screaming something I wasn’t listening to.
I continued to sit even after I had caught my breath. Shams came over closer and sat cross legged.
“Lemme get a cigarette,” he said.
I pulled the battered pack of Parliaments out of my pant pocket and handed him one.
“Why do they have these open parts?” he asked, looking at the end of the filter.
I looked out into the street at the men and women with their signs: He Shall Leave. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Do you know who was ruler before Mubarak?” Alex had asked one day, at the time when I had completely stopped going to school.
I was lying back on the couch as usual, with a book on Lenin and the Bolsheviks on my face. Alex was working on his computer at the kitchen counter. I didn’t look up from the page as I tried to think. “Nicholas II,” I joked.
“No, really.” He wanted an answer.
“Um,” I tried to remember but I couldn’t find the answer. “I don’t know; I don’t keep up with that scene.”
“That scene?” he laughed. “You mean your scene.”
“I don’t know, man.” I continued reading about Russia, far away.
“Well when did he take over?”
“Mubarak?”
“Yeah”
“Um, I told you, I don’t know. Why do you need to know?”
“My students. I’m trying to brush up on my Egyptian history so they don’t think I’m a total outsider.”
I put down the book and got up and went over to peruse the bookshelf again. “Maybe if you had some books on Egypt you’d have better luck,” I teased him.
He responded, “Maybe if I had some books on Egypt you’d actually learn about your own country.” I looked back at the book I was reading, sprawled out on the table.
“Uncle’s probably wondering where I am by now,” I said.
“Alright, that’s cool. I’ll be out tomorrow morning, so I’ll leave the key under the mat.”
“Thanks.” I left.
About a week ago, before I left the city for Cairo, I went to Alex’s place. I walked down No. 27 Street and saw him in his raggedy Circle Jerks shirt and sandals smoking a cigarette, looking intently at nothing in particular.
“What’s up? Can I get one of those?” I asked. He offered me the pack in silence. I took one and tried to see into his eyes as I lit it. “What’s going on?”
He took a drag. “You been watching the news?”
“We don’t have a television.” I looked to where he was looking, at a bar across the street. Then I turned back to him, “But you don’t watch television either; your set is covered in dust.” I smiled at him.
“I was at Gazura. They had Al-Jezeera on. People are getting wild. They’re calling for Mubarak to leave. I was there yesterday and today. It’s getting wild in Cairo.”
“What do you mean? Rioting? What did Mubarak do this time?” I turned back and chuckled taking another drag.
“It wasn’t about this time.” He squinted his eyes looking up at the sun. “I suppose it’s a culmination of everything. The past thirty years of his bullshit. And they saw Tunisia speaking out so…why not, huh?” He flicked the butt into the street and turned to go back into the building.
“What happened in Tunisia?” I took a last drag and flicked the butt too, following him in. We got up to his flat and I plopped down on the sofa. I picked up a book I had laying there—Stranger in a Strange Land.
Alex was in the kitchen with his hand over his mouth in thought. He was staring at a boiling pot of water. I could smell the steam after a while and feel the room getting hotter.
“Making Ramen?” I asked.
“I got a call from my mom in Cleveland. Ohio. She said the US government was strongly suggesting for American citizens to get on the very next plane back.”
“Oh, you’re gonna be a frightened cat now?”
“Fraidy Cat?”
“Yeah.”
He stayed silent, looking at the boiling water. Then he walked back through the hall to his room and closed the door. I continued reading, not offset in the least. It was a normal day at Alex’s until I left at the usual seven o’clock, biding “goodbye” to the house, and shuffled back home.
The next day, I got over to the flat at around noon. The door wasn’t unlocked like it usually was. I flipped up the dusty map and used the key underneath to let myself in. I walked up the building’s steps and went into Alex’s apartment. It looked deflated. Most of everything was still there except several books on the shelves, making the remaining titles fall diagonal into each other in a real depressed scene. The records had been taken from the milk crates. The trunk-table was cleared except for a note on a piece of loose-leaf paper that read: Went back to USA. Be back when the shit subsides. I could read it from the threshold where I was standing.
I walked into the kitchen and looked through drawers. I don’t know what I was looking for. I found half a pack of parliaments and put them in my pocket, then I went back over to the couch and sat down. The television was still there. The stereo and most other things a sane person would cherish remained. I told myself he was probably coming back.
The next couple of days I tried to tell my uncle I was sick so I could stay home. He didn’t buy it. Nevertheless, when I parted with him in the morning I’d just lap the block and go back into the house using a copy of his key that I made. I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling wondering what to do.
A couple days ago, before I left the city, I was in Gazura Café having a hookah. Two men were sitting immediately in front of me, a little to the right:
“I’m convinced the day has finally come,” said one. “There will be a large protest tomorrow in Tahir square. I’m going to go into the city with Madhat and his woman and little girl. They have a fair sized van if you’d like to come. If I were you I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“Madhat has never been a man of good judgment. Why bring your woman and child to such a ruckus of an event? They’re sure to be knocked up,” said the other man.
