Cairo Swan Song by Mekkawi Said

Author:Mekkawi Said
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Published: 2009-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

17

I WATCHED SCENE after scene of repulsive violence against children, trying as hard as I could to hide my discomfort. Marcia’s face was flushed and excited, even when she pretended to be moved, as she played certain scenes in slow motion and went zooming past others. She was taking notes with her right hand and controlling the remote on her thigh with the fingertips of her left, and at the same time she was giving me some background on what had happened there. I’d never seen footage of it before. The kids looked just like Karim, Warda, Maryam, and their friends.

There isn’t a big difference between us Arabs and Brazilians. We’re both third-world, backward, on our way to extinction. The scenes playing on the screen were genuine documentary footage of how the phenomenon of street kids spread in Brazil and how the Brazilian mafia worked together with the police to stamp it out once and for all. Peeling them off the streets, crucifying them on lampposts, chasing them down at night in armored cars, sniping them like dogs. The last scene showed some officials with stars on their shoulders boasting about how a problem like that could be successfully wiped out in just a few months’ time.

She was very quick that Marcia; organized, too. She thought systematically. While I’d been busy goofing around, she’d corresponded with major international production companies; first to introduce herself, and then to get her hands on whatever documentary footage there was on the issue. Marcia had sent away for tapes, watched them by herself, selected the best ones, and bought the archival footage from a British TV channel along with the rights to use it in our forthcoming film, all without checking with me, the “consultant.” I was alarmed; throughout our months-long discussions about the film, she’d never told me she was going to buy archival material from international TV channels to back up her story. All she’d asked me to do was to contact the family of the Nubian musician Hamza Alaa al-Din, who lived in America, and ask them—because I used to know them—for permission to use his music in the film. I put off dealing with that request, just as I was deliberately trying to slow down production of the film. I was using the carrot and stick on her. I’d read her everything that was written in the newspapers about the phenomenon, I’d take her to documentaries that dealt with it, I’d even collect news clippings about novels or TV serials that portrayed street kids. I introduced her to some of those kids and told her their secrets. I told her about where they lived and where they hid out. I told her about what they ate, what they wore, how they ran away from ordinary people and the police. I’d act like I was really hard at work until she turned her attention elsewhere. It was as if I were the security guard manning the gate at the entrance to the world of those kids; the only one who could allow her in or keep her out.

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