Live from Cairo by Ian Bassingthwaighte

Author:Ian Bassingthwaighte
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

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The dust-brown city turned yellow as the sun died and the streetlights burned to their own deaths, flickering. The taxi stopped in an intersection where the streets met at weird angles. Sharp corners battled wide ones for the title of Most Egregious Urban Planning Mistake. Down one street was a tribe of goats eating garbage. Hana could more or less intuit her location from the length and direction of the drive. North along the corniche to the Imbaba Bridge, then west for ten minutes into the labyrinth. After the taxi dropped them off and became a cloud of exhaust, Charlie said, “This way.” He walked toward a set of steps leading to a long yellow hall. There was a man sitting on the steps. He was smoking and drinking a Coke. As Charlie and Hana climbed toward him, he said, “Where from?” To Hana, the question contained an unknowable pain. Where from? implied where going? The man clearly hadn’t gone anywhere in a long time.

“Montana,” said Charlie as if that word didn’t mean much.

“Michigan,” said Hana. The simple answer was unsatisfying. But the real answer was too complicated. “And you?”

“Baghdad.” The man’s body was a black shadow in the yellow light pouring from the hallway behind him. His Coke smelled like some other drink. “Tomorrow I think I go back.” He lay down across his step, covering the entire width of the stairs, and looked up at the sky. Hana looked up at the sky, too, but there were no stars. The light of the city bounced off the pollution so that Cairo looked covered by a shroud.

“This way,” said Charlie.

After passing the man—by necessity, stepping over him—and crossing the stone floor, the ascent continued. Five flights of slick, worn stairs. The edges had been rounded by years of bombing by feet. Hana thought the stairs had endured rather proudly. The dark upward climb was intermittently lit by dim bulbs. The higher they climbed, the more Hana struggled to breathe. “The secret,” said Charlie, “is exhaling through your nose.” Hana told him to stop talking. When they finally reached the fifth floor, the dim yellow bulbs in the landings became white fluorescent tubes in the hall. Hana saw the Arabic number sitting cockeyed on a red door. Charlie knocked. He knocked again and smiled at Hana. She put her hands on her hips, stared at the ceiling, and cursed every cigarette she’d ever smoked, which was not many. One every now and then when she was feeling especially stressed.

“What are we really doing here?” It occurred to Hana, later than she might’ve otherwise liked—the information was no longer useful—that this wasn’t the sort of building in which she could imagine Charlie socializing. “And why’d we take the stairs?”

“The elevator was broken. You didn’t see the sign?” Charlie continued to knock on the door. When there was no answer, Charlie knocked harder. Then said, “Salaam, Dalia?”

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