“No, no. That’s the thing; this is no riotous complication. This is organized. Delicate and thirty years in the making. It’s so precise; Mubarak has to go.”
The other man took a sip of his beer and crossed his arms and scratched his dark beard. “Mubarak has to go because of the uprising, or he has to go because he has to go?”
The first man leaned in: “this is the end of the line. Everything will be different in several days. We have no idea how, but it will change. Undoubtedly for the best, whatever happens.” The rumbling bubbling of the hookah sounded, and the man bellowed a great cloud that rose into the dark ceiling and diffused into the grey atmosphere.
The other man continued to muse, scratching his beard and rubbing his neck. “I’ll need to talk to Alimah.”
“She’s a wise girl. She’ll understand if she’s been watching. This is momentous. Every countryman should attend. I know Anwar in Alexandria is organizing.”
“Okay,” said the second man.
“Okay what?”
“Well, you go with Madhat tomorrow. But I will surely be there in the next day. I’ll look you up when I get there.”
“I’m glad to hear it! You will have no trouble finding me or anyone else you know that’s going in a group. The community will be strong! He will leave!”
The next day I left uncle a note; I knew he wasn’t going to take a day off of work. I went down early, before uncle was even up, to Gazura, where I had heard a group was gathering to go into Cairo. I saw a group of them around a van: beautiful people, men and women, elders and young workers. Some of them I had seen before and some I hadn’t, but they all had this sort of reflexive quality. It was as though these people who I had known my whole life were more real now, so real and concrete, solid, finely built men, graceful old women with faces like stone statues, each wrinkle precisely placed and eroded, deep like the Nile. I greeted them as I approached and professed my deep love of the revolution. They graciously invited me aboard their party. To fit everyone into the van, I sat on the roof as we drove onto the highway towards Cairo. I felt like I was in one of Alex’s books—like Che in the company of Castro and the party. We were on our way into the heart of the struggle.
After five hours of driving, as the sun was just rising, we finally got to the city, but the traffic was already congested to the point of stagnation. I was anxious. I had never been to Cairo, and now I would be there in the midst of the greatest event in Egyptian history! A fantastic urge came over me and I jumped off of the roof of the sitting van. I knocked on the window in a gesture of thanks and walked off towards the center of the city winding between the vehicles. Many others had taken this course of action, too. I imagined them unapologetically abandoning their vehicles to go be with the masses. They waded and hopped over caravans and at that moment, whether you were in a car or not, we were all one, and I felt it.
* * *
I called to Shams, “Let’s go find an open restaurant or hookah.” He got up real excitedly; I’m sure he was hungry. I hadn’t seen him eat, at least for four or five hours, from the moment I offered him a cigarette in one of the squares. I got up and we walked away from the busy street toward a section I had heard was still serving food for the protesters.
We walked until we ended up on Al Sabaa Banat, about four blocks from the square where a place called Jawhar was open. It was fantastically crowded, or at least it seemed that way because many people were standing in the middle of the establishment talking in high voices to each other and to no one in particular. Shams and I found our way to the back of the place and took the only two empty seats. We sat beside a quite, content looking man who wore American sunglasses—Ray Bans, like Alex had—and kept his arm folded in an authoritative fashion with his hose in his hand but not lifting it. His head lay against the wall and I couldn’t tell of he was asleep or awake and simply observing. There wasn’t much light coming in through the street windows by now and the weak lamps hanging from the ceiling and the small candles on the tables in front of us made for a sedative environment. Even the whirr of voices like gears of a machine became monotonous and a part of the atmosphere.
A woman brought us a hookah and two beers. Shams said, “and a fal in aysh baladi.”
“Two,” I added.
The woman gestured in acknowledgement and went back behind the curtain next to the bar. I took my beer and sipped; Shams tapped his foot rhythmically with his hands folded in his lap. He seemed to be interested in the debate that was occurring in the middle of the restaurant.
“I didn’t know we were living under such conditions, you know,” he said to me, or to himself. I’m not sure.
Whichever it was, I respond, “Well, to tell the truth, neither did I.”
“I wish I could join in,” he said. There was desire in his voice.
“You—we are joining in.”
“I mean in talking and debating.” He took his beer and put it in his lap. “I saw this man fighting with a pro-Mubarak type when I first got here, you know. Someone on the bus had told me there were clashes and people were beginning to get violent. And this man was wrestling with this supporter. And he was yelling that the supporter was just propping up a corrupt government, distant or something from the people.”
I sipped. “You want to fight? Physically with them?”
“I don’t know. I want to…know.”
“Well we may not have been following it before, and that was our fault. But we can show our full support now by adding to the numbers. And adding to the voices.”
“But what if we need to do more than that?”
I looked at him. “Non-violence prevailed in the American South.”
He chuckled. “America sounds cool. They know how to handle situations.” He was quiet for a while and we both just sipped on our beers. “Revolution, man,” he said, and shook his head in apparent disbelief. “We’re in it. It’s just surreal.”
“Yeah,” I smiled into my glass.
“We’ll never get this rush again. I’m just trying to a make it last, you know.”
The ambiguous man beside us joined in, moving nothing but his mouth. “Revolution!” We turned to look at him; Shams leaned over. “Revolution is life!”
“Right on,” Shams said.
His staccato declarations were prophetical: “Revolution is life! In this grand cycle, it is the facilitator. It disrupts monotony. Monotony is silence. Silence is death. Revolution is life.” And like that he seemed to resolve back into peace and silence. Any other time, I’d have thought he was crazy, but the eccentric tend to be revered more in eccentric times.
His words resonated with my own. “I’ve been saying that too! I was talking to my friend here about that, and how in Daoism revolution is natural and is a part of the way.”
“Right on, man,” he said still looking forward through his glasses, “We’re all one, man. Us, the revolution, the country. Even if you don’t know it. Even if you don’t know why it’s going on. Even if you’re supporting the ones in power. You’re a part of it all. In revolution, the conservative are progressive. It’s all good, you know.”
“It’s all good, you know,” Shams smiled at me.
“This violence was no accident. They had to react, the government and their puppets.” I leaned in. The man went on, turning to us for the first time, “The peace will prevail over this setback, no question about it.” And then he paused like he remembered something, and turn back looking out into the restaurant in his original position. “But even so, at this moment it’s dangerous out there. Where are you boys staying?”
Shams and I looked at each other.
Shams turned back to the man: “We’ll let the Revolution handle that.” He turned to me and smiled. “We’ll let the Dao handle that, huh, Aalam?”
The man laughed heartily. “You boys. You boys are blessed by your naivety. True revolutionary minds. Natural, with your age and temperament. Leaned, no doubt, but naïve all the same.” He turned and tilted his head to us so that he could see us with his eyeballs. He then turned back around: “Truly one with the way of world. But also at its mercy.” Then he took the first drag of his pipe that we’d seen him take since we sat down.
“What a cool old fellow,” Shams smiled as or waitress brought out our food. Shams dove in.
It took him all of three minutes to inhale the plate and scarf down the rest of his beer. I was still shoveling fal onto the aysh as he lay back with his hand on his stomach. He reached over and took the hose of our hookah and started bubbling. The great dark grey cloud moved throughout the room; there was now almost no light coming in through the street windows.
I was only about three-quarters of the way done when Shams tapped me and said in a low voice, as if to conceal his desire, “Let’s go out.”
“Well…we will. I gotta finish.”
“I’m feeling it tonight, Aalam.”
I just looked at him and continued eating. I heard some glass break from out in the street. The voices of yelling pulled out of monotony and I heard conflicts.
“We need to be careful, you know,” I said.
“I know. But this the real thing here.”
“What? The real what?”
“Nothing,” he said. He was looking outward with a real content look. Finally I finished and Shams and I left the establishment and went back out into the street.
We stood outside of Jawhar for a minute as we looked up and down the block. At the end of each corner I saw activity.
“Let’s go this way,” Shams said leaning to the right. He was walking with a bounce, almost skipping. I pulled out my pack which was dwindling down to the last few cigarettes. I lit one up and surveyed my surroundings. For some reason, this cigarette was burning my nose and eyes with a heavy smoggy smell. I looked at it, then looked up to see Shams on the corner pointing down the street where I couldn’t see.
“Look!” he yelled. He was illuminated.
I got to the corner and looking to my right saw a fire on an overturned car igniting the block and protesters in orange glow. Silhouettes of men in battle danced on the ground in front of the burning vehicle which was situated in front of a warehouse about thirty feet tall. There were protesters yelling and throwing bricks up at what I guess were pro-Mubarak types up on the roof of the warehouse. And I suppose some of the Mubarak supporters were also down in the group of protesters because there were fistfights, group beat downs and confrontations on the street.
“Shit,” we said in unison. My brain crippled with emotion, I was frozen.
So I didn’t know what to say when Shams ran out towards the debacle screaming “Fuck you, Mubarak Fuckers!” at the top of his lungs. I watched him, my cigarette hand still frozen in front of my face in disbelief as he sprinted two hundred feet, jumping and plunging feet first into a man who was beating on another man with a piece of debris. He got up and kicked the assaulting man in the face. He then raised his fist and screamed along with the other protesters at the pro-Mubaraks on the roof. I saw a man come up behind him as he shouted and choke his neck from behind in an arm-lock. I dropped my butt and started to run over, slowly and hesitant at first. Shams slammed the man with his elbow and blood flew from the choker’s nose. As he held it, Shams reared back and smashed into the man’s temple with his fist with the force of a tank. The man fell limp. Shams turned back. I ran faster. I ran towards that boy with his fist in the air as he screamed in euphoria into the night. At a star.
Then I don’t know if I slowed down or if the world started going in slow motion but I saw that star, a bright flame in a bottle hurled from a supporter on the roof, arc and fall, smashing into Shams and engulfing his torso in fire. That torch raged, and fell to the ground, and I had stopped and fallen to my knees. I watched that fist I was responsible for, smoldering.
